I love reading theology books. My wife will point out that I promised to stop ordering books once I made my Logos purchase. But… I have been picking up liturgical books from ISM communities. The sacrifice I am making for you!
I recently ordered the Saint Bernard Breviary, The Book of Common Prayer and the Book of Common Prayer Prisoner’s Edition (all for the Anglican Church of North America). I have not had a lot of time to spend with these resources, but I am very impressed with what I see thus far. I have few Anglican resources and an even smaller Anglican base of knowledge. The books seem to be of high quality, and I look forward to spending time with them and praying with them.
In addition, I ordered Book of Occasional Services – Old Catholic Communion of North America, Od Catholic Missal – Old Catholic Communion of North America, and Old Catholic Missal Old Catholic Communion on North America Principal Service with Collects. I only briefly looked at these and am unsure of how the last two books differ. What I really like about the last two books is that in less than 120 pages, the entire rites of Eucharist, Marriage, Baptism, Burial and Reconciliation are included. It is great to see pew editions to foster active lay participation as many jurisdictions lack these.
Which leads me to think about what the ISM might get right. The ISM spends a lot of time, energy, and resources on our liturgies. Our liturgies give us identity and set us apart. I think many people in the ISM movement must be liturgical scholars or think they are liturgical scholars. Liturgy seems to be life for many of us. It is a shame that we spend do much time developing our own liturgical resources and publishing them for very small communities. I wish we could collaborate more as the creation of liturgical texts consumes a lot of resources if done correctly. This got me thinking about something else.
The other day I was going down the rabbit holes of the internet searches and came across The Arnold Harris Mathew Centre European-American University The Arnold Harris Mathew Centre – The Western Orthodox University. I was initially very excited about this because I thought this was right up my alley. I started looking online for more information on the program and was disappointed that I could not find any additional information. What I am say below does not apply to the above program. I hope someone who reads this blog might be able to chime in on The Arnald Harris Mathew Centre. I think we spend too much time on liturgy and not enough time on Christian formation and development.
I read the webpages of numerous jurisdictions, and some have educational centers listed as well. It truly saddens me with what I see passes as our universities, colleges, and educational institutions. I think you can provide a quality education without being accredited, but a number of these have three qualities that cause me to lose immediate interest.
1) You can get your honorary doctorate for the low price of $X,000. Tell us why you deserve it and send us the check.
2) The educational program looks far too basic and elementary. From an actual institution (name withheld)
THEOL-CPE8 / SPEAKING SPEAK ONLY SO THE PATIENT CAN HEAR.
SPEAK CLEARLY ALLOWING FOR HEARING DIFFERENCES
3) Extreme liberalism. This seems so strange for me to say as I considered myself a liberal Roman Catholic priest. I wanted to work with people and live amid ambiguity. Yes, I was a priest who said it was not a sin to vote for Obama while bishops were doing that. I wrote a paper in seminary defending the use of condoms in Africa using the conversative arguments of Aquinas’s principles of double effect. I am a liberal, but I love the tradition. Liberalism without the tradition seems empty. I see a lot of programs focusing on environmental, racial, social, and sexual issues which are important and have pastoral application. At the same time, we are doing this through a Christian perspective otherwise what is the point – we could be doing all of that at a secular institution and probably better. I would never recommend someone to be ordained who knew all the modern issues and ways to navigate them but did not know the arguments of Athanasius on the divinity of Jesus or Cyril on the Unity of Christ.
I appreciate our love for liturgy. Maybe this is why so many of us want to develop communities where we can celebrate the liturgy. At the same time, the church is more than the liturgy. Mainline communities can outshine most of our liturgies. Instead, I think we need to work on Christian formation and development. I see so many people online who reject Christianity because of the false presentations of the Gospel by prosperity preachers, faith healers, and those who abused their power. We can reach out and show them a different way of being a Christian. As I was watching the movie Bonhoeffer, I was thinking of how many were complicit with changing Christianity to fit what the state wanted. The Confessing Church was not very effective because it did not have the resources needed. It’s voice was taken away. Most simply did not align with either movement. The ISM needs less liturgical books remembering the saints of long ago and people working to be a saint today.
Peace,
Ben
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