What is in Kelvin's Head?

Conversations with Catholics (and others)

08/01/2016

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m trying something new and a bit different at St Mary’s. I’m offering coffee and a chat to a couple of different kinds of people who are always present within the congregation. Tomorrow morning (Saturday 9 January 2016) I’m having a coffee morning for people in the congregation who have Roman Catholic roots. There’s always a significant number of such people in St Mary’s and I thought it might be interesting to get some of us together for a chat. In a fortnight’s time I’ll be repeating the exercise with those who have a background as evangelicals. I’ll see how these go and then see whether there’s any other groups which might want to meet. A couple of people said that they grew up as presbyterians and they should have a coffee morning but I’m not sure whether that one is one to go for or not. Another possibility that I’ve thought of is a chat with those who fit the Spiritual Seeker profile – those who’ve meditated with Buddhists, banged their drums, sweated in their sweat lodges, spun in circles and knitted their own lentils. We’ve always got a fair representation from that constituency and it might be interesting to gather such people together.

However, I’m starting with catholics because I know that those who come from a Roman Catholic background have a common conversation though not necessarily a common experience. Some come to St Mary’s who are quite clear that they are Roman Catholics still and that St Mary’s just happens to be a resting place for them on their journey. Others have an articulate conversation about what they have left behind and why they needed to move on from the Roman Catholic church and find something new. Rather intriguingly there’s a mix between those who come to St Mary’s because it allows them to live out their catholicism and those who come because it allows them to say that they’ve moved on from it.

St Mary’s offers an interesting place for those with catholic roots to worship. For many there’s the surprise that the worship is just like the worship that they have known within Roman Catholicism.

I once said to a liturgist that it wonderful, amazing and surprising that the modern Roman Catholic Mass was so similar to the liturgy of the Scottish Episcopal Church. “Not amazing at all!” he exclaimed – “we all of us, Romans and Anglicans and all the rest went to the same liturgy conferences in the 1970s”. Sadly in recent years with the new translation of the Roman Catholic mass into (terrible) English, we’ve moved a little further apart again but you can still very much recognise that things are essentially the same.

I’m soemtimes puzzled by the reactions of Roman Catholics who find themselves present in St Mary’s. We often have tourists who come from Roman Catholics countries who presume that it is a Roman Catholic church. They do so even, in my experience, when a female colleague has been celebrating at the Sung Eucharist. This puzzles me. But also encourages me a little.

For many from a catholic background we provide what they would have hoped for from their own church – a mass they recognise, social teaching on sexuality, marriage and divorce that is as positive as the catholic social teaching on economics that they believe in and a shared love and devotion to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist alongside a love for his mother too. There are no doubt negatives – the sorrow of families feeling parted by church divisions over the Eucharist. (Everyone is welcome to receive in St Mary’s but that doesn’t begin to scratch the deep irritations surrounding who is and who is not able to receive communion in various churches). There are also confusing messages that the Scottish Episcopal Church sends out about membership that we might talk about. People tend to know they are Roman Catholics and tend not to be entirely sure whether they are Scottish Episcopalians. That could well be part of the conversation.

I’m looking forward to this and expect I’ll learn things. The invitation is open to anyone who wants to come and have a coffee with me in the Synod Hall on Saturday morning at 10.30.

52 responses to “Inclusive Language – again”

ryan

11/10/2010

Kelvin – that cracked me almost as much as your last tweet on the left of your blog ;-)!

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Jimmy

11/10/2010

Ryan, although you address your comment to Kelvin like I am not there. I assume you are referring to my poem, I can assure you that it does not crack me up watching you making any opinion you may have untenable.

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1. kelvin
  
  11/10/2010
  
  No Jimmy – I think Ryan was indeed referring to my last comment, above.
  
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Jimmy

11/10/2010

Thank you Kelvin and Sorry Ryan.

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ryan

11/10/2010

No worries! Was indeed referring to the v.amusing coming out day tweets at the side.

I’m not sure there’s ever existed anyone, anywhere,at any time, of whom it could be said that *all* their opinions are ‘untenable’, so such rhetoric is dehumanising at best. Apropos nothing, I was moved to google the poetic stylings of the great David Brent. Who needs Auden? 😉
http://murfinsandburglars.com/2009/04/14/bad-poetry-for-tuesday-david-brent-edition/

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Peter

12/10/2010

Kelvin; no, I think it distracts. It simp;ly reminds us that this is how your mind works: you make connections and delight in that sort of word-play. However, to sharpen up my point. Thank you for helping me to realise that, for some, ‘family’ is not a positive word in the way in which I experience it. For my part, this willl mean that I will be more careful about its use when others might feel excluded (and therefore hurt). Mutatis mutandi can you accept that I feel offended by what seems to be merely a casual linking between family and the f word? These are sensitive areas, but sensibilities are by no means confined to those who find family a painful or unhelpful concept.

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Simon

29/10/2010

I am slightly nervous aboaut the alternatives to the 1982 Liturgy, not because I don’t share the inclusive sentiments expressed above (I do). I fear that, as so often in the history of the church, the steps we take to avoid one kind of mistake in the way we talk about God can lead us into another. The avoidance of pronouns as a measure to achieve inclusivity produces inelegant, strained and stilted English. How would it be if one were to use it in day-to-day speech? ‘I saw John this morning. I asked John’s how John’s health was. John said that John was over his flu, and hoped to be back at work on Monday’. This may not in itself seem to be a problem. But in fact, what very quickly happens when we adopt this idiom in addressing/expressing God, is that the very idea of a personal God begins to recede. My basic instinct is that the church’s language of pulbic prayer is properly anchored in that of the scriptures. There are dangers in departing from this. The perceived problem (rightly perceived) is perhaps better tackled by good teaching about the nature of God, than by linguistic contortions that produce stilted prayers, and possibly a less real and vivid idea of God.

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Melissa

15/11/2013

About the family imagery – another reason to drop it in church is for the sake ones who, like me, do actually have the signifying family relationships.

There is too much pressure on day to day life with children when that life is forced to serve as some kind of example or testimony or witness to the world – or more likely one’s church friends – about the nature of God.

I think it sours love because in that kind of scheme loving children is more fundamentally a means to an end.

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