This Is Your Polish Catholic Chant on Testosterone

Catholic chant for Catholic men.  Let's be done with all effeminacy.

Dig the "Alleluia, Amen" at the end.  Out of this world.

Ephraim Radner on the Death of the Anglican Communion

The Last Lambeth Conference.

To Orthodox Anglicans still in the "Communion", you got to move.  Come see us.

An Interview with N.T. Wright on Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

This is an absolutely fascinating interview, as is this one with Gavin Ashendon.

Please understand that for most of us traditional Anglicans it is the institution, or the office, of the English monarchy that is hallowed, and not the House of Windsor per se. Most modern monarchs have been infected by modern Western liberal democracy and all that goes along with that, and His Majesty Charles III is no exception.

The thing is, an increasing number of us have come to the realization that secularism is an enemy of the Church. Why would we therefore not wish to separate ourselves from that godless Leviathan and wish instead to be governed by our fellow Christians, whether in a Christian monarchy or republic?

I do not accept the argument advanced by some that God's warning to Israel about desiring a king in I Samuel 8 means that God is a republican. There is Deut. 17:14 ff. to consider. The human Christian king is an icon of Christ's eternal kingship, just as the human Christian priest is an icon of his eternal priesthood and the human Christian prophet is an icon of his eternal prophetic ministry. Christ, according to our christology, is prophet, priest and king, and those 3 offices are hallowed in a temporal way as earthly reflections of his offices.

Have Christian monarchs sometimes been despotic? Absolutely, just as some Christian priests and prophets have sometimes proved unworthy. But it is the office that counts and not the oftentimes defective behavior of those who hold the office. This is something secularists just can't get their heads around, but that's because they are secularists and therefore think accordingly.

God rest the soul of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and God save the King His Majesty Charles III. May he become a Christian king in the best sense of the word, but if he doesn't, may a better monarch take his place. May the English monarchy return to what it was, warts and all. It beats the rule of secularists.

Monarchy can easily be 'debunked,' but watch the faces, mark well the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut: whom no rumour of the polyphony, the dance, can reach - men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Where men are forbidden to honour a king, they honor millionaires, athletes, or film stars instead; even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison. - C.S. Lewis

Addendum

For those non-Anglicans attracted to traditional Anglicanism who may be looking in here and who have followed the recent dumpster fire about Fr. Hart, Mrs. Wagner and me, and who therefore find themselves ready to abandon their investigation, please take heart and reconsider.

Such brouhahas happened in the earliest church and in the centuries that followed.  Consider Jesus' angry words against the Scribes and Pharisees. Consider St. Paul's angry words against the heretical Judaizers.  Consider the account of St. Nicholas of Myra slapping the heretic Arius.  That account is likely legend, but it reveals the mind of the Church about it.  Consider the irascible St. Jerome, one of the Church's first biblical scholars.  He minced NO words, which is one reason he is one of my favorites.

Consider the Old Testament's list of saints.   Sinners and fighters, though saints in their deepest heart, and yearning for the peaceable kingdom of God.  Here is C.S. Lewis on Christian chivalry, from the book Present Concerns (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1986):

The word chivalry has meant at different times a good many different things - from heavy cavalry to giving a woman a seat in a train.  But if we want to understand chivalry as a distinct ideal from other ideals - if we want to isolate that particular conception of the man comme il fant  which was the special contribution of the Middle Ages to our culture - we cannot do better than turn to the words addressed to the greatest of all the imaginary knights in Mallory's Morte Darthur.   "Thou wert the meekest man, says Sir Ector to the dead Launcelot.  "Thou were the meekest man that ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest."

The important thing about this ideal is, of course, the double demand it makes on human nature.  The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost maidenlike, guest in a hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man.  He is not compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth.  When Launcelot heard himself pronounced the best knight in the world, "he wept as he had been a child that had been beaten."

