Are there still Anglo-Catholic parishes in the Episcopal Church(TEC)?

Oh, I forgot my footnote:

* Regarding St. Gregory of Nyssa of San Francisco, their liturgy is blasphemous and also particularly offensive to Eastern Orthodox Christians and Han Chinese, given the Qing despot the Khangxi Emperor is depicted, among other non-saints, in a Byzantine style icon, this being the chap who prohibited Christianity in China and also slaughtered large numbers of Han Chinese, and in further syncretic sickness, the funeral liturgy, which makes no provision for Christian burial, only cremation, has the cremains placed during a portion of the liturgy in a Shinto Shrine, which would be especially offensive to a Han Chinese Christian given, you know, World War II.

And they doubtless named the parish for St. Gregory of Nyssa because he is alleged to have been a universalist - which is false. Rather he contemplated, along with Origen and St. Isaac the Syrian, the possibility of eventual apokatastasis, which is not the same thing.

But St. Gregory is also one of the few Fathers who, perhaps the Pontic Greeks of Nyssa not getting the message clearly enough, felt it necessary to promulgate a canon condemning homosexuality.

Before I even had the chance to mention this to the parish on their Disqus forum, and merely asked them in a neutral manner why they had an icon on their ceiling of the man who suppressed Christianity in China, some rabid zealot attacked me and screamed about how intolerant I was.

For those curious as to the Canon in question, it is Canon IV of St. Gregory of Nyssa, the subject of which is the duration of time fornicators, adulterers, and practitioners of sodomy and bestiality are to be denied the Eucharist, and the degree to which this might be mitigated by their own penitence. And the answer, for those of you who are curious, is that an unrepentant sodomite or adulterer is to be excommunicated (denied the Eucharist) for at least eighteen years, some of which are to be spent outside the door of the narthex with the weepers, some of them with penitents in the narthex, and the final third kneeling in the nave of the church. One would assume that the rector who dared name his heretical parish for St. Gregory was unaware of this.

Here is an explanation of the relevant portion of the canon, by St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite, who compiled this and other canons of the Greek Orthodox Church in a book entitled The Pedalion (meaning, The Rudder, which indicates the book is guidance and not like Roman Catholic canon law, some strict code after the fashion of Pharisaical legalism):

As for sodomy, on the other hand, and bestiality (sexual intercourse with beasts), in these too besides the unlawful pleasure they afford, there is an actual injustice done to what is strange or unnatural, or, more explicitly speaking, they violate the laws of nature, in that they are sins contrary to nature. The number of years for each of these sinful deeds has likewise been economically fixed like those for fornication, but doubly as many: that is to say, in other words, adulterers are to spend six years in weeping outside the church, and so are those guilty of sodomy and of bestiality; they are to listen for six years, and to kneel for six years more, and then they are to commune. Nevertheless, the disposition of such persons has to be observed by the spiritual father, as is also that of fornicators, so that, if they repent more willingly and more eagerly, he may allow them the sooner to partake of communion; but if they revert more negligently, he may not allow to them the right to commune even later than the eighteen years. The general medical treatment both of fornicators and of adulterers and of sodomists and of bestialists is to have them abstain entirely from such pleasures as these and to repent. But there is also a difference in the manner of the confession made by such sinners as these. For the one who of his own accord goes and confesses is canonized more philanthropically and more lightly, owing to the fact he himself has seen fit to accuse himself, and to show a sign of change for the better; whereas the one who formerly denied his guilt, but was later convicted of sinning, whether as a result of a suspicion, or as a result of accusations lodged against him by others, he is canonized more heavily and sentenced to a much longer time, to a greater number of years. See also Canons XVI and XX of Ancyra, and Canon VII of St. Basil, and Canon XII of the 1st Ecumenical Synod, which provides that leniency shall be adjusted to correspond with the repentance shown by the sinner.

