On the Canadian liturgy itself: Some of the prose is a little awkward to my ears, so I hope they refine it a bit before it becomes official, but I like the overall idea of it.
As far as the Canadian liturgy is concerned, they have a beautiful Book of Common Prayer from 1962, but nearly all parishes use the Alternative Service Book, not to be confused with the C of E’s predecessor to Common Worship. Common Worship is good, like a larger version of the 1979 BCP, which features much of the good material from the Deposited Book of 1928 in addition to contemporary language services; fortunately Parliament no longer has direct control over C of E worship, because the alliance of low churchmen and non-Anglicans to vote against the majority of Anglican MPs to block the 1928 BCP from being adopted was a scandal. I greatly dislike the 1662 BCP compared to the 1549 and 1928 Deposited versions, and the 1892, 1928 and 1979 American editions, and the 1929 Scottish, 1938 Melanesian and 1962 Canadian versions.
On the canons of Nicaea: I don't agree that every canon carries the same weight as the creed itself, and I don't agree that we are prevented from ever changing any of it. I see, for example, that in canon 20, we are supposed to stand rather than kneel in prayer during the entire season of Pentecost. My experience in the Episcopal Church is that we (mostly) stand during the Easter season, but return to kneeling during Pentecost. Whichever practice is followed, I can't see that it carries the same weight as affirming that the Son is "of one being with the Father". To take another example, canon 6 says that the bishop of Alexandria has jurisdiction over Libya. That's fine, but if the episcopal structure in that region were reorganized so that Libya was more independent of Egypt, I could see that as a reasonable modification as populations grow and change. Again, not the same weight as affirming the nature of the Son.
So just as a point of information, what you are doing in the Episcopal Church is fully compliant with Canon XX of Nicaea.
The term Pentecost in Patristic and Orthodox sources includes what we would call Eastertide and Ascensiontide (hence the Eastern Orthodox hymnal for the period from Pascha through All Saints Day, the Sunday after Pentecost, being called the
Pentecostarion and not the
Paschalion, a term used to refer to books, such as one I have of Coptic provenance, that cover Holy Week and Easter inclusive.
To explain this nomenclature, wherein Pentecost refers to the period from Pascha through Whitsunday*, is because Pentecost was traditionally in Judaism a feast of multiple weeks, so it was actually on the last day or Pentecost, called Shavuot in Hebrew, that the Holy Spirit descended. Indeed, Whitsunday or Pentecost Sunday in the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches features a penitential liturgy, often served right after the Divine Liturgy, that the Eastern Orthodox call “Kneeling Vespers,” and which the Syriac Orthodox refer to using a different name, because their service features the three kneeling prayers but is not Vespers (
Ramsho in West Syriac). I prefer the Syriac service as it is shorter and also features the delightful use of a thoroughly soaked plant, I am not sure what, I don’t think its Hyssop, as nice as that would be, due to the scarcity thereof, at least in North America; the leaves of this plant are thoroughly saturated with consecrated Holy Water and then the priest gleefully splashes the laity between each of the three kneeling prayers, and also in the Middle East Syriac Orthodox commemorate the holiday by throwing bottles of water on each other.
What is commonly called the liturgical season of Pentecost in the West would be more correctly called Post-Pentecost or Whitsuntide, which is an existing term. I myself strongly support the division of Ordinary Time into at least three liturgical seasons, Whitsuntide, Kingdomtide, which in the Methodist Episcopal Church and certain other churches was the second half of the period, named as such to commemorate the universal adoption of the last Sunday before Advent in the Western churches as the Sunday of Christ the King, and Epiphany. I also wish Western churches would observe the Apostles Fast and the Fast of the Blessed Virgin Mary before the Feast of St. Peter and Paul, and the Marian feast on August the 15th, which is the Dormition in Eastern Orthodoxy and the Assumption in Oriental Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, but in the Assyrian church is the Commemoration of the Theotokos.
So, canon I. "If anyone in sickness has undergone surgery at the hands of physicians or has been castrated by barbarians, let him remain among the clergy. But if anyone in good health has castrated himself, if he is enrolled among the clergy he should be suspended, and in future no such man should be promoted." Gender transition surgery is normally performed by physicians. Vasectomies might be questionable under this canon. People transitioning from female to male aren't "castrated", per se. For this and other reasons, I don't know that this canon applies to us in the way you assert.