What, you may ask, is the relevance of this ideal to the modern world.  It is terribly relevant.  It may or may not be practicable - the Middle Ages notoriously failed to obey it - but it is certainly practical; practical as the fact that men in a desert must find water or die. . . .  (Brute heroism without mercy and gentleness) is heroism by nature - heroism outside of the chivalrous tradition.

The medieval knight brought together two things which have no natural tendency to gravitate toward one another.  It brought them together for that very reason.  It taught humility and forbearance to the great warrior because everyone knew by experience how much he usually needed that lesson.  It demanded valour of the urbane and modest man because everyone knew that he was as likely as not to be a milksop. . . .

If we cannot produce Launcelots, humanity falls into two sections - those who can deal in blood and iron but cannot be "meek in hall", and those who are "meek in hall" but useless in battle - for the third class, who are both brutal in peace and cowardly in war, need not here be discussed.  When this dissociation of the two halves of Launcelot occurs, history becomes a horribly simple affair. . . .  The man who combines both characters - the knight - is not a work of nature but of art; of that art which has human beings, instead of canvas or marble, for its medium.

In the world today there is a "liberal" or "enlightened" tradition which regards the combative side of man's nature as a pure, atavistic evil, and scouts the chivalrous sentiment as part of the "false glamour" of war.  And there is also a neo-heroic tradition which scouts the chivalrous sentiment as a weak sentimentality, which would raise from its grave (its shallow and unquiet grave!) the pre-Christian ferocity of Achilles by a "modern invocation". . . .

(However), there is still life in the tradition which the Middle Ages inaugurated.  But the maintenance of that life depends, in part, on knowing that the knightly character is art not nature - something that needs to be achieved, not something that can be relied upon to happen.  And this knowledge is specially necessary as we grow more democratic.  In previous centuries the vestiges of chivalry were kept alive by a specialized class, from whom they spread to other classes partly by imitation and partly by coercion.  Now, it seems, the people must either be chivalrous on its own resources, or else choose between the two remaining alternatives of brutality and softness. . . . The ideal embodied in Launcelot is "escapism" is a sense never dreamed of by those who use that word; it offers the only possible escape from a world divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable. . . .

"Those who can deal in blood and iron but cannot be 'meek in hall, and those who are 'meek in hall' but useless in battle."   If I may be so bold, speaking as a man who was never a soldier but who has long been a Christian controversialist, those who know me well can tell you that in my online debates I deal in blood and iron but am meek in hall, and I am always ready to reconcile, because that what God bids us all to do.  And though the Fathers, the Saints and Doctors of the Church often got caught up in (necessary) acrimonius debates, at night I believe they likely prayed for their adversaries, and for reconcilation and peace.

So, dear non-Anglican inquirer, do not despair in your investigation of Continuing Anglicanism when you see this kind of thing.  What is happening among us happened in the New Testament Church.  There were necessary battles on the one hand, but on the other there was this impetus, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, to transcend all that ugliness and to:

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace."

As a priest of the Orthodox Anglican Church, I can assure you that you will find this quest for Jesus here with us.  Our motto is, "Proclaiming Christ in Word & Sacrament".  That, at the end of the day, is what we're all about.  Fr. Thomas Crowder, who recently joined us, thus testified in so many words.

And with that, I hope to be done with this whole matter.

Fr. Robert Hart Gets Blocked by Yet Another Traditional Anglican Priest

Imagine my surprise.  It's getting hard to keep count.

Take a look at Fr. Hart's Facebook page.  It betrays his intense political anger against conservatives, and he seldom posts anything there pertinent to the Gospel or light-hearted.  He's eaten up by anger, and it is very sad.

"Anger dulls the intellect."  - St. John Cassian, paraphrased.

Templars

No, the Masons are not the successors to the Templars, or any of that tommyrot.

Yes, the Templars were Catholic warrior-monks.

Yes, St. Bernard of Clairvaux was their patron, who provided them a revised Cisterican rule to regulate their life of prayer.

Yes, the Templars fought in a just war against a violent, anti-Christian Islamic Empire. 

No, Fr. Robert Hart, Christianity is not pacifist.

