Posted on 05/19/2007 1:45:39 PM PDT by Frank Sheed
My brother and I used to say that the three reasons to remain Episcopalian were nice music, flirting with rich pretty girls after Church, and adult drinks and tasty apertifs after feasts such as Easter, Christmas, Epiphany, Pentecost, etc.
Of course once you grow up and become an adult, all that is left to enjoy is the music.
I was never Episcopalian; it must have been very tasteful.
Except that is not Semi-Pelagianism, but the Catholic system of grace.
Semi-Pelagianism is the belief that the first movement of the human soul towards God in the process of justification is a work accomplished by man without divine aid - the natural will and begin to have faith under its own power.
Does depend on what the definition of Semi-pelagianism is, and who, or whom, is doing the defining, doesn’t it?
Whether it is works+grace, or grace+works, either way appears semi-pelagian to this plain man. I believe the gospel is grace+salvation=(good)works, not grace+works=salvation. If any part is missing, the equation fails.
Most people on the make became either Presbyterians or Episcopalians. Methodist was o.k. if you were born there, but Baptist was right out, as were any of the evangelical/holiness type groups such as Church of God or Church of Christ (not UCC). I don't know what they thought about Catholics because there weren't any to speak of, Jews were in the same boat, there might be 1 or 2 families.
This isn't the hard and fast rule it used to be, and it never really applied in a larger city like Atlanta.
But as a result of all this status maneuvering, Episcopalians for a long time retained the reputation of being the "right" church to belong to socially -- even while the national church became so nutty. Many older parishes simply ignored the goings-on at national level.
But as the national church's positions have filtered down to the parish level (because the national church now has control of the seminaries and as rectors at the old churches retire they are being replaced by loons - there's nobody else to call), the people who were there because it was "the place to be" are leaving in droves. The radical attitude of the church is destroying the social value of belonging.
The music, however, is still very good in most places. We absolutely DREADED what we were going to find on the other side of the Tiber. When we first arrived at our parish our worst fears were realized - a horrible, horrible choir with no staff and a music director who just loved all the tackiest hymns out of "Glory and Praise" and anthems of the "pop" persuasion. If you're used to the high level of musical literacy and classical repertoire of an Episcopal parish that is proud of its music, it's a seriously heavy cross to bear!
Fortunately "the music man" got a job somewhere else, and we wound up with a splendid music director who loves Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony, and the best modern stuff (i.e. the stuff that's looking firmly backward). The choir has improved (we now have decent staff - and that is attracting decent singers out of the congregation) and there is joy in Mudville.
When you say that, you make salvation soley a work of God, with no human cooperation required.
Catholics believe salvation is a cooperative action of God first proposing and man disposing with the help of God. So it is entirely the work of God in that man cannot be moved towards salvation but by God's grace, but it is also a work of free will in that grace must be accepted freely by man under the influence of grace.
Like AAM, my family was old line Episcopalian, rising from an Anglo-Norman noble family in the Cotswold, a branch of which immigrated to Connecticut circa 1625 and immediately established themselves as decidedly upper middle class gentleman farmer/country lawyer types. Being born into this situation relieves one of malodorous task of having to rise into it via social climbing, a throughly disgusting and distasteful effort and display when one sees it put on. Once a Baptist, always a Baptist.
I happened to have the ill-luck of growing up in the parish of Frank the Heretic before he got Bishoped, so my formal education in Christianity was quite superficial until I undertook it myself. But I certainly liked the music, and we had a fine organist/choir director in that parish, and in all the ones I subsequently belonged to after leaving home.
The disastrous nature of the St. Louis Jeebies music for the Nervous Disorder Missae was such that I was unable to take more than a few weeks of it before I fled to the Byzantines, because the lying Chancery officials refused to tell me where the Latin Mass was celebrated, or if there even was one (I finally found it after a few months).
What is truly annoying about the American liturgico-muscial situation is that I’ve found that, for example, Mass in a place such as the Airport Chapel at Frankfurt am Main is several levels up from your typical American Mass. Apparently in a random German Airport, its not too much to ask random travellers from around the world to sing a little chant or respond with a little Latin.
