• Homily – Music Sunday Orchestral Megasong

    Here’s what I said to wrap up our West End Festival events on Sunday evening:

    As most of you will know, it is my habit to announce what we are doing at St Mary’s on the internet.

    Most people who come through the doors of this church these days for the first time have already encountered us online first.

    Our webpage and my blog attract people to this place who are seeking something. No doubt they also put off some others, and that’s OK too. Why waste people’s time if this is not what they are looking for.

    I was a little puzzled as to how to describe this service tonight.

    It is certainly choral evensong, but that didn’t seem to be enough. There is a touch of the festive about it, but even Festival Evensong does not seem to be a big enough description.

    I then looked to see how others were referring to it and found that someone who is singing tonight had referred to it as (more…)

33 responses to “Companions?”

  1. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    No, Kimberley – he ISN’T a Primate. He is merely first among equals and has no powers as a primate or metropolitan.

  2. Kimberly Avatar

    So what would you use as the collective noun for Archbishops, Presiding Bishops, Primi (Primuses??), etc?

    I have always heard ‘primates’ as a simple short hand and have not assumed that it tells us anything about the form of governance in any particular province.

  3. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Ah! But it does! +Idris is Primus (inter pares), but he’s no more a Primate than you or I. This is a delightful distinguishing feature of our Scottish Church. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there were various suggestions and attempts to restore some kind of Metropolitan Bishop, but they came to nothing.

    As for a collective noun, I don’t know. I prefer not to think about such meetings!

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