Structure for Corporate Anglican Reunion with Catholic Church announced
  • Chrism
    Posts: 868
    Rorate Caeli
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,499
    They shall need hymns!
  • IanWIanW
    Posts: 756
    They already have quite a few good ones.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,499
    True. But they shall need more!
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    If Anglicans become Catholics, their musicians should prepare for salary deflation ;)
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,499
    Maybe all boats will rise!
  • Daniel Bennett PageDaniel Bennett Page
    Posts: 833
    Lots of variables here:

    * The average Sunday attendance at Episcopal parishes in the US is 70. [sic]
    * The average Episcopalian contributes significantly more financially than the average Catholic, even when adjusted for income levels.
    * A fairly high percentage of Anglicans who will ever become Catholics have already entered the Church.
    * Full-time Catholic music directors do not do badly financially, especially in good-sized suburban parishes.
  • tdunbar
    Posts: 120
    The current CoE "New English Hymnal" has far more hymns by St Thomas Aquinas, etc than, say, "Glory and Praise" .. just saying.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,499
    Right, but they're a bit light on Marian hymns, one should think, and perhaps hymns for saint's days. I could be wrong.
  • IanWIanW
    Posts: 756
    Jeffrey,

    A straw in the wind, perhaps: a Catholic organist I know has been able to turn down an Anglican job because the Catholic parish offered more; and they're letting him do more chant and polyphony. Mind you, the Anglicans don't pay much here in England - most paid jobs are part-time. Directors of music either have day jobs or portfolio careers.

    Kathy,

    You're right about the Marian hymns, but take a look at the (New) English Hymnal. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
  • Daniel Bennett PageDaniel Bennett Page
    Posts: 833
    Note that the vast majority of Anglicans in the US (and a substantial, although smaller, percentage of those in Britain) who will enter the Catholic Church under the new arrangements will use Elizabethan/KJV English exclusively. Any hymnody for these contexts would need (mostly) to be complementary in style and diction. However, this is not necessarily an all-or-nothing situation: there has been a modest but telling amount of new Anglican hymnody in dignified, non-hieratic English written over the last 100 years or so. Still, the vocabulary tends to be traditional and literary.
  • Chrism
    Posts: 868
    They may well need hymns to commemorate this day. :-)
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,934
    I showed the news release to a Maronite teacher at my school. I am Byzantine, so we are the eastern presence in that Roman Catholic school. We read it, looked at each other, and both said, "This is wonderful!"
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,367
    SOLEMN TE DEUM -

    We praise thee, O God; we acknowledge thee to ' be the Lord,
    all the earth doth worship thee, the Father ' everLASTing.
    To thee all Angles cry aloud; the Heavens and all the ' Powers therein;
    to thee Cherubim and Seraphim con ' tinually do cry,
    (Bow) Holy, Holy, Holy, (Rise) Lord God of ' Sabaoth;
    Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty ' of thy GLOry.
    The glorious company of the Apostles ' PRAISE thee.
    The goodly fellowship of the ' Prophets PRAISE thee.
    The noble army of martys ' PRAISE thee.
    The holy Church throughout all the world ' doth acknowledge thee:
    The Father of an infinite Majesty; thine adorable, true, and ' only Son:
    also the Holy ' Ghost the Comforter.

    Thou art the King of ' Glory - O Christ.
    Thou art the everlasting ' Son of - the FAther.
    When thou tookest upon thee to de ' liver man,
    Thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to ' all beLIEVers.
    Thou sittest at the right ' hand of God,
    in the glory ' of the FAther.
    We believe that thou shalt come to ' be our Judge.
    (Genuflect) We therefore pray thee help thy servants,
    whom thou hast redeemed ' with the precious blood. (Rise)
    Make them to be numbered ' with thy saints,
    in glory ' everLASTing.

    O Lord save thy people and bless thine 'heritage.
    Govern them and lift them ' up forEVer.
    Day by day we ' magni-fy thee;
    And we worship thy Name ever ' world withOUT end.
    Vouchsafe O Lord to keep us this day with ' OUT sin.
    O Lord have mercy upon us, have ' mercy - upON us.
    O Lord let thy mercy be upon us, as our ' trust - is in - thee.
    O Lord in thee have I trusted; let me never ' be conFOUNDed.

    V. Blessed art thou, O Lord God of our fa'thers.
    R. And to be praised and glorified for e'ver.
    V. Let us bless the Father, and the Son, with the Ho'ly Ghost.
    R. Let us praise and exalt him above all for e'ver.
    V. Blessed art thou in the firmament of hea'ven.
    R. And to be praised and glorified, and exalted above all for e'ver.
    V. Praise the Lord, O ' my soul.
    R. And forget not all his be'nefits.
    V. O Lord, hear ' our prayer.
    R. And let our cry come un'to thee.
    V. The Lord be with ' you.
    R. And with thy spi'rit.

    Officiant: Let us pray: O GOD, whose mercies are without number, and the treasure of whose goodness is infinite:
    we render thanks unto thy most gracious majesty for the gifts which thou hast bestowed upon us; evermore beseeching
    thy mercy that, as thou dost grant the prayers of them that call upon thee, so thou wouldst not forsake them, but
    rather dispose their way towards the attainment of thy heavenly reward. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and
    reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God world without end. R. Amen.

    (DEO GRATIAS)
  • vincentuher
    Posts: 134
    Jackson, you took the words right out of my mouth.

    TE DEUM laudamus!
  • MaryAnn Carr WilsonMaryAnn Carr Wilson
    Posts: 1,738
    This is such great news. Deo Gratias, indeed!!!
    And I'm also thankful to God for a resourceful pope that responded with such a keen solution. THIS is ecumenism!
    As an woman of Irish/English descent, with many Catholics and some Anglicans in the family tree, I feel this as a true healing.

    As for the musical benefits to this, wow. Another reason to celebrate.

    Let us pray that many souls will come home through this most generous opportunity.
  • Bruce E. Ford
    Posts: 429
    All the movement is not in one direction. Our junior warden and another member of our vestry are former Roman Catholics.

    Disaffected Anglicans who swim the Tiber will (for a long time, at least) will avoid the ordination of women, but they will not avoid gay bishops. An inactive Roman Catholic priest who worships with us regularly (and makes a pledge) told me that not one member of his seminary class was heterosexual.

    I will not be so rash as to make a confident prediction that the Roman Catholic Church will some day ordain women; but I foresee the possibility. Certainly the last word on the subject has not been pronoounced; nor will it be pronounced by Benedict XVI.
  • eft94530eft94530
    Posts: 1,577
    Certainly the last word on the subject has not been pronoounced

    The most recent word ...

    1994-may-22 Ordinatio Sacerdotalis
    http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_22051994_ordinatio-sacerdotalis_en.html
  • Chrism
    Posts: 868
    One of the most beautiful souls I have the privilege of knowing is a lesbian who converted from Episcopalianism to Catholicism. She had first left a sadomasochistic lifestyle for the Episcopal Church, because she wanted to do something with her life besides sit all day in a cage. So she joined the social justice ministries, became active at liturgy, started working with the poor in the area.

    She ended up leaving the Episcopal Church because they kept trying to encourage her to spend her time, talent and treasure affirming her sexual identity, when all she wanted to do was good works. Robinson's election was a formal endorsement of that preoccupation.
  • Mr. Z
    Posts: 159
    Bruce,

    Respectfully, you are just wrong about "the last word" not being pronounced regarding any possibility of having women being ordained to the priesthood. The church has no authority to do so, and has said so. That is the last word. That is why 'lobbying" efforts are exasperating. So much wasted energy and misplaced vitrol.

    To quote one Fr. Zuhlsforf:

    "Never mind the fact that this is impossible. A woman can no more be ordained as a priest than an… eggplant, or giraffe.

    The Church, faithful to Christ, has no authority to ordain women. This is the Church’s infallible teaching."

    He, to me, is the expert on like topics. I will let others quote from encyclicals.

