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This page last updated 8 August 2008
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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 We usually do not publish letters written in response to other letters.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 Canadian 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 28 July to 3 August 2008

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.

Hearts lifted

You have linked Bishop Forsyth's words to the Pope and the criticisms of aspects of RC practice made by a small group that included Anglicans. As a priest of Diocese of Sydney (one neither Puritan, Papist, Pentecostal, or Progressive), I think people should know what our newspapers and television showed was the overwhelming response of Sydney-siders and I believe Anglican church-people to the "World Youth Day".

Whatever people's various views about the Pope, the pomp or the promotion, or their impressions of the Masses (400,000 at one, the largest gathering of any kind ever held in Australia), the vast number of young pilgrims from all over the world, with their joyful singing and enthusiastic witness to their Lord, not only in Sydney but in all the other places groups visited, left a wonderful impression and lifted the spirits of many.

In one of the very few remaining "catholic" churches in our diocese, many pilgrims came for the daily Taizé devotions, but in my local Evangelical Anglican church, there was certainly also prayer for Bishop Benedict and the pilgrims and thanksgiving to God for their presence. (And the Pope's very last words in the final Mass I think were Anglican, the familiar "Go forth into the world in peace...", hard to beat as a message for today.)

The Reverend John Bunyan
S. John the Baptist's Parish Church, Canberra ACT
Campbelltown, New South Wales, AUSTRALIA
jrbpilgrim@bocnet.com.au
28 July 2008

Would that it were so!

Perhaps when our Anglican family stops being obsessed about who does what, with which, and with whom, we'll look beyond these nounish ways of thinking — and recognize that the authentic mood of faith's voice is optative, not accusatory.

David Fisher
St James Cathedral
Naperville, Illinois, USA
28 July 2008

Ed: We'll join you in a call for more hortatory subjunctives and fewer imperatives.

No sex in the interval?

"At the Lambeth conference, which meets once a decade, bishops from the 38 provinces of the worldwide Anglican communion gather to think, pray and talk about sex." — Christopher Caldwell. Financial Times 11 July 2008

So sad that it's true.

Brian McKinlay
St Philip's O'Connor
Canberra, AUSTRALIA
brian@nottoomuch.com
30 July 2008

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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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