When you reach the far side of the Tiber, do please send the boat back to this side, as there may be more need of it in the times to come.
TJ
I’m afraid I won’t be embarking when it returns. Not for me so-called Marian apparitions, eucharistic miracles, etc., which Gavin cites as reasons for his conversion. Nor Newmanian development of doctrine which amounts to a justification for Rome’s accretions, novelties and outright perversions of biblical truth. It’s one thing to be a Catholic, which the Reformers all claimed to be as they found themselves in agreement with the Early Church, but to be a Roman Catholic is to align oneself with an ecclesiatical entity in which the whole range of unreformed, false or aberrant teachings, ancient or modern, can today be found. No, the true Catholic is a Reformed Catholic, à la Cranmer, etc. Guess what Anglican clergyman and scholar W H Griffith Thomas called his manual for CofE members. Yes: ‘The Catholic Faith’! Amen and amen!
I’m with you.
I can well imagine getting fed up with the Church of England… But to go back to Rome is to turn one’s back on the theological points that were raised and resolved by the Great Reformation, and they are far from insignificant.
I can see myself getting restless, longing for stability and tradition. Were I to go seeking it, I’d look for it in Eastern Orthodoxy, not in a place where the theology is so remarkably different… and problematic.
What great news! Many of us have been expecting it for a while, but still great news. The analogy with John Henry Newman is a good one. Gavin Ashenden could go on to do really great things, now that he is relieved of his Anglican shackles. Watch this spot.
“relieved of his Anglican shackles”? Care to try that again?
In the end the longing to be affirmed and validated as a priest or, at worst, to be – even as a layman – a member of an organisation founded on a priesthood/laity divide got the upper hand. There was always that inner conflict: issues around sacrament and ordination on the one hand, concerns relating to clerical deviation from traditional norms of sexuality on the other. With this move Gavin has lost perhaps half his constituency – the people who loved what he was saying because he seemed to share their biblical understanding of truth and of what it meant to be faithful to Jesus. Having chosen to associate himself with the Roman concept of priesthood (celibate and set apart from the laity), the adoration of Mary (interceding between us and her Son), the rosary, the sacrifice of the Mass, the issue of papal indulgences, the dogma that Peter was the first bishop of Rome and the Pope is the only true head of the Church, the Vatican Bank … what group of Christians will he be speaking for now when he speaks critically about sexual and moral deviancy in the higher echelons of the Church of England? But the C of E’s sickness was always more fundamental than just its departure from traditional norms of sexuality.
Saddest yet, Steven……from what I have seen, the RCC takes the opinions of the “church fathers” over that of the Bible – our only source of truth. Once again, is the Bible being left behind? This saddens me greatly.
Our prayers for you and the Church.
Rome’s gain is Anglicanism’s loss.
Bishop Gavin,
May God be with you.
When you reach the far side of the Tiber, do please send the boat back to this side, as there may be more need of it in the times to come.
TJ
I’m afraid I won’t be embarking when it returns. Not for me so-called Marian apparitions, eucharistic miracles, etc., which Gavin cites as reasons for his conversion. Nor Newmanian development of doctrine which amounts to a justification for Rome’s accretions, novelties and outright perversions of biblical truth. It’s one thing to be a Catholic, which the Reformers all claimed to be as they found themselves in agreement with the Early Church, but to be a Roman Catholic is to align oneself with an ecclesiatical entity in which the whole range of unreformed, false or aberrant teachings, ancient or modern, can today be found. No, the true Catholic is a Reformed Catholic, à la Cranmer, etc. Guess what Anglican clergyman and scholar W H Griffith Thomas called his manual for CofE members. Yes: ‘The Catholic Faith’! Amen and amen!
I’m with you.
I can well imagine getting fed up with the Church of England… But to go back to Rome is to turn one’s back on the theological points that were raised and resolved by the Great Reformation, and they are far from insignificant.
I can see myself getting restless, longing for stability and tradition. Were I to go seeking it, I’d look for it in Eastern Orthodoxy, not in a place where the theology is so remarkably different… and problematic.
What great news! Many of us have been expecting it for a while, but still great news. The analogy with John Henry Newman is a good one. Gavin Ashenden could go on to do really great things, now that he is relieved of his Anglican shackles. Watch this spot.
“relieved of his Anglican shackles”? Care to try that again?
In the end the longing to be affirmed and validated as a priest or, at worst, to be – even as a layman – a member of an organisation founded on a priesthood/laity divide got the upper hand. There was always that inner conflict: issues around sacrament and ordination on the one hand, concerns relating to clerical deviation from traditional norms of sexuality on the other. With this move Gavin has lost perhaps half his constituency – the people who loved what he was saying because he seemed to share their biblical understanding of truth and of what it meant to be faithful to Jesus. Having chosen to associate himself with the Roman concept of priesthood (celibate and set apart from the laity), the adoration of Mary (interceding between us and her Son), the rosary, the sacrifice of the Mass, the issue of papal indulgences, the dogma that Peter was the first bishop of Rome and the Pope is the only true head of the Church, the Vatican Bank … what group of Christians will he be speaking for now when he speaks critically about sexual and moral deviancy in the higher echelons of the Church of England? But the C of E’s sickness was always more fundamental than just its departure from traditional norms of sexuality.
Saddest yet, Steven……from what I have seen, the RCC takes the opinions of the “church fathers” over that of the Bible – our only source of truth. Once again, is the Bible being left behind? This saddens me greatly.