Gordon Gritter: Eucharist

[If you click through, you will find the "Yes" position is the liberal position on a question related to the war. --sionnsar]

“On Sunday morning I was sitting on the aisle, as usual, as the 10 AM service began. The procession came up the aisle, and the rector paused and whispered to me, “We haven’t any ushers. Will you get somebody to take up the offering with you ?” I nodded. At the appropriate time, I stepped into the aisle and looked for someone to join me in taking up the offering. Sitting immediately behind me was Bill ! So I whispered, “Bill, will you help take up the offering ?” Bill nodded, we took up the offering, and there we were, side-by-side before the altar, presenting the offering. Everybody in the church knew that I had led the “Yes” position of the vestry and Bill had led the “No” position. Everybody had strong feelings for or against the war.

The rector looked at the two of us and was speechless. There was a long silent moment. We could almost audibly hear the Holy Spirit saying, “OK, you are opponents, but don’t forget that you are brothers.” The Eucharist continued.

When I now hear that some of the Primates, having declared “broken communion", have refused to share the Eucharists with Bishop Griswold, I have a deep sense of sacrilege. The Lord’s table does not belong to them. It does not belong to us. None of us has a right to say “I will not share the Eucharist with someone who has offended me.” To do so is a self-excommnication!”

This is just plain silly.

What is s vestry doing anyway taking up "yes or "no" positions on the Iraqi War.

What were they going to do, declare St. John 'O The Woods an Underwear-On-The-Head-Free-Zone?

And why is this parish so disorganized that the rector has to stop in procession and recruit ushers?

And what in name of God does any of this have to do with Griswold's apostasy?

No wonder the Episcopalian Church (as we call it down South) is rapidly dwindling away to nothing.

Oops, my error. Vietnam war (several hours between when I read the entire piece and then posted.) But here's why the Vestry was involved:

"The rector received a letter informing us that a group of young Episcopalians from the Seattle area were planning to participate in an anti-war march in San Francisco during the coming week-end. They asked us to make our parish hall available as lodging for them. The rector promptly called a meeting of the vestry and laid the request before us."

As regards this kind of disorganization -- it can happen to the best at times.

As regard's Griswold's apostasy, the question is in the last line quoted. It is my opinion that a false parallel is being drawn. What do you think?

"When I now hear that some of the Primates, having declared “broken communion", have refused to share the Eucharists with Bishop Griswold, I have a deep sense of sacrilege. The Lord’s table does not belong to them. It does not belong to us. None of us has a right to say “I will not share the Eucharist with someone who has offended me.” To do so is a self-excommnication!”

This speaks volumes about the level of catchesis among the vestrymen of this parish. His false equivalency to the contrary notwithstanding, the irony of this religiously befogged person's comment is that it would have indeed been a sacrilege HAD the Primates taken communion with the heresiarch Griswold. The self-excommunication comment is so pathetic that I can't laugh at it. Its just so sad.

It goes beyond pathetic. Anyone who has been on the receiving end has a hard time seeing it as sad. These people are vicious.

For all their "peace and love" stuff and their purported rejection of hide-bound tradition, you haven't seen iron-fisted canon-law thumping until you've seen liberal Episcopalians. They are brutal and cruel, and they insist on absolute, total obedience in every degree, or else... But only when it is a liberal who is bishop.

The spirit of the law, and the faith underlying it? Forget it. You first have to be a Christian to understand that, let alone apply it.

Thanks for the further explanation - I suppose I could have broken out of my laziness and read the whole piece myself, but it is so much easier to rely on your regular posting. Thanks. It has been very helpful during these days. You are a worthy Joshua to Arlen's Moses.

In my own parish we have political liberals and conservatives, and I have no problems taking communion together, but we are all believing Christians, regardless of our political beliefs. I have to conclude that the same is not true is not true of the supporters of these latest innovations. They are no longer believing Christians.

I think the invocation of the Eucharistic rupture as somehow making the Global South Primates unchristian is a usual liberal strawman. The issue is not the same as Griswold & Co appearing at the altar rail and being denied communion. Rather the refusal to engage in a joint Eucharist is merely the promised fruit of Griswold's apostasy.

