I’ve been holding a bunch of links in tabs for days (some for weeks), waiting to say something substantive about them. It’s come clear that I won’t get around to devoting extensive reflections to them, but in order to close out the windows I need to throw the links somewhere, so I’ll just dump them here in a big heap.
+ I’m not sure what all these links lead to, but it includes a variety of ancient Judaic and Christian scriptural, deuterocanonical, rabbinic, apostolic, and patristic texts. Some of these might not be conveniently available elsewhere — haven’t had time to compare.
+ Hugh’s right; meaning scales. We could have a long discussion about what that implies, and how to deal effectively with it, but the premise is spot on.
+ Al Kimel and I disagree forcefully about very many things, and I doubt that I’d refer to “open communion” as “blasphemy,” but I read this pontification with some sympathy, not least because Al found himself beset by intransigent interlocutors from further to the right than he. The effort to articulate a sound, careful position between left and right can be very frustrating, can’t it?
+ I’m bemused by the whole “Christmas Under Siege” charade, especially because it seems to be orchestrated by heirs of the Reformed tradition — which itself sought to eliminate Christmas as a legacy of idolatrous paganism and Papist superstition.
+ Miss Manners talks good sense about watching your language when speaking about, even thinking about, people who have cancer. Meaning scales, and meaning matters.
+ A Creative-Commons downloadable book on Enquiry-Based Learning and Problem-Based Learning, from the All Ireland Society for Higher Education. Maybe I’ll have time to read it someday.
+ An ideal case for blogging in an educational context.
That Pontificator post and comment thread EPITOMISES the reason why I dread the strictures of the institutional church.
Where is the individual communicant and seeker in that discussion? Trapped somewhere betweent the Thomists and the Pharisees! Does no one remember what it is like to approach the rail for the first time, or to yearn to?
The legalism and the literalism make my head reel. The desire to define and confine, and the sense of attendant panic, I find shocking. Cannot God defend the purity of his rites sufficiently?
Despite being invited to do so, I chose not to receive communion until after I was baptised, out of respect for tradition and deep appreciation for the meaning of entering into the community of believers through the holy sacrament. But the fact that the invitation was extended to me, nonetheless, made me more eager to, in fact, be part of that community.
I was invited; like a wedding guest, I sought to clothe myself in the appropriate garment before I attended.
The Pontificator’s comment thread on communion is indeed an education for every flavor of Christian. Thanks for the link, AKMA.
re: “Christmas Under Siege”
AKMA–aren’t you yourself an “heir to the Reformed tradition”?
Besides, as far as I can tell after doing a little surfing around, the Reformed blogs I read are deeply disgusted by that whole meme, including me. It’s the fundamentalists that are beating that drum–James Dobson, Jerry Falwell. Last I checked, those guys were still raving Anabaptists. I reckoned you knew the difference.
Wyclif, point partially taken. When I cited “heirs,” I very specifically didn’t say that “everyone who’s outside the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communion” — and if I’m an heir of the Reformed tradition, I have received only a small legacy relative to Proud Five-Point Calvinists. I identify much more strongly with the Laudian side of the Anglican tradition (though not to the extent of forcing my theology on reluctant Calvinists).
But as to my neglect of the distinction between responsible adherents to the Reformed tradition and the advocates of “Christmas Under Siege,” that’s a solid point. I don’t know that I’d associate Dobson and Robertson with Anabaptists in any but a (potentially misleading) taxonomic sense; my Mennonite friends probably don’t want to be lumped with Left Behind millionairians any more than Dobson and Robertson want to be associated with John Howard Yoder. I did tangle my theological lines of descent. I was looking sideways from my Catholic-leaning position, and it skewed my perspective. Sorry about that!
Ditto – the very notion that the life of the Church depends on “saving Christmas” from barbarians at the gate is silly at best. So I finally declared war on Christmas myself…