laudable Practice

Anglicans should have a love for Rogationtide. But, no, Rogationtide is not a peculiarly Anglican observance. Rogation Days are, after all, rooted in the practice of the Latin Church . And it is joy to read, for example, of a Church of Scotland parish observing Rogation. The more Christian traditions that (re)discover Rogationtide, the better. This post, therefore, is not attempting to declare Rogationtide as property of the Anglicans. It is, however, seeking to suggest that Rogationtide should have a particular resonance for Anglicans.  This is partly because Rogationtide reflects a significant strain in Prayer Book piety. The exhortation at the opening of Morning and Evening Prayer calls us to "to ask those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul". In the Litany we petition, week by week, "That it may please thee to give and preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth, so as in due time we may enjoy them". In the General ...

Our being bishops jure divino , by divine right, takes nothing from the king's right or power over us. For though our office be from God and Christ immediately, yet we may not exercise that power, either of order or jurisdiction, but as God hath appointed us, that is, not in his Majesty's or any Christian king's kingdoms, but by and under the power of the king given us so to do.  And were this a good argument against us, as bishops, it must needs be good against priests and ministers too, for themselves grant that their calling is jure divino , by divine right; and yet I hope they will not say that to be priests and ministers is against the king, or any his royal prerogative s - Archbishop Laud in Star Chamber , 1637. I never claimed the King's Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, as incident to my Episcopal or Archiepiscopal Office in this Kingdom: Nor did I ever deny, that the exercise of my Jurisdiction was derived from the Crown of England. But that which I have said, and...

Paul Anthony Dominiak's  Richard Hooker: The Architecture of Participation  (2020) is, quite simply, superb.  One significant feature of the work is the way in which it reveals Hooker's defence in Book V of the Prayer Book liturgy and ceremonies as flowing from and dependent upon the rich participatory vision he sets out in Books I-IV: Book Five aims to show that the Elizabethan Prayer Book engenders 'true religion' and cultivates the Philonic virtue of 'godliness', with benefits for the here and now in political terms of order, but also preparing believers for their final union with God  (p.62); Hooker argues that the established liturgy affords 'mutuall conference and as it were commerce to be had betwene God and us', creatively crafting appropriate 'holie desires' which lead believers both to know and also to love God in sacramental union with Christ  (p.127). What has particularly struck me is that while Baptism and Eucharist are, as Dominiak...