"The race that is set before us"

No—and Father Mike’s mother was 100 percent Irish and his uncles were Vincentian Irish priests. Just because you are Irish does not mean you are Roman Catholic. In fact, Saint Patrick was English. He was kidnapped by Irish pirates at 16, and after six hard years on the Emerald Isle, herding on Irish farms, he returned home to his parents. Soon, he was inspired to return to Ireland, whereupon converted countless Celts, Picts, and Scotts, to Christianity. “Roman Catholicism” had not yet taken root as it fully did in the time of Augustine’s papal mission to Canterbury and his converting of King Edwin in 597. Long before this happened, Aristobulus of Jerusalem was sent by Christ to Britain along with Joseph of Arimathea according to Pseudo Hippolytus writing in 170 A.D. that they were part of the “Seventy Disciples.” Then there were the three British Bishops at the Council of Arles, France, in 325 A.D., St. Patrick, St. Columba, and St. Brigid of Kildare, came next, as with the others, being pre-Anglo Saxon-conquest, and pre-Gregory-the-Great Christians, who converted the Britons, Picts, Scotts, and Gaels of Ireland. Mind you, everybody was celebrating Mass in the Celtic Rites of their region, speaking early English or Gaelic, the language of the Irish and Scotts, not Latin. St. Columbanus, although he was respectful of Pope Gregory the Great’s authority as Petrine moderator when he nominally accepted his French bishops’ mandating of the Synod of Whitby’s judgement in their adoption of the Roman-Catholic Dionysian/Victorian calendar over the Irish-monks’ favored Ionian computus, in 665, by exiling himself to the solitude of Mount Bobbio, in Italy, was an Irishman, who, lived with other tonsured Irish monks under a pre-Roman-Catholic Celtic Rule. Therefore, just because Anglo-Saxon conquests, devastation by the Vikings, and Roman Catholic religious usurpation overtook Ireland does not mean that Christianity and St. Patrick’s mission were Roman Catholic religious property. In fact, this English saint, St. Patrick, was quite indendent minded and never mentions the Pope or Rome in his Confession or in his Letter to the Soldiers of Corocticus. In fact, although St. Patrick read the Latin Vulgate and wrote in Latin, as did St. Palladius, who himself was sent by Pope Celestine to the Irish 30 years earlier than St. Patrick, the latter Bishop was actually a speaker of Gaelic, born from a wealthy Frankish family of Aquitaine and was not the official “Apostle of Ireland,” that the former British Celtic saint actually was.

You have come to the right church. First, acquire the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. Let Fr. Mike get on Zoom or meet you here in person and tell you how to celebrate the Liturgies of the Word and the Eucharist, through its Morning Prayer, the Evening Prayer, and the Order of Holy Communion. You will discover that your language, English, or any language in which this book is spoken, offers an extremely powerful—even emotionally fulfilling—witness to your Faith in God. We offer a catechesis and the Office of General Instruction, to get you and your children Confirmed in this time-old tradition. 

In 1978, the Anglican Communion, the Church of England, and the Episcopal Church of America, opened its canons to female ordination to the priesthood and diaconate. In the early nineties, the Lambeth Conference (Canterbury’s official recurring Council for American and Episcopalian Bishops), began paving the way, via linguistic artistry in its synodol decrees, that homosexuals could marry one another; and, by the early 2000s, when a female Bishop was elected to Canterbury, homosexuals were allowed the matrimonal Sacrament, and a homosexual was ordained a Bishop, a growing exodus from institutional bishoprics happened. Now, by the mid-1800s, creeping Modernism was causing the Tractarian Anglicans of the Oxford Movement to create “Anglo-Catholic” churches, and even convert to Roman Catholicism to seek orthodoxy, but by Vatican II in the 1960s, Liberalism, the Novus Ordo of the Catholics, and the new “gender-equal-pronoun” 1979 service books of the Anglican churches had helped rebellion begin to hit its stride. In 1978, the Affirmation of Saint Louis formalized the exodus from this institutional disobedience by its congress, of 2,000 bishops, clerics, and laity. It promulgated the return to orthodoxy in re-sanctifying procreation-based family values (as opposed to following the wayward churches’s pursuit of the Sexual Revolution), solely-male ordination, and the building of the “Anglican Continuum”—churches belonging to this recommitment to tradtionalism and the use of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. As time went on, new dioceses and churches at large were founded throughout the world, and it could be argued that the Reformed Episcopal is part of the Continuum (with its 2005 Prayer Book bearing many of the 1662 English forms). However, Reformed Episcopals have their own synods and Bishops’ councils and has been in existence since 1873. Also, the Anglican Church of North America, despite its “Common Cause Partnership,” marked by its reactionary ecclesiastical founding against institutional Liberalism in 2009, and with its 2019 Book of Common Prayer’s reversions to 1549 English forms, allows female ordination of Deacons and Priests within certain of its dioceses. The episcopatus ecclesiae of Saint Patrick’s Anglican Church, known as Traditional Anglican Church of America, headed by Archbishop Rick Aaron Reid, is a constituent autonomous Diocese of the Independent Anglican Church of America, 1934 Canada Synod. It meticulously keeps the 1978 Affirmation held in unwavering orthodoxy, an original Anglicanism that was excellently predicated for all ages to come, during the 1600’s as: ““One canon [the Bible] reduced to writing by God himself, two Testaments [the Old and New Testaments], three Creeds [Apostolic; Nicea; Athanasius], four general [Ecumenical] councils [of late Antiquity], five centuries [from the Nativity til the Fall of Rome], and the series of Fathers [the Apostles to Boethius] in that period—the centuries that is, before Constantine, and two after, determine the boundary of our faith.”