Why I Gave Up Premillennialism

Branching out to a new topic here at The Old Jamestown Church, namely eschatology.   I do this for three reasons:  1) to explain why Anglicans have historically been amillennialsts; 2) to address biblical and Catholic eschatology with a view towards countering some of the crazy premillennialist interpretations of what's happening in our troubled times; and 3) (but least importantly) to give my readers a sense of who I am in person.  I have recently been accused of being "embryonic" by a person at Fr. Hart's page who bravely remains "Anonymous", but probably who has no clue as to why I took that handle. 

Anyway, this is a talk given at an Orthodox Anglican Church clericus a few years ago.

A Report from the Orthodox Anglican Church Clericus

I was not able to attend our Orthodox Anglican Church (OAC) Clericus (clergy meeting) this weekend, but I want to relate a report of something that happened there. Clericus was held at the Christmount Retreat Camp and Conference Center in Black Mountain, NC. The Conference Center is not a Christian one per se. It is open to many faiths and secular groups.

As it turned out, the OAC's conference room was booked right next door to a conference room booked by Wiccans. God certainly has a sense of humor, but read on.

While the Anglicans were praying and teaching, the Wiccans next door were casting spells and teaching.

The plot thickens. . . .

One of the Wiccans approached one of our clergy and invited him, in a sort of sneering tone as the report goes, to come speak to their group about "your view of Jesus." You have to credit them for reaching out and inquiring.

We think they were expecting one of our "stereotypical" priests, but instead we sent them Fr. Yellowfox, a Native American OAC priest who ministers to those caught up in substance abuse. Being a Native American, he knows Native American religion well and why it is attractive to people who gravitate to paganism, such as Wiccans.

Anyway, while he went in to give the talk to the Wiccans, a number of our clergy prayed for him outside.

At the end of his talk, the Wiccans gave him a *standing ovation*.

I haven't heard any of the details about his talk, but it seems they were warmly received, and I'm quite sure it isn't because he abandoned the Faith in order to pander to them.

The long and short of it is this, from St. Paul:

"For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more; and to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might win Jews; to those who are under the law, as under the law, that I might win those who are under the law; to those who are without law, as without law (not being without law toward God, but under law toward Christ), that I might win those who are without law; to the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some."

(But the OAC is about as relevant as Mormons, doncha know. ;>) )

Fr. Yellowfox is on the right.

Gavin Ashenden - Why the death of Queen Elizabeth II marks the end of Christendom

This is fascinating. Gavin Ashenden on his former experience as a Royal chaplain to the Queen. Worth the 28 minutes.

Ashenden is a former priest in the Church of England and shortly a bishop in an Anglican Realignment jurisdiction, but now a Roman Catholic layman. He is a class act.

Do. Not. Miss. This. Ashenden's predictions about what will happen in Charles' reign are very troubling, though many of us have seen it coming. He ends on a note of hope, however, and with a beautiful prayer. Just astounding.

The Great Reversal

OK, so now that I have, like a good Anglican, wished Charles III well, also, like a good Anglican, I do a “Great Reversal” and direct everyone's attention from the rose to the thorns.

His Majesty's faith is not Anglican Christianity, but climate change religion. And that is why he is tight with that bizarre creature Klaus Schwab and a player in the Great Reset.

"Prince Charles’ base of supporters are conservatives. His betrayal won’t change a government, but it could destroy our political system in  its entirety." (From the article linked below, which you must read.)

And this is why a couple of my friends are invoking Psalm 109:8 as to Charles' accession: “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.”

Prince Charles' Great Reset

God Rest the Soul of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

God save His Majesty Charles III the King.

Lights in a Dark Woke World

You wokies know who you are.

"Serbian Patriarch Porfirije and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban call for Christian unity and solidarity against the rising tide of woke degeneracy in the Western world.

