Thursday 22 October 2009

Church making the news...


It's been all over the blogs and the papers - but happened just as I was putting the finishing touches to the last page of our November Parish Magazine. So this is what I wrote in my "View from the Vicarage."


[The print edition is now out and being distributed. But to appreciate it in full colour, you need to click here. The picture above is to be found in the magazine - of a certain retired priest who incites ladies to wear hats in church.]



Careful what you write…

As I write these words the Church is in the news - well, not much, but in a short story that the Vatican has opened the way for Anglican clergy to transfer their allegiance more easily to Rome should they feel that way inclined. Of course it was already possible. But now there is to be a structure, and clergy and congregations who make the jump will be able to retain certain Anglican practices within defined “Ordinariates.” There’s a word new to most people - and me! There’s just this problem - most of the disaffected clergy I know of who wish to escape the prospect of women bishops are already quite happy with official Roman Catholic liturgies, and would pop over pretty quickly if it weren’t for the prospect of stricter discipline, re-selection (or not) and re-training - plus the fear that they’d encounter more guitars and rather less incense… And the pay is even worse! What they don’t want is the assurance they can carry on in an Anglican way - after all they never have wanted to do that in the past!

Actually the Church hit the news the day before this as well when Fr. Ed Tomlinson - an Anglican priest in Tunbridge Wells - found an excerpt from his “blog” plastered all over the national dailies. He wrote:

In the last few years it has become painfully obvious that many families I have conducted funerals for have absolutely no desire for any Christian content whatsoever. I have then stood at the Crem like a lemon, wondering why on earth I am present at the funeral of somebody led in by the tunes of Tina Turner, summed up in pithy platitudes of sentimental and secular poets and sent into the furnace with ‘I did it my way’ blaring out across the speakers! To be brutally honest I can think of a hundred better ways of spending my time as a priest on God’s earth. What is the point of my being present if spiritually unwanted? … Once upon a time even funerals at the Crem would have been sincerely Christian in character. But that was another England, a time when Christianity was worshipped on these shores…


I fear that he’s less than charitable, though I know what he means. But I rather welcome the desire I encounter in people who wish to say something personal to them while at the same time having a priest as officiant. Where religion seems an alien creature, the music or poetry they know might help them make a connection. Weddings in church offer more possibilities than the civil version. If people wonder about my attitude I’d say, “Try me.” Nevertheless I’d advise that the organ provides better music than a CD for getting into church whether for a wedding or a funeral - our Bill knows when to start and stop! Let’s be sanguine - and cheerful.

Wednesday 21 October 2009

Overdue post...

... I mean this "post" is overdue, rather than the stuff from Royal Mail which is still coming through my letterbox - and I like the people who deliver my mail, whatever is going to happen at the end of the week. While on that subject, why is it that if I'm out and Royal Mail can't deliver an item of post, they have to take it back to the sorting office four miles away to be picked up after I've waited a further 24 hours? But if Parcel Force can't make the delivery, they can drop it in to the Post Office 150 yards away at the bottom of the road, and I can get it straight away? Maybe Royal Mail ought to sort their own management systems out rather than blaming it all on the work force....

I've not been blogging recently, largely because it's been so busy recently - but fun as well. I'll post again soon, with a link to our November Parish Magazine (just finished for the printer) - it says something of what we've been up to.


Anyway, I've at last up-loaded the two sermons most recently preached at St. Cuthbert's - both by our Readers: Paul Heatherington on the Word in Hebrews from 11th October, and Rosie Junemann on St. Luke for his Feast Day of 18th October. I see that I haven't up-loaded anything of my own for a while, but recent offerings have been "live" only - and that's how it's going to be this coming Sunday too!

Friday 2 October 2009

How true?

I was raised in the Church of England. I can’t say I’m lapsed. You can’t really lapse if you’re an Anglican. You don’t lose your faith, you just can’t remember where you left it.

I got a bit annoyed during The News Quiz on Radio 4 the other day. It was Jeremy Hardy who said these words in the midst of an exchange in which Christianity in general and the Church of England in particular came in for some rather scathing sarcasm. “All a bit predictable,” I found myself saying aloud. “Would they say that sort of thing on the radio about..."

See where the "View from the Vicarage" goes by following this link to the newly-uploaded October issue of our Parish Magazine...