 

@Liturgyworks do you have any good books to read on any of the Eastern Fathers like St. Gregory of Nyssa

 

Well to be honest I prefer to read books by them, but if you are just looking for a biographical account, Pope Benedict XVI wrote a well respected series on the church fathers when he was Cardinal.

On the other hand, Fr. John Behr’s books on Patristics, which include biographical material, are superb. Also, The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware explore the roles of major historical figures in the church, and the relationship between the three Eastern churches and Anglicanism; Orthodox Christology by the Oriental Orthodox priest Fr. Peter Farringdon. The Orthodox tend not to write long biographies of the fathers who are also saints, with a few exceptions, for example, The Life of Anthony, by St. Athanasius, which manages to be a biography of both St. Anthony and his more obscure and mysterious predecessor, whose hermetic life was unlike that of Anthony, entirely dependent on God for survival, St. Paul the Hermit.

Rather, we prefer two types of literature: hagiographies and new works of theology which deal with points raised by prior theologians and revisit them, usually from another perspective. But in general I think our hagiographies are accurate; the Orthodox Church in America (a multi-ethnic autocephalous “jurisdiction”, which would be called a Province in Anglicanism* consisting of the former Russian Orthodox mission in Alaska, about half of the former Moscow Patriarch churches in the US that were released by Patriarch Tikhon in anticipation of his imprisonment, as well as Byzantine Rite Ruthenian Catholics who converted, led by St. Alexis Toth, when the Latin bishops in the US acted to prevent married Ruthenian priests who had immigrated from Europe from continuing to serve, and also some of the Romanians, Bulgarians and Albanians, and a large number of conwertsy), and the Coptic Orthodox Church (the larger of the two Patriarchates of Alexandria) publish the Lives of the Saints on their website. There has been a tradition of greater caution with regards to hagiographical material in our Synaxaria than the Roman Catholics in their Martyrology, which used to be notoriously exaggerated, and in response, in the 20th century the Romans rather three the baby out with the bathwater in pruning it back excessively.

As an so example of Orthodox hagiographical reliability, through careful study of scripture and the early Patristic tradition, you will find that St. Mary of Bethany, the penitent sister, who washed the feet of our Lord, was a different person from St. Mary Magdalene, who we regard as equal to the Apostles, a female evangelist. Also, it is known there are minor errors of dating that have crept into the Coptic synaxarion. so there are efforts under way to publish in English the Ethiopian synaxarion, considered more accurate.

Here is an example of an Eastern Orthodox hagiography, in the relatively professional biography of St. Gregory of Nyssa on the OCA website: https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2000/01/10/100140-saint-gregory-bishop-of-nyssa

Here is an example of the Coptic Synaxarion, in its profile of one of my favorite martyrs, St. Abanoub: http://www.copticchurch.net/topics/synexarion/abanoub.html

Also, John Sandipoulous collects stories of miracles involving our saints on his website Mystagogy, many of which might seem rather incredible from a Western perspective. All I can say in response to that is that weird things happen in the Eastern churches, but the history of Anglicanism is also filled with miracles.

The book The History of the Orthodox Church by Fr. Constantine Calincos should also be of some use. The Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodoxy is not worth the money. The Catholic Encyclopedia, however, has excellent articles on most of the early Eastern church fathers, albeit with a Roman bias, but by the time you reach someone like St. Gregory Palamas, the polemics have become vitriolic, and you are better off using Wikipedia. Likewise, a pious Roman Catholic lady wrote an exciting, but biased, biography of St. Athanasius. This, and several other items in my library in the public domain, I can send to you.

The Cambridge History of Christianity and the Oxford Handbook of Patristic studies would also be rather good; recently the former was uploaded to Scribd, and it might still be available there. They provide a more rational, scholarly approach, like that of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, who is a professor emeritus at Oxford, or Fr. John Behr, the dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary.

