Do you pray the Anglican Rosary?

I give up. Christians will never agree until the End. We will always be divided until Jesus Christ comes again in glory.

 

True. It's the nature of our condition. But I am not one who thinks uniformity a good thing or something to be striven for. Unity and uniformity are two different things.

 

Uniformity is not a good thing to strive for if it's a forced communion based on this prayer book or that hymnal. If we are not uniform in the basics, however, then how can we say we keep unity? I think we'd all agree that the basics involve Trinitarianism and not being a Unitarian. The problem is that non-Trinitarians insist that this is not one of the basics, but belief in Christ alone is. Accomodating more people into the Unity of the Church, without good uniformity, tends to debase the currency, so to speak. It's the same on every level: whether with images, or saints, or bishops, or whatever.

The Fall was hard indeed.

 

Why couldn't Nicea have acommodated the Arians?

edited to prevent subsequent wrangling
-admin

 

Gentlemen, can we please stay on the topic of the rosary? We have a thread for the topic of womens' ordination going.

What do people here think of the existence of the Sub tuum praesidium prayer about A.D. 250? It's of direct relation to the Rosary.

Ὑπὸ τὴν σὴν εὐσπλαγχνίαν,
καταφεύγομεν, Θεοτόκε.
Τὰς ἡμῶν ἱκεσίας,
μὴ παρίδῃς ἐν περιστάσει,
ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ κινδύνων λύτρωσαι ἡμᾶς,
μόνη Ἁγνή, μόνη εὐλογημένη.

Beneath your compassion,
We take refuge, O Mother of God:
do not despise our petitions in time of trouble:
but rescue us from dangers,
only pure, only blessed one.

It's said to originate in the Alexandrian Coptic liturgy of the 3rd century. I often wondered if it's genuine.

 

I believe in the KISS formula!!

Praying with Rosaries are a form of Intercessory prayer. There is a bit of misunderstanding about the role of the rosary in prayer. Of course, I pray directly to the Father. Have you ever asked someone to say a prayer for you? That's intercessory prayer. You needn't ask a friend to pray. You can, after all, do it directly. The Rosary is a meditative type of prayer. It's not a replacement for anything. It's just something that one is free to do to enhance their prayer life. There is not right or wrong answer about the Rosary in my humble opinion.

 

Madam, this is the crux of the whole matter. When you ask a friend to pray for you, do you really think of yourself as "praying" to that friend? It's a big stretch. The only way I can get a friend to know that I need prayers is to write or speak. The only way the Mother of God (having "fallen asleep") can hear our requests is if she reads our minds, since she's not "here" to listen to our voices crying out to her. Human beings have five senses. This is all very simple and rational.

I hope you don't take my reply badly - I am just afraid of invocation becoming something more. After all, how do you reconcile yourself to calling Mary our Life & our Hope, in the Salve Regina? This was a big problem for me as a Roman Catholic.

 

For everyone, remember that angel in Revelation 19? John sees him, and falls down to "worship" him (a word of varied meanings in the old tongues), but the angel tells him to get up. The angel refuses to allow John to fall down and bend the knee, for they are both mere creatures. Even if John never meant to adore the angel, the act of kneeling to address the angel was associated with worship. At the very least, then, whoever prays the Roman rosary should not be genuflecting or kneeling during its duration.

 

Actually little brother it is not a stretch at all... I have a personal spiritual relationship with those Saints that I talk to on a regular basis and to me it is no different then asking my local Priest to pray for me. But I believe we have also done this one to death in other threads and from what I see no one has changed their minds about the subject.

 

The Invocation of Saints violates article XXII of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. The Scriptures, of course, are also against it.

This is an incontrovertible fact.

 

How many times do you need to be told that the 39 articles are not binding on Anglicans they are simply a historical document. If you go and do a search of the forum you will find a thread were the discussion of XXII has been done to death.

The simple fact is that asking those who have gone before us to intercede for us is a part of the Anglican communion and that is that. I am sure if you don't like that the Presbyterians would be happy to have you.

 

Is the Bible simply a historical document as well? Creeds and confessions of faith are not simple historical documents, unless one wishes to contradict them.

Female clergy, which is something universally condemned by Scripture and apostolic tradition is also a "part" of it these days. And so are many liberals, marxists and gender ideologues raging for the recognition of sodomites and the overturn of Christian morality. Anything can be a "part" of the Anglican Communion when there are no standards one must adhere to. And I'm sure all sorts are welcome in, except those who dare to rain on this fantasy land parade.

Ha! I always love when the fake mask of the inclusivists drops on the ground.

 

That's not true, brother. As much as I love you, that's just a completely ridiculous thing to say. Why did Cranmer & others pen these 39 articles, if only for a good example? No! They had to be adhered to strictly for hundreds upon hundreds of years by priests. Laity who denied them or merely treated them as "historical documents" were severely rebuked by the clergy. Read Burnet's commentary on the Articles, where he treats them as our Confession, alongside the Scriptures & the Nicene & Apostles' Creeds!

They may no longer be considered binding on The Episcopal Church and other shameful excuses for "Anglicanism", but that opinion does not make the truth to change. Even if they were merely historical, it simply won't do to "pff" them away as chronological curiosities. That's an insult to Cranmer's memory and against the whole point of the Articles in the first place. They were written that Unity might be established. The rejection of them coincides with the moral & spiritual breakdown of Anglicanism - only proving how needful they are.

 

You have not answered my question, big brother. Personal relationships are fine - calling others by poetic names that would better describe God is not fine. Why is it that whenever I bring up the objectionable parts of the Rosary, those are ignored and the mere "asking for prayers" bit is emphasized? I never called my best friend, James, my "life and sweetness and hope" when I asked him to pray for me.

I do wish ritualists would stop avoiding the issue! We've not done this to death, because every time we get to the crux of the matter, the subject gets changed by those who feel "hurt" and "offended" by "uncharitable speech". If asking some honest questions is the death of charity, there is no God. Thankfully, God exists, so....

 

Brother we will just have to agree to disagree on all of this.

 

I really can't believe statements like this are allowed.

 

I hear what you are saying but please don't be too hard on my little brother.
The Anglican Church goes back well before the reformation some here just don't believe it does. It is time for me to back out again for while it can get just way too nasty in here from time to time.

 

Fair enough. I certainly meant no offense. Just wanted to remind everybody that Episcopalians are Anglicans and are supposed to be welcome here too. There's no reason for forum members to put our church down. It's not right and ought to be against the rules, assuming this forum has any rules.

 

Ironically, the eagerness to be offended has stopped some people from actually providing sound Scriptures that might've resolved this debate. Now let me prove that I know how disastrously wrong I can be, and that it's possible to say hello to the departed saints:

In Revelation 6 and in the accounts of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17 & Luke 9) we see that the departed, though " fallen asleep", are conscious before God - in Christ. Moses & Elijah speak with the Lord.

In Luke 16, the Lord speaks of the Rich Man in Hell asking if he may contact his brothers still alive on Earth.

In Luke 15, the Lord says that not only angels rejoice when a sinner repents, but "there is much rejoicing in Heaven". Clearly they are aware of events in Earth, and have a direct way of knowing when even a single sinner repents. I would've said "ah, that's just the angels" - but in Luke 20 the Lord says the children of the resurrection shall attain equality with the angels.

In 2 Peter 1 we who live in faith & hope are to be made partakers of the Divine Nature. I dare say that the Divine Nature is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. The blessed dead are in Heaven; their theosis & divinization according to nature are complete. They have obtained to the resurrection and the kingdom already, for Eternity is come.

What can I say? I am sorry. "There are more things in heaven and earth, [Consular], Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."