tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post2783851974699355858..comments2024-03-19T16:52:19.962+13:00Comments on Anglican Down Under: Will Resolution 1.10 (1998) be reaffirmed at the Lambeth Conference?Peter Carrellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09535218286799156659noreply@blogger.comBlogger51125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-22399882713268068672022-07-23T09:48:49.664+12:002022-07-23T09:48:49.664+12:00Dear Bishop Peter,
Heere is a lovely word of enco...Dear Bishop Peter,<br /><br />Heere is a lovely word of encouragement for you and your fellow Bishops at the Lambeth Conference - from out Brother in Christ, Pope Francis:<br /><br />SATURDAY, JULY 23, 2022<br /><br />“The style of God is clear: closeness, compassion and tenderness. This is the style of God… Hope and conversion come from here: from believing that God is close and keeps watch over us: he is the Father of all of us, who wants us all to be brothers and sisters. If we live under this gaze, the world will no longer be a battlefield, but a garden of peace; history will not be a race to finish first, but a shared pilgrimage. All of this — let us keep in mind — does not require grand speeches, but a few words and much witness. And so we can ask ourselves: do those who meet me see me as a witness of God’s peace and closeness, or an agitated, angry, impatient, belligerent person? Do I show Jesus, or do I obscure him with these belligerent attitudes?”<br />Pope Francis<br /> <br /> <br />Homily ~ July 3, 2022<br /> <br /><br />Saturday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time<br /><br />Psalm 84<br /><br />How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!<br /><br />My soul yearns and pines<br />for the courts of the LORD.<br />My heart and my flesh<br />cry out for the living God.<br /><br />How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!<br /><br />Even the sparrow finds a home,<br />and the swallow a nest<br />in which she puts her young—<br />Your altars, O LORD of hosts,<br />my king and my God!<br /><br />How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!<br /><br />Blessed they who dwell in your house!<br />continually they praise you.<br />Blessed the men whose strength you are!<br />They go from strength to strength.<br /><br />How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!<br /><br />I had rather one day in your courts<br />than a thousand elsewhere;<br />I had rather lie at the threshold of the house of my God<br />than dwell in the tents of the wicked.<br /><br />How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!Father Ronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17062632692873621258noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-82873208664971131502022-07-22T22:34:58.518+12:002022-07-22T22:34:58.518+12:00Prayers for minds and hearts to be open to the Spi...Prayers for minds and hearts to be open to the Spirit of God at LAMBETH God bless these Bishops! Let them really listen to: "What the Spirit is saying to the Church - TODAY!"Father Ronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17062632692873621258noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-10462958630297887572022-07-18T06:55:23.494+12:002022-07-18T06:55:23.494+12:00I'm with how various, generous, specific, and ...I'm with how various, generous, specific, and 'at service' the Spirit is...meeting us at our point of need ...<br /><br />in Silicon Valley, as a technology of peace...<br /><br />in parts of the Middle East, as the One who shrinks all human power...<br /><br />To paraphrase Thomas Keating, to an amoeba, God appears as an amoeba; to a dolphin, as a dolphin, or perhaps a shoal of tasty fish...Mark Murphyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499278196265491516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-74480350851454416852022-07-18T04:26:48.405+12:002022-07-18T04:26:48.405+12:00So, if that's a conversation one cares about, ...So, if that's a conversation one cares about, the dissolution of Protestantism (see above) is welcome news that the ideas have escaped their unreliable and resentful patrons. As already with worthwhile ideas from elsewhere, they are finally free to find their way into the next human horizon.<br /><br />BWAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-91706864259000627232022-07-18T04:14:37.970+12:002022-07-18T04:14:37.970+12:00Postscript
