The Rock May 2012 the Rock

THE ROCK MAY 2012 THE ROCK The Anglican/Episcopal Parish of St. Peter, Caversham, Dunedin, NZ The Vicar Writes CONTENTS Contemporary Dilemmas edition will of Anglo-Catholicism consider the u n f o l d i n g o f n 1923 a nation wide conference contemporary PAGE TWO: I gathering of thousands of Anglo- dilemmas at some The Vicar Writes contd: Catholics took place in London, depth. which culminated in an outdoor How Anglicanism Works PAGE THREE: Mass at the White City stadium. hroughout its history the Church The Vicar Writes contd: That such a large venue was required T spoke volumes for the critical mass of England has been renewed by a the movement had acquired within series of holiness movements that PAGE FOUR: the Church of England. Some have have enriched, enlarged and subtly The Vicar Writes contd: argued that this was the high water changed its sense of identity. Anglo- tidemark of Anglo-Catholicism, and Catholicism is but one of these, along that a down hill momentum set in with Evangelicalism and the PAGE FIVE: from that time on. The reality was Charismatic movement, to name but Our Parishioners more complex and nuanced than two others. As each of these that. In many ways the movement movements first emerges they come PAGE SIX: produced some of its most as a surprise to the parent body. outstanding personalities and Generally the Anglican Church Vestry in Brief contributions to the Anglican Church reacts by at first opposing the Wardens Warble from the 30’s through to the 60’s. movement, then at a later stage by Origins of the Eucharist But from then on there was a sense of granting it limited toleration, and reacting to developments, rather than then by swallowing it whole, and PAGE SEVEN: setting the agenda as it had before, taking it on board lock, stock and and in recent times splits have barrel. I will be arguing that this is Friendship Group occurred within the movement that the most dangerous stage for any Fellowship Group have revealed unresolved tensions holiness movement of renewal, Film Season Extended that were there from the beginning. because it then loses its agenda having apparently achieved what it Concert This edition of the Rock considers set out to do. Does it then have the Celebrating Pentecost the dilemmas that have beset the generativity to bring new gifts to its movement in recent times. It does so parent body? Is there a reason for its mostly from the perspective of the continuing existence? And often the apparent taking on board of its PAGE EIGHT: Church of England, but its spin offs and ramifications reach us here, and major demands and outward forms Service Times the New Zealand dimension can be turns out to be a cosmetic exercise Calendar the theme of a later Rock editorial. that doesn’t change the parent body Contact Information This is a big subject, and the May in fundamental ways, and which in edition of the Rock will set the scene turn blunts the movement by wearing and raise the curtain, while the June THE ROCK St. Peter’s Caversham - Dunedin THE ROCK - PAGE TWO MAY 2012 its clothes yet not truly acquiring developments, and the ensuing expression of worship would its mind. counter blast sweeps Newman appeal to the unchurched poor out of the Anglican Church, and who were bored by the “words, Each of these movements is an the Tractarians out of Oxford. words, words” of Prayer book expression of the Holy Spirit that worship, while in reality it was brings much-needed gifts to the This first stage of the movement deeply attractive to the middle Church as a whole. Each of them is breaking up in the late 1840’s class. has strengths and weaknesses that at about the time that the first become apparent under the waves of colonists are arriving in T he protestant minded pressure of events and the New Zealand. We can note also Anglicans who took to the streets passage of time. And each wax that what marks out this to protest at these new and wane in different epochs of emergent Anglo-Catholicism developments in the public history, according to the from the high church party of worship of the slum ritualist operation of Divine providence, the 18th century, the “high and parishes had grasped an and the demands of each age. dries” as they were known, is its important truth in what was infusion with romanticism, the happening. The clergy who wore Opposition, Toleration, most vital cultural force in 19th Eucharistic vestments did so Acceptance century Europe, with its because they were proclaiming insistence on the passionate life their belief in the doctrine of We can see how these three and the awakened imagination. Eucharistic sacrifice. Cranmer stages played out in the and the protestant reformers development of Anglo- were vehemently opposed to this Catholicism in the 19th century. catholic interpretation of the Mass, and had shaped the Book The Tractarians emerge in the of Common Prayer in such a 1830’s as a group with the way as to suppress this