I'm not hugely Marian, I guess, though I am a fair way up the candle. However I was asked to preach and preside at a St Mary's this year (translated to yesterday) so I drew (loosely) on Central American and Asian feminist theologies to draw Mary as a focus and impetus of justice and "womanspirit rising" ...
... I managed to get away alive
Very brave of you to do that. You're far too far south for that theme.
I once led worship at my local Church of Scotland on the fourth Sunday in Advent, and naturally preached on the example given to us by Mary, and finished by encouraging the congregation to join with all nations in calling her blessed. I was very careful, as you might imagine, to remain thoroughly Biblical.
@Cyprian do you know if any of those accounts are on the web in English? Do you happen to have any links to them?
Years (easily over a decade) ago, as part of a discussion of the Dormition-Assumption on the old SOF, I linked to someone's personal academic website where a number of these texts were to be found but I can't find it now, and it likely no longer exists. Jengie's link contains a link to some of them but I'm having difficulty finding the others online now.
I remember one account simply saying that angel song was heard at the tomb until the third day, then stopped, at which point all believed that her body had been translated. Then there's the version in which St Thomas arrived late and asked to see her body for himself, for the tomb to be revealed to be empty. Yet another version includes at least some of the apostles personally witnessing her bodily assumption, into heaven, during which she gave her sash to St Thomas. It's these minor details that vary but the core of the narrative, I recall, is the same across the different accounts. I'll see if I can find them.
Also worth a glance is the SVS publication On the Dormition of Mary.
I once led worship at my local Church of Scotland on the fourth Sunday in Advent, and naturally preached on the example given to us by Mary, and finished by encouraging the congregation to join with all nations in calling her blessed. I was very careful, as you might imagine, to remain thoroughly Biblical.
A great theme of the Gospels is summarised in Jesus's statement in Gethsemane "Your will not mine be done". You could well include that in your sermon and link it back to Mary's reply to Gabriel "Let it be done to me according to what you have said". A very similar comment to that of the Son but said at the Annunciation not in the midst of the Passion. And totally Biblical.
I once led worship at my local Church of Scotland on the fourth Sunday in Advent, and naturally preached on the example given to us by Mary, and finished by encouraging the congregation to join with all nations in calling her blessed. I was very careful, as you might imagine, to remain thoroughly Biblical.
This is where so many people get Reformed wrong, you can preach on almost any topic provided that you make clear and strong Biblical connections. Those connections must stand up to scrutiny as you are preaching to Biblically literate congregations. I can remember once being on Iona around the time CH4 came out and we had used one of Kathy Galloway's hymns from it at morning prayer. That afternoon in the bookshop I heard someone say "how does she get away with such feminist theology without causing a stir", I simply pointed out that she was strictly Biblical and expected those singing to be equally adroit at negotiating the Bible.
As for Marian preaching, provided you do not ask for devotion to Mary you are hardly being radical. Mary as the exemplar of faith is a fairly common sermon theme in Reformed circles in my experience.
As for Marian preaching, provided you do not ask for devotion to Mary you are hardly being radical. Mary as the exemplar of faith is a fairly common sermon theme in Reformed circles in my experience.
I was still accused by one elder of "sailing close to the wind". West coast Presbyterianism is still its own animal where sectarianism is concerned. I'm glad to hear that is not the case more broadly.
As for Marian preaching, provided you do not ask for devotion to Mary you are hardly being radical. Mary as the exemplar of faith is a fairly common sermon theme in Reformed circles in my experience.
No, but when faced with a naveful of gloomy masons and their wives, all whose idea of radical is suggesting the Man might butter his own toast, then a ripple or two doth flow from Mary's being.
Incidentally. what does CPWI stand for? I don't think I've met that one.
I'm sorry. I missed this second part of your post. PDR is right. The CPWI is indeed the Church in the Province of the West Indies, a fruit of the labours of Oxford Movement missionaries, and whose clergy are almost all exclusively trained at Codrington College - a foundation of the Mirfield brothers.
I watched a video from one of their dioceses from a few years ago from the occasion of the enthronement of the bishop in the cathedral, which concluded with Benediction - to give you a flavour of that Anglican province.
It's a province where the term "Anglo-Catholic" is largely unknown because there's no need to distinguish this form of Anglicanism from others, which simply don't exist. This was the context of my childhood formation, so you can imagine what a shock the C of E was to my poor teenage brain.
As for Marian preaching, provided you do not ask for devotion to Mary you are hardly being radical. Mary as the exemplar of faith is a fairly common sermon theme in Reformed circles in my experience.
No, but when faced with a naveful of gloomy masons and their wives, all whose idea of radical is suggesting the Man might butter his own toast, then a ripple or two doth flow from Mary's being.
Honestly, within the URC you are more likely to get a sermon on the evils of masonry than on Marion worship.
