So, a Dominican and Jesuit walk into this Anglican Use Conference...

....no, no don’t worry. No bad jokes tonight. This isn’t a repeat of the last "inflammatory" post. However I did visit a Jesuit University and attended Evensong – but the not at all in the context of what a posted two weeks ago.

Yesterday I attended the Anglican Use Conference in Scranton, PA. It was really interesting. For those of you not quite familiar with the Anglican Use Liturgy, I strongly recommend taking a quick look at what Wikipedia has to say and look at the links too - at the very least, know that they are in full communion with Rome.

I won't comment in detail on my impressions, thoughts, what I learned, and so on in this post; but rather give a quick run down of the events I attended:

I arrived in the middle of Fr. William Stetson's lecture. The main point I picked up on was that among the problems faced by the priests of the Anglican Use, is that those married priests who are reordained under Rome find that their burdens as Catholic priests are far more taxing than as Anglicans and so much strain is put on their families. good insight which I think makes a very strong case as to why priests should not be married, and that should the Anglican Use become a full-fledged rite, that marriage should not be permitted except in the cases of those who were ordained in the Episcopal church and have swam the Tiber.

Following that, Fr. Carleton Jones, OP and pastor of St Vincent Ferrer's in NYC shared his conversion story. Very interesting.

Then Matt of the Holy Whapping presented one of his architecture projects from last semester - a hypothetical Anglican Use church. It was, of course, beautiful and very well thought out. Everyone loved it and hailed him as a genius - which, of course, he is. ;-)

Evensong - again in reference to my "inflammatory" post - was prayed. No complaints about the terminology here because it is a liturgy coming from a protestant tradition! Since the Anglican Use derives most of its liturgy from Thomas Cranmer's work naturally it therefore was indeed Evensong and was rightly called so (I still don't understand why Loyola would have it...I do not know of any Anglican Use community there - and outside of that there is no reason that they should have a service derived from Protestant tradition).

Cardinal Avery Dulles (SJ) delivered the keynote address which was held over at the University of Scranton (a Jesuit University). Like many of the talks of the day he spoke of his conversion story. Again very interesting. Matt, "Fr. Peregrinator," our other friend and I were very honored to meet him afterwards. He complimented Matt, expressed his dissatisfaction with Fr. Jenkins decision on "academic freedom" and then kindly gave us his blessing.


I intend to write more detailed musings later on. I think the conference raised a lot of important issues - not only specifically in dealing with Anglicans who've decided to take the plunge and swim the Tiber (like Fr. Peregrinator! yay!) but also in relation to others who wish to hold fast to other liturgical traditions - specifically the Tridentine Mass. It also brings up other issues that, like how is it that the Anglican Use can have a better translation (in some regards) of the Latin than the standard Novus Ordo Liturgy? Interesting. Or how does (or can) the allowance of those reordained to maintain their famlies impact the Catholic Church as a whole? Many questions - but I will ponder them publicly at a later time.

Peace and goodnight to you all.


P.S. it was fun to see the Dominican and the Jesuit talking together. Fr. Carleton gave Cardinal Dulles a ride back to the hotel. :-)