Hacker News Reader

Comment by cbfrench | Hacker News Reader

I’m an Anglican priest, and I can attest to this! We used to buy the Eucharistic hosts produced by the Institute for the Deaf at Sint-Michielsgestel in Holland (via our local church supplier). They were lovely. The priest’s hosts had a variety of designs (e.g., the Crucifix, the IHS monogram, even the Pelican). Their texture was nice: not too thick, not too gummy (less likely to stick to the roof of your mouth!). Plus, the proceeds from the sales of the hosts went to supporting the work of the Institute.

Alas, sometime in the past year-and-a-half, the Institute stopped producing hosts, so we now have to use Cavanagh. They’re fine, as far as it goes, but a little too chewy for my taste, and the only design available is a cross.

But it was always nice knowing that the bread we were using at the Eucharist was helping to support a worthy cause. It seemed to reinforce what the Eucharist is about in the first place.

View on HN

> I’m an Anglican priest

HN never ceases to amaze me, especially with the vocations of its users.

As a Catholic who was studying to be a priest a long time ago (but that didn't end up happening), I've learned that in most tech circles, just mentioning anything even tangential to religion is a quick way to get shunned, or at minimum turn a conversation pretty awkward.

Therefore unless explicitly asked or warranted, it rarely is mentioned.

I have a very different experience. In all tech companies I worked at (Bay Area) there were very many Indian immigrants, most of whom were religious. In fact, I have never met an atheist from India.

We would frequently discuss religion, philosophy, religious traditions - especially after work or on business trips.

I must add that I am an atheist, which was never an obstacle to our discussions.

Now you have. Lol

Oh haha, that's great! Nice to meet you! I am curious... are you a first generation atheist or were brought up in a non-religious environment?

Now you have met another one. Although I am a migrant in Europe and not in US.

I work at a Big Tech company (not necessarily a FANG though) and there's a weekly Rosary zoom session that the local Catholic group runs. It's really wholesome and fun! You just have to sort of keep your head down long enough, and then you'll realize there's actually a lot of us out there. The death of Religion for millennials has been greatly exaggerated.

Depressing though very depressing and concerning.

Normally modern companies are also sometimes a safe space for all the discrimination happening because of religion.

Like the campus of Aramco were you can be more lax. Or were homophobia is not tolerated etc.

COVID also showed how problematic it is if people just accept some believe system without expecting any logic.

If people don't question basic and stupid religios beliefs they also tend not to question real issues in society.

I think anyone still a catholic after all of the news stories about priests either has fully questioned their religion and come to their own conclusions or has decided to never question their religion at all.

The rampant sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests is a function of a couple things, but chiefly among them was the cultural moment and who, exactly, was entering Seminary at that time. You can trace back the overwhelming majority of abusers to specific cohorts. Not trying to get conspiratorial about it, it’s just a fact that this was something boomer priests did and they all joined the Church during the sexual revolution in the 1970s.

Not really sure I have a point other than to say modern Catholics are quite aware of what people think about the Church and waffle between being dismissive (because critics genuinely don’t understand it) or reactionary.

Well, personally, I'm not concerned as much about the actual low level priests. You'll get a few bad guys no matter what you're doing in an organization that big. It's the shuffling them around after being caught and not going to the police when they knew. If the middle and the top also have the bad guys you have to start questioning what the organization is really about. And I struggle to believe that it's just one generation of priests that was bad while all the other ones were perfect celibates, to be honest. This was just the generation that ran into media that couldn't be silenced.

> I'm an anglican priest

> reinforce what the Eucharist is about in the first place

What would that be? I mean to you. I am Catholic and I am entirely aware of what it is about to us. I am not trying to dunk on you or start an argument.

Remembering and embodying the ideals of Christ, by loving your neighbor and taking care of your community?

Catholic commenter is probably alluding to transubstantiation, the metaphysical transformation of bread and wine into Christ's body and blood, and asking whether that's also an Anglican thing. That's my interpretation.

For me, what’s it’s primarily “about,” of course, is the making present in an unbloodied manner the eternal and propitious Sacrifice of Christ, “proclaim[ing] the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26). And in the Eucharist we receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ truly present under the species of bread and wine. I would imagine that our Eucharistic theologies are generally not dissimilar.

