Roland Walls again

I was intrigued by his description of the Scottish Episcopal Church .. ‘that almost its sole raison d’etre has been to be a non-Catholic form of sacramental Christianity …. through thick and thin they did preserve that sacramental tradition in the face of a highly non-sacramental church.’ That’s interesting as a statement of what we are for – a sacramental counter-balance to the Kirk. But of course there are other things that we seem to be for – a liberal expression of Christianity … a marker of the identity of a distinct cultural group. The danger is, of course, that if we are mainly defined in adversarial/over-against terms, we may never manage to be a church with a mission to the whole of society expressed through a living tradition which we value.

Meanwhile back at Bogstead, we are dealing with an issue to do with our septic tanks. Like Tutankhamun’s tomb, they consist of a number of interlinked chambers which need to be emptied and filled in a particular sequence. Should anything go amiss with that ordered sequence, terrible problems result. Of which more tomorrow ..

One?

My Facebook homepage records that ‘I think I have had enough for today’.  Our twice-yearly meeting with the Catholic Bishops was followed .. by a nice lunch .. and then by a lengthy meeting of the College of Bishops.  On the train home, I finished ‘Mole under the Fence’ – conversations with Roland Walls, a wonderful mystic of a man who served as Priest in Charge of the famous Rosslyn Chapel .. became a Catholic .. established a religious community.  I don’t think he would have found our meeting today particularly exciting.  He said, ‘I’m not one of those who despise formal ecumenism.  It’s all been part of a very necessary process in the simplification of faith’  Would that it were so!