'Sir Ellison
Pogo Announces Plans to Retire'.
What a great
loss his retirement, and what a great contribution he made.
My
encounter with Sir Ellison was during a service at Brisbane Cathedral,
where my family had had a not entirely enthusiastic welcome (see below).
We found ourselves sitting in front of a little brown Melanesian man
in a purple clerical shirt. I turned around and asked him if he was
from Fiji; he said, no, he was from the Solomon Islands. “Ah!” I exclaimed. “You
are Sir Ellison Pogo!” He indeed was. He was on his way back to
Honiara from Canada: “Did you meet Michael Peers?” (Yes.) “Duncan
Wallace?” (Yes.) “David Crawley?” (Yes.) And he and
I proceeded to whisper and laugh like a couple of naughty schoolboys
throughout the duration of the service. And no one was game to shush
us.
During a couple
of years in Sydney, where we as mainstream Anglicans went to Sunday
Mass at Sydney RC Cathedral, our children would murmur instruction to
their Jewish mother. I particularly recall a morning when our four year-old
daughter said to her mother, “Now it’s time for Communities,
Mummy: shall we go up for a blessing? We can’t have Communities,
but just hold your hands out upsidedown....” There was a row of
nuns in front of us and they as one turned around and beamed.
When we found
ourselves in Brisbane the response at Brisbane Anglican Cathedral was
somewhat different. Our then-avowedly Christian children would patiently
explain the proceedings to their Jewish mother. She actually did entirely
know what was going on, but it was charming that they found it appropriate
to try and include her — albeit that the egregious Peter Hollingworth
was preaching a halfwitted sermon that embarrassed me down to my bootstraps
and that Brisbane Cathedral doesn’t put on much in the way of
music or liturgy, not even during the Christmas Midnight Eucharist,
despite its then having a more-than-full house. Our younger son was,
as had become the custom in our family, quietly explaining the proceedings
to his Mum. When a dragon of a woman in the pew in front turned around
and hissed, “Shoosh! Be quiet!”
Needless to say
my three Canadian children were mortified (we Canadians cannot handle
public demonstrations), leapt to their feet and rushed out into the
street. We of course followed them, gathered them up with abject apologies,
tried in vain to suggest that they mustn’t draw too many adverse
inferences, and went home to lunch. I wish I had leaned forward and
said to the horrible old Australian woman, “Now look what you
have done!” But I didn’t.
Perhaps needless
to say, none of our children have darkened the door of a church ever
since: and I had been of all things at one point nervous about their
hero-worship of the rector of our church in Vancouver, lest they “get
religion”! Nowadays
it’s
more like, “So, Dad, you’re going to be dead sooner or later,
so you’d better tell us what you want your funeral to be. But
it’s not going to be with those horrible Anglicans!”
And I remind
them of lovely Sir Ellison and that day in Brisbane Cathedral when the
nasty old Australian Anglican women couldn’t say a word!
Mac Robb
Holy Trinity Fortitude Valley (occasionally)
Brisbane, AUSTRALIA
mac.robb@gmail.com
24 November 2008
The letter from
the Reverend Mr Calder illustrates the "Sydney problem". He
appears, quite literally, not to be talking the same language as Anglo-Catholics
(at least) and probably most Anglicans.
Some of
the linguistic differences are just traditional markers of churchmanship,
such as the use of the term "Lord's Supper". OK, it appears in the
BCP, but these days is certainly a marker of decidedly protestant churchmanship,
just as in my church it is, as in the 1549 BCP "commonly called the
Mass" indicating
our Catholic churchmanship.
But other terminology
used by Mr Calder goes beyond the traditional "high/low" markers. What
on earth is a "senior minister"? A protodeacon in the Orthodox Church
is a senior minister, but he cannot serve the Liturgy. A reader with
forty years' service in a C of E parish is a senior minister, but s/he
cannot celebrate the Eucharist. Why does Mr Calder fight shy of using
the P-word? In normal Anglican practice, celebration of the Eucharist
is confined to PRIESTS (and bishops). What baffles me is why Sydney
so firmly resists the ordination of women to the priesthood, while apparently
seeing no function which is restricted to a priest.
Alan Harrison
S. Stephen's, Wolverhampton
Walsall, West Midlands, UNITED KINGDOM
alantharrison@btinternet.com
24 November 2008