But what I meant by that particular comment was that there was a fitting consonance between using bread whose proceeds went toward helping those in need and the works of love and mercy to which the Eucharistic Lord calls us.

Edit: And I certainly didn’t read any dunking into your question! Anglican Eucharistic theology is sort of all over the place. The vast majority of Anglicans adhere to some understanding of the Real Presence (and the Anglican theological tradition has generally tended to exclude memorialist understandings of the Eucharist, fwiw). I tend to have a very “Anglo-Catholic” sacramental theology.

With full respect for your freedom of conscience, should you ever wish to discern whether to become Catholic the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter[1] makes retaining many if not the majority of your Anglo-Catholic traditions possible. They permit married priests and use a liturgy that is strongly influenced by the Book of Common Prayer while being in full communion with Rome.

In fact, the chaplain for Catholic Answers is an Anglican priest who converted[2]. I find the segments where he’s on quite interesting. Many people are surprised to learn that there are Catholic priests who are married with children!

[1] https://ordinariate.net/

[2] https://www.catholic.com/profile/fr-samuel-keyes

Serious question, but isn't anything that is a "married priest" not actual catholicism, as it would be recognized and approved by church HQ in Rome?

I'm confused because it does seem somehow officially okay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Ordinariate_of_the_Ch...

Not answering your question but Patricia Lockwood (one of my favorite authors) wrote a very amusing memoir called Priestdaddy about growing up with a father who was a Catholic priest (having converted from Anglicanism I believe). The book also doesn't really answer your question, but it's fantastic despite the awful name.

Clerical Celibacy is a disciple rather than a dogma. It is especially prominent in the Latin rite. There are other rites in the Roman Catholic Church and some of them have married priests. When priests convert to Catholicism they are usually allowed to remain priests if they wish. They often have to be actually ordained. If they were married and ordained both stick. Neither is reversible. If they are married and "ordained" they can still be ordained.

Married priest are rare in the Roman Catholic Church but that is only one of the 27 Catholic Churches. There are various Eastern Catholic Churches under the Pope with their own particular laws (and many have married priests).

It's a totally reasonable thing to be confused about. I was baptized at a Catholic parish as a child and I only relatively recently learned of the existence of many other rites besides the Latin one. Here[1] is an article by a canonist going into some detail. The short version is there are many churches in full communion with Rome that retain their own traditions, including married priests. Theoretically even a Latin rite priest could have the discipline of celibacy dispensed, but I've never even heard of that actually happening[2]. I wouldn't be gobsmacked if it has though.

[1] https://canonlawmadeeasy.wordpress.com/2007/09/20/are-they-r...

[2] Edit: I think it is sometimes done for laicized ("defrocked") priests, but such persons wouldn't be permitted any active priestly ministry, except for a few rare exceptions like someone in immediate danger of death asking the laicized priest to hear his confession.

My neighbor across the street is a Catholic priest and the pastor at a local Catholic parish. He was married and ordained as a priest in the Episcopal church, then he and his wife had several children. His whole family later converted to the Catholic Faith; he was given the options of being ordained as a priest in the Catholic Church or finding a new path in life as a layman, and chose the former. He and his wife had several more children since then: lovely family, very much "actual Catholicism".

The Roman Catholic church has constituent churches in which married priesthood is the typical path. The Latin Catholic church, which, with over a billion members, is the largest constituent of the Roman Catholic church, only ordains single men to the priesthood. In all apostolic churches (I believe), an ordained priest cannot marry after ordination without some kind of special dispensation. Also, both Catholic and Orthodox only ordain celibate men to the episcopacy.

However, there is no rule that this is the case. Any man can be ordained a priest or bishop, married or not.

Only since 24 June 1967[1] (there may be ~75+yo married Roman Catholic priests still walking around), and there are exceptions.[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacerdotalis_caelibatus

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerical_celibacy_in_the_Catho...

> Serious question, but isn’t anything that is a “married priest” not actual catholicism, as it would be recognized and approved by church HQ in Rome?

Married priests (that is, people who are priests and simultaneously are married) are and always have been fine with Rome. But, since about the 14th Century, (as a measure to address a number of scandals that were occurring that had the common theme of married priests favoring, or being seen to favor, their family over their clerical duties) it has normally been impossible for new married priests to come to exist in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, since priests have never been allowed to get* married in the Catholic Church, and, as a matter of discipline (not a doctrinal rule) married men have since then not been regularly ordained priests in the Latin Rite (though they continue to be in the Eastern Rite particular churches that are in union with Rome, of which there are more now than there were when the Latin Rite adopted the celibacy discipline.)

