While I quibble with some of the detaiils (speaking in tongues isn't a general Protestant thing, it's a Pentecostal thing), this is a very interesting article that covers a wide array of topics, giving us a sense of the man pretty quickly.
What's interesting is how similar he seems to the new Pope. Not in life story certainly, but in their theological position. Both can be considered theological conservatives, an interesting move for these global churches, and one that belays the expectations that churches need to be more progressive in their theology -- the argument that liberals have been making since Schleiermacher. In order for people to respect us, and come to faith, we have to put aside the miraculous and more silly sounding doctrines like the resurrection. Now we have an Archbishop who speaks in tongues?! Moving the opposite direction.
Yet, both the Archbishop and the Pope have incorporated progressive values in their priorities. Both highlight the need to work with the poor, and the need for a holistic ministry of the church. Yet, both have shown distrust for the socialist approaches. Rather than rhetoric, rather than big sweeping policies, they both seem to looking for on the ground ways to actually help those in need. Very pragmatic.
Both also seem to illustrate a new kind of humility and approachability. The last holders of these positions were first theologians, academics who had a lot of very influential writings that other academics quoted well before their rise to power. But academia tends to enforce a waffling, a priority of nuance that sees everything as complex but has trouble when confronted with situations of clear controversy or decision.
Yet both stepped down having set a continued tone for their various churches, and now both churches have new kinds of church leaders, who are in power but don't see their power as something to exploit but are taking on the attitudes of servants -- asking, "how can we be voices of hope and peace? How can we be followers of Jesus in the midst of the trials of this world?"
Very interesting era for these churches indeed. Gives me hope.
57 comments:
My first impression was that a "spiritual magpie" would not be a good choice to head a religion. But, then again, I always think of Roman Catholicism as a big tent that encompasses many ways to experience God, from speaking in tongues amongst the Charismatics, praying with Mary for the Marian devotionists, etc. Perhaps Anglicanism is the same, and it's not such a bad thing to have a leader who understands that, as long as the core beliefs are upheld - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I haven't read the post but I'm laughing.
That's usually good.
Oh, and this is most interesting:
And, in a choice that could not possibly have been made since the 16th century – until now – the Archbishop’s spiritual director is Fr Nicolas Buttet, a Roman Catholic priest.
Peace on both their houses.
It is pretty funny when you here liberal Christians like PaddyO talk about how the churches should incorporate more "progressive values" into the church. That feeding the poor and helping the homeless are "progressive." Poppycock.
Feeding the poor and helping the destitute was always the mission of the church. I remember my Dad and other various very conservative parishioners going out with the St Vincent De Paul Society to bring food and help to the very poor in the 1960's. You didn't have to be a dirty hippie to help the poor.
You know what the liberal progressive strain has brought to the church: the guitar Mass.
How hard is it to look conservative in the Church of England?
Oppose pubic nudity if San Fiasco?
Progressive values are code words for abandoning the moral principles that have been the bedrock of society for thousands of years. With the accompanying wish list of the liberal progressives. Woman priests. Married priests. Gay marriage. Gay bishops.
You can already get that in other denominations like the Episcopalians. Of course they are losing whole churches and dioceses because of people who prefer a traditional doctrine and find it in the church based in Africa.
Troop is hurt.
who should we call? the paramedics that might or might not show up, or the town comptroller?
Just messing with you troop.
The strength of the Church has become more and more to be found in the destitute areas of the Third World were people are much closer to the work of the Devil. They are not fat and happy like the American church and know that we need to concentrate on feeding the poor, teaching the ignorant and nurturing the faith. Not bogus social issues that turn our beliefs upside down. That is why the Pope came from South America. It would have been better if he came from Africa but it is a step in the right direction.
Trooper, you're right (well not about me being progressive, I'm really downright Fundamentalist).
Those are values from the earliest churches and the most conservative expressions throughout the centuries have included those.
The trouble, like with most things, is the 20th century, where Conservatives and Liberals took opposing sides on a whole package of issues, so that being Conservative meant evangelism, or church order, or whatnot, while Liberals had their Social Gospel, Liberation Theology.
The perception is that helping the poor is progressive is out there, and yet these two men are showing that such priorities can and do happen within a particularly conservative strain. Or, rather, a genuinely devotional strain, as they seem to take their faith seriously, not something that all conservatives or liberals do.
