Pensieves
Episcopal News Service. November 8, 1984 [84223]
The Ven. Erwin M. Soukup, Editor of Advance, Diocese of Chicago
Father Bill Allen of the Church of Our Savior, Elmhurst, Ill., calls our attention to a phrase describing a movie star which he finds provocative: "It's all the imperfections that work so well...." He suggests it could be an apt description of a parish. Right on!
The Baptists once again have decided to refuse ordination for women on the biblical grounds that "that it was a woman who brought sin into the world." Takes a sinner to recognize sin, doesn't it?
Headline in in The Canadian Churchman: "Mary Rose remains buried in Sarum Rite." It meant that a service for the 700 seamen who died in a tudor warship some 439 years ago was conducted from the 17th-century Prayer Book. Sounds more like "Mary Rose" was put six feet under by what Webster calls excessive devotion.
The Diocese of Georgia News Letter began a news release by writing "Sunshine glowed on the balding head of the tall, slender bishop-elect...." A number of Chicago's parish priests who received the notice acknowledged they never got around to finishing their reading of it.
Then there is a sign on a store front that reads: "Christ Shoe Service." And we thought He was a carpenter.
The New Yorker reprinted a headline in the Oneonta (N.Y.) Daily Star which read: "Bishops Tackle Women Priests." The magazine placed it in their "we don't want to hear about it" department. And we don't want to, either.
Church sign boards can tell a lot. At least the one in Zion, Ill. does. It reads: "The Christian Catholic Church: Protestant Evangelical." An identity crisis?
Father John Throop reminds us of the old saw about the nature of authority: Catholics look to the Pope, Protestants to the Bible and Episcopalians to their previous rector!
Remember Peter de Vries who, when asked what he thought of Western civilization, said he thought it would be a good idea? Might ask the same about Christianity.
On a British television program named Credo (Latin for "I believe"), England's newest Anglican bishop, the Rt. Rev. David Jenkins said "NO" to the following questions: Did Jesus Christ walk on water? Was he born of a virgin? Do you have to believe he was both God and man to be a Christian? Perhaps the television show should be re-named Non-credo. Or the bishop.
What do you think of a cemetery that stages running races, Easter egg hunts and Christmas parties? Among the other ventures, it also sells albums, T-shirts reading "Heaven Can Wait," has offered food coupons, two-for-one discounts and free burials and grave markers. That's what you can get at the Cedar Park Cemetery in Chicago. People are dying to get in.
Quickly turning to weddings, we note that a bride-to-be wrote to Miss Manners asking an opinion. The interior of the church in which she planned to get married had a color-clash with the hues she and her bridesmaids intended to wear on her wedding day. Miss Manners was sympathetic, but she did remind her correspondent that "a church is supposed to be a house of God, not a stage setting." Sounds okay to us.
Mary Lee Simpson of The Southwestern Episcopalian (Southwestern Virginia) passes along the wisdom uttered by 15-year-old Tommy Whitfield, winner of the annual Think About contest at Boy's Home, Covington, Ky.: "Some people control their tempers and some tempers control their people."
Finally, Father Leon Adams, retired priest of the Diocese of Chicago, sent us an item found in the Family News Letter of St. James' Anglican Church in Vancouver, British Columbia: "There once was a merry old priest/Who lived almost wholly on yeast. For, he said, 'It is plain/We must all rise again,/And I must get started at least.'"