COVID-19 and the Office

COVID-19 has provided an excellent opportunity with which to explore the more austere and monastic side of the English spiritual patrimony Having just visited my parents in Ballarat and, on returning from Victoria, finding my family required to undertake a two week period of self quarantine, it seemed like a good time to impose a further discipline of praying the offices of Morning and Evening Prayer daily. Having done so for a few days now, the regular rhythm of the prayerbook is starting to sink in, giving a calmness to my daily prayers that is both new and welcome.

The death of Roger Scruton

It is with sadness that I greeted the news, on Monday morning, that Sir Roger Scruton had passed away. In his latter days an organist for a parish church of the Church of England, Scruton had a deep appreciation for the aesthetics of English spirituality, and - despite his public struggle with faith - he, on many occasions defended the importance of the Christian faith and the attitudes and dispositions that cement it in its concrete reality. One can only hope that Scruton's relationship with his eminent student, the Thomist John Haldane, helped him appreciate the importance and centrality of supernatural faith at the heart of the Christian life.

In his struggle against both Marxist revolutions of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: the Soviet revolution in the East and the Gramscian revolution in the West, Scruton lived with great fidelity to his philosophical beliefs, and ended his life with more battlescars than most, some quite fresh. Through it all, he always presented as a sober and thoughtful defence of a traditional way of life that was coherent with the Christian faith against the radical anti-Christian politics of its enemies.

A great Englishman and philosopher has passed away: may we remember him and pray for his soul in the hereafter.

C.S. Lewis on the Ordination of Women

One of the practical influences that lead to Anglicanorum Coetibus and the formation of the Ordinariates of the English spiritual patrimony was the ordination of women to the priesthood of the Church of England.

The following is an article written by C. S. Lewis, recently alluded to by Dr. Gavin Ashendon, that looks at the theological significance of sex (of maleness and femaleness), and the ramifications of such in the ordained priesthood.

http://www.episcopalnet.org/TRACTS/priestesses.html

The conversion of Gavin Ashendon

The conversion of Gavin Ashendon - former chaplain to the Queen - represents a great importation of the English spiritual patrimony into the Catholic Church. Although he has chosen to enter into the Latin rite via the usual rather than the Ordinariate channel, Ashendon's theological personality, which synthesises evangelical vigour with a deep love of the depths of the one holy and apostolic faith, represents something very much like what we in the Ordinariate might hope to embody: spiritual depth, a dignified and sincere approach to liturgy, and a strong evangelical fervour for preaching the Word. A big welcome to Dr. Ashendon: may the Lord bless him in this time and continue to use him to build up the universal Church.

Video of Partick Coffin interviewing Dr. Ashendon shortly after his conversion.