Pursuant to the earlier post - I've been reading the comments on Damian Thompson's piece about Graham Kendrick (and I told you they were scary!). If I were to reply in that exalted place, where they know they're all right and everybody else is wrong, which I can't and wouldn't even if I could, I would be saying something like this:
Dear fellow Christians in the Roman Catholic Church:
We may not have unity in the Anglican commnion, but we've got most of the best hymns, especially if you take the great Methodist hymn composers (the Wesleys) into account as well as those of the CofE such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Ireland and even Sidney Nicholson, founder of our Royal School of Church Music.
But shouldn't this ongoing argument, sorry, discussion be about the appropriateness (or otherwise) of "high" or "low" music at different moments of a service? I have always had a sneaking feeling that the only reason we (and you) allow music at all at the most holy moments of the Mass is that otherwise the congregation would chatter among themselves.
In the CofE we don't do "Ita Missa est" - we have the children in from Sunday School to tell us what they've been doing, and we usually recess to something fairly bouncy, like "Shine, Jesus, Shine", and we do it for them, because we think that Nun danket alle Gott might be just a wee bit over their heads seeing as how they are only five or thereabouts. And yes, there is a bit of arm-waving, and even mild leaping, because happy, bright children have that effect on you.
But if anybody expected me, as a choir person, to sing that song during Communion, they would have a war on their hands.
Actually, I don't dislike "Shine" that much (and I hope Brother David isn't reading this!) . There is a lot that is much worse out there, lurking in dark corners. Of its type it is a very acceptable example, unless of course it's wailed AT the congregation by earnest young persons with pimples and that most execrable of all instruments that neither you nor we have yet had the sense to ban, viz. and to wit, the geetar.
The real problem with music, any music, in church is that it can very powerfully engage us in realms which might be described as spiritual, uplifting and ennobling. But it can for that very reason create emotional climates which can be distracting, and the church has from time to time in its history felt so threatened by such beguiling distractions that it has sought to limit or even ban them (cf the Council of Trent, or the Russian Orthodox Church.)
Another thing we try not to do in the CofE is sneer at Christians who share the same faith but happen to have different bosses in the boardroom. Our liturgy closely parallels yours: when yours changes, ours changes. Your bishops and our bishops make sure of it, because the ultimate prize will be reconciliation.
But there is still too much patriarchal garbage in the way. There are serious issues to resolve, which won't be resolved if we keep hurling insults at each other.
We don't have "priestesses" in the CofE: we have clergy who happen to be women (50% of humankind). We call them deacons, and priests, and one day, God willing, bishops and archbishops. Many of us, though sadly not all, do not distinguish between God's anointed servants by whether they've got funny little dangly bits or not but by their wisdom, their compassion, their godliness, the strength of their will, the power of their words, and their capacity for spiritual leadership.
Just the qualities that you'd expect from a bloke in a frock, really.
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