Tuesday 22 June 2010

Comments welcome...


...although I do wonder whether I should adopt a more stringent policy on which comments will be published.

Ex Fide is a personal blog, and the essential keywords are "Catholic Liturgy and devotions". I'm starting to wonder whether any comments on ecclesiological controversies should be allowed to appear at all, since they almost always upset people. Anglicanorum Coetibus is a hot topic, but this blog really wasn't set up to provide a platform for partisan mud-slinging. There are many other blogs and discussion groups that are dedicated to reasonable (and unreasonable) debate, and they do it much better and involve far more people than this one.

The main reason that I started writing Ex Fide was to share the joy that I experience from being a Catholic Christian, being part of a worshipping community that strives always to live the Gospel, and to explore it in a way that is often fun, sometimes informative, always honest.

It is always the more light-hearted posts on this blog that attract the most derisive comments, and there are always people waiting for the next swish of lace or similar to use as ammunition against us. I'm personally not interested in defending myself against charges of frivolity and triviality, but in the interests of others, I'm not happy to let this blog become a blackboard for insulting Anglo-Catholics. I firmly believe that being a Christian can be, and sometimes should be, about having fun, and not taking oneself too seriously. That's largely what Ex Fide is all about. Therefore, if you don't want to read my ramblings on Liturgy, vestments, birettas, home altars or anything else, then kindly don't bother to waste your time reading this blog, and certainly don't go the extra length to leave a comment.

18 comments:

  1. Hurrah for honesty.

    As a friend of mine, a former RC priest who became an agnostic, once said 'Religion brings the worst out in people'.

    The cartoon is fun.

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  2. I have to agree with Rubricarius, the cartoon is fun!

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  3. Well done Joseph!

    I think it's great especially as I identify with the camp little nitwit.

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  4. I hugely enjoy this and cannot understand the poor souls who make such comments. The cartoon is great (even if you are not CofE).

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  5. I have said on other blogs that, whilst there is an obvious and essential need for a serious side to religion, it is also important that it should be fun and that we should not take ourselves - of the religion of other people - too seriously all the time. I am convinced that Our Lord himself had, at appropraite moments, a wicked sense of humour.

    One of the most hard working and successful parish priests in the London diocese - at a church not 1,000 miles from Chalk Farm station - is much given to stating publicly that as a teenager - many years ago - he was my assistant organist at St Paul's Brighton. One of the reasons for his combining undoubted great pastoral success with liturgical eccentricity (apart from an incredible capacity for endless hard work) is that he has always had a superb ability to laugh at himself - and do so quite openly and publicly. Oh that there were more like him. Long may your blog continue. I get the impression that you also have a capacity to laugh at yourself as well as taking seriously the things that matter.

    Asd you say, if others don't like what is written on this blog they don't have to read it and they don't have to comment on it!

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  6. There will always be monsters ready to be horrid about anything which allows our faith to be fun.

    You've no idea what a lift this site gives so many people.

    You can always put 'Comments Off' and just allow us to enjoy the posts.

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  7. Fr. David Allen23 June 2010 at 13:24

    As an often weary parish priest I visit this blog to lift my spirits and I am never disappointed, except of course during the dry times when the venerable blogger is in hiatus. On the other hand, it is a good sign when a blogger actually has a life outside his blog. Thanks a bunch for all this holy hilarity and ferial frivolity.

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  8. As Queen Elizabeth I wisely put it, “There was one Jesus Christ and one faith, and all the rest they disputed about but trifles.”

    Catholic or Protestant, High Church or Low, let’s respect – and even embrace – our diversity. Whatever our denominations, we are all Christians first and foremost.

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  9. Continue the good work you are doing with this blog, dont be tempted to sink in the mud like the Continiuum blog or the gossip of David Virtue or the arrogance on the Anglican Catholic. I use my blog to bring others to Christ in the Catholic Faith and there it stops.With every good wish in Christ,
    Father Ed Bakker SSM
    HCC-AR New Zealand

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  10. Good cartoon ! Laughter is the best medicine (as Reader's Digest used to say) but no-one has spotted the typo in the second line, penultimate word beginning with b ?????? shurley,shome mishtake ? ed.
    Alan Robinson

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  11. Given St Magnus the Martyr's history, don't you think it is inevitable that questions of church order are likely to be raised in the comments box to your posts? After all, a website is public and if comments are invited they are, or should be, part of a public forum. Many former members of the congregation in more solid days are astonished by the church's present life and its breach with earlier traditions, little of which any longer appear to be understood.

    Probably at no time in recent history has Anglo-Catholicism been in a more sensitive and insecure position in the Church of England. The parent body has effectively abrogated its Catholic credentials and undermined the distinctive Anglo-Catholic case. Former firm Anglo-Catholic churches are falling into selective ritualism largely based on whim and superficiality rather than authority. Anglo-Catholicism has always been a self-authenticating tradition but never more so than at the present time. But it is a tradition that no longer has roots in the form that could be deduced in the past and which yielded remarkable fruits of serious spiritual significance and value, not least in personal holiness.

    At best Anglo-Catholicism has become congregationalism pure and simple and its foundations do not go deeper than personal choice. The Oxford Movement aimed to return the Church of England as a body to a Catholic form. In this is failed. If that suits you, you have your reward. But as time passes this is going to be progressively unsatisfactory on all but a superficial level. It will slowly die of inanition. Enjoy it while you can but don't confuse it with faith. Fun it might be in a limited sense but without seriousness this is little better than decadence. The midsummer night's dream is over.

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  12. I very much doubt that Our Lord ever laughed...

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  13. Rev'd Sir: Please don't take that vile comment seriously....it was probably posted by a member of the US House of Bishops...I mean Clowns.

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  14. The cartoon is funny ha ha rather than funny amusing.

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  15. Do keep ranting and keeping me amused.

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  16. Yes, do keep the posts coming and oftimes one need only see the "name" Anonymous to know that mischief is intended, not honest disagreement.

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  17. It was the combination of holiness and joy in traditional Anglican Catholicism that brought me to the faith ... please God that we avoid the self-righteousness of those who would leave us barren of both

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  18. Stick a four foot beard and silly hat on the cartoon and it could be a Russian Orthodox, of course their condemnation of Anglicans are far, far nastier...at least Rome believes we are baptized Christians!

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