Opinion of the Episcopal Church

[TJ in Oregon]

Seems to range from basically Catholic except separated because of some disagreement 450 years ago that has no real relevance to the people alive today, to Shelby Spong, and anywhere in between.

[TJ in Oregon]

To elaborate, here are the reasons why I dislike the Episcopal Church:

1) Tolerance for blatant heretics and apostates. People like Bishop Spong should have been defrocked and excommunicated decades ago. I can deal with disagreements on more minor issues, but this sort of thing is non-negotiable.

2) Lawsuits against congregations attempting to leave the church.

3) They seem to be intent on abandoning the old BCP for weirder, newer stuff. I like the beauty of the old liturgy much better.

I dislike all of these things as well. The third is probably the biggest issue for me in that it was the proximate precipitating factor for why I stopped considering myself Episcopalian--the church I'd been going to for most of the past year at that point up and stopped using the Nicene Creed in its liturgy one day, and adopted a Eucharistic Prayer that was not in the BCP and was not printed in the order of service leaflet.

The horror!

The problem was that it was impossible to follow along with. (Admittedly this is a problem with Catholic churches I've been to as well, along with many, many other honestly extremely disappointing mechanical and aesthetic problems.)

I'm a little perplexed at this. Is your main beef simply that they didn't have it typed out in a booklet somewhere? I guess I don't understand why that should matter at all. Do you have hearing problems that necessitate it being written down for you to understand? My parish back in Ohio has books with everything in them to follow along with the readings and even the rest of the Mass and no one ever looks at the Eucharistic prayers in the book. Heck, I don't even look at it for the readings; I'd rather hear them than read them.

From the Catholic perspective, making up a Eucharistic prayer would be far, far beyond the pale and call into question the validity of the consecration. Is your old church memorialist? If so, I suppose that would change the priorities a lot. But if not, yikes.

[TJ in Oregon]

It'd be kind of nice if that was the case. It'd really be kind of nice.

The point of saying the Creed communally, of saying or doing anything communally or collectively or en masse or by rote, is reaffirmation. Reminding oneself what one believes is useful both psychologically and symbolically, and doing this in concert with other people reinforces the sociocultural aspect of religion (which is half the point of being religious).

I agree that it should be said and is reflective of the point of being religious. However, I disagree that it is primarily to reinforce the socialculture aspect of religion but is instead primarily to reinforce its contents. If one were to ask the people in attendance "Why are we here?", reciting the Nicene Creed would be one way of answering it. I think it's important to repeat such things semi-regularly to remind ourselves of that.