I am not hurt Lem. The only way I could be hurt is if the Red Sox sweep this weekend. And we know that is not going to happen.
"The strength of the Church has become more and more to be found in the destitute areas of the Third World"
Absolutely, with the Catholics and Anglicans. While the Episcopalians are considered liberal (on a lot of topics), the worldwide Anglican communion has a strong conservative bent precisely because of African churches.
Of course, that leads to a curious new form of colonialism, in which liberals often look down on the Africans for being backwards and ignorant because of their religious stances.
Well Paddy we can agree that the thing the church needs to do is get back to the bedrock principles. That is why I do not trust the bishops and cardinals who are the politicians of the church. I am writing a check today to the Annual Bishops Support Appeal and know that it is going to good works among the poor. This Sunday is Mission Sunday and we are all going to contribute generously to a parish in India as their shepherd is speaking at all of our Masses. Everyone is happy to help.
And he doesn't even have to play a tambourine and sing the score to Godspell.
The way i see it the church has outsourced their ... what Troop is talking about ... over to the state and the democrats.
In turn the democrats get theirs and things deteriorate to Detroit levels.
Spirituality, the poor, service, all suffer.
im at work i got to get back
You hint the nail on the head Paddy.
Every summer our pastor takes off a couple of weeks and we get a priest from Uganda or Niger or Gabon. You can tell these men are simple men of God. Sometimes their words are hard to follow but the light of Christ shines through in them. Nothing is better than seeing these simple men of God blessing some old Italian Ladies before they go off to cook Sunday dinner.
Lem just like your taste in baseball you get it exactly wrong. What is happening is that the government is trying to force the church and religious people generally out of the business of helping the sick and the indigent. They pass decrees drenched in political correctness that force Catholic charities to get out of the adoption business. They are trying to force the church to provide birth control and abortion services to their employees. Soon they will try to force the church to perform gay marriages or multiple marriages or whatever is the new think they thought up.
They want the church out of education. In the United States there are not enough people willing to pay the price to educate their children in Catholic schools. Many of the children currently in Catholic schools are minorities and many are not even Catholic. This is part of the subtext of the fight against charter schools and vouchers. They don't want the religious people to get the children. They want to indoctrinate them.
Religion is the root of the rule of law.
It is the first law--and without it-- civilization is hard to achieve.
PaddyO, Good piece. I often point out that people fall into 2 basic categories. There are simplifiers and complicaters. I am a simplifier. My son is also. My bride and daughter are complicaters.
Progressive is an understood term.In the context of Catholicism it means that we the parishioners use our own resources and laboratory to help those who need our help. In secular context, however it means something entirely different. It means that we (the progressivists) will tell you how much of your resources we will seize, keep some of it, and then give the remainder to groups we favor, at the expense of all others in need.
Labor, not laboratory.
The message of Jesus was QUITE simple. For me, most everything else is complicating.
spinelli, I'm a complicater who is working on being a simplifier.
The way i see it the church has outsourced their ... what Troop is talking about ... over to the state and the democrats.
In turn the democrats get theirs and things deteriorate to Detroit levels.
Spirituality, the poor, service, all suffer.
*************
Damn it that's interesting.
Voting Democrat became an ID thing for Catholics--I'm not sure when that started but it could have really congealed around Kennedy--hell my Grandfather was part Irish and a member of the Liberal party in Canada but we had pictures of the Pope, The Queen and John F. Kennedy in the house.
For a long time white Catholics were the "swing vote" that pollsters always tried to get a handle on and operatives like Carville tried to capture.
If you had a Venn diagram of white Catholic voters and The Reagan Democrat--I think there would have been a lot of overlap.
I'm not sure what has happened to that segment of the vote--but Obama has a lot of the Irish working for him.
Biden, Donilon--NSA--even Donilon's immediate assistant IIRC, and McDonough--now Obama's chief of staf--started of under Donilon.
Donegal went to Saint John's University in Minnesota which is an outpost of German Catholic.
so that being Conservative meant evangelism, or church order
This is just a convenient lie perpetrated by the media and the Liberal/Progressives. Labeling and attempting to box in people is a tactic to keep people from being able to communicate with each other and to realize that we are not always so completely different.
