What is in Kelvin's Head?

Not merely patronising

01/11/2012

Bishop Victoria Matthews is not merely patronising, she is actually wrong.

Wait, you want me to back up a bit? OK.

The story so far: We’ve been considering the idea of an Anglican Covenant for years and this year the Scottish Episcopal Church decided to reject it and did so in a very clear synodical decision. The Anglican Consultative Council is currently meeting in New Zealand and Bishop Victoria has been making statements about those who can’t agree with the Covenant that are, at best disingenuous. (Which is Anglican for “Completely Wrong and Verging on Deceit”).

Here’s part of the report from the Anglican Communion Office:
Bishop Matthews… was introducing a session on the history and progress of the Covenant as part of the 15th ACC meeting in Auckland.
She stressed the point that it was not the work of IASCUFO [The International Anglican Standing Committee on Unity, Faith and Order] to promote the Covenant, but rather to monitor its reception.
â€œAs we have sought to do that,â€ she told delegates, â€œI have often thought that the document people discuss and the actual Anglican Covenant are two different documents.
“One is the document that people have in their mind and the other is the Anglican Communion Covenant on paper. So I really want [people] to read the Covenant and be focused on that. Because often, when people start talking about the Covenant, what they describe in their mind as the Covenant is unrecognisable.â€

I have to say that I find the suggestion that we really need to read the actual Covenant quite insulting. No church could have done better at reading the thing than the Scottish Episcopal Church. We’ve discussed it at our annual General Synod over years. We’ve looked at each different version of the text. We’ve discussed it in dioceses. We’ve discussed it in regional councils. Some have discussed it in Vestries and in some places whole congregations looked at it. People preached on it. People studied it. We went over the text itself with a tooth-comb. The Standing Committee discussed and implemented every possible way of discussing the document. We talked about it until people were sick of talking about it. We printed it out so many times that people complained about the environmental impact of the Covenant process.

And then we finally made a decision and the decision was a resounding “No.” We really don’t need to go back and read the text. We read it plenty and we made up out minds very clearly and overwhelmingly.

Bishop Victoria also said, “Remember most of the Covenant reminds us who we are in Christ.”

You know, the predominant thing that we said was not that we were worried about the punitive sections. That was true for very many of us. However the thing I heard people saying again and again was, “This just doesn’t represent who we are”.

The claim that the Covenant reminds us who we are in Christ is a rather foolish one. The Covenant is an imagined identity which we have firmly rejected.

It is certainly patronising of Bishop Victoria Matthews to imply that we in Scotland just have not read the Covanant enough. More than that though, it isn’t true.

She’s just plain wrong.

Anglican Covenant

6 responses to “Here or there?”

Gary

01/04/2007

Up there. High altar. No doubt.

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Tom Allen

01/04/2007

I am very much with Richard Giles on this one – there should liturgically only be one main altar – ideally this is achieved by romoving the former High altar and dedicating that space to some other purpose – where that is not possible as in historic cathedrals then it should be left dormant (covered in a simple cloth perhaps) and only the altar which is being used for worship should be dressed since this is in fact THE altar.

Despite all the reservations about removing former altars in the end it solves long-term problems, and provides a single visual focus for Eucharistic worship. At times when a high altar is needed then the new altar can moved there.

This kind of fuzziness illustrates that our liturgical practice has become dominated by hertiage criteria.

I am about to replace our main altar with something moveable and aesthetically more appropriate, but am facing a Registrars ruling that the current altar (and former eastward facing number more recently provided with wheels and moved to the chancel!) must be burnt, and that the wood frontal cannot be used for a screen.

Dont’ we get ourselves tied up in knots!
Tom

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Stewart

01/04/2007

A thought came to my mind this afternoon. At the Creed we all face east. This results in the choir turning their back on the Nave Altar and in most cases put the High Altar in their sight.

Considering Tom’s comments, another thought thinking about some English Cathedrals which have multiple altars around the building, it is not usually possible to see more than one at a time. Some have a chapel behind the High Altar – behind a screen.

Turning back to St Mary’s – all the action at the 10:30 service is centred and focused around the Nave Altar. However there is still the High Altar, the Pheobe Traquair Reredos and Gwyneth Leach mural of Our Lady at the East End. To my mind their presence enhances the worship around the Nave Altar and does not detract from it.

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Andrew

02/04/2007

The Altar is a table, where we commemorate a meal together. Clearly (to my mind) we should all be sitting round it, as we do (more or less) at present. The table reminds me that Jesus instituted the Last Supper when he was among us (HERE), not somewhere else (THERE).

I very much hope that the Altar in St. Mary’s can be left where it is.

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kelvin

03/04/2007

It seems to me curious that the practice that I inherited was to light and dress the high altar whilst using the nave altar. It makes no sense, except perhaps to highlight St Mary’s puzzling parallel worlds of deep conservatism mingled with radical liberalism.

Whist tending to agree with Andrew’s sentiments, it is worth remembering that the nave altar could hardly be said to have stayed in one place these last 20 years.

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Elizabeth

17/04/2007

Here. Both. Loving the paradox.

But maybe I only say that beccause the only church I’ve regularly worshiped in where there are clearly two visible altars is St Mary’s and that’s what I’m used to. I’ve never found it distracting that the high altar is dressed and lit, even though the nave altar is where the action is, so to speak. But then, would I notice if the high altar wasn’t dressed and lit? Probably not.

I do love the nave altar, peripatetic as it is!

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