Posted on 08/07/2005 3:43:14 PM PDT by sionnsar
Mrs. Miniver was on public television here last night so of course I stayed home and watched it. It's one of my favorite movies and if you've never seen it, I urge you to buy it, rent it or check it out of your local public library. Aside from the fact that Greer Garson's husband was played by an American, Walter Pidgeon(were there no actual Englishmen floating around Hollywood at the time?), it is a great movie, very moving and even scary in spots. And a movie like it could not and would not be made today. It is far too fiercely patriotic and far too Christian.
About which, Mrs. Miniver was also, in some respects, the high point of the modern Anglican tradition. In it, we see Anglican worship at its best. Dignified, restrained, peaceful. One gets the impression that church is extremely important to these people. Even the service at the end of the movie in the bombed-out church, with the town mouning its deaths in a recent air raid, the worship still exudes a quiet confidence and a serene faith in God as evidenced by the movie's final hymn, Onward Christian Soldiers, with its familiar refrain:
Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
For western Anglicanism, it has been downhill ever since that movie was released.
The Archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, one of the most powerful leaders in the Anglican Communion worldwide, has called upon the Church of England to be suspended from the Communion for backing civil partnerships, says Alex Delmar-Morgan for the Sunday Times.
The comments come after a pastoral statement was released last week from English bishops saying that they would allow gay clergy to register their civil partnership as long as they agreed to abstain from sex.
In December 2005 the Civil Partnerships Act will come into force in the UK and will provide legal recognition of homosexual partners.
In response to the latest announcements by the Church of England, Peter Akinola, who leads the largest Anglican province in the world rebuked the new policies promoted in England. The condemnation continued as he called for the head of the Church of England, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and his Church to face disciplinary action.
The Nigerian archbishop seemed to be hugely disappointed with the example that Archbishop Rowan Williams is setting for the 70-million member worldwide denomination, which Williams leads. Akinola also seemed to demand that the Anglican Communion continue away from the path laid down by Lambeth Palace.
Archbishop Akinola continued, “Lambeth Palace upholds our common historic faith. It will now lose that place of honour in the world. Must I come to Lambeth Palace in order to go to heaven. The answer is no!”
If Akinola’s demands are met then the Church of England would be suspended, and therefore removed from the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC), which is the governing body of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The Church of England would therefore lose its say in the Church’s worldwide policies.
Will that happen? Probably not. But add this to Andrew Smith's inhibiting of Mark St. John's, Bristol, rector Mark Hansen on very questionable grounds, his savage takeover of church property and his imposing a very liberal rector on that very conservative parish, the Anglican Communion Network's
declared intent to bring presentment charges against Smith, court cases against parishes to get control of buildings and real estate in Missouri, Los Angeles and other places, the sociopathic disregard for worldwide Anglican opinion by ECUSA in giving Gene Robinson a pointy hat and by the Diocese of New Westminster in permitting same-sex marriage, the arrogant response of both to the crisis they caused and all the other Anglican controversies that have erupted since 2003 and you have a religious tradition in complete disarray if not freefall.
Can anything be done to halt the decline? Certainly. The US and Canadian churches can be suspended from international Anglican affairs until such time as they decide to listen to the rest of the Anglican world. Is that likely to happen? No. And the increasing aggressiveness of the Anglican Communion Network(I know they're not as aggressive as some of us would like but these are Anglicans, the wheels grind slowly and all that) suggests that Anglican conservatives realize it. A year ago, the Network probably wouldn't have instantly licensed inhibited priests.
The next step, of course, is for an orthodox American or Canadian parish to request that an active orthodox American or Canadian bishop come in and perform confirmations and for that active bishop to laugh the inevitable presentment charges to scorn and comply with that parish's request. When that happens, it is also necessary for the American and/or Canadian Networks to back that bishop 100%. When that happens, the de facto Anglican split probably becomes de jure and conservative western Anglicans can begin repairing the damage caused by ECUSA and the Anglican Church of Canada and returning Anglicanism to a state where Mrs. Miniver doesn't seem so dated.
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