Edition 262 “The Church in the Park – Growing in Faith, Hope and Love” JANUARY 2021 [email protected] A MESSAGE FROM DAVID ‘It’s a year now since I and the rest of the clergy team from P & P were licensed at All Saints. Thank you for making us feel so welcome back in late December 2019. In my mind I have a map of what the first year in a parish might look like. It would begin simply with learning: getting to know people, to understand the parish’s ethos and traditions, its distinctive way of working. Every church has its own way of doing things. Sometimes it doesn’t realise how different it is from other parishes; sometimes it is fiercely proud of the particular way it chooses to do things. This first phase of time spent in a parish would normally take around a year. After a year, there has been a chance to experience all the seasons, the festivals and the other events which make a parish’s life so distinctive. During this first year, there will have been plenty of chance to get to know the main people involved in the life of the church, and to begin to get to know some of the wider congregation as well as the parish served by the church. Sadly, this first phase was abruptly brought to an end after less than three months of our time in the parish. The crisis we all experienced back in March found us improvising and for a while all three of our churches had to be served by a single camera in the P & P Rectory. Before long though we found ways to involve members of our three churches. We learnt new skills, new ways of being church. So the initial period of learning has been interrupted and my guess is that it won’t begin again properly before the second half of 2021. And this means that much which would normally happen during the second year of an incumbency will need to wait until 2022. That is the time to begin asking questions together about the church and the parish. What are our distinctive strengths? What are the things we could be better at? If we carry on doing things the way we do now, what will our church look like in 20 years time? Where is the future lay leadership of the church? Are there obvious opportunities for ministry and mission in our parish which we’re overlooking? Do we have a shared vision about what our priorities are as a church? Some of these conversations are very hard to have unless we’re sitting down in the same room with people we have got to know and understand. As I said, these questions are likely now to wait until 2022. In 2021 we will continue to make sure, in the first half of the year, that services happen whenever possible, that the PCC is carrying out its role, that important pastoral care is not overlooked. And hopefully at some point in 2021 this will begin to change and we can once again spend time getting to know each other properly, face to face. Thank you for all your support, encouragement and prayers in this most demanding of years. Thank you to those who have played key roles in keeping All Saints going: the wardens, those responsible for health and safety, for organising rotas, those who play the organ, to name just a few roles. God goes ahead of us and shows the way to those who follow. Let us look for the signs of God’s leading as we make our way forward into an unknown future God bless you all, David (Priest-in-charge) The Christian Chronicle Out with the Old, In with the New We’re into a new century and already there’s a sense of change. An old established Order, a bedrock of the Crusades, has gone and there appears to be a new way to looking at things. One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the quest for power. The change is not confined to Europe but for this report we’ll look at two very significant developments that in turn have their end and their beginning in Europe. Although we’re now in 1321AD, we’ll start with a very turbulent period from 1305. The ‘Poor Fellow-soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon’ (aka The Knights Templar), had been a Catholic Military Order, vital to the Crusades, for nearly 200 years. They had become prominent in many countries across Europe and bordering the Mediterranean controlling many regions and business interests. Whilst they had freedom of movement across many borders, they did not have their own monastic state, unlike the other two significant military orders: the Teutonic Knights in Prussia and the Knights Hospitaller who now controlled Rhodes. The Templar’s were not without challenge: some disenchanted former Templars had brought criminal charges, and these were being considered by King Philip IV of France, himself deeply in debt to the Templar’s. There were various rumours relating to initiation ceremonies, idol worship and even homosexuality. In 1305, Pope Clement V summoned the Grand Masters of both the Templars and the Hospitallers with a view to merging the two orders and seeking to have Papal control. Clement and Philip were related, but, whilst Clement was inclined to consider the charges against the Templars to be false, it suited Philip to think otherwise and he seized the opportunity to act decisively. On Friday 13th October 1307, arrest warrants issued by the King were simultaneously executed across France against numerous Templars, including Grand Master Jacques DeMolay himself. It seems many Templars were tortured into confession and subsequently burned at the stake. This was a bad day for the Templars, and already superstition is growing regarding Friday 13th. Philip threatened Clement with military action and in 1312 the Pope issued Papal bulls dissolving the Order and transferring many Templar assets to the Hospitallers. DeMolay was burnt at the stake in 1314 and some of his last words are recorded to be: “God knows who is wrong and has sinned. Soon a calamity will occur to those who have condemned us to death.” Both Clement and Philip were dead before the end of the year! In Portugal, King Dennis I refused to persecute the Templars; the country became home for a new Order; established in 1319 and known as the Military Order of Christ, it was predominantly formed of former Templars. All that, of course, happened a few years ago; the reason I have jumped to 1321 is because I need to tell you about a certain Italian poet who’s revolutionised literature and the way of thinking. Not just a poet, he’s had a hand in politics, and challenged theological thinking too. Before I get into the detail, I need to give a bit of background about the politics. In Florence in the late 13th century there were two political allegiances: the Guelphs, who supported the Papacy, and the Ghibeilines who were backed by the Holy Roman Emperor. At the Battle of Campaldine, in 1289, the victorious Guelphs had secured dominance of the local politics. In the Guelphs army that day was a young man called Dante Alighieri. The battle, however, did not fully resolve the political argument as the Guelphs then divided into ‘White’ and ‘Black’ factions. Whilst both continued to support the papacy, the Black Guelphs welcomed that influence locally, whereas the Whites were opposed to this, especially when it came to Pope Boniface VIII. Dante, as he was known, had held various political offices in Florence, so when, in 1302, the Black Guelphs seized control, Dante was exiled midst unproven allegations of corruption and financial wrongdoing. Dante had already started writing but chose, quite unusually, to write in his common Florentine dialect rather than Latin. Dante has been promised in marriage to Gemma Donati, the daughter of a prominent family, from the age of 12. Such arranged marriages are common, and they did go onto have at least 4 children, but Dante had been smitten from the age of 9 with Beatrice Portinari, another local girl of same age to himself. Beatrice died in 1290 aged just 25, but this love inspired several aspects of Dante’s work and was the basis for a new school of literature known as “Dolce Stil Novo” which means ‘sweet new style’, the focus of which is amore (love). Dante’s works were challenging both politically and theologically. His most renowned work is known collectively as the “Comedy” although some are already suggestions that this should be redefined as “The Divine Comedy”. This extended poem comes in three stages: ‘Inferno’, ‘Purgatorio’, and ‘Paradiso’ which translate as Hell, Purgatory and Paradise (or Heaven). Dante lives this poem through each of these areas of afterlife with the help of a guide; initially this is the poet Virgil of ancient Rome but then it is Beatrice who guides him through Purgatory to Paradise. So profound are Dante’s descriptions of these zones, that they are already reshaping Catholic thinking and imagery even though the final section, Paradiso, was only published earlier this year, shortly before Dante’s death. There are still many challenges within the politics of both the church and the wider world. Many had seen the multi-nationality of the Templars as being destabilising, but that is debatable as their presence had brought a certain conscience check to many regions. There are murmurings that the church still exercises too much direct political power, and also censures much of the theological thinking.