Located on page 603 of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion were pubished in 1573 and offers religious perimeters for, Christians, to whom, the Magna Carta refered, as “true Anglicans.” By and large, it repudiates papal authority but reestablishes the Church of England’s continuity with the pre-Reformation English ecclesiastical community as a whole. Until the time of the Glorious Revolution of Queen Mary and William of Orange, the King was the Supreme Head of the Church of England, but when King James II fled upon the arrival of William and Mary, his abdication and the Articles of Grievances solidifying his acquiescence had nulled Henry VIII Divine Right of Kings. However, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (BCP) retained the supremacy of the king as did the Thirty-Nine Articles, although the Church of England thereafter was given increasing religious practical independence. By the time of the Anglican founding of the Episcopal Church in the new United States in 1789, prayers of pious admiration were written in the American BCP for the President of the United States and all in Civic Authority. Of course, you are getting the idea, that the Pope has nothing to do with Anglicanism, which was not merely the desire of Henry VIII but of Britons and Celts since the begrudged self-exile of St. Columbanus. Now, if you are a recusant (sick and tired and non-participatory) Roman Catholic, Anglicanism—Traditional Anglicanism—is just what you have wanted, if you desire to remain both orthodox and free of papal heterodoxy and moral error (note the charitable use of euphemisms, here). It will come on strong, but Traditional Anglicanism is defined in terms of its anti-Roman catholicism in the following neat fashion (according to the Articles, as they are herein numbered): The 39 Articles denounce teachings and customs that Protestants in general repudiate in the papal religion. For instance, we subscribe to Consubstatiation while denying  Transubstantiation (XXVIII), the sacrifice of the Mass (XXXI), and the Immaculate Conception (XV), and the use of seven Sacraments while we consider two major Gospel ones (Baptism and Holy Communion) and the other five to being Religious ones (XXV).. We hold that Scripture is the final authority on salvation (VI); we believe that Adam’s fall commenced Free Will (X), and that both bread and wine should be served to anybody seeking the Eucharist (XXX; albeit we have grave exhortations to said, in the BCP), and that Priests and Deacons may marry (XXXII). You may find the complete Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion at the following link:

http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1662/articles.pdf

This Creed is of such beauty, such ecclesiastical importance, and such theological relevance, that we originally were going to name our church after its author, the great Bishop Saint Athanasius of Alexandria. When Bishop Arian, that terrible heresy, had seduced churches throughout Europe and Asia Minor with the idea that Christ was not equal to God, was created after God’s existence, and was thus the same person as God, Bishop Athanasius was one of the few orthodox Bishops left. He held the sadly minority but true “diophysite” position that God was not only man but was was God Himself and that the Holy Spirit is also co-equal and of the same substance of the Father and of the Son. If Arius’s heresy had taken permanent hold, God’s character would be up for endless speculation and all the moral teachings of Christ would be sidelined, as new “candidates” for the role of Messiah could be nominated by linguists such as Arius, as the times or whims demanded. After being harshly exiled multiple times, Alexandria (along with Bishops such as Saint Nicholas), were heard at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea, of 325 A.D., which decided, miraculously, in his view’s favor, despite the leaning of Emperor Constantine the Great, who had invoked the Council, being toward Arianism! The Nicene Creed now became imprimatur, but a certain writ by the long-suffering Alexandrian episcopate needed to be canonized. For this, the other Ecumenical Council of dire importance to oust heresies, that of Chalcedon, in 450, forever formulated the epistemology of the “prosopon” (divine personage), the existential totality of the Trinity, with Christ’s existence defined as being in hypostasis union, with the Father, and co-eternal with the Holy Spirit. This was an advancement or sophistication of the Creed, written by Athanasius, himself, which goes as follows (and lovers of St. Vincent of Lerins can find a very similar apostolic writ in that saint’s writings, if you are keen to explore for it). Please be patient with this highly pedantic ontological oath of catholic christology, which was considered to be too academic, intense, and metaphysical to be included in the 1892 and 1928 books of Common Prayer, but which is an indispensible truly catholilc part of our Traditional Anglican Church:

“Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith unless every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence. For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreated; the Son uncreated; and the Holy Ghost uncreated. The Father unlimited; the Son unlimited; and the Holy Ghost unlimited. The Father eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal. As also there are not three uncreated; nor three infinites, but one uncreated; and one infinite. So likewise the Father is Almighty; the Son Almighty; and the Holy Ghost Almighty. And yet they are not three Almighties; but one Almighty. So the Father is God; the Son is God; and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods; but one God. So likewise the Father is Lord; the Son Lord; and the Holy Ghost Lord. And yet not three Lords; but one Lord. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity; to acknowledge every Person by himself to be God and Lord; So are we forbidden by the catholic religion; to say, There are three Gods, or three Lords. The Father is made of none; neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created; but begotten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten; but proceeding. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Ghost, not three Holy Ghosts. And in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another. But the whole three Persons are coeternal, and coequal. So that in all things, as aforesaid; the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved, let him thus think of the Trinity. Furthermore, it is necessary to everlasting salvation; that he also believe faithfully the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right Faith is, that we believe and confess; that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and Man; God, of the Substance [Essence] of the Father; begotten before the worlds; and Man, of the Substance [Essence] of his Mother, born in the world. Perfect God; and perfect Man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead; and inferior to the Father as touching his Manhood. Who although he is God and Man; yet he is not two, but one Christ. One; not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh; but by assumption of the Manhood into God. One altogether; not by confusion of Substance [Essence]; but by unity of Person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man; so God and Man is one Christ; Who suffered for our salvation; descended into hell; rose again the third day from the dead. He ascended into heaven, he sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from whence he will come to judge the living and the dead. At whose coming all men will rise again with their bodies; And shall give account for their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil, into everlasting fire. This is the catholic faith; which except a man believe truly and firmly, he cannot be saved.”