I do not know of any group within the URC that are pro-Masonry, the mildest we go is to treat it as a dirty secret that really should not be shared in public. In liberal churches, the worry is that it goes against openness in the flow of power and in conservative churches, it is a worry over idolatry.
My local parish church (C of E) has an 8 am Eucharist with liturgy according to Common Worship in Traditional Language. I've not come across this before and it might be sufficiently obscure to identify the church! Does anyone know what the intention was in writing and authorising this service, and why the parish might use it instead of just going with BCP?
My local parish church (C of E) has an 8 am Eucharist with liturgy according to Common Worship in Traditional Language. I've not come across this before and it might be sufficiently obscure to identify the church! Does anyone know what the intention was in writing and authorising this service, and why the parish might use it instead of just going with BCP?
Apologies - I see this has been pretty much covered in the 'vouchsafe to feed us' thread (thanks, Angloid). I'll leave it here in case anyone wants to add anything.
Are you on/ near the south coast? I know of one parish there where that happens - the incumbent at the time that Common Worship came in wanted to change to it but met some resistance so the compromise was CW in trad language. Left to their own devices the congregation would happily revert to 1662 and have done with it.
My friend is organist there and they have a battle with Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us because the NEH has changed the words of verse 2, so half the church sings about ...self-denying, death defying and being on the way to Calvary, while the other half is ... lone and dreary, faint and weary slogging through the desert.
My local parish church (C of E) has an 8 am Eucharist with liturgy according to Common Worship in Traditional Language. I've not come across this before and it might be sufficiently obscure to identify the church! Does anyone know what the intention was in writing and authorising this service, and why the parish might use it instead of just going with BCP?
Apologies - I see this has been pretty much covered in the 'vouchsafe to feed us' thread (thanks, Angloid). I'll leave it here in case anyone wants to add anything.
These days the major problem around here has been that 8am services have generally disappeared except in the larger town parishes, and the 'urbs. It used to be pretty common 20-25 years ago for the 8am HC to be Rite B, and the mid-morning ASB Rite A. As I preferred the former to the latter this ticked me off enormously as
1. I prefer traditional language services because the range of music is better, but in the 8:00am slot one inevitably had no music.
2. It was close enough to the "Interim Rite/Series One" to be comfortably familiar
@TheOrganist I imagine that's exactly what happened, and this was the theory of the person I asked this morning, but it seems to be very much embedded now. @PDR we have no music at 8. I like the service because the congregation are enthusiastic in their responses and friendly to strangers, and I find the language soothing.
Comments from you and Angloid on the other thread about the leanings towards Anglo-Catholicism are probably right. I suspect that what happened was that at some point a vicar who couldn't live with the theology of the 1662 clashed with a congregation wedded to the language. The church now is a very odd mixture of every Anglican tradition going, which is why I don't attend the mid-morning service very often. It makes my head hurt!
@TheOrganist I imagine that's exactly what happened, and this was the theory of the person I asked this morning, but it seems to be very much embedded now. @PDR we have no music at 8. I like the service because the congregation are enthusiastic in their responses and friendly to strangers, and I find the language soothing.
Comments from you and Angloid on the other thread about the leanings towards Anglo-Catholicism are probably right. I suspect that what happened was that at some point a vicar who couldn't live with the theology of the 1662 clashed with a congregation wedded to the language. The church now is a very odd mixture of every Anglican tradition going, which is why I don't attend the mid-morning service very often. It makes my head hurt!
Quite a few parishes have had tensions between conservative MOTR laity and Catholic leaning clergy with the latter usually pushing liturgical change that the former either does not want, or is unconvinced about. My usual hidey-hole when I was student was a Series 2 parish, then the new rector came along and reminded us it was no longer authorized and gave us a choice of BCP or ASB:A. Of course, we split with the result that the new Rector could therefore slip Rite A past us. On the whole, he played the situation quite well, and it was about the only thing he did in his 7 years that annoyed us, but in the process we lost our sung main service as no-one seemed to be prepared to find an acceptable setting of the new service.
@TheOrganist I imagine that's exactly what happened, and this was the theory of the person I asked this morning, but it seems to be very much embedded now. @PDR we have no music at 8. I like the service because the congregation are enthusiastic in their responses and friendly to strangers, and I find the language soothing.
Comments from you and Angloid on the other thread about the leanings towards Anglo-Catholicism are probably right. I suspect that what happened was that at some point a vicar who couldn't live with the theology of the 1662 clashed with a congregation wedded to the language. The church now is a very odd mixture of every Anglican tradition going, which is why I don't attend the mid-morning service very often. It makes my head hurt!