So, Canon I applies to any means of self-castration. The context of Canon I of Nicaea can be found in Apostolic Canons XXI - XXIII, which categorize castration as self murder, deposing any clergy who are castrated voluntarily by their own hand or by someone else’s, and excommunicating any laity. The reason why clergy are not excommunicated is because the Apostolic Canons, which were upheld in the canons of the Ecumenical Councils, prohibit applying more than one penance for the same sin. Also it should be stressed these canons, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, can be interpreted with oikonomia (literally, economy, but figuratively, leniency, or akrivia, or strictness, the goal being to do what is best for the laity, also, an excommunication is different from an anathema, which can be lifted only if the person anathematizes repents, whereas excommunication is merely the status of not participating in the Eucharist; indeed one can become inadvertently excommunicate if one becomes sick and out of range of an Orthodox priest; there is no way anyone would be penanced for this, and only churches in the Slavonic tradition require regular confession, so if someone became mentally ill or castrated themselves in a drunken rage, this would be handled differently than the case of someone deliberately castrated themselves via vasectomy or the removal of male genitalia due to dysphoria.
(Source for Nicene canons:
First Council of Nicaea – 325 AD - Papal Encyclicals)[/quote]
If I might make a suggestion, the source you want to use for the Canons is the
Pedalion, which can be downloaded free of charge from Scribd if you upload a public domain work or something you hold the copyright to:
The Rudder (Pedalion) | PDF
The Pedalion is the Eastern Orthodox nomocanon, which is the most comprehensive nomocanon containing the ancient canons of the early church translated into English (to my knowledge, the Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian nomocanons were never translated, and the Roman Catholic Church decided it could rewrite the early canons it had agreed to previously, presumably because canons such as Canon VI of Nicaea contradict Papal supremacy; some Orthodox erroneously criticize the Catholics for not following the Canons of the Council of Truro, also known as the Quinisext Council, but the fact was that was a council specific to the Eastern churches intended to update the canon law, an opportunity otherwise missed at the Fifth and Sixth Ecumenical Councils, and is specific to the liturgical praxis of Eastern Orthodoxy; the Roman church did not participate in it. That being said, some canons thereof are of broad applicability, for example, the canons prohibiting priests from acting as financial planners or estate managers for their congregants strike me as falling into the category of “duh.”
Now, some Greek Orthodox bishops from the Ecumenical Patriarch have suggested laity should not read this book or the Philokalia. I could not disagree more, and no one from ROCOR or the other Greek Orthodox churches have suggested this, and indeed, why Ecumenical Patriarchate clergy are basically contradicting their foremost spokesman, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, and discouraging people from buying a book he translated with Mother Mary, a great Orthodox nun, baffles me. I suppose they are afraid that newly baptized and catechumens might not understand the concept that the canons are subject to oikonomia, or leniency, as much as deemed spiritually beneficial, and are seldom enforced with exactness, or akrivia, and some of them are, if read in an overly literal way, obsolete or inapplicable, for example, the canons against attending the theatre were due to the lewd nature of theatrical performances in that era, likewise the canon against clergy dining or staying in taverns was due to lewd entertainment and songs and drunkeness and prostitution which occurred therein; these days, the correct scope of these canons would be against clergy entering strip clubs or brothels or attending indecent entertainments.
The idea that laity should not read the Pedalion however is absurd; St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite composed the work so the laity could easily learn the canons, which is of great benefit to the laity in terms of knowing what the canon law is, for example, concerning disqualifications from Holy Orders, like divorce and murder, and concerning inheritance, marriage and divorce procedures, and also a great resource of moral theology, since the canons tell us what the early church found morally objectionable. I believe the War on St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite’s Pedalion, and the Philokalia he compiled with St. Macarius of Corinth, is unjustified, since the pastoral concerns of misinterpretation can easily be corrected by making sure laity understand how canons are used in the Orthodox church, as guidelines for the medical treatment of sin rather than as a legalistic framework for the punishment of crimes aganst God understood forensically, or for that matter as a legalistic framework relevant only to the internal operation of the Church, which is of my many criticisms of Scholastic moral theology and the current Roman Catholic Code of Canon Law and Code of Canon Law for the Eastern Churches; indeed the fact that the Roman church requires Canon Lawyers, some of whom are Juris Doctors who could acquire or have acquired a license to practice secular law, makes me cringe.
It is also worth noting that clergy of the same Greek Orthodox Archdiocese are known for discouraging the laity from attending their own monasteries established by St. Ephrem of Arizona, memory eternal, monasteries which are part of the same Greek Orthodox archdiocese under the same ecumenical Patriarchate. Why I cannot imagine, because at those monasteries, people, including me, have experienced beautiful, traditional worship and traditional theology in an Athonite environment, albeit observing the New Calendar and the same Typikon as the parishes, rather than the Julian Calendar and the traditional Sabaite-Studite Typikon which are used in the Athonite monasteries and the Orthodox Churches of Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Jerusalem, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Sinai and Ukraine, as well as the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and some parishes of the Orthodox Church in America and the Polish Orthodox Church. I have heard it alleged that priests find it annoying when the laity return from Elder Ephrem’s monasteries, and having seen what is both possible and conducive to church growth, try to get their parish to do the same.