There is an irony. If Christians want ...Postscript<br /><br />There is an irony. If Christians want to join that conversation, they need not come to it empty handed. But any talk about the consciousness of the individual seeker awakens voices of the Protestant premoderns.<br /><br />BWAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-35167806146716875452022-07-18T03:59:09.148+12:002022-07-18T03:59:09.148+12:00Carolyn Chen is right. And she might have gone on ...Carolyn Chen is right. And she might have gone on comment on the influence of Buddhist meditation on pain management in medicine (Jon inn), thinking about improvisation in jazz (Herbie Hancock), etc. In all those worlds, the contest-- or alliance-- is between neuroscience and premodern traditions like Buddhism and Stoicism. <br /><br />BWAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-18740160022336364502022-07-17T22:42:59.580+12:002022-07-17T22:42:59.580+12:00Speaking of Buddhism … a correspondent happened th...Speaking of Buddhism … a correspondent happened this weekend to send me this: https://www.guernicamag.com/carolyn-chen-buddhism-has-found-a-new-institutional-home-in-the-west-the-corporation/ !!Peter Carrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09535218286799156659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-20340079732832081892022-07-17T16:23:39.583+12:002022-07-17T16:23:39.583+12:00PS though I am well aware the Corinthian church ha...PS though I am well aware the Corinthian church had its problems or we wouldn’t have the two letters - they just had different ones!<br />Moya Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-62196359228917075872022-07-17T16:15:22.444+12:002022-07-17T16:15:22.444+12:00And how is it that Jesus is calling people to hims...And how is it that Jesus is calling people to himself in dreams and visions across the Muslim world, who are forming themselves into churches that are neither protestant nor catholic? They are gatherings like the Corinthian church: worshipful, prayerful, Scriptural and evangelical with a joy that outfaces persecution. What are we missing?<br />Moya Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-28059807324888657542022-07-17T16:04:39.692+12:002022-07-17T16:04:39.692+12:00"Why... Buddhism?"
Because congregation..."Why... Buddhism?"<br /><br />Because congregational religions have a huge blind spot right where postmoderns are stumbling across transcendence-- the consciousness of the individual. <br /><br />To be clear, the folk Buddhism practiced by millions of South and East Asians is not much better. But what is spreading in the West is an ambitious laicisation of moderately sophisticated monastic practice.<br /><br />When persons in the Lord are attracted to Buddhism, they seem to ricochet into some analogous Christian traditions-- the Philokalia, centering prayer, neo-Celticism-- that are also monastic. Their ideal pastors are not professional congregational leaders but experienced spiritual guides.<br /><br />BWAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-22649088917781929132022-07-17T09:27:49.627+12:002022-07-17T09:27:49.627+12:00This comment has been removed by the author.Mark Murphyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499278196265491516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-69587956578037100042022-07-17T03:31:15.731+12:002022-07-17T03:31:15.731+12:00Defining *unravel*, but perhaps not "unravel&...Defining *unravel*, but perhaps not "unravel"--<br /><br />Any X-ism is three things together: ideas, institutions, constituencies. It *unravels* when they separate. <br /><br />Ideas have all sorts of destinies in time. One of them is to be sponsored by institutions that are themselves supported and followed by critical masses of some constituencies. <br /><br />For example, classic French haute cuisine has sophisticated gastronomical ideas, schools and kitchens that teach them, and several publics that like to eat the result. On the other hand, the ideas are being absorbed by other cuisines, the schools and kitchens have rivals, and the publics are eating cooking unknown to them a century ago.<br /><br />So lately, we have seen ideas in rude good health lose their institutional patrons anyway. And we have seen constituencies migrate from those institutions to movements that are not yet institutions. <br /><br />Protestantism is one of these disintegrating complexes. As an early modern answer to late medieval questions-- Alister McGrath dates the justification question from the C13-- the ideas still make sense and have provoked worthwhile thought in the recent past. Some very Protestant seminaries are flourishing precisely because they are Protestant. But a church today cannot define its work merely with those ideas. And wisely or foolishly, not many today frame their own spiritual problems in C13-16 terms.<br /><br />BW<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-25018678790789895232022-07-17T01:58:14.565+12:002022-07-17T01:58:14.565+12:00Hi Mark