Quite a few parishes have had tensions between conservative MOTR laity and Catholic leaning clergy with the latter usually pushing liturgical change that the former either does not want, or is unconvinced about. My usual hidey-hole when I was student was a Series 2 parish, then the new rector came along and reminded us it was no longer authorized and gave us a choice of BCP or ASB:A. Of course, we split with the result that the new Rector could therefore slip Rite A past us. On the whole, he played the situation quite well, and it was about the only thing he did in his 7 years that annoyed us, but in the process we lost our sung main service as no-one seemed to be prepared to find an acceptable setting of the new service.
Perhaps they couldn't find an acceptable setting because there aren't any?
When Series 2 came in various people tried - some with more success than others - to write music to fit, both for congregational singing and for bodies like cathedral choirs. However, the subsequent constant tweaking* and clerical insistence on only have the (latest) words as in the booklet meant that most composers with talent gave it up as a bad job. The result is that the church is left with a couple of OK-but-uninspired settings which a reasonable choir can stomach, a couple more congregation only settings, and a large number of banal, tedious and lack-lustre settings that bore an 8 year old after a few weeks.
* So the Kyrie invocations have gone from once each priest then people, back to three-fold for everyone, then three-fold alternately priest-people, then back to two-fold. Is it any wonder people give up?
Well, in the absence of a choir, Our Place has used Murray's A New People's Mass as the default setting for some years now. It's simple enough, we know it quite well, and new peeps seem to be able to pick it up easily.
On the odd occasion when we have no organist, and rely on the Parish Laptop, we use the Kyries and Sanctus from Malcolm Archer's Missa Simplex (the recording is much better!).
We also sometimes use metrical versions of the Gloria , just for a change.
My local church uses the Addington Mass (I think it's called) for their Parish Communion - nicely singable, though they do have a small choir to help lead.
They might not have been up to @TheOrganist's exacting standards, but we actually had two settings people had written for the ASB Communion Service, one slightly avant garde and the other in what I'd describe as more a folk mass style. Unfortunately, when Common Worship came in, neither fitted the words any more, the composers had moved on and besides, Common Worship involves more variants and permutations than the ASB. So they both went out of use and have never been replaced.
Well, in the absence of a choir, Our Place has used Murray's A New People's Mass as the default setting for some years now. It's simple enough, we know it quite well, and new peeps seem to be able to pick it up easily.
On the odd occasion when we have no organist, and rely on the Parish Laptop, we use the Kyries and Sanctus from Malcolm Archer's Missa Simplex (the recording is much better!).
We also sometimes use metrical versions of the Gloria , just for a change.
My local church uses the Addington Mass (I think it's called) for their Parish Communion - nicely singable, though they do have a small choir to help lead.
Oooh, is the Addington Service still extant? I was brought up on it for ASB Rite A, later modified for Common Worship.
Well, in the absence of a choir, Our Place has used Murray's A New People's Mass as the default setting for some years now. It's simple enough, we know it quite well, and new peeps seem to be able to pick it up easily.
On the odd occasion when we have no organist, and rely on the Parish Laptop, we use the Kyries and Sanctus from Malcolm Archer's Missa Simplex (the recording is much better!).
We also sometimes use metrical versions of the Gloria , just for a change.
My local church uses the Addington Mass (I think it's called) for their Parish Communion - nicely singable, though they do have a small choir to help lead.
Oooh, is the Addington Service still extant? I was brought up on it for ASB Rite A, later modified for Common Worship.
The parish where I was supposed to go, rather than my hidey-hole, alternated Appleford and Wilcox's setting - which were OK, but dated back to Series 3. Both were acceptable, but not exactly wonderful. At the end of the day they did the job, and lasted at least 25 years. I do not know what they are using now, but I would not be surprised if Appleford has survived as it was the more popular of the two. I just hope they have got their timing problems under control. There were far too many Sundays when we started ten minutes late (9:40am) and did not get out until after 11:00am!
It is a little bit easier than Merbecke. A good cantor, or knobbing a few good singers in the congregation works wonders when one introduces it as the rest of the congo will pick it up quite quickly. I introduced it in Lent in my old parish and it worked well.
I have no idea how easy it is, but what about Martin Shaw's Anglican Folk Mass setting of the BCP?
Is that the one at the end of the NEH? St Sanity used that regularly. Madame and I rather like it. It sounds good and is within the singing ability of a congregation. Have a look at the Dudman setting, written for the 1995 APBA 2nd Order - again, easy for a congregation.
I have no idea how easy it is, but what about Martin Shaw's Anglican Folk Mass setting of the BCP?
Is that the one at the end of the NEH? St Sanity used that regularly. Madame and I rather like it. It sounds good and is within the singing ability of a congregation. Have a look at the Dudman setting, written for the 1995 APBA 2nd Order - again, easy for a congregation.
No, I don't think it is - NEH 541 is 'A New English Folk Mass', written for ASB Rite A, and doesn't appear to be the same as Martin Shaw's. I'm no musician, so I can't say for certain, and the NEH doesn't name the composer. I agree that it seems eminently singable.
