Posted on 05/27/2005 6:06:04 PM PDT by sionnsar
The more I discover about Trinity Church's Trinity Sunday clown Eucharist Holy Communion Travesty, the worse it gets. That, at this time of difficulty, an ancient and historically important congregation would choose to mark the Feast of the Holy Trinity and its patronal feast this way is diagnostic of some terminal disease. To do it at all is bad enough. Anyway, the service bulletin is here, and there are pictures here. Expagan also has links to videos of the event. You have to wade through some snarkiness about Anglican orders to get there, but we've brought this on ourselves. I find myself of one mind with Mr. Pratchett's Patrician, reserving a special scorpion pit of the mind for mimes and other street performers.
It was years ago that I realized, after listening to Episcopal leader after Episcopal leader, that they didn't believe; didn't believe in the Incarnation, didn't believe in the Resurrection. Their language danced around the issues, deflected, avoided, pretended, but the conclusion was clear to someone who actually listened and sometimes asked questions. That was great inertia in many congregations of real belief and worship, led by priests who remained faithful, but the rot in critical places was established. There's still quite a healthy core, even here in this midwestern desert of cabbages, but they're hunkered down and being very, very quiet. It will take a while to build the network of connections to enable these Anglican faithful to thrive again.
This clownish farce, like so much Piskie "worship" these days, is directed toward the audience, not to God-ward. The Reformation-based Prayer Books do not have this failing; the Order for Holy Communion is continually directed to God, drawing the participants along a stair from listening to the Word, repentance, intercession, and finally to Communion. It's quite impossible to imagine a Clown Eucharist based on any of the earlier Prayer Books. But Rite II in the 1979 Book looks toward the congregation much too much, and easily lends itself to this sort of flummery.
This damage cannot be undone. Whatever emerges will be different, the work of many hands over many years, a little at a time. Sort of unnerving, that.
Thanks, if that's the right word, to Amy, Chris, and others.
Yes, I know, I should have named this post Attack of the Clowns. I'll try to do better.
Later: Oh my beard and whiskers, my brain is melting. I watched the webcast. A punch bowl for the Eucharistic wine? Blowing bubbles instead of censing the altar? And ending with the wonderful, beautiful, intense hymn, Hyfrydol? What were they thinking? Were they thinking? We can only pray that God is even now raising up for us a new Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, Andrewes, in our need. And, in a way, we should thank the Clergy and Vestry of Trinity Church for putting on the web the stark evidence of this bankruptcy. Someone make sure Archbishops Williams, Akinola, Gomez and Venables see this.
PS. Played at high speed, it's sort of like an especially arty-blasphemous French movie, er, film, something much praised in Cahiers du Cinema.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. The Holy Father stands against the tyranny of relativism; I will stand with him and with Athanasius against the tyranny of relevantism.
Perhaps God has already answered that prayer.
How many winds of doctrine have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth. Every day new sects spring up, and what St Paul says about human deception and the trickery that strives to entice people into error (cf. Eph 4: 14) comes true.
Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be "tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine", seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.
We, however, have a different goal: the Son of God, the true man. He is the measure of true humanism. An "adult" faith is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceipt from truth.
We must develop this adult faith; we must guide the flock of Christ to this faith. And it is this faith - only faith - that creates unity and is fulfilled in love.
PRO ELIGENDO ROMANO PONTIFICE HOMILY OF HIS EMINENCE CARD. JOSEPH RATZINGER
"Perhaps God has already answered that prayer."very good very good thank you
I was telling my sister about this and she said I don't know why you are complaining because we did a clown mass at my Search weekend. Of course my sister is a Methodist now and I have returned to the Roman Catholic Church. All I can say is thank goodness I didn't participate in Search when I was in high school. I thought the teens involved in that were a bit snobby.
Ugh! I haven't thought about Search in a long time! Bad memories. A "Search weekend" was required for all confirmation candidates in my diocese when I was a teenager and it was horrible. I didn't think I would be able to get through it. They had a "nun" who looked kind of like a hippie folk singer who played a guitar and told us there were no guardian angels and it went down hill from that. It was the silliest, most un-Catholic mess!!!!
In the Lutheran Church, we have a controversy, even among conservative Lutherans, as to how we should celebrate Holy Communion. The WordAlone movement wants only the Words of Institution. Evangelical Catholics want a full Eucaristic Prayer including the Words of Institution. Evangelical Orthodox (like me) and some Evangelical Catholics want all of the above, but also including an Epiklesis (calling down the Holy Spirit upon the people, and the bread and wine).
Well, this radically stripped-down "liturgy" does WordAlone one "better". There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, not even the Words of Institution!!!! All that, and clowns and all sorts of other irrelevant hooplah as well. Whatever subspecies of conservative Lutheran we are, we would all agree--this is no Holy Communion at all, but only a bunch of blasphemous nonsense!!!! The ECUSA is truly in the handbasket, and it is accelerating!!!!
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