Letters from 13 to 19
August 2007
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They forever
held their peace
I
read with interest your essay (link
here) on the laws of affinity/consanguinity and the fact that
the divergent views held by the Church of England and the Episcopal
Church in the U.S. did not affect the Anglican Communion at large.
'Way back in
the 1920s, when the C of E rules still applied, my great-aunt, the
eldest sister in a family of ten children, died, and her widower later
married the youngest sister of that family, in the Church of England.
This all took place in rural England where one would assume ecclesiastical
rules and national laws still held greater sway over the hearts and
minds of the faithful than they did in the great cities like London,
Birmingham, Manchester, etc. I wonder if they lied on their marriage
licence application? Obviously no one raised any objection at that
point in the wedding ceremony where the solemn question is put to
all in attendance. Lawbreakers all!
My great-aunt
and uncle were happily married for over fifty years and produced four
children, one of whom was ordained as a priest of the Church of England
(the fact that he was also a closeted gay man merely adds a pinch
of spice to the story, don't you agree?)
I long ago
came to the conclusion that the present uproar in the Communion has
more to do with politics than it has with polity (a conclusion that
was confirmed after reading Archbishop Obomi's essay on what it is
to be Anglican!) In my view, the struggle between the Global North
and the Global South is a power play, not-so-pure and exceedingly
simple. My view is futher confirmed by the present schism-within-schism
occurring in the Anglican Communion Network in the U.S., and I was
heartened by the resignation of the Reverend Dr. Ephraim Radner, one
of the co-founders of that schismatic group, because he can no longer
see eye-to-eye with Bishop Robert Duncan (a power-player if ever there
was one!) on what constitutes faithful adherence to the Gospel and
membership in the Anglican Communion. One wonder where it will all
end.
O tempora!
O mores!
Thank you for
continuing to be a voice of reason.
P.S. Re the
lavabo — we use a gel hand-sanitizer at the Cathedral, but in true
Anglican style we have disguised the plastic pump bottle in its own
little vestment so that the 21st century does not intrude too glaringly
on the tradition of centuries!
Rene Jamieson
St. John's Cathedral
Winnipeg, CANADA
13 August 2007
Driving under
the influence of a deceased wife's sister?
Your
lead last week about the differences (link
here) between the Church of England and the (P)ECUSA during the
19th century regarding permissible degrees of consanguinity is,
at best, disingenuous.
The differences
between the two bodies was not, as you claim, a difference over the
fundamental nature of marriage. Both bodies assumed, as had the Church
as a whole since the first century, that marriage was properly between
one man and one woman, for life. If anyone, on either side of the
Atlantic, had then advance the novel proposition that marriage could
be re-defined to encompass a "union" between two members of the same
sex, both bodies would have reacted with shock and incredulity.
Your analogy
is sort of like arguing that, if one state has a highway speed limit
of 70 miles per hour, and another state has a highway speed limit
of 65 miles per hour, the states have fundamental disagreements about
the nature of traffic safety.
Ted Gale
Calvary Episcopal Church (Indian Rocks Beach, Florida)
Seminole, Florida, USA
15 August 2007
(Ed. note:
Our letter emphasized that there was a fundamental disagreement
about the nature of marriage between the Church of England and the
Episcopal Church in the USA in the 19th century. Marriages that were
possible in the US Episcopal Church were considered
by the Church of England to be incest. Here is the comment of the
Bishop of Rochester in 1850 regarding the marriage of a deceased
wife's sister: 'I
directed the Archdeacon to treat the man as excommunicate and
to reject him from the Communion; to refuse to church the woman;
and to register the children as illegitimate'. This
is far more of a difference than five miles per hour.)
'The field
is the Wiki'
The
report, from a Cal Tech student, referenced
in a Wired magazine story below, would tend to give credence
to allegations that Opus Dei has hijacked some of the Wikipedia
entries for various Latin American countries and removed any
reference to protestant churches generally and Anglican churches
specifically, even though these churches are all enjoying rapid
growth in all Latin American countries.
www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker
The Reverend
Peter H. Christiansen
South San Francisco, California, USA
smi2le@sbcglobal.net
15 August 2007
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