As they say, “all of the above”, but my po...Hi Mark<br />As they say, “all of the above”, but my point perhaps is that the surviving churches at the end of the 21st century will either be those with catholic hardware/evangelical software (because that offers multiple entry points)* or something (such as Pentecostalism has been in 20th century) which offers inspiration and hope to desparate / disillusioned people - and where some forms of Protestantism are at today will not exist because they are neither of the above.**<br /><br />*Roman Catholicism is at its best when it is exactly this.<br /><br />**I am in a major world city where I have noticed (Prot) church noticeboards which basically say “these are our values, if they are yours, you might like to join us” - nothing about Christ, life in Christ.Peter Carrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09535218286799156659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-46243103549365881982022-07-16T10:49:59.097+12:002022-07-16T10:49:59.097+12:00Three Proofs that Christ’s True Body and Blood are...Three Proofs that Christ’s True Body and Blood are Present in the Sacrament <br /><br />1. The japonica is flowering again. <br />2. Raggy clouds moving across the hill’s broad saddle.<br />3. A wasp – searching the deck for bits of sugar. <br />Mark Murphyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499278196265491516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-88687271019399361062022-07-16T08:58:08.022+12:002022-07-16T08:58:08.022+12:00“The Protestant project maybe unravelling” (+ Pete...“The Protestant project maybe unravelling” (+ Peter). Is this because: <br /><br />1. Denominational causes and identities (“Baptist” vs. “Methodist” vs. “Presbyterian”) are mostly meaningless and irrelevant to contemporary people, North and South; and not how contemporary Protestant churches organize, theologize, and evangelize anymore…?<br /><br />2. The fragmenting logic of schism…?<br /><br />3. Meaninglessness of anti-(Roman) Catholic “Protestant” identity positions (c/f/. Peter Leithard)…? <br /><br />4. Unreformed (in a modern sense) authoritarian, patriarchal, parochial, and psychologically-abusive tendences, as well lack of contemplative spirituality and relentlessly extraverted church cultures, resulting in *Protestant burnout* …?<br /><br />5. Spiritual aridity of liberal Protestantism…? <br /><br />Locally, I’ve observed quite a number of life-long Protestants (Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Pentecostals) become attracted to the Anglican Church after suffering *protestant burnout*. They seem attracted by a church with beautiful liturgy and ‘traditional’ elements (‘holy’, ‘catholic’), a settled, somewhat centralized form of accountable power (‘one’) but also a church that includes and celebrates local and indigenous cultural realties (so it is a church *of* NZ not a theological American or cultural British church *in* NZ), a catholic church that is rooted in scripture (‘apostolic’), but also ‘reformed’ in 15th and 21st C ways (not subservient to Papacy, open to women’s equal authority and ministry). <br /><br />Again, I think they are attracted by the hope or reality of the best ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic’ church on the block – one that is reformed but not protestant, we might say. <br /><br />Completely idealistic thinking here (from me). <br />Mark Murphyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499278196265491516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-32148914902434998112022-07-16T03:13:54.072+12:002022-07-16T03:13:54.072+12:00"...finding authentic church membership in my..."...finding authentic church membership in my own life. I never got there, I think, as most of us don’t I guess, by working out timelines, lines of episcopal hands, canon laws, who’s in communion with Canterbury or Rome or Constantinople... In my 30s, when I came back to the Christian tradition, I made a connection with a local Anglican church – it felt the most vibrantly ‘catholic’ church near to where I was now living, and spiritually attracted me in and on."<br /><br />In Istanbul, where the maps are often inaccurate and sometimes deceptive, I had a weekly appointment at the patriarchate in the Fener for a while. One week, I was guessing my way to it on foot. Guessing my path through the unmapped streets of strange neighborhoods, I followed a rough sense of direction and the contours of the seven hills. I was afraid that afternoon that I might not be very punctual. <br /><br />Then I looked down at the Golden Horn, the river that flows from Europe into the Bosphorus. I noticed that it was bending nearby with a certain curvature. I recognised that curve from photographs of the city taken 200 miles above in space that also showed landmarks of the Fener. So strangely, I still did not know where I myself was in the labyrinth of streets, but I knew exactly where my location was with respect to St George's Cathedral. <br /><br />I orienteered from the memory of that photograph until I gradually stopped seeing squatters' huts and apartment blocks and started to see Byzantine palaces and ruins. Then personal acquaintance with the old Fener district took me to the compound where my tea was still steeping in the pot.