In October 2003 Griswold signed the communique recognizing that if the "consecration" of Robinson proceeded, it would tear at the very fabric of our communion. When he went ahead anyway, many primates declared a broken or impaired communion with ECUSA. Why is anyone surprised that broken communion means no joint communion?

This morning, I read in the Book of Numbers about the Children of Israel's revolt when the spies returned from the promised land. After Moses interceded for them, God spared them, but declared they would have to wander for an addiitonal 40 years. Some then tried to attack the Amalekites anyway (they were defeated).

I was reminded of my own children who misbehave, are punished, yet refuse to understand that their actions have consequences. The liberals of ECUSA still seem to be in denial that their actions have consequences.

I was perhaps more embittered sounding in my post than I really personally feel. I knew people who had their lives ruined by those folks, and others who were cowed into submission by the strong-arm tactics. But I never had it personally affect me. I can, however, say this:

Had I tried to stay in the Anglican world, I would have been eaten up and consumed by anger over what those people did and do. They are wolves in shepherd's clothing. I truly say that without the slightest feeling of rancor in my heart (I think.) Becoming Orthodox and getting away from it has allowed me to escape that, and I look on it now pretty much with dispassion, and my words, harsh as they are, are really just cold statements of fact based on observation.

In that regard, as K. says, they are pathetic, and I truly do feel sorry for them. But when you are in the Episcopalian/Anglican world, and you are bearing the brunt of having to deal with what they are doing, it is (or at least it was for me), extremely difficult to just move on. In my post, I was trying to show that I truly understand. Non-Anglican Protestants don't understand the impact that liberal theology had on Anglicans, because they are used to the idea of constant splitting and leaving -- and that's just not in the Anglican tradition. The effect on Anglicans, on the other hand, has been to basically ensure that whole generations of at least nominally Christian Anglicans completely left off going to any Church. As long as Anglicanism was intact, they were at least in the pews every Sunday, with the capability of hearing the words and teachings of Christ. Now they are on the golf course or watching Sunday morning talk shows rather than go to the local three-ring circus.

Theological illiteracy and spiritual apathy was the rule in the old Episcopal Church, and the liturgy, beautiful as it is, simply doesn't have adequate breadth to educate the man in the pew on the full range of Christian morals and dogmas, the way that the Orthodox liturgical services do.

So the vast majority of members were not spiritually or psychologically equipped to have the sophistication to get out of Anglicanism without getting out of Christianity altogether. If they were, the continuing churches, Orthodoxy, and RCism would have been flooded with exiting members. And none of us were.

Anyway, just some further thoughts, and, I hope, ones that are a little calmer and kinder.

This may not be as simple as I had originally thought, in regard to the anger business I mean. Evagrius the Monk wrote:

"Anger is by nature designed for waging war with the demons and for struggling with every kind of sinful pleasure. Therefore angels, arousing spiritual pleasure in us and giving us to taste its blessedness, incline us to direct our anger against the demons. But the demons, enticing us towards worldly lusts, make us use anger to fight with men, which is against nature, so that the mind, thus stupefied and darkened, should become a traitor to virtues."

So, as I asked another Freeper, has ECUSA become so demonic that personal anger is appropriate in forearming the Faithful and in fighting apostasy, or is the anger a trick of the Great Deceiver to drive people not simply from ECUSA, which might be an appropriate result, but in fact from Christianity itself as Agrarian posits?

I've been mulling the whole anger thing over in my mind sporadically since that thread. And I began to think that maybe anger deserved a good definition, as it was possible we were using the same word but meaning different things.

,has ECUSA become so demonic that personal anger is appropriate in forearming the Faithful and in fighting apostasy, or is the anger a trick of the Great Deceiver to drive people not simply from ECUSA, which might be an appropriate result, but in fact from Christianity itself as Agrarian posits?

The answer to your question, K, maybe both. I do think that initial forceful rejection one feels when he or she witnesses the Faith being dismantled is appropriate, and if I had to describe it further I guess I would call it anger. But it has to end the second it starts or it does become a tool of satan.

In my experiences upon my reversion to RCism I've felt that same thing, and not redirected it right away as I should have.

It becomes really complicated in RCism because of the Papacy, and the attendent inculcation that if you reject it, you pretty much are rejecting Christ.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is sometimes that sense of rejecting what so called shepherds are trying to promulagate is God or the Holy Spirit giving you a sign post, but after that one needs to decide on a course.

