 |
To be added or removed from the "The Wall Street Journal" Ping List, FReepmail GOP_Lady. |
Posted on 02/26/2010 7:32:49 PM PST by marshmallow
On a recent evening, about 60 people—ex-Episcopalians, curious Catholics and a smattering of earnest Episcopal priests in clerical collars—gathered downtown for an unusual liturgy: It was Evensong and Benediction, sung according to the Book of Divine Worship, an Anglican Use liturgical book still being prepared in Rome.
Beautiful evensongs are a signature of Protestant Episcopal worship. Benediction, which consists of hymns, canticles or litanies before the consecrated host on the altar, is a Catholic devotion. We were getting a blend of both at St. Mary Mother of God Church, lent for the occasion.
One former Episcopalian present confessed to having to choke back tears as the first plainsong strains of "Humbly I Adore Thee," the Anglican version of a hymn by St. Thomas Aquinas, floated down from the organ in the balcony. A convert to Catholicism, she could not believe she was sitting in a Catholic Church, hearing the words of her Anglican girlhood—and as part of an authorized, Roman Catholic liturgy.
And that was not the only miracle. Although the texts had been carefully vetted in Rome for theological points, the words being sung were written by Thomas Cranmer, King Henry VIII's architect of the English Reformation. "He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel," the congregation chanted, "as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever."
The language of this translation of the Magnificat, one of Christianity's two great evening canticles, is unfamiliar to many Episcopalians today, as it comes from earlier versions of their Book of Common Prayer. Yet a number of former Anglicans are eager to carry some of this liturgy with them when they swim the Tiber, as Episcopalians becoming Catholic often call the conversion. "I wonder why the phrase 'and there is no health in us' was omitted from the...................
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The faster the Protestant Revolution ends the sooner there will be a return to reason (as well as to the Faith).
Catholicism is built on absorbing and adapting the religions around it to attract customers, starting from the pagan traditions of Rome. This is just more of the same shameless malleability.
This is just a misunderstanding of St. Paul. Catholicism is the practice of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Catholicism is built on absorbing and adapting the religions around it to attract customers,
Leave St. Paul out of this. There is no difference between traditional Christianity and Catholicism. Except in the minds of the Reformers and their descendents.
You wrote:
“Catholicism is built on absorbing and adapting the religions around it to attract customers, starting from the pagan traditions of Rome.”
That’s a crock. Catholicism destroyed ancient paganism. Where are the believers in Zeus or Jupiter now? Where are the believers in Mithras? Those pagan religions were all destroyed not adapted.
“This is just more of the same shameless malleability.”
It’s better than your shameless make believe.
Oh man, are you ever so wrong in that statement. The Protestant Reformation is what brought sanity into the world that had been locked in hundreds of years of death at the hands of the Catholic Church. Have you ever read Foxes Book of Martyrs and how many people they put to death?
Please, spare me.
How dare you.
ROFL!!
He has read. Caring is another matter:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2447091/posts?page=83#83
Like the Romans did to the pantheon of the Greeks, and the Greeks did to the pantheon of the Egyptians, Catholics simply changed the names. Now Zeus and Jupiter are "Patron Saints," in charge of their own little portfolios like weather or childbirth.
I don’t think the Papists can stamp out Christianity no matter how many inquisitions they have.
In short, it is a process which is tending towards chaos and fragmentation and that cannot continue indefinitely.
Brian Moynahan in his minumental “the Faith” noted how importand the falling-off of England was to the success of the Reformation. He says — I paraphrase from memory — that had England remained Catholic the Protestantism would have been another quaint German invention, like Kantian philosophy or porcelain figurines. England, however, gave Protestantism a global reach, especially as she planted it, a century later, in the United States and built an empire that spanned the Third World.
I firmly believe that this century will be the century of re-gathering, as the churches that retained a kernel of Orthodox patrimony, the Church of England, and some Lutherans, as well as of course the Eastern Orthodox, find their ancestral home in communion with the Catholic Church.
Diverse Evangelical communities of faith will follow their diverse paths, and most likely they will scatter further.
The fulcrum of Christianity is coming, once again, to Rome.
It is based on scripture, that WILL last. Individual denominations come and go, but the word continues. That is why Wycliffe & Tyndale wanted to get it into the hands of commoners.
Father Bergman says he began his journey to the Catholic Church by thinking about something that has taken many liberal Catholics out of the church: contraception. He regards Anglicanism's 1930 embrace of contraception as a mistake: "Out of that came a confusion about the roles of men and women, a theology of androgyny," he says.Father Bergman and his wife, Kristina, have six children.
Every liberal Catholic should read this and weep. As Humanae Vitae has the last laugh.
Not a bad word, is it?
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
My browser cannot handle WSJ.com.
Where was this taking place? London? New York?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.