Recently I have posted two concepts that resulted in replies of strong rebuke. Understandable as what I professed is not popular in today’s world. So be it. This morning ( Feb. 21) I read the below post which affirms - at least for me, in part- the vantage point of some of our brothers and sisters who adhere to the ideas as a result of the European Reformation and why mutual understanding may be so difficult. Am I misunderstanding this? I profess to have no theological wisdom but I will re- reread this article for clarity and post it to encourage discussion. "To a Catholic, faith is not simply an act of the mind, that is a matter of ideology or thought (concepts) or belief or trust, though it is usually mistaken for these things. Faith is a mode of perception, a sense like sight or hearing or touch and as real and actual as these, but a spiritual rather than a bodily sense. (The Protestants, [Marshall McLuhan] found in his research, had decided to regard faith in terms of ideas and concepts. Their decision meant that they had, in terms of the trivium, hitched their fortunes to dialectic, and abandoned the old alliance of rhetoric and grammar to which the Church still resolutely adhered.)"
The changes in church praxis and doctrine, brought about during the period of reform, now labeled The Reformation, were the result of changes in our understanding of the teaching of the Apostles, as to be found in the New Testament Scriptures. St. Paul, in particular, set forth ideas concerning the how and why and who, of salvation. (Salvation by faith, and not works etc.) It was a renewed understanding of those Apostolic 'ideas' that renewed The Church in better understanding The Faith of the apostles. If the church is to remain Apostolic it must obviously 'believe' in Apostolic concepts and 'trust' in them, rather than be blown by the winds of doctrines merely found progressively fashionable in previous periods of church history, (such as Mariology, purgatory, works of supererogation, obligatory pennance, etc), but by then insisted upon as tenets of the 'true Catholic faith'. Much of this 'periodically fashionable' theological church clutter was cleared out of the Anglican attic and sent to the dump, while much of it remained in the Roman Catholic living room as well used 'faith' furniture, mostly because it had for 'Catholics' so much sentimental value. Some of these 'Roman Catholic heirlooms' still decorate the 'living room faith' of many Anglo-Catholics today, most being seemingly unaware that few of these patinated antiques are actually Apostolic in origin. .
of course we disagree on this too. To help me get more understanding, may I ask in what denomination do you practice your Faith?
I have been, for a little over 4 years, serving as a Licensed Lay Minister in a VERY Anglo-Catholic Anglican Priory church that was built in 1109. I have no problem with Anglo-Catholic practice, as long as it is not all regarded as being essentially necessary tenets of the Christian faith assuring believers in it of salvation. That kind of 'faith' would be fatally misdirected, in my opinion. Before that I served in a two church benefice with one being High Anglo-Catholic, the other being somewhere between that and Evangelical, (kind of Middle of the road), classic English parish churchmanship. I have worshipped, worked, prayed and preached with other church people from across the spectum. Pentecostal, Baptist, United Reformed, Roman Catholic, Free Church Evangelicals and Dutch Reformed Charismatics. I have been Anglican however since I was about 2 months old. Baptised by Rev. Wellesly Orr, a Surrey cricketer, in 1945. You might say, I've been about a bit in the church so it might be said I have practiced my Faith in all of them. .