Thursday, November 02, 2006 AD
At the risk of flogging a dead horse...
...could someone please explain to me why All Souls' Day - oops, sorry, I mean the "Commemoration of the Faithful Departed" - is OK, but a Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of the Sacrament of the Altar (or "Corpus Christi", for short) is utterly beyond the Lutheran pale? It just seems a little, y'know... arbitrary.
Update: Actually, fuggeddaboudit. We did this one last year, it turns out, and it appears the new Lutheran Service Book drops what I referred to in a comment as the "commemoration of the departed who were faithful but still somehow - in an interesting twist on Lutheran theology - don't count as saints".
But I think the NT Wright quote from last year bears repeating on an annual basis, as he describes the neither-one-thing-nor-the-other manner in which the Church of England marks All Souls:
Update: Actually, fuggeddaboudit. We did this one last year, it turns out, and it appears the new Lutheran Service Book drops what I referred to in a comment as the "commemoration of the departed who were faithful but still somehow - in an interesting twist on Lutheran theology - don't count as saints".
But I think the NT Wright quote from last year bears repeating on an annual basis, as he describes the neither-one-thing-nor-the-other manner in which the Church of England marks All Souls:
"The sort of hymn you are likely to find sung at All Souls' commemorations these days is probably a piece of woolly Victoriana, hinting at purgatory without really coming out and saying it - which is what the entire commemoration, in its current Anglican mode, does at every point.""Back of the net!", as Alan Partridge would say.
