Wide Latitude
AM Psalm 78:1-39 • 78:40-72
Gen. 45:1-15 • 1 Cor. 7:32-40 • Mark 6:1-13
I had no regrets when I left the Roman Catholic church three decades ago and joined The Episcopal Church, but I retained a respect and love for many of the traditions and rituals I had grown up with. Fortunately, the Episcopal church I joined had, over many years—some charged with inner-conflict—grown into a church that afforded much latitude; I felt comfortable in a church that allowed me to join fellow practitioners in celebrating a mass (although my wife tells me I should call it a “service”) almost identical to the post-Vatican II mass I treasured, to trust in the real presence of Christ in the holy Eucharist, to pray for the souls of the dead, and to freely express my own opinions (not necessarily sanctioned by any church) in Morning Reflections. Unlike (in the reading from St. Mark for today) Jesus’ co-religionists in Nazareth who condemned his preaching because he was just somebody they knew, my co-religionists at St. Paul’s haven’t lambasted me for my opinions. They are tolerant in the way of our namesake St. Paul in today’s reading from 1 Corinthians when he “counsels” rather than “commands” the Corinthians in matters of marriage, whether they marry fellow-Christians or heathens, giving them more latitude than he does himself so that their lives may be happy and pleasing to God.
Today is the feast of James DeKoven, who died 17 March 1879 in Wisconsin. He was a member of the “Ritualist” minority of the American Episcopal Church, where he argued pugnaciously that traditions and practices inherited from the Catholic church have a central role in the Episcopal Church. He failed.
But his unsuccessful arguments were persuasive enough to ensure a wider latitude for practice and opinion in a national church that was temporarily embroiled in controversy. In the words of the Great Cloud of Witnesses website, “Perhaps his greatest achievement was in preventing the Episcopal Church from adopting a rigid, doctrinaire, and exclusive confession,” because he did persuade “the General Convention to accept the fact that the viewpoints of the ritualists were at least not subversive.” He would have preferred for his ritualist agenda to prevail completely, but that’s the way it is with saints, God works with their human fallibilities. So may God do with ours!
Written by John DuVal
John asks for prayers for himself, his wife, and other family members and friends of Frank DuVal (1945-2021), who will meet together in Frederick, Maryland, the week of April 2, for services and sociability commemorating Frank's life.