<br /><br />How does the same mind know a trustworthy body of the Body *both* as tacitly alluring us bodily into the kingdom of heaven and *also* as a peaceful participant in the catholic order long ago given by the Holy Spirit? This is analogous to the unpleasant question: how might that mind see oh a pattern of drinking alcohol without much enjoying it both as a comforting habit and also as evidence of molecular change reconfiguring neurons for addiction? And to my hike through Istanbul. All three involve knowing the same creature as both inescapably personal and cosmically impersonal. <br /><br />First off, the Protestant point-- both knowings are real. The realities we know objectively like catholic order, lesions in an alcoholic brain, and photographs from space do not imply the unreality of what we know personally-- spiritual allure, a sensation of comfort, or the slope of a path. Working minds transit from the personal to the impersonal and back again.<br /><br />And so, the Pauline and Johannine point-- the Resurrection uncovers this discontinuity in our spiritual lives. The Holy Spirit gives each of us the faith, hope, and love to anticipate our future selves in the true, undistorted image of God, but he is meanwhile also tugging the whole present Body into the shape of that image. Each movement is somehow also the other, but for now we know them separately, albeit with a sort of binocular vision.<br /><br />So when we hear that some person or gesture is "unpastoral" or "too institutional" or even "pharasaical," the quarrel is with objective certitude that does not care whether it can possibly makes personal, existential sense to the spiritual sense of a living soul. If that is what + Peter means when he says that the Protestant project may be unraveling among Anglicans, he is probably right. In the New Jerusalem, I will ask why Soren Kierkegaard was sent to Copenhagen when he was so sorely needed in London.<br /><br />BWAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-56109421416958501522022-07-15T21:21:22.571+12:002022-07-15T21:21:22.571+12:00Thanks for recent comments. I am encouraged!
Just...Thanks for recent comments. I am encouraged!<br /><br />Just one comment from me:<br /><br />As a leader and influencer within ACANZP my concerns about being a faithful - holy, catholic, apostolic, united church - are not only that (e.g.) a Mark and a Ron find a “happy place” in it, but also that we are a church living for the future as well as for the present.<br /><br />The Protestant project may be unravelling … can Anglicanism survive that unravelling?Peter Carrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09535218286799156659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-7232585223821043112022-07-15T12:57:05.086+12:002022-07-15T12:57:05.086+12:00"We're the ABCD!" -- Ellie and Katha..."We're the ABCD!" -- Ellie and Katharine Welby<br /><br />BWAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-10624908787822545122022-07-15T10:31:33.705+12:002022-07-15T10:31:33.705+12:00Bowman, I think this sentence of your is a real ge...Bowman, I think this sentence of your is a real gem:<br /><br />"Authentic tradition in the Son first absorbs, and then outlasts, aspirational confessions or antagonistic manifestos."<br /><br />Maybe this is the basic reason why the Catholic Bishop of Rome; the Orthodox Patriarchs of Constantinople, Moscow, and Ukraine; the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury; and the newly 'Confessing Anglican Archbishop' of ACNA - together with all the Heads of the Churches of the World Council; have their separate jurisdicitions and are not yet ONE!<br /><br />Perhaps one has, ultimately, to realise that Christ is The Head of His Body The Church, and that all of these different parts of The Body need to effect Christ's ministry in their different contexts? Maybe the glue that hold us together is the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Redeemer of ALL the world. Jesus himself said: "They will know you're my disciples by your LOVE" - which includes each of the Beatitudes in His Sermon on The Mount.Father Ronhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17062632692873621258noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-22655298191845541872022-07-14T20:32:06.605+12:002022-07-14T20:32:06.605+12:00Forgot to say: your ABCDE is brilliant, Peter.Forgot to say: your ABCDE is brilliant, Peter.Mark Murphyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499278196265491516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-37097572022064599842022-07-14T17:14:18.987+12:002022-07-14T17:14:18.987+12:00So, a fully authentic and authoritative Anglican C...So, a fully authentic and authoritative Anglican Church (quoting our pithy ‘A New Zealand Prayer Book’ Catechism) is three things:<br /><br />1. “Self-governing” <br />2. “holding the doctrine and ministry of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church” (Bowman, not just being in the same, unbroken episcopal ‘line of hands’; presumably, following and accepting local, synodical, episcopal authority is critical too?)