Chronicles Foreign Affairs Editor Srdja Trifkovic writes":

Viktor Orban and the Serbian Patriarch: Lights in a Dark World

Fr. Robert Hart v. Theologian Hans Boersma on Conspiracy Theories

Fr. Robert Hart or Hans Boersma?  Gee, I *dunno*.  Tough choice. ;>)

Fr. Hart:

Hans Boersma: Why I Am a Conspiracy Theorist (First Things)

Boersma's answer to a critic in the latest issue of Touchstone:

Orthodoxy's Liberalism Problem

This is Albion Land, who created the Anglican Continuum blog before he followed the truth further, converted to Orthodoxy and is now some sort or Orthodox monastic residing at some monastery of dubious origin called the Hermitage of Saints Passios and Seraphim. 

In other words, he votes for the Godless Party, the party that advocates such abominable things as abortion and trans rights.

Now, I do not indict all of Eastern Orthodoxy because of this man's folly or the folly of other Orthodox Christians, mainly Western ones, who vote for Democrats (mostly Greek ones).  True Orthodoxy is trad conservative, even "reactionary."  But the Episcopalian serpent has clearly slithered under the door of the Orthodox Church.

Constantinople's Moral Oversight

The Latest Howler from Fr. Robert Hart

"I was in the Spirit

To the Church in America, write:

The sword of the Spirit is the word of God;

Not an AR-15.

You are called to bear the image of Jesus to the world;

Not the mark of Cain.

Talk of violence and civil war must never be uttered among you. 

For Christians there is but one Christ."

And I reply:

"And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.  For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. . . .

(I)f any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect."

How easily Fr. Hart opens himself up to criticism and ridicule, alluding to the words of Jesus in the Letters to the Seven Churches recorded in Chapters 2 - 4 of Revelation, putting his own words in Jesus' mouth as it were, when really it's just another example of him spewing rubbish from the lefty fever swamp he inhabits (though this time, thankfully, with no incendiary comments about "Trumpublican pieces of $#!+"). 

Christian lefties like Hart do this all the time.   They assume that their lefty politics are merely Jesus' politics.  I remember engaging a young, woke Neo-Anglican priest who averred that he was neither liberal nor conservative, but rather an advocate of "biblical politics". I answered how funny it was to me that his "biblical politics" are not too distinguishable from left-wing politics.  He was not amused.

It is anyone's guess as to why Fr. Hart would actually intimate that any American Christian gun owner truly thinks that the AR-15 platform, or any other semiautomatic platform for that matter, is the "sword of the Spirit."  Yes, I know he's trying to be rhetorically creative, but his attempt falls flat due to its sheer inanity.   Except for a tiny handful of postmillennialists in our midst, we trad conservatives do not identity our politics with the Gospel, but rather hold to a "two kingdoms doctrine" of one form or another.  The religious leftist's identification of his political agenda with the outworking of the Gospel is actually akin to postmillennialism

Like all "good" religious leftists, Fr. Hart embraces pacifism.  Well, I have dealt with the novelty of Christian pacifism many times here in this blog.  Here is a link to the archives, and here is an important reference to the Anglican theologian Nigel Biggar on the topic of Just War Theory.

What nonsense will Father Hart concoct next, I wonder?  And I await with rapt anticipation as I set my stopwatch to see how long it takes this time for him to accuse me of "libel." ;>)

C.S. Lewis: Why I'm Not a Pacifist

Toxicity

 I've been called "toxic" , but seriously I don't measure up.  I'm a chump.  This Vicar sets the standard to which I must aspire, and I'll get there yet, Fr. H., or bust. ;>)

On the New Interest in Hallucinogens aka "Psychedelics"

There's been much in the news these days about the purported therapeutic uses of hallucinogens, sometimes called "psychedelics".   Some stories report about the psychological benefits of macrodosing.  Other reports concern the benefits of microdosing.  

Consider all the recent stories of folks who are either troubled or curious and who make a pilgrimage to South America and elsewhere to be administered a strong dose of Ayahuasca.  The psychedelic 1960s are seemingly making a comeback.

