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Is Anglicanism Catholic or Protestant?

“Fools rush in where angels dare to tread.” – Alexander Pope, An Essay in Criticism Entering into the virtual (and, I hope, “real life”) debate over whether Anglicanism is Catholic or Protestant seems a little like an illustration of Pope’s epigram. But since I’ve already manifested the foolishness (or is it audacity?) to attempt a…

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The Sanctus: Bigger on the Inside

O how sweetly the voices resound there when all the Holy Ones sing the praises of God saying: sanctus Thus we also praise the Lord on earth whom the holy angels praise in the highest saying: sanctus You alone make clean from unclean cleanse us, as long as we are in the world because you…

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The Conundrum of Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost [Commentary on Browne: Article XVI (1)]

The pernicious doctrine opposed by Article XVI—that deadly sins committed after baptism cannot be forgiven—is rarely encountered in our dissolute age. If anything, we are more likely to fall into the opposite error of diminishing the seriousness of sin and the damage it inflicts. Yet tender consciences, suffocating beneath the burden of grievous sins, are…

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Book Review: “The Anglican Office Book, 2nd Edition”

The Anglican Office Book, 2nd Edition. Edited by Charles Lance Davis. Lake Almanor, CA: Whithorn Press, 2023. 2,247 pp. $125 (leatherette). The first edition of The Anglican Office Book was published in 2021, with the purpose of presenting “the entire Divine Office, through the prism of the classical Prayer Book tradition, in a format designed…

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If You Begin

If you begin a lullaby, You’ll know what words, what tune. The harder question, though, is why, Which—like a red balloon Floating along, as evening comes, On soft, pale purple air, Just out of reach of laws and sums, Unanswered—hovers there. The red balloon floats there alone, Dark seeping in from shade. No wonder we’re…

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The Daily Grind

The alarm blares as I slide off the bed and somehow make it into the shower – nearly blind without my glasses and halfway sleep-walking with my eyes closed as I turn the shower on. My routine begins. It mirrors the daily lives of so many Anglicans across North America and beyond. Before anything gets…

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On the Immaculate Conception [Commentary on Browne: Article XV (2)]

Browne’s Exposition originally appeared in two volumes, the first volume—which ended with his discussion of Article XV—being published in 1850, a few years before the Romish doctrine of the Immaculate Conception was declared a dogma by Pope Pius IX in 1854: We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed…

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Book Review: “Low Anthropology”

Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others (and Yourself). By David Zahl. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2022. 208 pp. $16.38 (cloth), $20.99 (paper). We all have an anthropology (i.e., the study of what it means to be human). But do we have an anthropology that keeps us exhausted, overworked, anxious, and…

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The Greater Church

Scanning through the documents pertaining to the Anglo-Prussian Bishopric of Jerusalem recently helped to focus my mind on what one might call the proto-ecumenical movement. The nineteenth century was an age of rampant denominationalism, but it also saw the first tentative moves toward ecumenicism. Unlike twentieth-century ecumenicism, which at times sounded like an exercise in…

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