<br />3. “in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury”<br /><br />What does *communion with Canterbury* mean? Attend Lambeth? Stick to Lambeth resolutions? How and why do Churches lose communion? I suppose churches like ACNA and NZ Confessing Anglicans have opted out of communion themselves. Peter mentioned that, in theory, the hypothetical Bishop Kirill of the Moscow Anglican Church could be ex-communed. Good. But how does that work?<br /> <br />When I was reading one of your posts, Bowman, I made a link to finding authentic church membership in my own life. I never got there, I think, as most of us don’t I guess, by working out timelines, lines of episcopal hands, canon laws, who’s in communion with Canterbury or Rome or Constantinople. My parents baptized us simultaneously Catholic and Church of North India, and took us back and forward on alternative Sundays to both (long, happy story). In NZ, growing up, I felt a need to commit (at least in attendance) to just one – the local Catholic Church was the one I felt most attracted to, spiritually and relationally. The local Anglican Church felt rather dry. In my 30s, when I came back to the Christian tradition, I made a connection with a local Anglican church – it felt the most vibrantly ‘catholic’ church near to where I was now living, and spiritually attracted me in and on (marriage, baptism of two children etc.).<br /> <br />I suppose we mainly choose churches (Catholic, Anglican, ACNA, Confessing Anglicans) for ‘vertical reasons’ – it’s where the Spirit moves us. Something in your writing helped me glimpse this, Bowman – I wasn’t following denominations, I was just going with the most vibrant, local ‘holy, catholic, and apostolic’ church. <br />Mark Murphyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499278196265491516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-73929655459019775232022-07-14T15:18:30.052+12:002022-07-14T15:18:30.052+12:00Thanks Bowman for taking time to write all this. I...Thanks Bowman for taking time to write all this. It's very helpful. I shall let it sink in.Mark Murphyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499278196265491516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-39535482139476815222022-07-14T14:25:13.706+12:002022-07-14T14:25:13.706+12:00*
"So the Anglican Church in North America (...*<br /><br />"So the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is an illegitimate Anglican church not because Canterbury does not ‘recognize’ it..."<br /><br />ACNA has (a) and (b), but not (c) and (d). Why not?<br /><br />Anglicans are catholics, and catholics cannot countenance disunity. Ancient canons forbid two bishops in the same see city. The related *national principle* forbids a second church from any country. <br /><br />But more fundamentally, each bishop in a Lambeth Conference recognises the other bishops as leaders of real churches. No ACNA bishop can do this whilst TEC bishops are in the Communion, because he is obliged by church policy and personal conviction to deny that TEC is a church. Conversely, a TEC bishop could have reasonable doubts about a schismatic bishop who denies that his church is real.<br /><br />*<br /><br />This is not a narrow dispute. <br /><br />ACNA is a federation of several bodies that have broken away from TEC over controversies of the past two centuries: episcopal ordination, the status of the 39A, Reformed identity, ritualism, Prayerbook changes, Protestant identity, more Prayerbook changes, the ordination of women, the ordination of queerfolk, and SSM. The ACNA does not necessarily oppose TEC at each of those points, but some of its constituent bodies actually do. Tellingly, ACNA seminarians have noted that their bishops-- who will not let them receive communion with TEC seminarians at the same schools-- are afraid to take up social questions because they do not know whether this fragile alliance can take the strain of what they might say.<br /><br />Moreover, individual ACNA clergy, as distinct from the bodies to which they belong, were often outrageously mistreated by their former TEC bishops. For example, when priests uncertain about or opposed to the ordination of women confided this to their bishops, it was commonplace for them to be canonically deposed from the priesthood so that they could not receive the pensions that they had earned over years or decades of service to the church. Bad as that was, some who endured that have said that the power-mad infighting among the schismatic bodies of the ^Continuum* was even more demoralising. So one can understand why, quite apart from their opposition to revision, bishops elsewhere in the world felt that something had to be done for those TEC had itself kicked out. <br /><br />Senior ACNA clergy are limping toward life's finish line because they believed what they were taught in TEC's seminaries when they were young. They do not believe that TEC is a real church; I understand that.