Talk:Anglican sacraments

WikiProject Anglicanism

A new WikiProject focussing on Anglicanism and the Anglican Communion has just been initiated: WikiProject Anglicanism. Our goal is to improve and expand Anglican-reltaed articles. If anyone (Anglican or non-Anglican) is interested, read over the project page and consider signing up. Cheers! Fishhead64 06:43, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Is confession a sacrament?

The text in Seal of the Confessional and the Book of Common Prayer is from the Catholic Encyclopedia, save for the first para which is my summary. It concludes that confession is not a sacrement in the Anglican Church. Could someone please look at this and fix what needs fixing? Cutler 08:43, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

See also: Priest-penitent privilege in the UK#Anglican canonists and theologians, again from Catholic Encyclopedia. Cutler 10:47, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

The Cathechism of the Episcopal Church in the USA defines "reconciliation of a penitent" as a "sacramental rite" [1]. Also, this page from my own diocese, the Diocese of Texas (not a High Church diocese by any means, clearly includes "reconcilation of a penitent" among the sacraments. [2] Rockhopper10r 14:09, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I think there is a clear ambiguity in the Anglican Communion about the sacramental system. The Anglican source documents (like the 39 Articles and various catechisms) tend to focus on the two sacraments. However, since the Anglo-Catholic revival, many Anglicans see the other five ordinances as sacraments. Just last week, my bishop David Stancliffe spoke in passing of confession as a sacrament without qualification of its status, and everyone understood what was being said. Thus, Anglicans have developed a scheme of sacramentals, ordinances or simply sacraments to include the five with the two. — Gareth Hughes 15:30, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

As the original author of the article, including the bulk of the present introduction, I'm biased - but I think the lead does an adequate job of explaining the diverse views in the Anglican tradition. Baptism and Eucharist are the two dominical sacraments, and the others are variously viewed as sacraments or lesser sacramental rites. Stuchbery, in This is Our Faith (an introductory manual to Anglicanism popular in the Canadian Church) writes:

The Anglican Church, in a compromise, accepted the two "major sacraments" together with the others which were described as "commonly called sacraments." Today this distinction has become increasingly redundant, and all seven sacraments are practised in the Anglican Church.

I think this accurately reflects the prevailing thought in the mainstream of Anglican theology. Fishhead64 23:15, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

"Liturgical churches"

The dictionaries I consulted define "liturgy" as a form of public worship. Even Quakers have liturgies, a fact I have referenced in the article on liturgy. And lest reference to dictionaries be considered suspect, I would also refer interested editors to the first chapter of two books: Cheslyn Jones et al., The Study of Liturgy and Evelyn Underhill, Worship, both now referenced at liturgy. To say that a particular church is liturgical, in other words, is as unremarkable as saying that it conducts a prescribed form of worship - which all do, whether it involves prescribed silence until the Spirit moves one to speak, prescribed praise music followed by a sermon and speaking in tongues, or the no-holds-barred high Pontifical Mass. The terms are synonymous. Some may have a greater elaboration of liturgy than others, but none are "non-liturgical." Fishhead64 05:37, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Did your dictionaries define "liturgical church"? That term is not uncommonly used to contrast with "non-liturgical churches" (e.g., http://www.victorious.org/churchbook/chur51.htm). --71.245.167.64 19:54, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

No they didn't, but the term is meaningless since there is no such thing as a "non-liturgical church." By simply having a usual form of public worship, churches are liturgical by definition. I am not unaware that this term is sometimes used, as my revisions to liturgy point out, but it is a neologism that conveys a falsehood. In any event, I'm not quite sure what your beef is with the original wording, "other churches in the Catholic tradition." That really is the issue here. Is it your contention that Anglicanism is not in the Catholic tradition? The reason the word here is useful is because Anglican sacramental theology and liturgical life is in continuity with that of its pre-Reformation incarnation, and is closely allied with that of other Catholic bodies. Fishhead64 20:42, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

The phrase "other churches in the Catholic tradition" is ambiguous, so I substituted "other liturgical churches." The term I inserted is not one I made up; I have seen and heard it used several times in the sense described in the link provided. You stated that using "liturgical churches" is not appropriate. I re-edited using "other Christian churches" instead of the offending term. You have not commented on the other changes which you have reverted.--71.245.167.64 23:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

My apologies for the other reversions, that was a mistake on my part. I don't have a problem with that language. My only concern was that "Catholic" was more descriptive and, in fact, less ambiguous than "liturgical" or "Christian." I concur that "liturgical" is sometimes used in the sense you suggest - but given that the chief meaning of "liturgical" is as an adjective of "liturgy," meaning a form of public worship, it seems more, not less, ambiguous. I will rework the intro to make it more clear, and hopefully we will all be happy. Fishhead64 00:36, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I apologise if I seem ungrateful for your willingness to accomodate, but in my opinion, the introduction is clearer and just as descriptive if the first paragraph is left out altogether. I thought this version of the introduction was straightforward with a NPOV. --71.245.167.64 01:07, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Holy Orders → Ordination

I have boldly renamed the section Holy Orders to Ordination. This seems to be the correct title to the section, as a postulant enters into holy orders through the sacrament of ordination. Liturgically speaking, one is ordained (admitted to holy orders) through the Liturgy of Ordination, also called the Ordinal, just as a person is baptized through the Liturgy of Baptism. Wine Guy Talk 22:12, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Private confession

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_sacraments#Confession_and_absolution says "There is no approved ceremony for a private confession of sins, the event being provided for in the Anglican tradition only in uncommon instances where an individual cannot quiet his conscience or find consolation in the General Confession that is part of the liturgy." If the focus of this article is English practice, this seems to be correct. I'm an American and (as the rest of the world often rightly reminds us) America is not the whole world. For what it's worth, since 1979 the US Episcopal Book of Common Prayer HAS had a form for private confession, as correctly noted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confession_(religion)#Anglicanism in the first paragraph after the first indented quote. However, since this article addresses all of Anglicanism, that level of detail may not be desirable or practical. You may have to stick with the Church of England (Anglicanism's mother church) to keep the subject manageable. Gms3591 (talk) 14:48, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

On bishop permission in divorce cases.

I do not have link-able source. I have been told by a priest that the bishop permission is still used to assure that prior divorces have legally concluded and both partners are fully aware of the history. i.e. Avoiding a second broken marriage by a serial cheater harming the lied to partner.

i think reasoning is worthy of note to an overview if the 'permission need' is mentioned. 45.53.130.189 (talk) 16:49, 5 August 2022 (UTC)