Ministering the Advent hope at the hour of death

Mindful of the traditional Advent themes of the Four Last Things, it was appropriate that Timothy Stanley's recent interview with Rowan Williams addressed the matter of our deathbed. In the course of the interview Stanley said, "I would want the Last Rites when I’m dying, and if the hospital sent for the local Anglican cleric, I might not get it, because not every Anglican does it". And, Stanley quite rightly protests, "on my death bed, I would want to know what I’m going to get".

Stanley's critique is not entirely unfair. There are Anglican clergy - let's call them the neo-Puritans - who think that extemporary prayer and a Bible reading of their choice will suffice at the deathbed.

That, however, is weak, pale stuff. And certainly not the Real Thing.

For that we turn to the Book of Common Prayer:

Here shall the sick person be moved to make a special confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter. After which confession, the Priest shall absolve him (if he humbly and heartily desire it) after this sort.

OUR Lord Jesus Christ, who hath left power to his Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive thee thine offences: And by his authority committed to me, I absolve thee from all thy sins, In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Prayer Book also provides a weighty "commendatory Prayer for a sick person at the point of departure", giving assurance of the Christian hope:

O ALMIGHTY God, with whom do live the spirits of just men made perfect, after they are delivered from their earthly prisons: We humbly commend the soul of this thy servant, our dear brother, into thy hands, as into the hands of a faithful Creator, and most merciful Saviour; most humbly beseeching thee that it may be precious in thy sight.

And then there is the provision for administering to the sick and dying "the holy Communion of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ", with the appointed collect petitioning "whensoever his soul shall depart from the body, it may be without spot presented unto thee". The short Gospel reading also powerfully proclaims the hope in which participate through the Sacrament:

Verily, verily I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.

Here is the Advent hope at the hour of our death. This why we petition in the Litany to be delivered "from sudden death", so that we may receive the ministrations of holy Church as we pass from this life. This should be the basic stuff that any Anglican priest knows and administers. Anything less than this - including the concoctions of neo-Puritans - deprives the dying of good and godly means of the assurance of the mercy of God. As Bramhall, then Bishop of Derry, declared in a 1657 work:

The ordinary and most received custom of preparing sick persons for another world in the Primitive Church, was Prayer, and Absolution or the benefit of the Keys, and the Viaticum of the Body and Blood of Christ, which we retain.

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

1928 practices and the 1979 book: unthinking conservatism or popular piety?

Those responsible for Earth & Altar - a new blog emanating from a group within TEC - are to be congratulated for an excellent contribution to wider Anglican discussion and debate. The commitment to "an expansively conceived credal orthodoxy as fully compatible with LGBTQ inclusion, gender equality, and racial justice" is an important part of a wider retrieval of creedal orthodoxy within what we might call the post-liberal generation. It is in this spirit that I want to respond to a recent post on the site by Andrew McGowan , Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School. Against the background of another round of "ill-defined" liturgical revision in TEC, he understandably urges that a fuller reception of the 1979 BCP should occur before further reforms. In doing so, however, he takes aim at what he describes as "clinging to the ritual structures of 1928" while using the text of 1979. We ...

laudable Practice

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