The Questioning Christian

Morning / Evening Prayer - Centralize in One Parish?

My fellow blogger “bls” has a splendid suggestion (scroll down in the linked comments to Mon. 4/25 06:22 pm):  She correctly notes that people don’t come to Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, even though those are beautiful liturgies that don’t need priests.  She asks:

So why not convince one parish to do the services every day for all the others in the locality? Different people from different parishes could be responsible for leading them, so it wouldn't all fall on that particular rector or congregation.

What a brilliant idea!  It would have the added benefit of helping people from different parishes to get to know one another.  That would help promote my diocese’s slogan that we are One Church.

A possible variation might be to rotate the service among different parishes on a monthly basis -- in April it would be at Parish A; in May, at Parish B; etc.  But that might lead to confusion; bls's idea of rotating responsibility instead is probably better.

I have no idea who bls is, but the more I read of her stuff, and of her comments on this blog, the more I like and admire her.

Gay Civil Unions and the Baby Moses Law

I sent the following email to my state senator, Kyle Janek M.D., who is a friend from church from before he got elected.  I've edited it a bit.

Hi Kyle -- [my wife] and I read the other day that the [Texas] House has approved a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and civil unions. If the proposal comes up for a vote in the Senate, we hope you'll vote against it. 

Conservatives who regard homosexual activity as morally wrong -- [my wife] and I are not among them -- ought to view same-sex civil unions as the equivalent of the state's Baby Moses law.  It's a horrible thing for a mother to leave her newborn baby in a dumpster.  It's terribly wrong.  But in the real world, it happens, and the babies often die. It's always been that way, and it probably always will be. The State of Texas, wisely facing the facts, has provided a way to mitigate the harm: The Baby Moses law allows mothers to drop their babies off at fire stations, no questions asked. It's not a perfect solution, but it helps avoid the greater evil.

At the very least, same-sex civil unions do something similar:

• Civil unions can help discourage homosexual promiscuity, which can contribute to the spread HIV/AIDS -- and not just in the homosexual population.
• Civil unions could also reduce the likelihood that a homosexual might marry a straight person of the same gender, then later cause heartbreak all around by leaving the marriage for someone of the same sex.

Surely conservatives would prefer to see homosexuals in stable, committed relationships from the get-go, rather than inflict such harms on others.  Even though that wouldn't be a perfect solution (in their view), it would still mitigate what they might regard as the greater evil. 

See you Sunday,

Bishop Duncan Needs Better Lawyers

In a previous post, I noted Bishop Robert Duncan’s claim that, under the Episcopal Church’s constitution, his rump traditionalist group is the Episcopal Church.  He argues that (i) the preamble of the Episcopal Church’s constitution supposedly requires the Church to remain a part of the Anglican Communion; (ii) the liberal elements of the Church have allegedly left the Communion, in effect abandoning the Church’s house and leaving it vacant; and therefore, he seems to say, (iii) he and his traditionalist friends are entitled to move in and claim ownership of the premises. 

The good bishop also predicts that the secular courts would back his claim.  His legal argument is . . . unpersuasive, for several reasons. 

Let’s look at the preamble of the Church’s constitution, on which he relies so heavily:

The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, … is a constituent member of the Anglican Communion, a Fellowship … of those duly constituted Dioceses, Provinces, and regional Churches in communion with the See of Canterbury, upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer.

I’d be very surprised if the secular courts were to read this as establishing a test for who is, or is not, the Episcopal Church. 

(UPDATE 5/15/05:  See this comment on the TitusOneNine blog for my response, with some additional cites, to an argument that the purpose of the preamble amendment was to give "authority" to the preamble.)

The Revolutionaries (Finally?) Hoist Their Flag

Pittsburgh Bishop Robert Duncan has come clean:  The archbishop-in-waiting all but admits that his long-term agenda is to stage a traditionalist takeover of the Episcopal Church.   In an interview with The Living Church, +Duncan says:

TLC: So, as a body within the Episcopal Church, what’s your “lifespan"?

Bishop Duncan: Well, of course we claim to be, constitutionally, the Episcopal Church. And there’s every evidence, both from what the Windsor Report says and what the primates said in accepting it, in their communiqué in Northern Ireland, that we are the Anglicans.

If the Episcopal Church’s constitution says that we’ll be constituent members of the Anglican Communion, and the Anglican Communion now says, Episcopal Church, you’re in time out. In fact, you’re not only in time out, but it appears you’re making a decision to walk apart.

If in General Convention 2006 the Episcopal Church determines to walk apart, then the question we ask is, who is the Episcopal Church? And our legal basis will be to say, we are, of course, because they have broken the constitution.

*  *  *   You know, there’ll be infinite court battles, but it’ll be very interesting, since the Communion will have said the Episcopal Church walked apart, and the Episcopal Church’s Constitution says that you’ve got to be constituent members [sic], and we’re the only ones they recognize as constituent members, so who’s the Episcopal Church, legally?

It’ll be very interesting time. I mean, we don’t want to go to court, but it’s quite clear the Episcopal Church is always ready to go to court, and this time I think they might not be so willing to go to court, because we think there’s every reason they’ll lose.