NEH 542 is Merbecke, re-arranged slightly to concur with the order of Rite B. Personally, I think much of Merbecke is reasonably easy to sing, so could still be suitable for younger peeps...though the question might be asked as to why those younger peeps are at a 1662 BCP service in the first place. Not a common occurrence, I should think, unless it's one of those parishes which has a varied rota of 'main' services week-by-week.
I prefer traditional language services because the range of music is better.
In the US Episcopal Church, you can use service music from Rite I (traditional) in an otherwise Rite II (modern) service. Can you do this in the C of E?
Yes, you can (there's no law about it!), though you'd probably have to produce a specific (perhaps one-off) service booklet, in case peeps got muddled up with the words.
That is to say, if you were using Common Worship Order 1 (the modern rite), but wanted to sing at least some of it to Merbecke, you'd have to make sure that everyone had the 'old' words to Gloria, Sanctus etc., even if you weren't printing out the music as well.
Yes, you can (there's no law about it!), though you'd probably have to produce a specific (perhaps one-off) service booklet, in case peeps got muddled up with the words.
That is to say, if you were using Common Worship Order 1 (the modern rite), but wanted to sing at least some of it to Merbecke, you'd have to make sure that everyone had the 'old' words to Gloria, Sanctus etc., even if you weren't printing out the music as well.
IYSWIM.
You can (or at least you can if you are musical) sing Latin mass settings too, whatever the rite of the rest of the service. Most cathedrals do so regularly.
I get some moans from members of the congregation if we sing a setting where the words aren't exactly the same as in the OoS, but since members of the congregation are given a copy of the music if its a setting they can join in singing I'm afraid its water off a duck's back. Besides, the same people moan about "no knowing the meaning of the words" when we sing in Latin - a naughty member of the choir said its as if they suspect we might use a foreign language to sneak part of a Black Mass past them
(Purely for information, they are our most evangelical congregation members - won't kneel for anything, stand for all prayers, undoing the light fitting gesture and all.)
I prefer traditional language services because the range of music is better.
In the US Episcopal Church, you can use service music from Rite I (traditional) in an otherwise Rite II (modern) service. Can you do this in the C of E?
I have not had much to do with the CW forms of service, but with the ASB it was definitely kosher at MP and EP, and I got the general impression that no-one was going to get too upset if you did it at the Communion service provided you were using a genuinely 'well-known setting.' A neighbouring parish used to sneak in bits of mass settings by Haydn and Mozart often enough that it was considered quite normal, or at least quite normal for them.
It's also something scripture is completely silent about.
This may be slightly off topic (since this is Ecclesiantics) but I fail to see the significance of this point. Scripture is completely silent on a whole barrage of historical issues. We don't hear anything about either St. Paul's or St. Peter's martyrdoms in Scripture, yet we don't doubt that they were indeed martyred in Rome. We don't hear anything about the life of Martin Luther King, jr. in Scripture, yet we don't doubt that he existed. What makes the historical event of the dormition of the Virgin Mary so special that this historical event had to be recorded in Scripture?
There are two Anglican churches where I live now. One is quite small, conservative, and uses traditional language and has an average age of around 45-50, and actually has 18-30 y.o. members. The other parish is fairly progressive and entirely modern language. At present it is much larger, but has an average age of around 65-70, but one wonders where they will be in about twenty years time. I don't think modern versus traditional language predetermines the age group necessarily.
@kmann I seem to remember that you are a Norwegian Lutheran with some experience of having lived in England. So this may be a bit unfamiliar.
In the CofE, whether something is or is not mentioned in scripture is important. That becomes particularly so if it is something from the period of scripture. It's significant if something could potentially could have been in scripture but isn't. That makes it a matter of personal opinion, adiaphora, something people can have their own opinions on, but which cannot be stated categorically or required of people (or for that matter forbidden) as a matter of belief. It also means that it should not be regarded as something essential. See as explanatory material Article 6.
So it is significant for us, even if it isn't for you. Arguably, its absence might in itself be an argument against its being significant.
<snip>Scripture is completely silent on a whole barrage of historical issues. We don't hear anything about either St. Paul's or St. Peter's martyrdoms in Scripture, yet we don't doubt that they were indeed martyred in Rome. <snip>
Speak for yourself. There has been sufficient research over the years to cast great doubt over the presence in Rome, never mind the martyrdom, of both Peter and Paul.
In the case of Peter there is no evidence of him ever leaving Palestine, and the discovery over ten years ago of an ossuary in Jerusalem with the inscription Shimon Bar Jonah is likely to contain his bones. The so-called "evidence" of the limited research permitted over the years by the vatican is highly questionable: for example, some bones that were "definitely" Peter's that were allowed to be independently examined in the 19th century proved to be from a dog.
There is some evidence for Paul's journeys around the middle east and his being in Malta but again, nothing to show him in Rome.
