Strong words.Dear editor, You report the primate, Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, as saying that "a two-tier church is anathema anathema (ənă`thĭmə) [Gr.,=something set up; dedicated to a divinity as a votive offering], term that came to denote something devoted to a divinity for destruction. In the Bible, the term is herem. Anathema means "accursed" in the New Testament, where it clearly suggests separation from God as the penalty." and describing any Anglican covenant "intended ... to exclude people who don't think in a certain way" as "devilish." If the primate means "anathema" and "devilish" in their strict senses, these are strong words indeed. As Saint Paul uses it, "anathema" means either "cast out of the Christian community for heinous sin" (I Cor. 16.22, Gal. 1.8-9) or "accursed" (I Cor. 12.3). According to Gratian Gratian, Roman emperor of the WestGratian (grā`shən), 359–83, Roman emperor of the West (375–83). At the death of his father, Valentinian I, he accepted the army's election of his brother, Valentinian II, as his colleague., it implies not only exclusion from the sacraments and public worship (excommunication excommunication, formal expulsion from a religious body, the most grave of all ecclesiastical censures. Where religious and social communities are nearly identical it is attended by social ostracism, as in the case of Baruch Spinoza, excommunicated by the Jews. In Christianity the Roman Catholic Church especially retains excommunication; the church maintains that the spiritual separation of the offender from the body of the faithful takes place by the nature of), but also complete separation from the body of the faithful (Decretum, Book II, canon 106). So if we take him at his word, Archbishop Hutchison seems to be denouncing anyone who suggests a two-tier Anglican Communion as a way out of our present impasse (such as the Archbishop of Canterbury) or wants the church to uphold the New Testament standard of sexual morality (such as the primates of many other Anglican provinces and, at home, the membership of Essentials).Is Archbishop Hutchison planning to anathematize all such wayward Anglicans publicly in Toronto's St. James Cathedral with bell, book and candle? That gesture would certainly earn him some notice from the media. Whether it would help mend matters is another question. If not, perhaps he would do us all the favour of explaining what he did mean by calling half his colleagues, and a large part of his flock, diabolical heretics. William Cooke Toronto |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion