On Friday, December 9, the Episcopal News Service published an article about educational materials related to the blessing of same-gender unions that have recently been made available by the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music. Read the article, or go directly to the referenced educational materials or press release.
The Rev. Keri Aubert
Blessings Project Manager
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En el transcurso del trabajo de la SCLM para responder a la Resolución C-056 de la Convención General 2009 y la bendición de las relaciones del mismo género, hemos decidido que la iglesia se podría beneficiar de algunos recursos para preparar a las parejas del mismo género. El informe ofrece algunas reflexiones sobre las diferencias en la preparación de parejas del mismo género en comparación con la preparación de parejas de géneros opuestos. De todas maneras, el informe declara:
Los recursos pastorales en este ensayo son provistos para asistir al clero y a los laicos profesionales que preparan a las parejas del mismo género para la bendición de su relación, utilizando la liturgia. La expectativa de dicha preparación es equivalente al requerimiento canónico que parejas que se preparan para casarse reciben instrucción ” sobre la naturaleza, significado y propósito del Santo Matrimonio” ( Canon I.18.2 [e]).
La preparación es similar para todas las parejas, ya sean del mismo género o de géneros opuestos. La mayoría de los clérigos y laicos profesionales que actualmente ofrecen preparación prematrimonial a parejas de géneros opuestos están mas que capacitados para trabajar con parejas del mismo género.
En esta estación de Adviento cuando nos preparamos para recibir la llegada de Cristo, les invitamos a reflexionar sobre su propia experiencia de ” estar preparados”. ¿ Como fue usted preparado para el matrimonio o para la bendición del mismo? ¿Qué preparación o consejería usted recibió? ¿ Que usted recuerda, ya sea hace un mes o 25 años atrás- que se quedo impregnado en usted? O si usted es una persona que prepara a las parejas, ¿Que es lo más importante para usted? ¿Que funciona y que no?
Luego en la primavera un informe completo de la SCLM será publicado más adelante para la Convención General y los recursos recomendados serán parte de este informe. De todas maneras, les invitamos a involucrarse ahora con sus propias experiencias en la preparación de relaciones para toda la vida, ya sean del mismo género- o de géneros opuestos-
In the course of the SCLM’s work to respond to the 2009 General Convention Resolution C-056 and the blessings of same-gender relationships we decided that the church might benefit from some resources for preparing same-gender couples. The report goes on to offer some insights into some of the differences of preparing same-gender couples from preparing different-gender couples. However, the reports also states:
The pastoral resources in this essay are provided to assist clergy and lay professionals who are preparing same-gender couples for a blessing of their relationship, using the liturgy. The expectation of such preparation is equivalent to the canonical requirement that couples preparing for marriage receive instruction “as to the nature, meaning, and purpose of Holy Matrimony” (Canon I.18.2[e]).
Preparation is similar for all couples, whether same-gender or different-gender. Most clergy and lay professionals who currently offer premarital preparation to different-gender couples are more than capable of working with same-gender couples.
In this season of Advent when we are to be preparing for Christ’s coming, we invite you to reflect upon your own experience of “being prepared.” How were you prepared for a marriage or for a blessing? What preparation or counseling did you receive? What do you remember, whether it was 1 month ago or 25 years ago – what sticks with you? Or if you are someone who prepares couples, what is most important to you? What works or does not work, so to speak?
Later this spring the full SCLM report will be published for General Convention and the recommended resources will be part of that report. However, we invite you to engage now with your own experiences preparing for either same- or different-gender life-long relationships.
In January 2011 we posted here the guiding summary documents developed for the theological and liturgical work of the Commission on blessing same-gender relationships. As the work proceeded, those two documents were refined. You can find the final versions at the following links:
We invite your participation in this dialogue. To post a comment, your first and last name and email address are required. Your name will be published; your email address will not. The first time you post, a moderator will need to approve your submission; after that, your comments will appear instantly. Our rules for posting are fairly simple: express yourself with courtesy, civility, and respect for others, whether or not you agree with them.
On Monday, October 17, 2011, the Episcopal News Service published a comprehensive article about the work of the Standing Commission on Liturgy on same-gender blessings. The article, which includes both a history of this work and an update on recent actions by the Commission, is available here.
Keri Aubert
Blessings Project Manager
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We invite your participation in this dialogue. To post a comment, your first and last name and email address are required. Your name will be published; your email address will not. The first time you post, a moderator will need to approve your submission; after that, your comments will appear instantly. Our rules for posting are fairly simple: Express yourself with courtesy, civility, and respect for others, whether or not you agree with them.
It’s great to hear from people who have appreciated keeping the commemorations and reading the blog.
While the official period of trial use has concluded, you may continue to use the resource. Having gone through a full year, we have received comments on all of the commemorations and so have feedback that will inform the Calendar Committee and the Commission in our report to the July 2012 General Convention.
The online survey will be available until the end of August to receive additional comments on any commemoration. The survey is available in English and in Spanish.
Update: 9/15/11: Santas, Santoscontinues to be available on the General Convention website. You can access the English version through the Archives on this blog – the commemorations were posted from July 2010 through June 2011.
The SCLM continues to receive comments through this blog.
The official year of trial use of Holy Women, Holy Men concluded on June 30. Many thanks to our blogging team who created the posts, and to all of our readers and all of you who commented on the commemorations.
This summer the Calendar Committee of the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music is continuing its review of your comments and responses to the online survey. The committee is preparing recommendations for the commission to review at our October meeting, and a public report of those recommendations would come after that meeting.
Welcome to the Holy Women, Holy Men blog! We invite you to read about this commemoration, use the collect and lessons in prayer, whether individually or in corporate worship, and then tell us what you think. For more information about this project, click here.
About this commemoration
If theology is “thinking about faith” and arranging those thoughts in some systematic order, then Irenaeus has been rightly recognized by Catholics and Protestants alike as the first great systematic theologian.
There is considerable doubt about the year of Irenaeus’ birth; estimates vary from 97 to 160. It is certain that he learned the Christian faith in Ephesus at the feet of the venerable Polycarp, who in turn had known John the Evangelist. Some years before 177, probably while Irenaeus was still in his teens, he carried the tradition of Christianity to Lyons in southern France.
His name means “the peaceable one”—and suitably so. The year 177 brought hardship to the mission in Gaul. Persecution broke out, and a mounting tide of heresy threatened to engulf the Church. Irenaeus, by now a presbyter, was sent to Rome to mediate the dispute regarding Montanism, which the Bishop of Rome, Eleutherus, seemed to embrace. While Irenaeus was on this mission, the aged Bishop of Lyons, Pothinus, died in prison during a local persecution. When Irenaeus returned to Lyons, he was elected bishop to succeed Pothinus.
Irenaeus’ enduring fame rests mainly on a large treatise, entitled The Refutation and Overthrow of Gnosis, Falsely So-Called, usually shortened to Against Heresies. In it, Irenaeus describes the major Gnostic systems, thoroughly, clearly, and often with biting humor. It is one of our chief sources of knowledge about Gnosticism. He also makes a case for Christianity which has become a classic, resting heavily on Scripture, and on the continuity between the teaching of the Apostles and the teaching of bishops, generation after generation, especially in the great see cities. Against the Gnostics, who despised the flesh and exalted the spirit, he stressed two doctrines: that of the creation as good, and that of the resurrection of the body.
A late and uncertain tradition claims that he suffered martyrdom, about 202.
Collects
I Almighty God, who didst uphold thy servant Irenaeus with strength to maintain the truth against every blast of vain doctrine: Keep us, we beseech thee, steadfast in thy true religion, that in constancy and peace we may walk in the way that leadeth to eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
II Almighty God, you upheld your servant Irenaeus with strength to maintain the truth against every blast of vain doctrine: Keep us, we pray, steadfast in your true religion, that in constancy and peace we may walk in the way that leads to eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Welcome to the Holy Women, Holy Men blog! We invite you to read about this commemoration, use the collect and lessons in prayer, whether individually or in corporate worship, and then tell us what you think. For more information about this project, click here.
Hill's grave at Holy Apostles, Oneida
About this commemoration
Born in 1834, Cornelius Hill was the first great Oneida chief to be born in Wisconsin, after the United States government had forced the Oneida peoples west from New York State.
As a young man, Hill spent several years at Nashotah House, where the Episcopal priests educated him and formed him in the faith, worship, and tradition of the Church. Hill was greatly respected among his people for his intelligence, courage, and ability to lead, and by his teenage years, he had already been made an Oneida chief, named Onan-gwat-go, or “Big Medicine.”
Hill’s great mentor was the Reverend Edward A. Goodnough, a missionary and teacher who had worked among the Oneidas from 1853-1890. Hill defended Goodnough when the latter resisted land allotment among the chief families as the solution to their poverty and conflicts. Like Goodnough, Hill was a staunch opponent of allotment, and he opposed Chief Daniel Bread, his elder chief who saw allotment as an inevitable reality. Upon Bread’s death Hill took on a great role in the tribal politics of his people. In 1874 he drafted a petition to the legislature of the State of New York calling on them to respect Oneida claims under state treaties, particularly fishing rights which had been revoked and which led to economic hardship for Oneidas remaining in the area.
When land allotment became a legal reality under the Dawes General Act of 1893, Hill turned to the Church, and in 1895 he was ordained an Episcopal deacon. In 1903 he became the first Oneida to be ordained a priest. At the ordination, he repeated his vows in the Oneida language.
Hill saw Christian faith as a way to help his people grapple with the profound and rapid changes which faced them, and the authority of his ordination enhanced his ability to be a bridge between Oneida and white culture. He is to this day revered by his people, and many shrines to him exist in the state of Wisconsin.
Collects
I Everliving Lord of the universe, our loving God, who raised up thy priest Cornelius Hill, last hereditary chief of the Oneida nation, to shepherd and defend his people against attempts to scatter them in the wilderness: Help us, like him, to be dedicated to truth and honor, that we may come to that blessed state thou hast prepared for us; through Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
II Everliving Lord of the universe, our loving God, you raised up your priest Cornelius Hill, last hereditary chief of the Oneida nation, to shepherd and defend his people against attempts to scatter them in the wilderness: Help us, like him, to be dedicated to truth and honor, that we may come to that blessed state you have prepared for us; through Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
Welcome to the Holy Women, Holy Men blog! We invite you to read about this commemoration, use the collect and lessons in prayer, whether individually or in corporate worship, and then tell us what you think. For more information about this project, click here.
About this commemoration
Isabel Hapgood, a lifelong and faithful Episcopalian, was a force behind ecumenical relations between Episcopalians and Russian Orthodoxy in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century. Born in Massachusetts of a wealthy family, Hapgood was educated in private schools. She was a superior student with a particular talent for the study of languages. In addition to the standard fare of the time—Latin and French—she also mastered most of the Romantic and Germanic languages of Europe and most notably Russian, Polish, and Church Slavonic. She possessed the particular gift of being able to translate the subtleties of Russian into equally subtle English. Her translations made the works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, and Chekov, among others, available to English readers. She was also a prolific journalist writing regularly for The Nation, and The New York Evening Post, and was a contributor to The New York Times, Harper’s Weekly, The Century, and The Atlantic Monthly.
Between 1887-1889, Hapgood traveled extensively through Russia. That visit cemented a lifelong love of Russia, its language and culture, and particularly the Russian Orthodox Church. She would make return visits to Russia almost every year for the rest of her life.
Her love of Russian Orthodoxy and its great Divine Liturgy led her to seek the permission of the hierarchy to translate the rites into English. Hapgood’s already established reputation as a sensitive translator certainly contributed, but in the meantime she had developed close relationships with Russian clergy and musicians at all levels of the hierarchy. The work, Service Book of the Holy-Orthodox Catholic Church, took eleven years to complete. It received support of the Russian Orthodox bishops in North America, particularly Archbishop Tikhon who was later to give Hapgood’s work a second blessing when he became Patriarch of Moscow.
Isabel Florence Hapgood is faithfully recalled among the Russian Orthodox in North America for her contribution to their common life, her desire for closer relations between Russian Orthodox and Episcopalians, and for her making the liturgical treasures of their tradition available to the English-speaking world.
Collects
I Loving God, we offer thanks for the work and witness of Isabel Florence Hapgood, who introduced the Divine Liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church to English-speaking Christians, and encouraged dialogue between Anglicans and Orthodox. Guide us as we build on the foundation that she gave us, that all may be one in Christ; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, unto ages of ages. Amen.
II Loving God, we thank you for the work and witness of Isabel Florence Hapgood, who introduced the Divine Liturgy of the Russian Orthodox Church to English-speaking Christians, and encouraged dialogue between Anglicans and Orthodox. Guide us as we build on the foundation that she gave us, that all may be one in Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, to the ages of ages. Amen.