Faith may be enough for some, but the inconvenient truth is that the Romans were meticulous record keepers and there were sufficient good historians writing at the time that it is surprising that nothing is heard of the either Peter or Paul being in Rome until you get to Christian writers hundreds of years later.
The Romans were meticulous record keepers, but we only have something like one document in 10,000 or less. When dealing with Imperial Rome, or early mediaeval Europe it is usually a good ideal to work on the hypothesis that if there is an old, and well-attested tradition about something do not reject it until there is clear evidence proving the tradition wrong, or significantly misstated.
Personally, I am a lot more confident about St. Peter having been martyred in Rome than I am about him ever having an extended ministry there, or of having been bishop of that city. I tend to think that if you want to associate St Peter with any see it has to be that of Antioch, rather than Rome. However, it has to be said that the early history of the Church in Rome is not all that clear even now. For example, we have no decent chronology of the early bishops. However, it is clear that the Church is of early date - Paul dropped them a line about 55AD - and being in the Imperial City relatively important.
Of course, the disclaimer here is that I tend to work from the premise that most of the New Testament is early (50 to 80AD) and generally reliable allowing for authorial agendas, etc.. Of course, I share the basic bias of the authors which is the belief that Jesus is Lord, but that did not have much influence on my thinking when I was first looking at Scripture and making up my mind about it.
The Romans were meticulous record keepers, but we only have fragments of their records.
In relation to both Peter and Paul there is first and second century Christian evidence of them being in Rome.
There is early Christian anecotal evidence - otherwise known as hearsay, just as there is anecdotal evidence for the presence of an alien in Area 51.
The Acts of the Apostles is early evidence that Paul was in Rome.
Acts states that Paul travelled throughout the Roman world - which was dead easy because to travel outside the sphere of Roman influence he would have had to do a time-equivalent of extra--terrestrial travel. It is stated that he left on a journey with the intention of going to Spain, and it was possible that the route would give him the opportunity to go to Rome, depending on which of the routes he chose.
However, there is rather more evidence for St Paul having been shipwrecked somewhere on the coast of Malta, and that is significant (I'll discount the proposition that it might have been a much smaller island, then known as Melida near the Coatian coast) because shipping routes that went so close to Malta as to allow for Paul to be shipwrecked there would indicate a route towards Spain, which was Paul's intended destination, that bypassed Rome.
There are suggestions in the Epistles that Peter May also have spent time in Corinth and Antioch.
A suggestion is just that, a suggestion. Equally there are suggestions - no, I do not mean as suggested by Dan Brown - that Mary Magdalene ended up in France, in fact there is rather more evidence (to use your word) that she did so than not: it is just as likely that some of what is in the Gnostic writings is true.
BF: " the question might be asked as to why those younger peeps are at a 1662 BCP service in the first place".
We are building a bridge between our popular Family Service, and BCP Communion, our main service. In Family Communion all the words are BCP, but some have been omitted, and children do as much as possible. So far it's working well.
BF: " the question might be asked as to why those younger peeps are at a 1662 BCP service in the first place".
We are building a bridge between our popular Family Service, and BCP Communion, our main service. In Family Communion all the words are BCP, but some have been omitted, and children do as much as possible. So far it's working well.
I thought such might be the case. Interesting, as I suspect there aren't that many churches with BCP Communion as the main Sunday service, but if the new Family Communion is working well, good!
The Romans were meticulous record keepers, but we only have fragments of their records.
In relation to both Peter and Paul there is first and second century Christian evidence of them being in Rome.
There is early Christian anecotal evidence - otherwise known as hearsay, just as there is anecdotal evidence for the presence of an alien in Area 51.
‘Anecdotal’ and ‘hearsay’ are two different things. ‘Anecdotal’ evidence can often be first hand eyewitness evidence. The problem with it is not in the truth or otherwise of that statement, but in its value in establishing a general case.
Acts 28.11-30 states in terms that Paul arrived in Rome and spent two years there.
The Acts of the Apostles is early evidence that Paul was in Rome.
Acts states that Paul travelled throughout the Roman world - which was dead easy because to travel outside the sphere of Roman influence he would have had to do a time-equivalent of extra--terrestrial travel. It is stated that he left on a journey with the intention of going to Spain, and it was possible that the route would give him the opportunity to go to Rome, depending on which of the routes he chose.
However, there is rather more evidence for St Paul having been shipwrecked somewhere on the coast of Malta, and that is significant (I'll discount the proposition that it might have been a much smaller island, then known as Melida near the Coatian coast) because shipping routes that went so close to Malta as to allow for Paul to be shipwrecked there would indicate a route towards Spain, which was Paul's intended destination, that bypassed Rome.
See above.
There are suggestions in the Epistles that Peter may also have spent time in Corinth and Antioch.