Finally, I am not as eager to split the Anglican Communion as you are. Yes, we could divide so that the US, Canada, Brazil, and Scotland are in one diminished Communion, the churches in Africa are in another diminished Communion, and everyone else has to pick a side. There are rumblings in that direction, and maybe that's where this all ends. But I think that divorce would impoverish us all.
The Global South consists of more than just Africa; most South American provinces and Sydney are a part of it, and South Africa is not a part of it, but I am not eager to divide the Anglican communion. Rather, I think Lambeth Palace needs to apply pressure to churches like Canada and Scotland to comply with the morality of the persecuted Anglicans of Africa and the Middle East, and the impoverished Anglicans of the Global South, and do things differently, so as to arrest the rapid decline of these denominations. Also, Archbishop Rowan Williams did take limited action against the Episcopal Church when it greatly violated the trust of the Anglican Communion by unilaterally ordaining Gene Robinson.
The Episcopal Church I feel is improving, having elected Michael Curry, a more traditional replacement for the presiding bishop previously in office, who spent 45 million on an ill-fated effort to keep traditionalist dioceses from leaving, which is now collapsing since Fort Worth managed to successfully escape with their real estate, and encouraged bishops like the disgraced former Bishop Bruno, who I would note would have been, strictly speaking, disqualified under ancient canon law from serving in Holy Orders without
oikonomia being granted because he killed someone while in the LAPD, and became ordained as part of a major moral reform, which would have been good, except he lapsed into questionable conduct.
I would note he might well have gotten
oikonomia to be ordained in the Orthodox Church if his shooting was to protect life and was completely justified, considering that St. Moses the Black, before his baptism, was a highwayman and murderer; after his baptism, he renounced violence, founded a monastery, was ordained as a priest, and he and his fellow monks were martyred.
What makes the actions of your previous presiding bishop so problematic, however, is the staggering amount of money she spent, and bishops under her spent, to forcibly deprive traditionalists leaving of their real estate; at the same time, the PCUSA and ELCA, the latter of Episcopal polity, implemented an enlightened policy of Gracious Dismissal, which also saved them a fortune in legal fees. Imagine what that $45 million could do for the Episcopal Church and the communities of vulnerable people it serves. Actually it could be $50 million now, since regrettably, Bishop Curry hasn’t stopped all of the appeals, so the murder is still running. Letting dioceses and individual parishes leave for ACNA with their real estate, while seeking to persuade them to stay by addressing their concerns would be so much better.
So basically, I misspoke in terms of calling for Canada to be ejected from the Anglican communion. What I meant to convey was that Canada needs to be warned that if the Global South leaves, the responsibility will be theirs, and furthermore, the Church of England should I think enter into direct communion with ACNA, and the Continuing Anglican Churches, as a means of pressuring Canada and the Episcopal Church USA to improve. And the it should leave the Poorvoo Communion. And if the Episcopal Church of Scotland does not improve, logically, the Church of England should open parishes there, using the 1929 Scottish BCP.
Of course, there is a gap between what the Church of England should do and what it will actually do, due to government interference. Given that the Church of Scotland now has become a state church in a mainly symbolic way, I think it would be of extreme spiritual benefit for the Church of England to push for a similar change; just as the Church is now no longer subject to Parliamentary oversight of its liturgics, it would be a great breakthrough if the appointment of bishops was no longer at the recommendation of the Prime Minister. This might not mean the end of the Lords Spiritual, since the Chief Rabbi is generally appointed to the Lords, for example, Jonathan Sachs.
*The
Pentecostarion stretches beyond the end of Pentecost itself to include All Saints Day, which in the Byzantine Rite is celebrated on the same day as Trinity Sunday in the West (largely because Whitsunday itself is the among other things the main Feast of the Holy Trinity in the East, so any churches named for the Holy Trinity have their annual feast on Pentecost), for purposes of convenience, because we are discussing a movable feast tied to the date of Easter. So just as the
Triodion starts on The Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, or Septuagesima, and stretches from then through the Vesperal Divine Liturgy on Holy Saturday, the
Pentecostarion stretches from Pascha through Ascension and Whitsunday until the end of the movable feasts tied to the date of Pascha.