But, because this is a discipline and not a doctrinal rule about the validity of the sacrament, exceptions can be and have been granted; one of the more common ones is that married who have been ordained as priests in the Espicopal Church convert to Catholicism, they are generally permitted to be ordained as priests (after the usual preparation) in the Latin Rite despite being married.

* The rule was first stated by a Pope then, but not adopted in the form of canon law until quite a while later (apparently, the 1917 Code of Canon Law), but was accepted as the practical norm prior to that formal adoption, so its hard to date precisely.

For me, the primary obstacle to my joining the Ordinariate is the requirement of absolute (rather than conditional) ordinations and confirmations for people coming over from Anglicanism. To me, submitting to that would be an implicit admission that I was effectively just “playing church” for all the years I’ve been a priest. It would be to acknowledge that the sacraments (baptism excepted) that I’ve administered to my people were in some sense a sham.

And yes, I’ve read Lumen Gentium, Ut Unum Sint, Unitatis Redintegratio, etc., so I know that the current position of the Vatican is somewhat more nuanced than it used to be w/r/t the grace operative among those ecclesial bodies deemed to be in “impaired communion” with Rome. There is an acknowledgement that grace (perhaps even salvific grace) is present in the sacramental acts of non-Roman and non-Orthodox churches, but it’s never really clarified what, exactly, that would mean from an ecumenical standpoint. Nonetheless, the situation doesn’t seem to have developed much since Apostolicae Curae: Anglican orders remain “absolutely null and utterly void” in the eyes of Rome. I think there are serious theological flaws with that bull, and those flaws are reified in the handling of Anglicans entering the Roman communion under the Ordinariate. It seems fundamentally anti-ecumenical. (And, I would note, there’s no reason why these ordinations couldn’t be conferred conditionally; there are at least a couple of examples of Anglicans priests—such as Fr. John Jay Hughes—who were so ordained.)

After much research and prayer, I remain convinced that my orders are valid, and I cannot in good conscience consent to the repetition of two sacraments of character (namely, confirmation and ordination). I don’t begrudge anyone who examines the case and arrives at a different conclusion, who feels that the imperative of full and visible unity outweighs the qualms that I have. The situation in the Church generally is such a mess these days that we all have to pray, think, and hope for the best.

So, that’s the major issue. Beyond that, I have some objections to a few of the papal claims. Plus, I’m not convinced there is much of a future for the Ordinariate. I’ll be surprised if it makes it a full generation before it disappears or is effectively suppressed, as the TLM communities have been. Maybe I’m wrong about that, and I sincerely hope I am, but I’ve gotten that sense from conversations with folks in the Ordinariate (including folks who are close to the hierarchy).

> For me, the primary obstacle to my joining the Ordinariate is the requirement of absolute (rather than conditional) ordinations and confirmations for people coming over from Anglicanism. To me, submitting to that would be an implicit admission that I was effectively just “playing church” for all the years I’ve been a priest. It would be to acknowledge that the sacraments (baptism excepted) that I’ve administered to my people were in some sense a sham.

I can see where you're coming from and I bet I'd feel the same if I were in your shoes. I'm just a lay Catholic who likes to read, but I also can't see any reason a conditional conferral of those sacraments should be a problem. Of course as a somewhat educated lay Catholic I'm obliged to believe what the Church teaches with respect to Anglican orders, but as you say I think there's some nuance there and I don't claim to understand the theological technicalities. Nevertheless, I think it's fair to say that we both believe Apostolic succession is of vital importance to the Church that Jesus personally founded and that we're both members of.

I would however urge you to never view your current ministry as in any respect a sham, regardless of where God guides you. I do believe that some of the goofier Episcopalians are playing Church, especially the ones ordaining women and otherwise going all in on scandal of various sorts, but that's not you. Obviously I don't know you, but based on charity and your other comments I'm inclined to believe that God has conferred real and significant graces on you to aid in your ministry.

> After much research and prayer, I remain convinced that my orders are valid, and I cannot in good conscience consent to the repetition of two sacraments of character (namely, confirmation and ordination).

