What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • The Privatization of Public Space and the Commonwealth Games

    Glasgow’s having a ball hosting the Commonwealth Games at the moment. As everyone here is going around saying to one another, there’s a real buzz about the place.

    However, that buzz comes at a significant price.

    I had a wander down to Glasgow’s great public gathering place by the Clyde yesterday – Glasgow Green. I was surprised to be frisked going onto the Green and even more surprised to read what was and was not allowed there during the Games celebrations.

    It was very noticeable that in all the hullabaloo, religion had been written out of the picture. To a certain extent the churches have colluded with keeping themselves hidden during the Games period. I don’t particularly have a problem with that but it was striking that amidst all the festivities in this city in which both the glories and the shame of religious life are vibrantly practiced there was nothing at all to refer to that reality.

    More troubling to me is that people on the Green were apparently being told to cover up YES badges indicating their support for Scottish Independence.

    I’m not a supporter and have every intent to vote no and encourage others to do so. However, I don’t like the idea that the authorities were asking people to cover up their allegiance to a political movement on Glasgow Green – a place where political opinion and protest has often flourished.

    There’s other things you can’t take onto the Green too which are perplexing – the ban on wifi routers being one particularly worrying one. Fortunately those doing the frisking seemed oblivious to the fact that one can use a mobile phone as a wifi router if one so desires.

    There’s other things you can’t bring in too – drinks in large bottles was one restriction, I think.

    There’s a lot of buying and selling going on down on Glasgow Green. But no protest. No dissent. No freedom of expression.  No freedom to use new technology.

    This glorious public space has been privatized and the Live Zone on Glasgow Green is a triumph of authoritarian capitalism.

    Amidst all the celebrations which rightly surround these Games, we should not be blind to what is being done to us.

14 responses to “Liturgical sadness”

  1. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Has anyone else been following the series in ‘The Tablet’ taking the Latin Sunday Collects from the Roman Missal (Ordinary Form), printing alongside them the official English translations and then commenting on the Collects?

    The effect the series has on me is not what was intended. I spend much of my time being puzzled and irritated by the looseness of the translations from the Latin – words and phrases left out, new ideas included, and sometimes translations which are at best a paraphrase.

    The point of mentioning this is that what I’ve seen of the new English translation of the Roman Mass is undoubtedly more faithful to the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.

    This will be important to some and, I expect, an irrelevance to others. However, an ecumenical gesture we could make (pause for breathtakingly unpopular suggestion!) would be to incorporate the new relevant parts of the new translation in our own Liturgy. That really *would* show ecumenical goodwill.

    Reply
  2. David |Dah • veed| Avatar
    David |Dah • veed|

    “…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.”

    That is certainly debatable. I fail to see that the purpose of the liturgical reforms of the 70s and 80s which resulted in many new liturgical books for most major denominations and prayer books for Anglicans, was to get us all back to the Latin Mass.

    Rome has pretty much cut the rest of us “free” so to speak, as irredeemable for all the heresies of women’s ordination and now GLBT ordinations and same sex blessings, and I am fine with that. I would not go anywhere near the Tiber, but I share Kelvin’s sense of loss of something we pew sitters shared around the world.

    Reply
  3. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Just to clarify, when I wrote “…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form” I meant that it was the definitive form for Roman Catholics.

    Reply
  4. Ritualist Robert Avatar
    Ritualist Robert

    Vicky wrote: “… it is unlikely new conversion areas such as China would find Latin accessible.”

    A Roman friend of mine who probably would know said to me the other day that the Catholics in China use the Latin mass because they missed out on the reforms of Vatican II. Does anybody know if this is true?

    I went recently to a Latin mass here in Sydney with the same friend and most of the servers and the priest were from Vietnam … and a good deal of the back-to-the-future seminarians one sees at the papist cathedral seem to be Korean … so I am not sure that the formality of the Latin mass, or a more formal English one will put off Asian converts.

    It’s a pity that the ecumenical implications of this translation exercise haven’t been pondered a bit more.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • A fox

    Funny, isn’t it, how a fox is always a moment in time. Tonight, she and I stopped. Frozen. Gazing at one another in the street near the Arlington Baths. The knowledge that she is a scavenger and a pest did not limit her regal pose. She and I gaze, each seeing something in the other.…

  • New Corporate Image

    The proofs of the new corporate image for the Scottish Episcopal Church have arrived at last today. It has been quite a job for the Information and Communication Board and I was getting worried that they would not arrive in time for this year’s General Synod to approve them. Synod will actually be part of…

  • Relation of College of Bishops to the General Synod

    Someone asked me recently what the relationship was between the College of Bishops and the General Synod. It is a good question. Fortunately, the code of canons is quite specific about this. Canon 52 Section 20 is helpfully clear: The Primus may at any time, when requested to do so by the College of Bishops,…