Without deciding on a course it's likely two things will happen, either you will become embittered or you will abandon the Eucharistic community altogether.

I would suggest we be careful with the term "Anglicanism" here -- because I'm still there, if disconnected from the world-wide Anglican Communion. I think you meant something like "Episcopalianism" (which is still not exactly correct.)

I also wouldn't write off Anglicanism, even in North America, and even in ECUSA, just yet. There is some motion (in true Anglican fashion glacially slow) towards "The Day", as this blog notes.

St. Isaac of Syria is pretty clear that the proper use of the incensive power (which in its fallen form is anger) is to resist the temptations of the demons and of our fallen nature, and that the proper direction is at ourselves, not at others.

There are, on the other hand, examples of saints who took actions that would be interpreted as "righteous anger" directed at others in defense of the faith. St. Nicholas slapping someone in the faith at the 1st Ecumenical Council springs to mind. They are pretty rare, and occur mainly in the context of leaders of the Church during times of heretical crises. And knowing the saints involved, these events were probably "passionless," although it wouldn't seem so to a secular historian.

But one thing is sure, speaking for myself -- I'm no St. Nicholas, or St. Anybody, and I am far more likely to destroy myself with what I'm thinking is "righteous anger" than I am to do anything constructive with it. If I'm feeling that burning of anger in my breast as I think or write about some perversion of the faith, it is more likely that the demons are using it to attack me than I am to be using it to defend against them.

I have chosen to take a passive approach to these things. There are any number of things in modern American Orthodoxy that I don't agree with, but rather than making a crusade out of them, and spoiling for fights with those who I think have betrayed or perverted the faith in this or that way, I wait for it to directly affect me, and wait for others to ask my opinion (as much as my poor level of self-control in that regard can accomplish.) We are never to agree that falsehood is true, when asked. We are never to participate in something that is wrong, when it is put in front of us. For most of us, this means paying attention to our parishes and our immediate circles of Christian friends, I think.

And sometimes, it may get to the point where it means fleeing to the mountains, either figuratively or literally. I was reading St. Theodore the Studite's Catechetical Lecture for Wednesday of Cheesefare Week just recently, and he strongly makes the point that we need to avoid participating in heresy (in his case, it was the iconoclastic crisis,) that we need to flee it, if necessary. Of course, the problem is whether we have the wisdom to know when that line is crossed. That's where we have to just pray and beg God for mercy and help.

Those are my thoughts, anyway

I used the term Anglican to be inclusive of those churches (ECUSA and the Anglican churches of Canada, England, etc...) that have been hit hardest by the the liberal changes. The context of my post was intended to specifically not include the continuing churches, which I think are doing their utmost to be faithful to their heritage.

I would never write off any church, including ECUSA, although it looks pretty grim to me from an Anglo-Catholic perspective, anyway. The only rays of hope in ECUSA seem to be Evangelical, which isn't at all bad -- it just isn't the whole traditional Anglican picture.

Finally, I may be incorrect in my perception that the hemorrhage in ECUSA has been an exit from active church life altogether -- it's just how it seems to me, namely that ECUSA is shrinking at a far larger rate than have former ECUSA members been entering the Continuing Churches, RCism , or Orthodoxy.

I see. I agree ECUSA looks pretty grim. I'm not sure they're all evangelical who are holding the line still, but I don't think it can hold, particularly in the light of other developments, one of which was posted this evening.

As regards ECUSA's hemorrhage, there may be an element of exit from church life, but my observations (experiences) say that may be a smaller percentage than is apparent. I suspect many arrive at their "destination" in protestant churches rather quiet about their church history, and so it goes unnoticed.

From this blog it seems many aren't arriving in the Continuing churches.

"I suspect many arrive at their "destination" in protestant churches rather quiet about their church history, and so it goes unnoticed."

I've wondered about that, too. You're right, since in most of the evangelical churches, especially the very popular mega-churches, one's prior history is of little interest.

You know, it's also interesting, when I think about it, a lot of the Continuing Anglicans I knew didn't grow up Anglican. Most of the clergy did, but a sizable proportion, if not a majority, of the parishioners had wandered their way in from other Protestant churches looking for the historic church and liturgical worship. Do you find this to be the case, or was this an isolated experience?

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