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Letters from 28 February to 6 March 2011

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New mornings, squashed birettas

I am so glad you got back to John Keble's wonderful hymn, just as you did several years ago! It is much more important than the fact that I sat on my biretta by accident when I was a curate in the Diocese of Durham about 50 years ago and never replaced it!

Keep up your good work.

Peter Sanderson
St John's Episcopal Church
Alamogordo, New Mexico, USA
frpeter.sanderson@gmail.com
28 February 2011

WTB?

I wonder if the term Biretta Belt was spoken as a derision or as a boasting.

Judy Fleener
St. Paul's Muskegon MI USA
New Era Michigan, USA
jfleener@charter.net
28 February 2011

Fond du Narnia

I have served a parish for 25 years in the American biretta belt, in the Diocese of Fond du Lac. When a colleague was in the UK several years ago, an English priest said to him, "You mean there really IS a Diocese of Fond du Lac?" He apparently thought that it was a kind of mythical place, where Anglo-Catholicism could flourish the way it never would in real life.

It's true that, when these Great Lake dioceses were created, they got bishops who were on fire to spread the catholic revival, and they attracted priests with the same zeal. But the people in the pews were not necessarily of the same mind. I remember going to a deanery meeting when I first arrived here. The rural dean opened the meeting with an Our Father and a Hail Mary. I was surprised that the parishioners who had accompanied me didn't know the words to the latter!

Now that the Eucharist is almost universally the central act of worship, the use of eucharistic vestments is the norm, and other "catholic privileges" are widespread, things have leveled out somewhat. At diocesan gatherings, the clergy haven't worn birettas for decades, and the lace cotta has been replaced by the voluminous Anglican surplice.

William Bippus
St. Paul's Church
Marinette, Wisconsin, USA
5 March 2011

Earlier letters

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