Sunday 24 March 2013

Nice church your Grace

In fact, it's a very nice church, and the doctrine's not bad either, those bits that were not excised or mangled by your forbears, and the position is excellent also......

....so please just remember that all of the above were once Catholic.....Canterbury Cathedral*, the doctrinal elements of the Anglican Faith and the post of Archbishop of Canterbury.


The inauguration of the new Archbishop of Canterbury


And, as far as the plywood altar and polyester vestments are concerned, they're yours - you can keep 'em.




But...please treat the accommodation with respect....

                                  
....we might want it back one day!


* Thanks to Fr Giles for correcting me

16 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Lfooter, Mathew
      You Beat me to it!:
      Ive wanted it back yesterday since I was four years old, and no might neither, with its squatters or (mea culpa)without.

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  2. I don't want it back unless it comes with an endowment towards upkeep and restoration.

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  3. Remember Benedict XVI, Bishop Emeritus' prophecy from the late 1960s? From therecord.com:

    On Christmas Day in 1969, a little known German theologian outlined his own assessment on the future of the Catholic Church during a radio broadcast.

    Mankind was at a turning point in history, he said, and the Church was fighting against a force which intended to annihilate it definitively. The theologian’s name was Joseph Ratzinger.

    He predicted that the Body of Christ on earth would be undermined by the temptation to reduce priests to social workers and the Church’s work to a mere political presence.

    During his speech, which came shortly after the socially and morally revolutionary tumult of 1968, while the ramifications of Vatican II were emerging and secular influences were fervently desiring to “liberate” themselves from the “shackles” of religious and social institutions, Ratzinger said, “From today’s crisis will emerge a Church that will have lost a great deal”.

    Structures that had been built in times of prosperity would be lost and numbers would decrease, he stated; he Church would “pretty much have to start all over again”.

    Ratzinger, however, then suggested “when all the suffering is past, a great power will emerge from a more spiritual and simple Church”.

    He believed there would be small groups and movements arising and a minority who would make faith central to experience.

    “It will be poor and will become the Church of the destitute”, he said.

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  4. EF Pastor Emeritus raises a very interesting point.
    We forget that when the crown stole church property in the sixteenth century the church buildings, monasteries etc were merely the "tip of a very large iceberg" in that all were supported by considerable endowments. It was the selling off of these to a greedy nobility that set the English Reformation - and class system- in stone. I read somewhere, for instance,that the wealth of the dukes of Westminster was derived from the estates of Westminster Abbey.
    As good British Catholics we would never consider the French solution, would we?

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  5. First, Supetradmum thanks for your comment. ( I typed and it read: Supertirademum ) . Secondly, Patricius, I was going to say that I hope Pope Francis will call for Counter-Reformation II . Everybody ready ?

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  6. Patricius - do you mean the guillottine or revolution? I favour the former personally.
    Supertradmum, all in favour of a fresh start - extra omnes!

    Thank you Brian and FR EFPE, Mike, Matthew and Chris.

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    Replies
    1. Now I come to think of it, murdering the entire aristocracy wasn't an originally French idea. Our Gunpowder plotters thought of it first.

      Oh dear! How embarrassing!

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  7. Yes, give us Catholics back what was stolen from us. And despite the vestments, Justin Welby is a layman, Anglican orders are invalid. Hopefully they will all come back home to the One, Holy, Apostolic and Catholic Church.

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  8. I noticed that ++ Nichols read one of the lessons at the inauguration ceremony. Did he ask for our property back while he was there or has he become one of them ?

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  9. I have it on impeccable authority that JPII said Canterbury Cathedral belongs to AB of Southwark

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  10. Ok, supertradmum etc : righting history's wrongs is beyond us, (and the following is NOT me just where I know I should be ) but , saying yes to Jesus Christ ,in his church, through the sacraments, the Holy Spirit can turn each of us into a temple, do we not know we have been ransomed at a high price? We have not been given light to keep it at home contemplating our navels , howsoever small a minority, howsoever destitute and outcast, the whole of society can be salted if the salt does not lose, it is losable, its savour.
    And, like St Francis of Asisi,when on our ways doing the will of the Father, we see, somthing sad in creation , like the beauty wrought by our catholic forefathers for the greater glory of God wherein baptized Christians still pray but the mass is no longer said , well, we mun let that moment come and go and say (approx) it is all allowed for good, thy will be done, let go and continue.

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  11. It's the cathdral of Canterbury NOT
    Westminister Abbey...Fr Giles

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  12. Fr Giles - you are quite right but the same principle applies.

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