(Emphasis and extra paragraphing added.)

Well, at least he’s finally being open about it.  In another post I’ll dissect the bad legal advice he seems to be getting from somewhere.  (Hat tip to TitusOneNine.)

Repentance Matters More Than Sinlessness

From a book review in Christian Century by Jason Byassee, of Eamon Duffy’s Faith of Our Fathers: Reflections on Catholic Tradition:

… Part of the problem [with the scandals in the Catholic Church], he explains, is that the church has nourished an expectation that its priests be sinless, above the fray, innocent.  Medieval Christians saw it differently. 

Prior to the Counter-Reformation, when future priests were removed from their homes and raised in seminaries to be “set apart” and perfect, the church was “profoundly Augustinian,” expecting its priests to sin like anyone else ….

With the church’s marginalization in modernity …. [w]hat we have now, he says, is a Donatist church stocked with reputedly perfect people, rather than an Augustinian one in which leaders are expected not only to sin, but also to repent openly and grow toward holiness.

(Emphasis added.)

That brought to mind a line from Herman Wouk’s World War II novel The Caine Mutiny, in which a reserve officer stationed aboard the USS Caine cynically describes the Navy’s practices as “a system designed by geniuses for execution by idiots.”  The remark is an unwarranted calumny, but it has a kernel of truth to it:  Good systems are designed to anticipate the human weaknesses of their operators, and to allow them to get the job done anyway.   Duffy seems to agree.

Science, Wishful Thinking, and Idolatry

“The opposite of science is not religion; the opposite of science is wishful thinking.”  John Derbyshire, Metaphysics, Science, Homosexuality, in National Review Online (hat tip to Topmost Apple).

"I have great sympathy with David Pailin when he says that 'Attempts to defend theism by ignoring the question of truth … are fundamentally atheistic. They worship human wishes rather than ultimate reality.'"  (Rev. Dr. John C. Polkinghorne, KBE, FRS, The Faith of a Physicist, Fortress Press paperback ed., ch. 2, p. 30.)

The "Turn Me On, Dead Man" Phenomenon

Michael Shermer, author of the monthly “Skeptic” column in Scientific American, sometimes comes across as being more interested in debunking the false, than in persuading us of what he perceives to be true.  That approach doesn’t always get people to change their minds, as politicians and litigators often learn the hard way. 

Still, it’s worth paying attention to what Shermer has to say in his May 2005 column, about how rumors and urban legends can arise from human error in pattern recognition:

• Shermer recounts the 1969 rumor that Paul McCartney was dead, fueled by fans’ intensely-focused exegesis of Beatles lyrics (A Day in the Life) and album covers (Abbey Road). 
  
• He tells of using a cheap turntable to corroborate the rumor by playing the song Revolution 9 backwards:  Turn me on, dead man … turn me on, dead man.
  
• He lists some recent examples such as the face of the Virgin Mary on a grilled-cheese sandwich and the face of Jesus on an oyster shell (remarking that the shell “resembles Charles Manson, I think”).

Shermer observes that natural selection has caused our brains to acquire the very useful skills of pattern recognition and association learning.  “We are skilled enough to have survived and passed on the genes for the capacity of association learning.  Unfortunately, the system has flaws.”  He labels one of these flaws as “TMODMP, the Turn Me On, Dead Man Phenomenon—if you scan enough noise, you will eventually find a signal, whether it is there or not.”

"A time to mourn and a time to butt out"

From Living will template, Christian Century, Apr. 19, 2005, at 7:  “Like three-fourths of Americans, I believe in heaven.  This doesn’t mean I want religious extremists to march outside, compare me to Jesus and clamor to enter my room with cups of water.  Remind them that there is a time to be born and a time to die; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to speak up and a time to butt out.”

Quarks and Creation: Polkinghorne Radio Interview

I ran across this 2004 American Public Radio radio interview with the Rev. Dr. John C. Polkinghorne, KBE, FRS, a former particle physicist turned Anglican priest and recipient of the 2002 Templeton Prize, and one of my favorite theologians.  (Requires RealPlayer.)

"There is no fleeing the fact of our moral autonomy"

From the editorial, "What Schiavo Taught," in The New Republic, Apr. 11, 2005, p. 7 (electronic version requires subscription):

Both the left's love of the courts and the right's hatred of the courts have the consequence of relieving the individual of his or her duties as a moral agent.  Enough of this.  There is no fleeing the fact of our moral autonomy.

• When liberals chose to oppose the feeding tube, they were acting as autonomous moral agents, on the basis of reasons. 
• When conservatives chose to support the feeding tube, they were acting as autonomous moral agents, on the basis of reasons.

Or so they should have been acting when they were instead waiting upon various institutions and authorities to release them from the hardship of choice and replace responsibility with obedience. 

The private inquiry into what is true and good is not relativism, it is the reality of ethical existence.  This, too, is the legacy of Terri Schiavo:  However we are guided in the justification of our beliefs, finally we have only our own consciences upon which to rely in the dark.

(Emphasis, paragraphing, and bullets added.)