<br /><br />*<br /><br />Culturally speaking, ACNA is just as Anglican as the United Methodist Church and the Anglican Ordinariate. If the Archbishop of York wants to print off Certificates of Cultural Anglicanicity and mail them out to all who hold those credentials, I have no objection. It would make many of them deliriously happy.<br /><br />But healthy governing bodies do one thing simply and well. There should be an Archbishop in Canterbury. S/he should host a decennial meeting of bishops there who are in communion with each other and, if need be, competent to discern. The apostles did more with less.<br /><br />I can more easily see TEC out of that meeting than ACNA in it. If Lambeth Conferences do anything about this side of the pond, it should probably not be institution to institution chitchat with the General Convention but steely fraternal pressure on TEC and ACNA to reconcile, form a one real simple church along Anglican lines, and do much more than either now does for more kinds of Americans than either now knows.<br /><br />If the Son can use a church to reconcile the races, bridge political polarisation, pacify the warring sexes, order tangled liberties, heal broken ecologies, model holy lives, honour the saints, and open imaginations to beauty, then the Holy Spirit will help it to grow.<br /><br />BWAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-5460978749353528762022-07-14T14:24:45.868+12:002022-07-14T14:24:45.868+12:00Thanks, Mark, for your interest in all of this.
A...Thanks, Mark, for your interest in all of this.<br /><br />An alternate framing--<br /><br />"Where does the legitimacy – the ecclesial legitimacy – of an Anglican church come from?"<br /><br />This is an onion of six layers.<br /><br />*<br /><br />A church is legitimate because it is a church. As Jesus said about those who were not with the Twelve, but cast out demons in his name, "Those who are not against me are with me." From the crises of the Avignon papacy, the Black Death, and in places the loss of catholic bishops, Protestants inferred that whether a group is a church or not is an empirical question. <br /><br />Most then agreed that unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity were probable cause to believe that a group is an assembly of the Body. However, reflecting his acquaintance with the Rhineland mystics, Luther wrote on fully seven marks of the Church. <br /><br />Early modern theorizing about the notes of the church had existential importance at the time-- should an Englishman dying in France receive communion from a Papist, a Gallican, or a Huguenot?-- but can remind one of that earlier debate about the one, two, three, seven, nine, forty ... sacraments. In practice, Anglicans have relied most on Articles 19ff and the Lambeth Quadrilateral.<br /><br />Personally, I think that ACNA has the notes of a church. However, ACNA denies that TEC has the notes of a church. <br /><br />*<br /><br />A church is in the historic episcopate if its present bishops were consecrated by bishops who were themselves in the succession. <br /><br />Nobody disputes that ACNA or the Union of Utrecht are in the historic episcopate.<br /><br />*<br /><br />A body is Anglican (a) if it is a church, (b) if its bishops are in the historic episcopate, (c) if it is in communion with the Church of England, and (d) if it is admitted to membership in the Communion. Its bishops will be invited to vote in Lambeth Conferences. <br /><br />Compare and sort out-- <br /><br />In: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Reformed_Episcopal_Church<br /><br />Out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Utrecht_(Old_Catholic) <br /><br />The Union of Utrecht is in communion with TEC. For a time, the Union in North America was virtually *extraprovincial* to the Presiding Bishop here. But it is not Anglican.<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3915617830446943975.post-44030548261219285422022-07-14T11:08:04.254+12:002022-07-14T11:08:04.254+12:00Thanks for your response, Peter, but I maybe more ...Thanks for your response, Peter, but I maybe more confused than ever. <br /><br />It makes sense that synodality is evolutionary - because it looks like a local 'autocephalous' tradition is being worked out in greater detail, justice, and efficiency. <br /><br />But legitimacy as <br /><br />"...the local people of God accepting that some proposal or other has Anglican character read against the background of 'what other Anglicans around the world are up to'..."<br /><br />...it can't be that, can it? Mainly because that would de-legitimize the principle and practice that churches are self-governing. And because "Anglican" is so contested and plural, how would you decide which version is normative? Mark Murphyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03499278196265491516noreply@blogger.com