This Is The Stuff, Right Here
Thursday, October 18, 2012 at 01:39AM
Embryo Parson in Anglican Catholic Church, Anglo-Catholicism, Evangelical and Catholic, Historical Theology, Traditional Anglicanism

Renewing the Anglican Tradition from St. Matthew's Church on Vimeo.

In a comment below, ABH writes:

For what it's worth, I have been attending St. Matthew's in Newport Beach (a flagship parish of the ACC) for a few months now, and it doesn't particularly strike me as Anglo-Catholic. There are some liturgical choices made which I suppose are Anglo-Catholic (e.g. the placement of the Gloria), and the Eucharistic real presence plays a central role in the congregation's piety, but the whole tenor of the parish doesn't *feel* Anglo-Catholic. Not that I am an authority on such matters, but I thought I'd throw it out there. And both Calvin and Luther are sold in the bookstore. That says something, I suppose.

By the way, it is a REMARKABLE parish. I hesitate to use the word "anointed," because it's loaded, but seriously, the Holy Ghost's presence is (almost?) palpable. There is a weightiness about the worship — a weightiness that goes beyond the "well, liturgical worship is by nature weighty." The congregation prays with earnest intensity.

The Lord has blessed St. Matthew's. I'm not sure what it is — I've been trying to figure that out. But the Lord's hand is upon it. I hope and pray that St. Matthew's can be a model to the rest of the ACC, and to the rest of Continuing Anglicanism.

THIS is what "reformed Catholicism" really is.  What St. Matt's seeks to renew is **classical** Anglicanism, which is an Anglicanism that knows there was a Reformation, and embraces it.  

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