A suggestion is just that, a suggestion. Equally there are suggestions - no, I do not mean as suggested by Dan Brown - that Mary Magdalene ended up in France, in fact there is rather more evidence (to use your word) that she did so than not: it is just as likely that some of what is in the Gnostic writings is true.
I agree that there is much less evidence of Peter having been in Rome. There is a letter of Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35–c. 107); a reference in Irenaeus of Lyons (c.130–c.202) Against Heresies Bk III; and a reference in Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–c. 215) Church History Book VI. While none of these three (with the theoretically possible exception of Ignatius) is eyewitness evidence, none of them is tainted with later arguments about the primacy or otherwise of the See of Rome. If we are going to simply dismiss their testimony, we need to consider what good reason there is centuries later for doubting them.
My point is nonetheless that Scripture cannot record anything that happened after it was last written. The historical text - the Acts of the Apostles - stopped in the late 50s or early 60s. Mary could have been alive at that point. Whether or not she was assumed is, then, not a Biblical question but an historical one.
My point is nonetheless that Scripture cannot record anything that happened after it was last written. The historical text - the Acts of the Apostles - stopped in the late 50s or early 60s. Mary could have been alive at that point. Whether or not she was assumed is, then, not a Biblical question but an historical one.
@kmann I'm not sure you're as persuasive there as you might imagine.
Without wishing to be irreverent, even if the Most Blessed Theotokos was, say, only 18 in 0 AD or 4 BC, by the early 60s either she would either be in her early 80s or mean the event which scripture does not cover had already happened.
Furthermore, the books themselves were collected together later than that. If it had been biblically important that this was defined, there would have been the opportunity to include it.
Comments
Very brave of you to do that. You're far too far south for that theme.
Years (easily over a decade) ago, as part of a discussion of the Dormition-Assumption on the old SOF, I linked to someone's personal academic website where a number of these texts were to be found but I can't find it now, and it likely no longer exists. Jengie's link contains a link to some of them but I'm having difficulty finding the others online now.
I remember one account simply saying that angel song was heard at the tomb until the third day, then stopped, at which point all believed that her body had been translated. Then there's the version in which St Thomas arrived late and asked to see her body for himself, for the tomb to be revealed to be empty. Yet another version includes at least some of the apostles personally witnessing her bodily assumption, into heaven, during which she gave her sash to St Thomas. It's these minor details that vary but the core of the narrative, I recall, is the same across the different accounts. I'll see if I can find them.
Also worth a glance is the SVS publication On the Dormition of Mary.
A great theme of the Gospels is summarised in Jesus's statement in Gethsemane "Your will not mine be done". You could well include that in your sermon and link it back to Mary's reply to Gabriel "Let it be done to me according to what you have said". A very similar comment to that of the Son but said at the Annunciation not in the midst of the Passion. And totally Biblical.
This is where so many people get Reformed wrong, you can preach on almost any topic provided that you make clear and strong Biblical connections. Those connections must stand up to scrutiny as you are preaching to Biblically literate congregations. I can remember once being on Iona around the time CH4 came out and we had used one of Kathy Galloway's hymns from it at morning prayer. That afternoon in the bookshop I heard someone say "how does she get away with such feminist theology without causing a stir", I simply pointed out that she was strictly Biblical and expected those singing to be equally adroit at negotiating the Bible.
As for Marian preaching, provided you do not ask for devotion to Mary you are hardly being radical. Mary as the exemplar of faith is a fairly common sermon theme in Reformed circles in my experience.
I'm sorry. I missed this second part of your post. PDR is right. The CPWI is indeed the Church in the Province of the West Indies, a fruit of the labours of Oxford Movement missionaries, and whose clergy are almost all exclusively trained at Codrington College - a foundation of the Mirfield brothers.
I watched a video from one of their dioceses from a few years ago from the occasion of the enthronement of the bishop in the cathedral, which concluded with Benediction - to give you a flavour of that Anglican province.
It's a province where the term "Anglo-Catholic" is largely unknown because there's no need to distinguish this form of Anglicanism from others, which simply don't exist. This was the context of my childhood formation, so you can imagine what a shock the C of E was to my poor teenage brain.
Honestly, within the URC you are more likely to get a sermon on the evils of masonry than on Marion worship.
I do not know of any group within the URC that are pro-Masonry, the mildest we go is to treat it as a dirty secret that really should not be shared in public. In liberal churches, the worry is that it goes against openness in the flow of power and in conservative churches, it is a worry over idolatry.
Apologies - I see this has been pretty much covered in the 'vouchsafe to feed us' thread (thanks, Angloid). I'll leave it here in case anyone wants to add anything.
My friend is organist there and they have a battle with Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us because the NEH has changed the words of verse 2, so half the church sings about ...self-denying, death defying and being on the way to Calvary, while the other half is ... lone and dreary, faint and weary slogging through the desert.
