Anglican to Catholic

I would not ordinarily use this blog to comment on such matters, but I feel it more appropriate to break from my preachings and take up a discussion.

It is one of the blessings of the Christian faith that we find room in a number of different traditions for a very wide spread of belief. As the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is about to start, I think the timing of the ordination in the Roman Catholic Church of three former Anglican bishops very unfortunate. Up to last year in our small group of five denominations we included an Anglo-Catholic priest who played a very supportive role. Sadly, he decided to find pastures new and left the area to serve in another Church in Wales pastorate.

The point is that we all got on together so well and worked at bringing worshippers together. I think it is all too easy to search out and espouse different beliefs and opinions which can lead to disunity. From its very inception the Christian Church was obviously likely to take many paths fanning out from the cross and resurrection. Look back to mediaeval days and you would not recognise the Christian faith we share today. But we did make it to this point where love and care are the building blocks of Christian effort. No longer do we consider the burning of those we term heretics. No longer do we insist on the Bible being restricted to a language not spoken by the local population.

We no longer follow the same traditions as the church we read about in the Epistles of Paul. So there is no case to exclude women from ordination. The two denominations to which I have belonged for 60 years had women ministers all through that period. Many of them have proved very effective Christian leaders. Gay priests in New Testament days would have been put to death. Today we can accept them for what they are and not what we would have them be. In fact, it was my trade union as a local government officer that convinced me to stop marginalising gay people and share our campaigns with them.

The diversity of life helps us enjoy our interaction with one another. It brings variety to dullness and blinkered thinking. We ought to be able to celebrate diversity within our various denominations without marginalising so many people. To the former bishops who have now signed up to Catholicism I say, "Be happy in your new home but stop wearing blinkers and try to find peace through prayer and a determination not to step on the toes of others."

Today we face a great enemy together - INDIFFERENCE. I feel sure that fighting this enemy is the hardest effort brought upon Christians in recent times. Despite the increase lately of those studying various aspects of religion the worshippers each Sunday are diminishing. Our thrust must be commitment to humanity, regardless of which church we attend. I can promise fun when we start to debate our differences but the journey is very worthwhile in that we see and understand why we stand so far apart on some issues.

As we commit to another celebration of unity let us pray that God will support togetherness and difference and use us to achieve great goals for him

Star Gazing

Over the previous three days we have been able to share a spot of star gazing centered on Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope near Macclesfield, Cheshire. The programmes introduced us to basic star identification and then began to explain some of the amazing facts about the universe in which we find ourselves. We learned that some of the stars we see in the night sky actually transmitted the light we see many billions of light years ago. So when we look at the night sky we are seeing history and not the present.

Every winter I have looked at the southern sky and marvelled at the great constellation of Orion, along whose "belt" a line of sight takes us to Sirius, the dog star, brightest star we see. The awesome universe is breath taking and often overpowers us because we struggle to find words adequate enough to describe it. It makes us feel incredibly small and very insignificant.

A former president of the USA used to entertain a friend at dinner and would lead him out of the White House to look at the stars. Pointing to the galaxy of Andromeda (pictured at the head of this post) he would say, "That is the great Spiral Galaxy of Andromeda which is approximately the same size and shape of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. It is two and a half million light years away but is the nearest galaxy to us. Now that we are down to size let's have dinner!"

It is a fact that in the entire scheme of things we humans are incredibly small. What all Christians agree is that God is the creator of all things. We may not all agree that it was done in six days and in the manner set out in Genesis. However, the point of agreement is that God is our great creator. Look at the heavens and see the immense canopy of lights all set there in dependence on each other. Limit your thoughts, if you like, to the activity of our star, the Sun, and its planets in orbit around it. On earth we are totally dependent upon a continuing activity of nuclear fusion of the gases of the Sun. This is our energy source and it is set to continue for millions of years. Prehistoric people realised this and worshipped the Sun. We see their ancient religious sites aligned to the Summer Solstice and find their votive offerings in waterways - thanks for water by which they lived under the energy of the Sun. These people were no fools. However little they understood, they knew from whence came their life!

And so we, today, can look out into the universe and marvel at the creativity of God. However this great action was contrived it certainly had a snowball effect. Like a stone thrown into a pond, making ripples, so far off activity has impact right across creation. It may be true that we have been ingenious in sending men to the surface of the moon but we are not even scratching the surface of creation in doing so. We are surrounded by a great mystery, the mystery of God. As we consider everything God made we ask the perpetual question, "Why?"

We have just passed through Christmas once more. It is a time when we celebrate and think about God's intervention through Jesus. In the birth of Jesus we see the world given a chance. We see another picture which is of God throwing a pebble into the pond of life to see the ripple effect and arrive at a target - salvation. I feel that God had, by the year 1AD, seen that the chance he had offered the world had been squandered, so he gave us a second chance and it is this second chance that we are preaching every day.

Despite being so small in creation, we are still incredibly well equipped to go out and make a difference in the name of Jesus. We were not simply created as animals, rather we were given feelings, emotions and so on in order that we could respond and give the world the God who created it in the name of Jesus. I am saying here that we are more than well equipped to perform our task. God has,through Jesus, given us everything we need to succeed in his service. May we respond and make the difference that is needed.