Being a Conservative does NOT equal evangelical or being controlled by a church order. Many Conservatives are not especially religious.
It is a myth and a lie because it keeps people from actually thinking about what Conservative values or Conservative polices are.
The media is also using the same tactic with the Tea Party in trying to label them as something they are not.
[Wow I need coffee gross grammatical error.]
They want to indoctrinate them.
Correct.
I hope the kids rebel somehow.
I use to have kids complain to me about how many times they had to watch that Al Gore movie.
I'm off to catch some brew.
DBQ - Exactly right. The media are acting as a propaganda arm for the democrat party. It's real and it's especially damaging because what they are spreading are falsehoods and lies; And they are doing so with purpose.
PaddyO, My bride really works ate not complicating. It's tough, I think it's mostly hard wired but she has made some progress. So there is hope. Maybe we should set up a 12 step program.
Trooper, You are absolutely correct about the vouchers, indoctrination, etc. The public school establishment loses many of the rich kids to private schools. They lose motivated poor kids to vouchers. And, they are losing students over a fairly broad spectrum to home schooling.
We have a friend who was a professor @ Kansas University. She was appalled @ the reading and writing skills of public school students coming to her. When she moved to Seattle to get married, she started her own biz, providing support to home schooling parents. Her biz has grown exponentially.
The message of Jesus was QUITE simple. For me, most everything else is complicating.
The message IS simple. It's putting it into practice that's complicated, at least for some, maybe most.
First, Jesus wasn't preaching to governments to do anything. It was to individual humans and their souls.
What I noticed is that my generation who grew up in Catholic schools and the church is at fault. Many of them had a bad experience here or there so they decided that they didn't "Believe" in the Church and only went there for mandatory rites. Baptisms. First communions. Marriages. Funerals. They are outspoken in their disdain and willful in their behavior. They never come to church on Sunday but demand everything when they need the church for a marriage or a funeral.
But I think there is hope. The younger generation always likes to rebel against their parents. I see a lot of young families who are coming back to church. With their children. And here and there you see guys in their fifties coming back and sitting in the pews. And praying.
It is a good feeling to see the young people coming back. And we didn't even need guitars and tambourines or puppets to get them to come in and pray.
Nick the risk of having a 12 step oft gram for people who complicate things is tha before long Step 1 becomes Step 1(A).2 section 7b, etcetera.
Wait a minute.....
Somebody has PUPPETS!!!
(just joshing ya, Trooper.)
Posting via iPhone sux.
Probably just a coincidence. LINK.
I haven’t quite done the theology of this saith the new Archbishop about which person of the Trinity you're talking to when you pray. Not exactly what you want to hear from the de-facto head of a major sect which has been making noise off and on about maybe merging back into the Roman Catholic confession.
I was startled by a Catholic apology I was reading yesterday, basically a long list of heresies, to find the majority of Protestantism condemned as heretics for denying the perpetual virginity. Serious holy men take their doctrine seriously - it defines why you're running your church and not, say, the one down the street that serves grape juice instead of the literal Blood of Christ. (I'm way too culturally Protestant to understand Catholic Mary-idolotry, especially something as scripturally dubious as the perpetual virginity thing.)
But he almost has to be an improvement on the former Archdruid Rowan Williams. I missed what happened there - did he finally get fired, or did he just retire? (Hmm, looks like he retired in good order. Shame.)
When I was a kid all of the students in the Catholic school had to go to the 9 o'clock Mass. They took attendance. Now the Mass was in Latin so you really didn't understand what was going on in the first grade. You hadn't learned Latin yet. The only thing you had to look forward to was the homily.
Now in those days they had five priests. They had about ten masses in English and Italian all day so they needed them. This young priest Father Phil comes on board and he start using puppets during the Homily. And using voices like in Davey and Goliath. We thought he was the coolest thing going. He started the folk mass with the guitars and the tambourines and all that crap.
In 1965 he left the priesthood to become a Hari Krishna.
He must of really loved those fuckin' tambourines.
Trooper York said...
The strength of the Church has become more and more to be found in the destitute areas of the Third World were people are much closer to the work of the Devil.
Christianity is not a rich man's religion (if one exists) - that whole thing with the camel and the eye of a needle.
