[Magdalen] Please pray for Ascension, Chicago

[Jim Guthrie]

Some parishes in this kind of situation simply invite a woman to celebrate when 
the Rector goes on vacation.

There's nothing like a woman doing Benediction to clear out the bad blood <g>.

Cheers,
Jim

-----Original Message----- 
From: Scott Knitter
Sent: Monday, August 31, 2015 11:48 AM
To: Magdalen at herberthouse.org
Subject: Re: [Magdalen] Please pray for Ascension, Chicago

On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 10:31 AM, Cantor03--- via Magdalen
<magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
> This is really a well organized attack.  It used to be that  factions
> like this in a church would cluck about it during coffee hour.

My problem with institutionalizing a group like Save Ascension is that
it takes on a life of its own, requiring more grievances every week to
pile on: <gasp> No birettas! (Never mind that the use of birettas
isn't a central activity of the parish, and their use has come and
gone many times in the parish's history...meanwhile, some other
liturgical traditions have actually come back recently.) <gasp> New
version of the Divine Praises at Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament!
(Never mind that the Divine Praises are not essential to the
Benediction rite, and the new version (from the revised St.
Augustine's Prayer Book) is solid both in content and in being praise
to God). And so on.

I do have some concern about the reporting of parish finances, which
is a very contentious item right now: I want the monthly financial
reports to continue to be accurately and fully reported. But I trust
the annual third-party audit, not to mention the bishop's annual
review of parish records, to raise and correct any issues. And I know
the vestry will continue pushing on this if it's actually not
happening the way it should.

Mainly, though, I grieve about this sharp division between groups of
parishioners, as well as loss of friends I'm not seeing anymore at
church. I pray for reconciliation, that we may be open to a "third
way" that can bring us back together, and that we'll come through this
conflict as we've come through others in the past, including a big
exodus in the 1970s due to the rector at the time being anti-WO and
aligned with an anti-WO group pressuring him to take the parish out of
the Episcopal Church. So people have left for a variety of reasons
over the years.


-- 
Scott R. Knitter
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA