The ACA gains a bishop…

Happy news in many ways, but a highlight to the continued divisions among us:

Frustrated By Divisions In Continuum, APCK Diocese, Bishop, Attempt To Catalyze Unity By Aligning With ACA

+Florenza et.al. Bolt APCK for ACA

Now It’s Official

Places and Things – Eliot, Kirk and Gregory the Great

Russell Kirk in his short essay “The Politics of T.S. Eliot” in The Politics of Prudence says,

 

I knew Eliot Somewhat during his later years, and understand him better now that his ashes lie in the medieval church at East Coker (p.97).

He puts forth a wonderful vision of a man who clung to the faith of his fathers (figurative as I believe that Eliot’s father was a unitarian) to the traditions of our civilization in the face of rampant radicalism and whose earthly remains are buried in a medieval church.

Many Christian traditionalists in America will know not such comforts. Of course we have no medieval churches, but for so many faithful Anglicans even the comfort of knowing that their remains will rest in the church in which they were married, or in which they were baptized or where their parents and grandparents are buried is gone or uncertain.

Those sons of Eliot and Kirk find themselves in storefronts or YMCA gyms on Sunday mornings. It is the struggle between the hyper-modernity of the leadership of the institutionalized western church of which they are the immediate causalities. Many building have been lost along with many souls. And this hurts because for the traditionalist and especially for the southerner, place is so important. Our own square of dirt and the people who inhabit it are often all that is worth fighting for. Volumes have been written on this.

For the Anglican in this day and age another notion may need examining. The Venerable Bede quotes Gregory the Great as saying,

 

For things are not to be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things.

We are called these days to a sacrifice and in the light of what the martyrs have sacrificed for the sake of the faith it is a small offering indeed. The places and things that are tied to the liberal churches must be sacrificed and new things must be brought forth. Walking away now may provide our sons of future generations the opportunity that was afforded Eliot.

Update: Seattle “Muslim Priest” to face actual discipline

Apparently, anyway, according to this nice summary of events from First Things, which has some other good observations on the whole embarrassing episode…

An Online Panel on “The Meaning of Suffering”

is up right now at Armavirumque, the blog of The New Criterion.  It’s definitely worth a click and a read.  The contributors include the father of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl; a Muslim scholar; a Catholic priest (a Dominican, I believe); and The New Criterion’s editor, Roger Kimball, among others.  The topic is one that I think about and pray over all the time, and one that cuts right to the heart of what it means to be a believer.  It also cuts to the heart of religious differences.  For instance, I was struck once again by the way the Christian understanding of redemptive suffering (as articulated for example by John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae, to pick an example off the top of my head) scandalizes and repels Jewish thinkers, both religious and secular, whose central concept of dedication to L’Chaim (life, in a spiritual, holistic sense) seems to leave no room for what we might call the Christian via dolorosa. 

The panel discussion is fascinating, but does suffer a bit from ecumenical happyspeak…in any case, it’s a great opportunity to get to know the New Criterion, one of the truly indispensable journals around.

A Definition for Anglicanism

…from A Conservative Blog for Peace.

For all that has been said about Buckley and his subversion of the conservative movement, his comments about Anglicanism (at least the official flavor) are on target:

Can anybody from the Pope to Mao Tse-Tung be absolutely sure he is not an Anglican?

Vatican Reaffirms Central Doctrine; Journalists Shocked, Surprised

Heading the long, long list of topics about which the media refuses to report honestly has to be anything involving the Roman Catholic Church. What with the “return of the Latin Mass” and now this business of the Church claiming to be, uh, the Church–it’s like that crazy Ratzinger fellow wants to take us back to the middle ages! (I can hear Incarnatus now: “If only!!”).

In other breaking news, the Jews claim to be the Chosen People of God (“Other People Lacking, Jews Say” runs the AP headline), Buddhists claim to know Four Noble Truths (“Other Truths Lacking, Buddhists say”) and Frank Sinatra claims to have done it His Way (“Other Ways Lacking, Sinatra Says”).

On the Motu Proprio…Summorum Pontificum a Blow to Sinners, Hell-based Community Groups.

From Creative Minority Report

Some thoughts on the Motu Proprio

From Hallowedground…

Common Knowledge

Fun from A Conservative Blog for Peace.

On the Union Flag

That is the British Union Flag as opposed to the yankee flag…Interesting commentary from the Young Fogey on the nature of British feelings for the Union Flag.

It seems the new Prime Minister Gordon Brown sees fit to support a sense of Britishness within the Kingdom. He has our prayers.