agenda of let the church be the understanding, particularly by church. Their message – recover sawing the Eucharistic Prayer in your Divine mandate, be a two in the 1552, 1559, and 1662 supernatural society, dispense versions of the BCP. This was an with state interference in church issue worth fighting about. matters, look to the past of When in the 1960’s the General Christendom for inspiration, let Synod declared that the wearing of Eucharistic vestments had no all things be done decently and in Rt Rev Charles Gore order. Relatively uninterested in doctrinal significance it was ritual and ceremonial, they giving expression to a trivialising The Heroic Phase conduct a pamphlet war in untruth – to wear vestments just which, among other things, they because they looked nice was a seek to rewrite the history of the Whenever Anglo-Catholics look pointless piece of dressing up for Church of England in such a back to the golden age of the vainglorious reasons. way that the Reformation is seen movement they invariably recall as a move towards a reformed this second stage, of slum ritualist This heroic phase of the version of Catholicism, and not a priests contending with rioting movement produced a deeply siding with the continental mobs, militant protestant satisfying story of origins, a reformers. When in Tract 90 demonstrators, court David and Goliath contest for the John Henry Newman argues that prosecutions, and persecuting truth against overwhelming odds the 39 articles of religion are Bishops. The ritualist priests in which larger than life capable of a catholic wanted a more imaginative characters loved the poor into interpretation a neuralgia point is approach to liturgy, and turned returning to the faith. It struck with many of his Anglican either to models and patterns of culminated in the granting of a contemporaries. They have been contemporary western limited toleration to the deeply irritated also by his Catholicism, or to the imagined movement because the public felt leadership style of the medieval usage of the English that the opposition had Tractarians in picking fights over past in the Sarum rite. Their overplayed their hand by using many contemporary church argument was that this fresh the courts to lock up ritualist THE ROCK St. Peter’s Caversham - Dunedin THE ROCK - PAGE THREE MAY 2012 priests, and because exasperated conservatism and at times Bishops tired of the issue and obscurantism, but at a cost. Not nglo-Catholics had already used their discretionary powers a few of the Tractarians and the A to create an uneasy peace. Ritualists and their leaders, such pioneered the establishment of We can note also some side as H P Liddon, felt utterly theological colleges with the effects that it generated within betrayed by this development, founding of Cuddesdon outside th the movement – a sectarian and shunned Gore and his Oxford in the 19 century. Until mentality of us against the rest, associates. It could be argued then Anglican ordinands simply and the rise of priests societies that this was an anticipation of read theology at Oxford or with an embattled anti- the late 20th century split Cambridge, or did some private persecution ethos – and a between the Forward in Faith course of study under Episcopal suspicion of the Episcopacy, movement and the liberal supervision. whom on the one hand they Catholicism of Affirming valued highly as successors of the Catholicism. Anglo-Catholicism changed the apostles, and whom on the other look of churches as The Commanding hand they devoted a lot of time the Camden society, Heights and energy to avoiding the the Ecclesiological authority of. This would later society, and a variety lead to some bizarre results when For the first half of of influential heroes of the movement such as the 20th century architects, convinced Charles Gore, Bishop of Anglo-Catholicism the ecclesiastical Worcester, then Birmingham, went from strength to world that gothic was then Oxford, would spend much strength, permeating godly, the only of his time trying to discipline his the ethos of the possible style to build ritualist priests. Church of England, in, with results that and gaining in can be seen right The Acceptance World c o n f i d e n c e a n d The interior of St Mary's Wellingborough around the world institutional today. In the first half T he year 1889 saw the buttressing. of the 20th century some of the publication of Lux Mundi, a most beautiful churches and collection of essays edited by By now a flourishing number of interiors in the British Isles were Henry Scott Holland and religious communities had created by the greatest of the Charles Gore, in which the emerged in which the full range movements architects, Sir Ninian Anglo-Catholic contributors of liturgical prayer, and the Comper (1864-1960) argued that it was possible to complete expression of the accept the conclusions of Divine Office, was on offer.

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