Given those conditions, your position is entirely theologically sound to my understanding and I wouldn't dream of telling you to go against your conscience. I'm no apologist so I won't try to change your mind, but know that I'll pray for you and that I wish you the most successful possible ministry. I'll also pray that the Catholic hierarchy understands and properly addresses the concerns you have and share with many other Anglicans.

> Beyond that, I have some objections to a few of the papal claims

There's a fair bit the various Popes have said that I also disagree with where I'm free to do so.

> Plus, I’m not convinced there is much of a future for the Ordinariate. I’ll be surprised if it makes it a full generation before it disappears or is effectively suppressed, as the TLM communities have been.

Yes, the current Pope's desire to enforce uniformity at the expense of unity strikes me as grossly imprudent and a huge step back from the achievements of his two immediate predecessors. It would appear that some of the hierarchy have a paranoid fantasy of sedevacantists hiding behind every copy of the 1962 Roman missal. All I can do is pray for him and them and accept that perhaps they have knowledge that I don't that makes these apparently wrong decisions make sense. But in any event, popes come and go—it's the magisterium that endures. That's not to dismiss the reality that the successor of Peter is the visible head of the Church, but I'm confident that Latin will not only retain its place in the Latin rite, but its role will continue to grow, by the grace of God.

I'm a little surprised that the Ordinariate is getting caught up in that panic though. It's indisputable that no Anglican seeking communion with Rome can possibly be a sedevacantist. Similarly I'm not aware of any movement to suppress any of the eastern rites. But there's much that I'm not aware of, so take that with a grain of salt.

God bless you.

>I also can't see any reason a conditional conferral of those sacraments should be a problem.

Honestly, I do understand where Rome is coming from on this question. There is a sufficient diversity in Anglican sacramental theology regarding the priesthood that it probably makes sense from Rome's side of the table to insist upon ordination de novo for every Anglican priest coming over. It saves the trouble of having to conduct an investigation of the circumstances of every Anglican ordination. Plus, with some of the changes in the Episcopal Church and the Church of England in the past fifty years, I do think there are valid questions (no pun intended) about the status of some of those ordinations. (I'm in a jurisdiction that has, thankfully, avoided those problems.) I just wish there was some flexibility in making a determination about whether or not a conditional ordination is warranted in some cases.

>Nevertheless, I think it's fair to say that we both believe Apostolic succession is of vital importance to the Church that Jesus personally founded and that we're both members of.

Absolutely. And it's a mark of real ecumenical progress over the past century that we can affirm that we are indeed both members of the Church that Christ founded--even if we're in a state of imperfect communion.

>I'm no apologist so I won't try to change your mind, but know that I'll pray for you and that I wish you the most successful possible ministry.

I truly appreciate your prayers and your kind and charitable comments. Be assured of my prayers as well. I wish more of these conversations went this way rather than devolving into opportunities to score argumentative points, which often seems to happen. As I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate more and more the fact that we're probably approaching a point where many of the less-significant divisions among "small-c catholics" (i.e., orthodox Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans, etc.) will fade away as we lose the luxury of clinging to what separates us. And I do believe the Petrine See will necessarily play an essential role in the future unity of the Church, whatever that looks like.

I do hope that the Ordinariate continues to exist and to thrive. The Anglican patrimony has much to offer Rome, and the Roman tradition has much to offer in terms of correcting Anglicanism and bringing it back into the historical mainstream of the Western Catholic tradition. I'm convinced that tradition was never lost in Anglicanism; it simply became somewhat submerged (which Unitatis Redintegratio 13 acknowledges).

A prayer from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer (American) that I often pray: "O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Saviour, the Prince of Peace; Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions. Take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatsoever else may hinder us from godly union and concord: that as there is but one Body and one Spirit, and one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

That line about "lay[ing] to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions" always strikes me. May those unhappy divisions cease. Thanks again for a good conversation. And God bless you, too!

I don't have much to add to the conversation, but as an Anabaptist (Mennonite), it is great to see various denominations getting along in a manner expected of us. It warms my heart, and gives me hope, that the brotherhood of God's children is alive and well.

Well, HN is not for flame wars or religious dispute. And I don't think it would be very effective.

More seriously, I think there is still hope for a full reunification. The Miaphysite heresy was resolved in 1990 after 1549 years. The Great Schism could go another 500 on that track record, and the protestants another 1000. At the rate things are going though, most denominations will just disappear from evaporation and increasingly lax doctrine long before that.