With reference to the post below, I remember having an online conversation with Addison Hart a few years ago about hallucinogens.  If I remember correctly, and I invite Mr. Hart to correct me if my memory is defective, he defended the position that hallucinogenic experience is true spiritual experience, whereas I argued that it's not only a matter of mere altered brain chemistry which is akin to psychotic and schizophrenic episodes, but that the use of hallucinogenics is connected with occult practices, and that there is accordingly nothing genuinely Christian about it.  (I believed Addison to be a Christian at the time.)  It is interesting that the Greek word for "sorcery" as used in the Bible is φαρμακεία (pharmakeia), and the Book of Revelation tells us that one of the reasons for God's judgment against unredeemed humanity is that they did not repent of their φαρμακεία.

Mr. Hart may assume I know nothing about this experientially.  If so he couldn't be more wrong.  I am an ex-hippie and "did" almost the whole panoply of drugs available back in the late 60s and early 70s, including the hallucinogens LSD, Mescaline (via peyote buttons), and even the chemicals in Morning Glory seeds (which I think was some combination of an LSD-like chemical and strychnine, a poison that is also present in peyote buttons).

My friends and I voraciously made our way through the the series of books written and published by one Carlos Castañeda, which detail his encounters with a Native American brujo named Don Juan Matus, who revolutionized Castañeda's life through a discipline of teaching and administration of various natural hallucinogens.  

One day a friend and I set off for Tucson, Arizona to use peyote buttons procured by one of our friends at the University of Arizona.  We bought a couple of large bags of them to take back to California to use and sell.

We spent one night after consuming the cacti hallucinating in the Saguaro National Park, after violently puking because of the natural strychnine warts in those cacti that we weren't told to dig out before we consumed the cacti.

Now, the Mescaline experience I had there in that desert was unlike anything else I had previously experienced with LSD.  I truly had a "Don Juan Matus" experience.

But it wasn't a good experience.  I saw the eyes of entities there out in the desert that were truly demonic.  I came to see later what Jesus meant when he said that evil spirits gravitate to "dry land", and why it was in the desert that Satan tempted him.

Anyway, we brought the bags back to California, and I'm telling you, I discerned this heavy, dark presence over us until the last peyote button was gone.  True story.  But then again, the Lord was working mightily with me at the time.  I would surrender to Christ a year or so later.   Decades later I would become a priest in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

So the long and the short of it is this:  Addison Hart, if he truly believes that the use of hallucinogens puts in greater touch with the "divine" somehow or the other, is seriously deluded, which spiritual delusion probably carries over to other issues.

I know a young Orthodox man who argues similarly that chemically-induced experiences are true and valuable spiritual experiences.  I can't name him here, but please pray for him.  And Addison too.

A Couple of New Ones from Addison Hart

"Brief, simple, and yet inexhaustibly rich. One of my favorite Ch'an meditations (I keep it in pamphlet form near at hand). My advice: take it slow and often."

The symbiotic ecology of the psychedelic realm (Quoting the author and a friend's comment):

"The basis for the present proposal comes from the contemporary confluence of comparative mythology and religion on the one hand, and on the other the renaissance of research on psychedelics. This convergence has its roots in the work of the patriarchs of the ‘perennial philosophy’ (William James, Huston Smith, Aldous Huxley, Alan Watts), who were themselves fascinated by the similarities between ancient myths and the phenomenological contents of non-ordinary states of consciousness. The implicit suggestion is that humans universally share the neurological capacity to enter into visionary states in which they experience interior but transpersonal events of the highest reality, value and meaning.

Comment: "Addison, I assess these experiences Neoplatonically and through Ibn Arabi. The forms as they exist in the Divine Nous are themselves living entities and must logically be infinite in number; Soul, perceiving them, reflects them in itself, and this is the imaginal realm, where "many paths and errands meet," to borrow from Tolkien. They also radiate downwards through the World Soul and into the kosmos, such that some of them are manifest in encosmic deities and spirits and the like; basically, everywhere there is Soul to contemplate Nous, which is to say everywhere, there is also an imaginal realm where the noetic is always becoming sensible."