    BTW, I have known homosexuals who seem to think just about everybody is.
  • MaryAnn Carr WilsonMaryAnn Carr Wilson
    Posts: 1,738
    Bruce, of course one needs to make the distinction between those choosing to be in 'the lifestyle' and those ordained men- whatever their inclination may be- embracing and slogging out chastity like the rest of us. You are probably right about the numbers being high, though, considering so many abuse victims are young men and boys...

    If all the movement isn't one direction, ok. I for one am excited that the Church will be bringing in more men like Fr. Longenecker and Fr. Rutler- it will only strengthen the priesthood.

    And, sadly, its only honest that Catholics part with leaders who value sexual self-realization above integrity and their own vows. Hopefully the story isn't over for them, either.
  • Mr. Z
    Posts: 159
    MA -


    Regarding the numbers of homosexual priests being "nigh."

    The percentage of priest - hetero - or homosexual - involved in abuse (depending on the study) is about 4%. I don't think one can draw conclusions about who is and who is not homosexual in the priesthood solely from this statistic alone - (though the amount of boys/young men abused vs. girls does say something. Don't really want to go down this road, not here anyway) - which would not be too different from abuse in other occupations, i.e., teachers, protestant ministers, etc.

    So while there are some correlatives - I think one has to be careful in just throwing out ideas and drawing quick conclusions without any precision. IOW, don't be too quick to concede points with amorphous non stats adding fodder to the cannons of some who would engage in reckless stereotyping of the priest profile.
  • MaryAnn Carr WilsonMaryAnn Carr Wilson
    Posts: 1,738
    Mr. Z, I understand the low percentage of priests involved in abuse. I intended to point out the high percentage of male victims- anywhere from the high 70s- high 80s. It doesn't look pretty for priests who live out same-sex attraction, that's all I meant. Hopefully the overall number isn't high. Though, let's remember that it must have been high enough for Benedict XVI to write a letter about admitting men with deep-seated same-sex attraction to the seminary.

    'BTW, I have known homosexuals who seem to think just about everybody is.' Entirely true in my experience, as well.

    At any rate, I welcome Anglicans who are fed up with fudging natural law and abandoning Christian doctrine on this issue, among others. It is entirely possible to love people without accepting their behavior, to call them to conversion and holiness. Seems to me Jesus did that all the time, and still does it with me in my own weakness.
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    Come into my parlor said the Pope to the Anglicans....
  • Mr. Z
    Posts: 159
    MA.

    I was guessing all along that you are probably well informed and have your info straight. We all do well to accurately write as if the reader knows almost nothing when conveying analysis of data that can be easily misconstrued. (Others are reading). So accuracy and careful that the points being made be very clearly delineated and not leaving room for misinterpretation, especially regarding such an inflammatory subject and one which abounds in misinterpreted or false data. That is all I was suggesting.
  • priorstf
    Posts: 460
    I wonder how long it will be before the Anglican Communion reciprocates, inviting disaffected Roman Catholic churches to leave their dioceses and join up.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,367
    A Solemn Te Deum was sung at Our Lady of Walsingham, Houston, this morning in thanksgiving
    for the Personal Ordinariate and the Holy Father who has made it possible.
    Clouds and clouds of smoke wafted heavenward from thuribles going in full circles.

    Related chant news: Yesterday St Basil's School of Gregorian Chant sang a Latin Novus Ordo mass at St Basil's Chapel for the International Jacques Maritain Society's closing liturgy. Propers from Graduale Romanum + Orbis Factor ordinary sung heartily by 200 attendees from square notes and no 'accompaniment'.
  • Chrism
    Posts: 868
    priorstf: I understand why doctrine-phobic Catholics might seek lodging with The Episcopal Church, and that in theory it would be possible for a similar uniate structure to be created for a Roman group under the Anglican ecclesiastical framework. But what sort of Roman culture and traditions would the aforementioned Catholics be seeking to preserve, which is not already found in the common use of the Episcopal liturgy? Marty Haugen?
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,157
    Sacro-pop is not unique to us: the local Episcopalian parish uses the "Glory and Praise" hymnal, or at least they did when I last saw their service on the local public-access channel. But that was under a previous rector, so things might have changed.
  • Chrism
    Posts: 868
    Perhaps the answer is Bingo?
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