March 2016 Bringing Church to the People: Ashes
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Episcopal JOURNALMONTHLY EDITION | $3.75 PER COPY VOL 6 NO 3 | MARCH 2016 Bringing church to the people: Ashes, Curry explains3 ashes everywhere primates’ actions toward church By Pat McCaughan NEWS Episcopal News Service ncreasingly, there are “Ashes to Go,” ‘Smudge and Run,” “Drive-through Ashes,” “Ashes on the Fly” and, now, “Lent in a Bag” as all sorts of churches — Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist — are moving the centuries-old Ash Wednesday observance beyond church walls. IThe Rev. Donna S. Mote, Episcopal chaplain at the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, offered “Ashes on the Fly” to travelers on Ash Wednesday. “I’m out and about, which is my usual style,” said Mote, 51, who describes her parish as “4,700 acres, in a geographic sense,” through which pass an average of about 274,000 passengers on any given day. Mote takes the ashes into public spaces because reminders of mortality, humility Pilgrims to7 and healing belong where the people are, and they make for powerful connections Ferguson, Mo., even beyond the context of a formal liturgy, she said. EWS confront racism Like the young woman “last year who asked, ‘Can you tell me how to explain N Lent to people who don’t observe it?’” Mote said. Or an airport employee who told Mote she wanted ashes but had never had them before and wasn’t sure what they meant. “What do you think it means?” Mote asked. Her reply: “‘I think it means I want to get my act together, but I’m going to need some help.’ I said, “I think that’s what it means, too,’” Mote said. But most who approach the cassock-clad Mote “don’t say anything at all,” she said. “They just come up and bow their heads, including those whose first language Photo/Wikimedia Commons Risen triumphant is not English. It’s very powerful. You don’t have to speak the same language for an In Andrea Mantegna’s “La Résurrection,” completed in 1459, important sacred event to transpire.” a radiant Christ steps out of his tomb, astonishing the soldiers The Rev. Harry Jenkins, rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Slidell, La., offers keeping guard. It was originally one panel of an altarpiece ashes, prayers and “Lent in a Bag” to drive-through worshipers. Included in the Movie10 characters made for the Basilica of San Zeno in Verona, Italy. brown paper bag are: a copy of Episcopal Relief & Development’s 2016 Lenten search for Meditations, sand, a rock, a human figure, a candle and a cross. continued on page 9 signs of faith ARTS Safety fears force Easter closure of Dublin churches By ACNS staff services to parishes outside the security cordon, while allowing for PAID individual clergy members to say the Daily Office in their churches on PRSRT STD PRSRT US POSTAGE Bellmawr NJ PERMIT #1239 ecurity officials in Dublin have told the Anglican Christ Church Easter “in order to avoid a break in the witness of each church.” Cathedral and six city-center churches they must close on Easter “This decision was made without consultation with the dioceses, and due to safety concerns surrounding events scheduled to mark there is a considerable sense of disappointment and sadness at this, but the centennial of the Easter Rising, which eventually paved the the church’s priority now is to find a way of offering worship on the most Sway for the creation of an independent significant day in the Christian calen- Irish nation. dar,” a diocesan spokesman said. Up to half a million visitors are “The archbishop and clergy most expected to descend on the city on affected by this in the parishes of the March 27, and security officials have diocese in the city center recognize the imposed a ban on all vehicles entering logistical difficulties in catering for be- the city center from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. tween 350,000 and 500,000 visitors to The Irish police, the Garda Síochána, the city on the day. They are also acute- have asked that the front gates of the ly aware of the health and safety issues cathedral remain locked for the day. involved in accessing the churches and The clergy have been told that “there the diocesan cathedral where Easter will be no ready access to their church- Day worship normally occurs when es on that morning.” such large crowds are expected to be on Church of Ireland Archbishop the streets of the city to view the parade. Michael Jackson has met with clergy “The archbishop and clergy of the from the affected parishes. Together, Photo/William Murphy inner-city communities have sought they are planning to move public Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, is set to close for Easter Sunday. to find an continued on page 9 2 EPISCOPAL JOURNAL March 2016 ANGLICAN DIGEST