These days the major problem around here has been that 8am services have generally disappeared except in the larger town parishes, and the 'urbs. It used to be pretty common 20-25 years ago for the 8am HC to be Rite B, and the mid-morning ASB Rite A. As I preferred the former to the latter this ticked me off enormously as
1. I prefer traditional language services because the range of music is better, but in the 8:00am slot one inevitably had no music.
2. It was close enough to the "Interim Rite/Series One" to be comfortably familiar
@PDR we have no music at 8. I like the service because the congregation are enthusiastic in their responses and friendly to strangers, and I find the language soothing.
Comments from you and Angloid on the other thread about the leanings towards Anglo-Catholicism are probably right. I suspect that what happened was that at some point a vicar who couldn't live with the theology of the 1662 clashed with a congregation wedded to the language. The church now is a very odd mixture of every Anglican tradition going, which is why I don't attend the mid-morning service very often. It makes my head hurt!
Quite a few parishes have had tensions between conservative MOTR laity and Catholic leaning clergy with the latter usually pushing liturgical change that the former either does not want, or is unconvinced about. My usual hidey-hole when I was student was a Series 2 parish, then the new rector came along and reminded us it was no longer authorized and gave us a choice of BCP or ASB:A. Of course, we split with the result that the new Rector could therefore slip Rite A past us. On the whole, he played the situation quite well, and it was about the only thing he did in his 7 years that annoyed us, but in the process we lost our sung main service as no-one seemed to be prepared to find an acceptable setting of the new service.
Perhaps they couldn't find an acceptable setting because there aren't any?
When Series 2 came in various people tried - some with more success than others - to write music to fit, both for congregational singing and for bodies like cathedral choirs. However, the subsequent constant tweaking* and clerical insistence on only have the (latest) words as in the booklet meant that most composers with talent gave it up as a bad job. The result is that the church is left with a couple of OK-but-uninspired settings which a reasonable choir can stomach, a couple more congregation only settings, and a large number of banal, tedious and lack-lustre settings that bore an 8 year old after a few weeks.
* So the Kyrie invocations have gone from once each priest then people, back to three-fold for everyone, then three-fold alternately priest-people, then back to two-fold. Is it any wonder people give up?
On the odd occasion when we have no organist, and rely on the Parish Laptop, we use the Kyries and Sanctus from Malcolm Archer's Missa Simplex (the recording is much better!).
We also sometimes use metrical versions of the Gloria , just for a change.
My local church uses the Addington Mass (I think it's called) for their Parish Communion - nicely singable, though they do have a small choir to help lead.
Oooh, is the Addington Service still extant? I was brought up on it for ASB Rite A, later modified for Common Worship.
The parish where I was supposed to go, rather than my hidey-hole, alternated Appleford and Wilcox's setting - which were OK, but dated back to Series 3. Both were acceptable, but not exactly wonderful. At the end of the day they did the job, and lasted at least 25 years. I do not know what they are using now, but I would not be surprised if Appleford has survived as it was the more popular of the two. I just hope they have got their timing problems under control. There were far too many Sundays when we started ten minutes late (9:40am) and did not get out until after 11:00am!
Is that the one at the end of the NEH? St Sanity used that regularly. Madame and I rather like it. It sounds good and is within the singing ability of a congregation. Have a look at the Dudman setting, written for the 1995 APBA 2nd Order - again, easy for a congregation.
No, I don't think it is - NEH 541 is 'A New English Folk Mass', written for ASB Rite A, and doesn't appear to be the same as Martin Shaw's. I'm no musician, so I can't say for certain, and the NEH doesn't name the composer. I agree that it seems eminently singable.
NEH 542 is Merbecke, re-arranged slightly to concur with the order of Rite B. Personally, I think much of Merbecke is reasonably easy to sing, so could still be suitable for younger peeps...though the question might be asked as to why those younger peeps are at a 1662 BCP service in the first place. Not a common occurrence, I should think, unless it's one of those parishes which has a varied rota of 'main' services week-by-week.
In the US Episcopal Church, you can use service music from Rite I (traditional) in an otherwise Rite II (modern) service. Can you do this in the C of E?
That is to say, if you were using Common Worship Order 1 (the modern rite), but wanted to sing at least some of it to Merbecke, you'd have to make sure that everyone had the 'old' words to Gloria, Sanctus etc., even if you weren't printing out the music as well.
IYSWIM.
You can (or at least you can if you are musical) sing Latin mass settings too, whatever the rite of the rest of the service. Most cathedrals do so regularly.
(Purely for information, they are our most evangelical congregation members - won't kneel for anything, stand for all prayers, undoing the light fitting gesture and all.)
I have not had much to do with the CW forms of service, but with the ASB it was definitely kosher at MP and EP, and I got the general impression that no-one was going to get too upset if you did it at the Communion service provided you were using a genuinely 'well-known setting.' A neighbouring parish used to sneak in bits of mass settings by Haydn and Mozart often enough that it was considered quite normal, or at least quite normal for them.