Originally, it was for people who had no hope - if you ever read about what life was like for a slave in the Roman Empire, you understand why they flocked to it.
That's why the Church of Africa and, in some cases, Latin america is where you find Catholicism.
Mitchell, ha! Honestly unintended but still gets me thinking...
Troop - I saw Father Phil on The Sopranos. He was a schnorrer. He really liked Carm.
Maybe that was a different guy...
Maybe a lot of religions started off as bad photoshops that people took serious.
I was not aware that there were any genuine believers left in the Anglican Church. I thought that was the church where atheists went to experience the grace of God or to have a picturesque backdrop for their weddings.
I don't think we have to be mean to the Prods. I mean they are entitled to worship as they feel fit. Even if they are just going through the motions. It is not for us to say.
It's like being a Red Sox fan. You chose the wrong faith but that's ok. I mean we shouldn't make fun of the retards. It's not Christian. Not noway.
Now some of them are serious about it. They are handling the snakes and shouting "Praise Jesus" all the live long day.
Those boys believe.
Got that right, you Y*nkee f*ck.
Hey, isn't "Lem" a hillbilly name? Just sayin'...
You see snake handlers like Sixty are too full of the Holy Spirit and too mean to die when they get bit.
So it works for them. More power to them I say.
You have to find the baby Jesus in your own way.
Plus I want everyone who comes to my church to wear shoes and not be married to their sister. Just sayn'
Our local Triple A baseball team was playing the Triple A affiliate of the Red Sox.
The RI team is Pawtucket.
Which is also what happened to one's sister's virginity.
Haz, So true! Annie is the classic complicater.
No puppets? Not even of the sock variety? Where is the fun in that?
It will be interesting when the missionaries from Africa and Asia arrive in Europe to spread the Gospel to the pagans.
Trooper York said...
It is pretty funny when you here liberal Christians like PaddyO talk about how the churches should incorporate more "progressive values" into the church. That feeding the poor and helping the homeless are "progressive." Poppycock.
Feeding the poor and helping the destitute was always the mission of the church. I remember my Dad and other various very conservative parishioners going out with the St Vincent De Paul Society to bring food and help to the very poor in the 1960's. You didn't have to be a dirty hippie to help the poor.
You know what the liberal progressive strain has brought to the church: the guitar Mass.
Leftist ideology has infested all aspects of the church and unfortunately, the new pope is a sucker for it. I admire the guy, but his slavish, unyielding, almost sanctimonious uplifting of the poor is going to be a boat anchor for the church. I'm not a fan of the poor nor the homeless and I think the church and charities are wasting their time and their money on them, but you know what? It's their money and their time. The poor are nothing but a parasite on the body of hard working people that find their tax dollars getting siphoned off to a problem that will never go away because government has taken it upon itself to think they can do the work of the church even when the church can't after two millenia seem to crush poverty wherever it sees it. Not because it can't, but because the essential component of poverty is the very people that continually fall into it's trap with their shitty attitudes, their shitty behavior, followed by the fact that those two distinctions create shitty lives and we as a people are told and preached to that these are the ones we need to help.
I'm don't with helping them and I think the church should wash their hands of them too and tell them to straighten the fuck up, the free ride is over and deal with the people who need real spiritual guidance. I've helped the poor in the past and there are legitimate people who truly have fallen on hard times. Those people deserve and get my compassion. I get it, I've been there, but the vast majority of the poor are the ones that are irredeemable in my eyes and can never be put back together. Let Christ deal with them, but on the human side of things, there is zero hope for them. Zero.
And the church lost me the day I went into an old parish I hadn't gone to in a while and there was a guitar mass and I was like WTF? and I got up and left. Leftism diseases everything it touches. It's an evil pox on everything.
Trooper York said...
He must of really loved those fuckin' tambourines.
The tambourine is the single greatest instrument fail on the face of the earth. It should never have become one and any song that has it in there is polluted and ruined by its presence. The fucking triangle has more validity as an instrument than a tambourine does. Fucking waste of time that instrument is.
Cowbells are always good. We can always use...
Sixty Grit said...
Cowbells are always good. We can always use...
An even nobler instrument than that piece of shit tambourine that CAN GO DIE IN A FIRE!!! ARGH!!!!!@!@!@!11111
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