Just Let This Sink In

From an Anglican priest I know who left Continuing Anglicanism for the Neo-Anglican/Pentecostal hinterlands:

I love that my niece has become a pastor and is fearlessly preaching the good news of the gospel.   She's following in the footsteps of Saints like Photini after her encounter with Jesus at the well, Mary Magdalene on that first Easter morn, and so many others.

#pentecostal #womenpreachers

As anyone who follows the debate over women's ordination should know, it is a whopper of a non sequitur to argue from the Gospel witness examples of SS. Photini and Mary Magdalene, et al. that women may therefore be ordained to the pastorate or the priesthood.

Having a Little Dustup with a "Reformed Anglican" Priest ("Presbyter?") Tonight

See the post here and the comments.

I was once a Calvinist (Presbyterian/Reformed).  Went through the whole "cage stage".  My journey from Protestantism to the Catholic Faith was a difficult one:  I was much like a drunk in a hallway bouncing back and forth off the walls and falling down but struggling to make my way to the light at the end of the hallway.

When I became an Anglican I was still somewhat under the sway of Reformed theology, but due to both my short experience in the Orthodox Church and my Anglican studies, over time I concluded that the Reformed theology of the 16th-century English Church was not the Catholic Faith, and I desired more than anything else to be a Catholic, because, among other things, that is what we proclaim ourselves to be in the Creed we've received as the standard of orthodoxy and which we recite at every Mass.  The correctives of Caroline and Tractarian divinity were necessary to remake orthodox Anglicanism into a true branch of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

These days I'm not even much of an Augustinian, though I still agree Augustine was the most powerful theological mind of the Western Church.  Over the years since my reception into the Anglican Church, I came to believe that his doctrines of original sin and predestination were amiss, something the Eastern Church has been arguing for over a millennium.   Yet, I still agree somewhat with Anglo-Catholic ascetic theologian Martin Thornton's assessment in his book English Spirituality: An Outline of Ascetic Theology according to The English Pastoral Tradition. 

Experience insists on some kind of predestination: some are Christians, some are not, and no Christian can take credit for his own conversion.

As I commented here on Thornton's statement of the matter:

Now, that is in a nutshell the argument I've made here at OJC about the Pauline-Augustinian doctrine of grace:  man is dead in sin and accordingly has no ability to understand the Gospel or to say "yes" to God's grace in his own power.  Grace must "prevent" ("precede") faith (Eph. 2:8-10; the Pauline-Augustinian doctrine of "prevenient grace"). 

Thornton is quick to add, however, that he has "tried to explain that Augustine's great importance is to lay the foundation of Christian spirituality, not to complete its superstructure", a comment that reminds me of what J.B. Mozley said of such "superstructures", whether Pelagian or Augustinian:  "All that we build upon either of (the root presuppositions of each system) must partake of the imperfect nature of the premise which supports it, and be held under a reserve of consistency with a counter conclusion from the opposite truth."

Indeed, Thornton,  in good Arminian fashion, speculates here whether or not "we may think of being 'elected', not to inevitable salvation, but to the Christian struggle on behalf of others."  Whatever the answer to that question may be, he concludes in good Augustinian fashion that the "Pelagian emphasis on austerity and rigour makes creative ascetical progress quite impossible", while "Augustine's doctrine of prevenient grace permits it."  Indeed, our ultimate sanctification is all of grace.

So, in good Anglican fashion I regard this all as an inscrutable mystery, and I no longer accept the Augustinian/Calvinist endeavor to boil the thing down rationally, with its division of mankind into "elect" and "reprobate" camps, and, what's more,  I simply find it incomprehensible that any pastor would preach or teach such a doctrine to his flock.   The Scriptures are clear to me that God desires the salvation of all, and that Christ therefore died for all.  The Augustinian/Calvinist superstructure founders on that truth.

And yes, Anglican priests are sacrificing priests, not mere "presbyters."