> most denominations will just disappear from evaporation and increasingly lax doctrine long before that.

Curious about this statement. Are you saying that doctrinal purity is required? I would have thought that Anglicanism especially tolerated an incredibly wide set of viewpoints. I still recall a one time Bishop of Durham saying that we had no right to insist on the veracity of the Virgin Birth. Is doctrinal laxity something measurable or simply a complaint the orthodox make when their fellow believers have moved away from them but are simply in the process of coalescing around a new set of principles?

I think purity and lack of purity are both required for a religion to be a successful meme.

To much purity and the religion faces a "no true scotsman" decline resulting in schisms and deconversion

To little, and it becomes too diluted to hold any significance.

The way a religious macromeme manages the level of purity in an evolving social environment is natural selection at work.

I mean relative to their own orthodoxy. Doctrinal laxity is a process that once started has never ended. Very quickly you end up with no doctrine at all and then people start to wonder why they’re getting up early on the weekend. Look at the Methodists, they’ve had two schisms (or one drawn-out schism? I’m not sure) in the last two years.

>HN is not for flame wars or religious dispute. And I don't think it would be very effective.

Sure, I would agree with that wholeheartedly. Just based off of previous experience I've had on here mentioning any facet of religion, has resulted in an overwhelmingly negative outcome, to the point of irrationality. The context was in how to get a desired outcome without resorting to legal action[1], I thought it was fairly innocuous. I wasn't exactly exposing "You need to think like I do on XYZ.", but there was a bizarre sort of backlash that resulted.

If I had to guess, perhaps the commenting audience that article drew in was a bit less welcoming than this one? However, I did see a few flame-y comments in here as well, that got greyed out. It's hard to really get a feel for the general audience on this site. It's not a Christian forum, but it's also not /r/atheism, either.

Overall, I'm just glad when I see responses that aren't purposefully malicious, you know? It's much easier to be mean to people than to be nice. It was refreshing to see people be nice to one another, even though they disagree on so many issues.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32194373#32195842

Agreed! And mad respect for the Anabaptist tradition. The nonviolent witness of the peace churches has been a powerful spiritual and theological influence for me.

Not to speak for an Anglican, but the 39 Articles state:

XXVIII. Of the Lord's Supper.

The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another, but rather it is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ's death: insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the Bread which we break is a lpartaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.

Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by Holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.

The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner. And the mean whereby the Body of Christ is received and eaten in the Supper, is Faith.

The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was not by Christ's ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.

Of course, the real question is what status the 39 Articles have in Anglican theology. They’re not a confessional document in the same way as the confessions you find in Lutheran or Calvinist traditions. (That tends not to be the Anglican style of doing theology, which tends to be much less systematic.) That isn’t to say they’re not instructive, just that their status as an authoritative statement is vexed and somewhat dependent on jurisdiction. They’re a part of the tradition, but they need to be contextualized alongside the rest of the tradition to be understood and valued properly, I believe.

A better guide to our Eucharistic theology is the Book of Common Prayer. (Really, Books of Common Prayer, since each national church has its own.) Our Eucharistic liturgies tend to emphasize a “high” view of what transpires in the Mass.

> I am Catholic and I am entirely aware of what it is about to us.

Well, can you enlighten the rest of us?

hoc facite in Meam commemorationem

Of course, He spoke a Galilean dialect of Aramaic, but even in clumsy translation to any language it remains a strong candidate for the most brilliant and, simultaneously, the most poetic idea ever spoken aloud.

D: That's no good. I wonder why they quit.

If I might inject a tangent: I was dismayed when LaserMonks, the laser printer toner cartridge recycler, went out of business some years back.

I'd much rather buy products from non-profits and worker co-ops than from corporations who don't have the same values or motivations.

Idk what you talking about , it all tastes like flesh to me

Why are you reading hn?

Shouldn't all the stories here should lead you to a different path?

Questioning rationally your beliefs?

The presumption of these questions is astonishing. You know nothing about me, and certainly not the extent to which I’ve “rationally questioned” my beliefs. (Of course, I recognize the laughably invidious premise of your question, which is that, had I truly and “rationally” done so, I would cease to be a Christian. Give me a break.)

A recommendation: Try practicing a little intellectual humility. It will get you farther with people. Have a good one.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com