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This page last updated 28 March 2006
Anglicans Online last updated 20 August 2000

Letters to AO

EVERY WEEK WE PUBLISH a selection of letters we receive in response to something you've read at Anglicans Online. Stop by and have a look at what other AO readers are thinking.

Alas, we cannot publish every letter we receive. And we won't publish letters that are anonymous, hateful, illiterate, or otherwise in our judgment do not benefit the readers of Anglicans Online. We usually do not publish letters written in response to other letters.

We edit letters to conform with standard AO house style for punctuation, but we do not change, for example, American spelling to conform to English orthography. On occasion we'll gently edit letters that are too verbose in their original form. Email addresses are included when the authors give permission to do so.

If you'd like to respond to a letter whose author does not list an email, you can send your response to Anglicans Online and we'll forward it to the writer.


Letters from 20 March to 26 March 2006

Like all letters to the editor everywhere, these letters are the opinions of the writers and not Anglicans Online. We publish letters that we think will be of interest to our readers, whether we agree with them or not. If you'd like to write a letter of your own, click here.

Not to betray, but uphold it

This passage was given to me during my retreat before ordination as a Deacon in 1986. I think it puts us clergy in our place as members of the Body of Christ.

"We are not ordaining you to ministry;
that happened at your baptism.
We are not ordaining you to serve the Church in
committees, activities, organisation;
that is already implied in your mrmbership.
We are not ordaining you to become involved in social issues,
in ecology, race, politics, the search for justice and peace;
for that is laid on every Christian.

We are ordaining you to something smaller and less spectacular;
to read and interpret those sacred stories of our community,
so that they speak a word to people today;
to remember and practice those rituals of meaning that address people at the level where change takes place;
to foster in community, through word and sacrament, that encounter with truth which will set people free to minister as the Body of Christ.

We are ordaining you to the ministry of the word and sacraments and pastoral care.
God grant you grace not to betray but uphold it, not to deny but to affirm it, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Sue Huyton
Holy Trinity, Gwersyllt
Wrexham, North WALES
SUEHUYTON@aol.com
20 March 2006

It's where you go when you're thirsty

I was gobsmacked on reading Lois Keen's complaint that clergy drinking in their cassocks in a "pub garden" at Walsingham (presumably the forecourt of the Bull) were "oppressive". Walsingham is just about the jolliest place God made, and beer is one of the jolliest things He made.

Yes, the clergy go there in their cassocks, because they've just come from the church across the road, much as somebody going for a lunchtime pint from the office might wear a suit or someone from a factory his overalls. At national pilgrimage time, the serried ranks of reverend fathers are always good for a news photo and caption about the "thirst after righteousness".

Alan Harrison
St Mary, Hayes
West Drayton, Middlesex, ENGLAND
21 March 2006

We gather two or three together

Your short essay this week was on target, though I have to say that in our parish when the reserved sacrament is taken to someone ill at home or in the hospital there are usually two or three people accompanying the lay eurcharistic minister and the lessons and prayers appropriate are used--it is not a form empty of connection to the community of faith. We don't just "go through the motions" but are ministering to our neighbors and friends, sometimes relatives-though I suppose that even the form alone is better than nothing, it is good to be in a small parish where we care about one another even though there is quite a broad spectrum of opinion, we realize that all of us are a part of Christ's flock.

Barry Brown
Christ Church, Madison, Jefferson County, Indiana
Switzerland County, Indiana, USA
bbrown97@netzero.com
21 March 2006

Commemorating Cranmer

As always, your weekly article/editorial is well worth reading and timely. I had an egg-beater exactly like the one in the picture. I haven't seen a monstrance like that in very many Anglican/Episcopal churches, however!

I am really writing this time for a different reason, however. I read Archbishop Williams' wonderful, moving sermon on the occasion of the 450th anniversary of Archbishop Cranmer's death, and wanted to know what day in the Episcopal Calendar we commemorate him - and he is not in Lesser Feasts and Fast (1997 - don't have the more current edition). I am sure he has a day, because I can remember crying, reading the collect about his act in burning his "sinful" hand. Am I misremembering? If not, what's the date?

Helen-Louise Boling
St. Andrew's Episcopal Parish
Toledo, Ohio; USA
hlboling@toast.net
21 March 2006

(Ed: The US Episcopal Church commemorates Cranmer on 16 October, along with Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley. This information is in our 2000 edition of Lesser Feasts and Fasts. The Church of England commemorates Cranmer on 21 March; you can find the collect under 21 on this page)

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Earlier letters

We launched our 'Letters to AO' section on 11 May 2003. All published letters are in our archives.

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