Other than books by Oxbridge, I am not aware of any specifically Anglican treatments of the Fathers, but I have no doubt they exist and are of exceptionally high quality. The erudition of the Anglican divines surpassed that of John Calvin and the other Continental Reformers by far; only some years after Trent would Rome catch up. Thus, we do not find in Anglican liturgy moronic assertions like Calvin’s claim that one could build a galleon with the alleged relics of the cross; a French scientist proved this was pure courtroom rhetoric by a former lawyer in the 19th century when he measured the fragments, with the exception of the massive section of a wing of the cross the Ethiopians possess, and determined they amounted to only 1/3rd the required volume of the cross on which our Lord, God and Savior perished. What one does find are quotes of the fathers, the use of obscure editions of the Bible for verification in the case of our Authorized Version, the translators of which actually included Syriac scholars, almost unheard of in the 17th century, who compared the text of the Peshitta with that of the Vulgate, the Byzantine Textus Receptus and so on, to ensure maximal accuracy. And Cranmer had a remarkable knowledge of the Eastern liturgy, hence the Prayer of the Second Antiphon appearing in the conclusion of the Divine Offices, as did the Non-Juring Episcopalians of Scotland and the North of England, who inserted the Epiklesis from the Divine Liturgy of St. James into their Holy Communion service.

And John Wesley, for his part, was extremely well read both in Eastern soteriology, which he reintroduced to the West, and Eastern liturgics, which apparently did not suit him as much as the Book of Common Prayer. I love both equally, but alas the modern day Methodists apparently do not.

There is an open source liturgy initiative in the UMC; years ago I set to work on a revision of Wesley’s BCP recension, and I think when I complete my modular BCP project, I will complete it as well, but the trick will be getting any Methodist parishes to use it. Perhaps some interested in the ancient-future movement.

 

Note by the way, I meant to state with regards to the fragments of the cross that the Ethiopians claim to possess a large section of it, but they make several unsubstantiated claims and in these cases Article 22 would encourage Anglicans towards a certain caution. Also, the fact that the alleged fragments of the cross are not as substantial as Calvin makes them out to be does not prove their authenticity.

That said I am inclined to believe at least some real fragments of the cross do survive, because its finding by St. Helena during the rebuilding of Jerusalem is well documented, and old execution structures are known to last; there are for example in historic parks in the US gallows and pillories and retired electric chairs and other horrors which are well over a century in age, and the relative lack of lumber in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem would suggest to me that crosses were reused. However, since it subsequently was broken up into splinters, we have lost the chain of custody for it, hence Article 22 warning us of the possibility of vain inventions, for the most repugnant Roman Catholic practice of pilgrimage promotion, which was like tourism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

In like manner, many Anglicans may likewise regard the Hagiographies that are the main biographical record for most Patristic figures, along with their writings, with incredulity, and I accept this on the basis of Article 22. Clearly, any hagiography which encourages us to venerate a saint rather than showing Christ glorified through their life is repugnant, and I find myself continually disturbed by RC devotion to certain saints and mystics which seem to distract from rather than point to our Lord.

 

Anglicans have typically been among the premier patristic scholars, and you might want to check out Robert Grant’s works on the Church Fathers from the mid 20th century.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Grant_(theologian)

 

Oh that looks splendid. Thank you my friend for continuing to connect me with Anglican scholars worth knowing and worth knowing about. There is a large amount of traditional Anglican scholarly lore which is endangered due to all of the attention the liberal heretics are getting, so we are at risk of a scenario where the only well known Anglican scholars might be those involved in the founding of the Church of England and contemporary heretics like Bishops Pike, Spong, and others. It embarrasses me that I cannot recall the name of any of the scholars involved in the production of the Authorized Version other than King James; neither can I recall the names of any of the Non-Jurors I hold in such esteem.

 

I should also add this little gem, cited by @Shane R:

It is available for free online at:
https://archive.org/details/churchinhistory00boot

 

I shall download that. Their current Welcome to the Episcopal Church series is surprisingly decent and inoffensive.