laudable Practice

November is the month of the departed. The month begins with All Saints' Day, particularly commemorating those "blessed Saints" whom we have known, and then moves into the solemn national and communal recollections of Remembrancetide. The last of the falling leaves, the darkness of the last days of Autumn, and the approach of the year's end evoke a sense of our mortality. It is a month made for walks in old churchyards and mulling over the Burial service. Each week during this month on laudable Practice , there will be a post meditating on the month of the departed through words from Jeremy Taylor, We being with Taylor's 1650 sermon at the funeral of Frances Vaughan, Countess of Carbery, in which he describes how we share with the faithful departed in the Communion of Saints: But then we should do well also to remember, that in this world we are something besides flesh and bloud; that we may not without violent necessities run into new relations, but preserve the...

... what to me is the clearest and most moving of all Anglican invocations. So said Roger Scruton, in his Our Church , of the Prayer for the Church Militant. Scruton's words echo those of John Shepherd in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801): Prayers to the same effect were offered in the primitive Church at the celebration of the Eucharist, and occur in ancient, and modern Liturgies; but a form of superior, or even equal excellence to this, is nowhere to be found.  Contrary to most contemporary Anglican liturgies, both Shepherd and Scruton rightly recognise the power and beauty of the Prayer for the Church Militant. Contemporary liturgies usually contain mere outlines of intercession, entirely subject to the vagaries of those leading the intercessions. By contrast, the Prayer for the Church Militant offers a memorable, theologically rich, intercession, rooted in a robustly apostolic vision of ecclesial vision (indicated in the op...

When Thomas Wilson, Prebendary of Westminster, turned to the Homily against Peril of Idolatry in his Introduction to The Ornaments of Churches Considered, With a Particular View to the Late Decoration of the Parish Church of St. Margaret Westminster (1761), he did not avoid the fact that the Homilies contained a strident critique of images. He addressed this in a manner which reflected wider and established Anglican thought regarding both the Homilies and other aspects of the Reformation era. Wilson began by recognising the context in which the Homilies were written, a context in which reformation of the Church was necessary and robust challenge had to be made of erroneous teaching and practices: the Compilers of the Homilies proceeded like Philosophers, who knew that when the Minds of Men were warped, it was necessary even to bend them into a contrary Direction. This, of course, echoed how Article 35 described the Homilies as "necessary for these times", wisely discerning ...

No. The answer is definitively 'no'. The answer is definitely 'no' because purgatory is, for historic Anglicanism, an erroneous teaching. The question arises from a recent article on the Roman Catholic news and information website Aleteia suggesting that "Anglicanism has no binding teaching on the matter" because the Articles of Religion have no standing and that Anglicans praying for the departed Queen were affirming the doctrine of purgatory. This, to use an appropriate phrase, is a "a fond thing, vainly invented". While the Articles of Religion do not bind the Anglican conscience, for most Anglican provinces they remain a statement of historic doctrinal norms.  Even in The Episcopal Church, after all, the Articles are placed alongside the Definition of Chalcedon, with the note that the Articles were "established by the Bishops, the Clergy, and the Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, in Convention, on the...

Words from Jeremy Taylor, suitable to November, on our duties to the dead, including "hearty and constant prayer" for them in light of the advent of "the fearful and yet much to be desired day", after the example of St. Paul's intercession for Onesiphorus.  But then we should do well also to remember, that in this world we are something besides flesh and blood; that we may not, without violent necessities, run into new relations, but preserve the affections we bore to our dead when they were alive: we must not so live as if they were perished, but so as pressing forward to the most intimate participation of the communion of saints. And we also have some ways to express this relation , and to bear a part in this communion, by actions of intercourse with them, and yet proper to our state: such as are strictly performing the will of the dead, providing for, and tenderly and wisely educating their children, paying their debts, imitating their good example, preservin...

On 2nd November last year , I suggested that the exclusion of All Souls' Day from 1662 flowed from a coherent, meaningful expression of the one eschatological hope shared by all the faithful - living and departed - in the Communion of Saints.  This being so, 1662 saw "a day set apart for particular, direct prayers for the faithful departed ... distorting our perception of the 'one communion and fellowship'".   While I remain convinced that this provides a coherent rationale for the absence of All Souls' Day from 1662 (to put it more bluntly, this absence is certainly not a deficiency), this year  - prompted by some pastoral considerations - I want to revisit the argument in light of the collects proposed for what the Scottish Prayer 1929 called 'The Commemoration of All Souls', the Canadian BCP 1962 calls 'The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed', and the Prayer Book Proposed in 1928 termed 'All Souls': O Lord, the maker and redee...

... the mellow light that plays over the church of George Herbert. It is a phrase from Eamon Duffy's  The Voices of Morebath .  Duffy could  have said 'the church of Lancelot Andrewes' but did not: Duffy, we might suggest, refuses to forgive Andrewes for the first Gunpowder Plot sermon . Never mind that the Gunpowder Plotters were raging against and seeking to destroy that mellow light . On this eve of his commemoration, it is - contrary to Duffy - fitting to give thanks for the mellow light seen in the church of Lancelot Andrewes.  Mellow because it does not overpower us, in Herbert's words , by "outlandish looks" or being "undress'd" but, rather, cherishes and nurtures the modest, decent, and wise ways of the Reformed ecclesia Anglicana .    We might, of course, turn to Andrewes' sermons to exemplify this mellow light, or his Preces Privatae , or his defence of the Reformed ecclesia Anglicana in debate with Cardinal Perron. Alongside these...

It was typical Twitter Milbank : provocative, breezy, and not overly concerned with detail.  The idea that Prince Philip was resurrecting the old debates of the 1928 Book (more of which below) is, to say the least, fanciful.  As George Weigel once stated in First Things , "Elizabeth II is said to be 'low Church' in her Anglican sensibility": in other words, Prayer Book Mattins and decent Laudian ceremonial.  All the evidence would suggest that Prince Philip shared the Supreme Governor's preferences.   1662 What particularly stands out, however, is Milbank's implication that 1662 should be dismissed as somehow inferior - what he terms in a subsequent tweet "old time religion" - contrasted with the "ecumenically Catholic" 1928 revision .  To term this a 'high church' stance is absurd.  The High Church tradition from the 17th into the 19th century delighted in the Book of Common Prayer as an ecumenically Catholic liturgy precisely beca...