The American situation will be resolved when, to paraphrase and expand upon Lenin, the last liturgist is strangled with the guitar strings broken off the smashed instrument of the last modernist Church “musician”, and the two of them are thrown onto a heap to suffocate the last Extraordinary Ordinary Ministerette of the Eucharist, causing such a shock to the last Girl Altar Boy that she accidentally swallows and chokes on the gum she is chewing during Mass, thus accidentally falling in front of the last Fr. Bob Smiley who trips over and smashes his nose backwards into his brain cavity, cutting short a final handshake of peace he was attempting to initiate with the back row of the Church. This day cannot come soon enough.
And, after all, they may have a vocation as nuns . . .
Our parish is very orthodox but does allow female altar servers. They keep the foolishness to a minimum by running the altar servers along military lines courtesy of the deacon who used to be in the Marines (I think). No gum or sneakers or giggling or any kind of girley nonsense like that. They have drills, and rank, and get promotions, which scares away the girley girls. Probably 2/3 of the servers are boys, and almost all the "Elites" (the high school age kids who lead the teams and make a commitment to serve until they graduate.)
My daughter had been an altar server a/k/a acolyte in our former ECUSA parish, and had just been promoted to serve on the altar (as opposed to carrying a felt banner, etc.) when we converted. She was happy that our new parish allowed girls to serve, she took her new position very seriously and eventually got promoted to Elite with the rank of colonel. She still fills in when she is back from college and they need somebody on short notice.
Poor kid! She had just been confirmed in ECUSA and had to go through the whole process again almost immediately to be confirmed in the Catholic Church. But she says now she's glad she went through it, because she learned absolutely nothing in ECUSA confirmation class, in contrast to the Catholic class where they really studied and learned things and had exams . . .
Colorful but still Episcopalian, except for the Scots (other than the nonjuring Episcopalian ones) who seem to have mostly joined the Methodist Church (South) when they got over here, except for the ones who stayed Presbyterian, like my maternal grandparents. And there's one branch of Baptists, my gg grandfather who was a Baptist Deacon in NE Alabama must be up to about 3500 rpm by now if he knows that our branch has turned Papist on him . . . .
Here I quit, I can do no other.
Odd that the “faith alone” people don’t understand that it presupposes the “total depravity” of man associated with Calvinism. Arminianism is basically a fudge, so it rather leapfrogs over Catholic theology and lands right in the territory of Pelagius—right along with the Jebbies, I must say.
Yes, but we know who the German shepherd is. ;^D
Great verbiage! It reminds me of BlackElk in his moods.
As to the subject of this article, don’t know much about him. I think he kept pretty quiet on “church” stuff.
In this country, "Protestant" often equals "Evangelical" or "Baptist". So many conservative orthodox Lutherans don't refer to themselves as Protestants, because we don't fit the public mold of what that means in this country.
This is the only sort of “sola scriptura” principle that can hold up to logical scrutiny, since the Scriptures themselves provide no definition of the canon and no clear statement of any sola-scriptura principle (both of these can be found only in the Fathers and Councils). Extreme sola-scripturism is, given these facts, self-refuting.
See tagline.
I've been a Roman Catholic for 50 years, and I never heard of that being issued from the Roman Pontiff on down the line ... but I hear that from the protestants all the time ...
I've never heard any Catholics promote this heresy, which is Pelagianism. The Church rejected this doctrine as heresy 15 centuries ago.
True philosophy, literally, "the love of wisdom," is love of God, since God is Wisdom.
Job 12:13"To God belong wisdom and power; counsel and understanding are his."
Proverbs 8:11
for wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her.
As far as I can tell, there are less than a handful of organizations that sell liturgical music in the U.S. They all seem to be run by former flower children. I don't know if the USCCB has any control over them. It's a very strange situation.
I know a lot of people who don't like the music, and only a handful that do (usually music directors). The people in the middle seem largely indifferent, but I really don't know. This music certainly doesn't foster a sense of the sacred. I think most people would agree with that.
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