Letters
from 6 March to 12 March 2005
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Return
to Rome?
Most
of us Episcopalians work forty-hour weeks, raise kids and puzzle
over the machinations of the politicians we send to Washington.
A lot of us worry about homeowners covenants and daily rush hour
traffic. We attend church on Sundays to celebrate and to seek the
respite and renewal offered by our church. Yet what is our church
today? Can we can define it beyond the level of our parishes? Where
is the direction, where is the comfort we expect from the greater
body of our communion?
The
Roman Catholic Church makes an amazing mistake by not promoting
an Anglo-Catholic Rite. At a time when we Episcopalians need a
firms doctrines by which to give meaning to our spiritual and worldly
lives, we hear scarcely more than dissent — indeed rancor— from our bishops and those who surround them. Our lives are short,
and we need the wisdom of church fathers now. The Roman Catholic
Church, I believe today, offers what the Episcopalian Church has
chosen to forego in pursuit of American discord, a brand of discord
that is self-perpetuating.
Should
we re-consider that indeed the Bishop of Rome is the rock upon
whom Christ our Lord built His Church?
David
Schulenburg
Trinity Church
Maryland, USA
7 March 2005
Remembering
old prayer books
Thank
you for sharing a contemporary, 'up-to-the-minute, moment of use'
of a 1559 Booke of Common Prayer, printed in 1614, and used in
the Year of Our Lord, 2005! That book, I think, is almost 400 years
old! After reading this week's AO front page, several memories,
spanning at least half a century, three continents and four countries,
are streaming through my consciousness.
A 1926
'Ro-maji' edition of the Japanese Book of Common Prayer came into
my hands — a rare book, used by Canadian Missionaries who
worked among the people of Japan, and among the Japanese Canadians
from the 1920's to the 1950's. 'Ro-maji' is a method of writing
the Japanese language phonetically, using the alphabet, and read
with Italian pronounciation — hence called 'Roma', and 'ji'
- the Japanese for 'word'.
After
I was invited to the Japanese-American congregation of St. Peter's
in Seattle in 1966, I discovered a group of parishioners who had
been denied the 'Sei San Shiki' (Holy Communion) in Japanese for
about 10 years — the clergy assigned by the diocese ministering
to them no longer had a knowledge of Japanese. I unpacked my books
that I brought from Canada and found this 'Kitosho' (the 'Ro-maji'
edition of the "Prayer Book") — the liturgy couched in classical
Japanese, not ordinarily spoken in every-day speech, a 'thee's'
and 'thou's' somewhat obscure language, as it were, used only in
the Imperial Court — thought to be a language befitting devotional
use in articulating our thoughts and words respectfully in prayer
to Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, the King of kings and Lord
of lords! Thus, it became my unique privilege to Celebrate the
Holy Eucharist — in classical Japanese, and to have the pioneer
'Issei' (First Generation) Japanese American Episcopalians, worship
'in a language "understanded" of the People' — as
the old saying goes (although the antiquarian form took an effort
to 'understand', but perhaps it was better than in English!). The
members used in their hands the 'hand-me-down' translation into
Japanese of the 1662 English Book of Common Prayer of the 'Nippon
Sei Ko Kai' (The Japan Holy Catholic Church) our sister Church
in the Anglican Communion, in Japan.
I took
my Romaji Prayer Book as a resource to Japan from 1991 to 2000
when I developed my own 'Ro-maji' version of the 1990 Services
from Japan's new Book of Common Prayer — Morning and Evening
Prayer, Holy Eucharist, Baptism, Confirmation, the multitude of
Services for Burial (in the Japanese Church), and Holy Matrimony.
I also rendered the readings of the Gospels each week in Romaji
because I could not read them fast enough in the Services if I
had to sound them out using the Japanese ideographs and phonetic
'katakana' and 'hiragana' scripts.
While
in Okinawa, I had the privilege of perusing a small 'pocket-book-size'
King James Version of the Bible bound together with the Hebrew
Old Testament and Greek New Testament. The leather covered Book
hadlt edged pages — a Bible given to Dr. Bernard John Bettelheim
by a fellow Jewish Christian convert in England in the early 1840's.
Dr. Bettelheim was the first non-Roman Christian to preach the
Gospel and to dispense Western Medicine in Okinawa, Japan (from
1846 to 1853) Dr. Bettelheim used this Bible (in the original tongues)
to translate portions of the Scriptures into the Okinawa dialect — a
remarkable feat, because Dr. Bettelheim used the phonetic Japanese
'Katakana' to develop a way of writing the Okinawan dialect which
had not been developed hitherto into written form.
I am
also reminded of learning about Bishop Bompas who crossed the far
Canadian North, and while doing so, to invent a script of symbols
to record on paper the hitherto unwritten Inuit language used by
all the Native People scattered all across the wide Northern territorial
expanse. His Book of Common Prayer and translation of the Bible
were used from village to village across the Great Far North, in
so many areas not reached by Missionaries. The devoted, dutiful,
diligent and daily recitation of Morning and Evening Prayer and
reading of the Scriptures by the Lay People — Converts to
Christ — brought many People to a dynamic Faith in God made
know through our Savior Jesus Christ whom they worshiped. This
accounts for the many Anglican Christians among the Inuit — 'The
People', as they are known.
The
Reverend Timothy Makoto Nakayama
St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle - Diocese of Olympia
Seattle, Washington, USA
frtim@yahoo.com
7 March 2005
Purple-vested
princes
Perhaps
there is some benefit for the Anglican Communion to establish doctrinal
unity around the world, but one wonders what it would be. Applying
tradition and reason in one part of the world may lead to one conclusion,
while in another part of the world the conclusion may be different.
The
emergence of relatively new instruments of unity, including the
Primates' meetings, suggests that the traditional autonomy of the
national churches will be set aside in favor of the rule of the
purple-vested "princes of the church." In my view, it is best to
continue the historic manner of meeting every decade at Lambeth,
with the agenda to consist of spreading the Good News the way Anglicans
are proud to do.
Ross
Weeks Jr.
Tazewell, Virginia, USA
9 March 2005
Real
separation better
than mock unity?
Most
formal Anglican beliefs (creeds, scriptures, etc.) were determined
around 300 AD, as part of the beliefs of what was to become the
Roman Catholic Church. The cynical might say that vested interests
played as much a part in the process as the fire of the Holy Spirit.
The
Reformation did amazingly little to change these beliefs, never
challenging that the Old Testament might be no more than a set
of fables that tribes in Israel invented for self-aggrandisement.
There was not a new focus on the words and life of Jesus alone,
expressing doubt that the definition of scripture a millennium
earlier was wrong.
Yet,
ask many Christians why they are such, and the answer is to the
effect that it because Jesus lives in their hearts as a personal
saviour, helping them to be loving, and guiding them between right
and wrong.
It thus
seems bizarre that in the current gay debate, some are still pouring
through the Pentateuch for guidance, rather than simply relying
on the way that Jesus speaks to them today. Obviously, he is speaking
to some very differently about the issue than to others. Time and
events have shown that any reconciliation on this issue is unlikely.
It must
be time now, both internationally and nationally, to accept this,
and go our separate ways with what we feel Jesus is putting into
our hearts. There need be no rancour, but rather respect. This
is surely better than any mock unity.
Michael
Jackson
St Luke's, Slyne-with-Hest
Lancaster, United Kingdom
mike-de-hest@alk21.com
9 March 2005
Earlier
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