In the CofE, whether something is or is not mentioned in scripture is important. That becomes particularly so if it is something from the period of scripture. It's significant if something could potentially could have been in scripture but isn't. That makes it a matter of personal opinion, adiaphora, something people can have their own opinions on, but which cannot be stated categorically or required of people (or for that matter forbidden) as a matter of belief. It also means that it should not be regarded as something essential. See as explanatory material Article 6.
So it is significant for us, even if it isn't for you. Arguably, its absence might in itself be an argument against its being significant.
Speak for yourself. There has been sufficient research over the years to cast great doubt over the presence in Rome, never mind the martyrdom, of both Peter and Paul.
In the case of Peter there is no evidence of him ever leaving Palestine, and the discovery over ten years ago of an ossuary in Jerusalem with the inscription Shimon Bar Jonah is likely to contain his bones. The so-called "evidence" of the limited research permitted over the years by the vatican is highly questionable: for example, some bones that were "definitely" Peter's that were allowed to be independently examined in the 19th century proved to be from a dog.
There is some evidence for Paul's journeys around the middle east and his being in Malta but again, nothing to show him in Rome.
Faith may be enough for some, but the inconvenient truth is that the Romans were meticulous record keepers and there were sufficient good historians writing at the time that it is surprising that nothing is heard of the either Peter or Paul being in Rome until you get to Christian writers hundreds of years later.
In relation to both Peter and Paul there is first and second century Christian evidence of them being in Rome.
The Acts of the Apostles is early evidence that Paul was in Rome.
There are suggestions in the Epistles that Peter May also have spent time in Corinth and Antioch.
Personally, I am a lot more confident about St. Peter having been martyred in Rome than I am about him ever having an extended ministry there, or of having been bishop of that city. I tend to think that if you want to associate St Peter with any see it has to be that of Antioch, rather than Rome. However, it has to be said that the early history of the Church in Rome is not all that clear even now. For example, we have no decent chronology of the early bishops. However, it is clear that the Church is of early date - Paul dropped them a line about 55AD - and being in the Imperial City relatively important.
Of course, the disclaimer here is that I tend to work from the premise that most of the New Testament is early (50 to 80AD) and generally reliable allowing for authorial agendas, etc.. Of course, I share the basic bias of the authors which is the belief that Jesus is Lord, but that did not have much influence on my thinking when I was first looking at Scripture and making up my mind about it.
Acts states that Paul travelled throughout the Roman world - which was dead easy because to travel outside the sphere of Roman influence he would have had to do a time-equivalent of extra--terrestrial travel. It is stated that he left on a journey with the intention of going to Spain, and it was possible that the route would give him the opportunity to go to Rome, depending on which of the routes he chose.
However, there is rather more evidence for St Paul having been shipwrecked somewhere on the coast of Malta, and that is significant (I'll discount the proposition that it might have been a much smaller island, then known as Melida near the Coatian coast) because shipping routes that went so close to Malta as to allow for Paul to be shipwrecked there would indicate a route towards Spain, which was Paul's intended destination, that bypassed Rome. A suggestion is just that, a suggestion. Equally there are suggestions - no, I do not mean as suggested by Dan Brown - that Mary Magdalene ended up in France, in fact there is rather more evidence (to use your word) that she did so than not: it is just as likely that some of what is in the Gnostic writings is true.
We are building a bridge between our popular Family Service, and BCP Communion, our main service. In Family Communion all the words are BCP, but some have been omitted, and children do as much as possible. So far it's working well.
I thought such might be the case. Interesting, as I suspect there aren't that many churches with BCP Communion as the main Sunday service, but if the new Family Communion is working well, good!
Acts 28.11-30 states in terms that Paul arrived in Rome and spent two years there.
See above. Here is the statement that Peter went to Antioch and the suggestion (I agree it is no more than that) that he may have been to Corinth
I agree that there is much less evidence of Peter having been in Rome. There is a letter of Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35–c. 107); a reference in Irenaeus of Lyons (c.130–c.202) Against Heresies Bk III; and a reference in Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–c. 215) Church History Book VI. While none of these three (with the theoretically possible exception of Ignatius) is eyewitness evidence, none of them is tainted with later arguments about the primacy or otherwise of the See of Rome. If we are going to simply dismiss their testimony, we need to consider what good reason there is centuries later for doubting them.
So what is the historical evidence for her assumption?
By and large, the Protoevangelium of James. Grossly flawed as it is.
Without wishing to be irreverent, even if the Most Blessed Theotokos was, say, only 18 in 0 AD or 4 BC, by the early 60s either she would either be in her early 80s or mean the event which scripture does not cover had already happened.
Furthermore, the books themselves were collected together later than that. If it had been biblically important that this was defined, there would have been the opportunity to include it.