Anglican Digest is a column of news and features from churches in the Anglican Communion. Catholic vespers celebrated in Henry VIII’s chapel Church raises awareness of ardinal Archbishop of West- As they spoke, they jour- minster Vincent Nichols on neyed through 450 years of Zika virus Feb. 9 led a service of Solemn history until they commented The Episcopal Anglican Church of Vespers in the Chapel Royal on present-day ecumenical re- Brazil has joined with other churches Cat England’s Hampton Court Palace lations in England. in the country to raise awareness of the in what was the first Roman Catholic Nichols told the Bishop of Zika virus and promote preventative act of worship for 450 years in Henry London that there had been a measures through an ecumenical Lenten VIII’s chapel, the backdrop to much of number of “key points in the campaign for a healthy environment. the English Reformation. development” of the relation- The campaign “Care for our Com- The service, sung mainly in Latin, ship between Roman Catho- mon Home” lifts up the right to clean marked the 500th anniversary of lics and Anglicans. One had water and sanitation in Brazil, a signifi- Hampton Court and was in recognition been the recognition at Vatican of the growing relationship between the II “of the gracefulness of the cant economy but Photo/Richard Lea Hair with great inequality Church of England and the Roman orders you exercise.” And the Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the archbishop of and severe gaps in ba- Catholic Church. biggest step had come 50 years Westminster, wearing a red skullcap, and Bishop of sic services and envi- Before the service, Nichols and Bishop ago with the publication of a London Richard Chartres flank the altar, decorated ronmental standards. of London Richard Chartres, who is Dean document on religious liberty. with Tudor plate, at the Chapel Royal of Hampton The mosquito that of the Chapels Royal, held a discussion “That recognized the pri- Court Palace, England. transmits the Zika in the Palace’s Great Hall in which they macy of a person’s conscience virus is able to breed talked about the pain and tribulations of to seek for God in the way in which pation in the 1800s and said that Britain Irala where there pools of the Reformation and the growing unity they were called,” he said. “So it shifted had “ceased to be a confessional state” water left standing in the environment. between the two churches. the Catholic Church from its classical in 1828 when it repealed laws banning “CONIC’s [National Council of The two leaders spoke about John position of ‘error has no rights’... But Roman Catholics from holding a num- Christian Churches in Brazil] mission is Fisher, who, as bishop of Rochester, was here now was a sense that said, ‘No — ber of senior positions, effectively creat- to strengthen the ‘ecumenism of service executed on the orders of Henry VIII our first commitment was to the work ing “a free market in religious ideas.” and justice’. This international ecumeni- for refusing to accept the king’s new of God. And the work of God unfolds The two leaders agreed that the cal Lenten Campaign can help to achieve position as supreme head of the Church in different ways in different periods churches now must work together to that, so the struggle to prevent diseases of England, deferring instead to the and with different people.” address growing problems. n and the spread of the mosquito in this primacy of the pope. Chartres spoke of Catholic emanci- — Anglican Communion News Service period is essential,” Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil Bishop Flavio Irala, (Amos 5:24) CONIC coordinates the Melanesia names new land, and was undertaking a doctoral degree president of CONIC, has said. campaign, which links churches with archbishop in theology at Charles Stuart University in Care for Our Common Home is faith-based organisations and social Australia. — Anglican Communion News Service rooted in the biblical text calling for jus- movements. The Provincial Electoral Board of the tice to “roll down like waters” and righ- The Zika virus is spreading rapidly Anglican Church of Melanesia has ap- New Zealand bishops oppose teousness “like an ever flowing stream”. and has now been detected in at least 23 pointed Bishop of Temotu George Takeli countries across the Americas, leading as the church’s next archbishop and pri- euthanasia the World Health Organisation to de- mate. Takeli will be enthroned on April 17 Nine New Zealand bishops recently Episcopal clare a global public-health emergency. at the Saint Barnabas wrote to the country’s Parliament urging The virus is transmitted to humans Provincial Cathedral no change to the law where the “right to JOURNAL through the bite of an infected Aedes and also will become die” is concerned.