A little note from my Father

My father was reading over my blog and sent a few comments that I wanted to share. Not only because they're illuminating, but because he's my Dad.

A while back, there was some discussion about transubstantiation, and whether or not something of merit happens when an audience is present or isn't. I think it came from Scott Walter's intitial posts about Theatre and Religion, and George Hunka and I had a little back and forth. My father speaks about this, and also Rosa Parks.

Been reading some of your blogs.. interesting stuff. Comment on a couple...
the one about religion and theater and the conversation about
transubstantiation etc.... Good Anglican theology is in fact that unless
there are at least two people present, nothing has happened. That is, as a
priest, I am the one authorized on behalf of the church to bless the bread
and wine... but if I do it all by myself... it wasn't the body and blood of
Christ. We differ from the Romans in that by the way... .their priests do
individual masses all the time, with noone else there.... we see that as a
kind of magic, that we don't believe in.
   My hunch is that the writer was trying to make some point about there
being an objective reality to spiritual things, whether believed in or not
(if God exists, then God is present whether one believes in God or not...
the difference will be in the experience of the situation by the believer or
non-believer). Karl Jung had something like that written over the lintel of
his home -- "bidden or not bidden, the gods will be here."
   But Anglican theology has always seen the eucharist and other sacraments
as functions of humanity's innate connection to one another....

Re; Rosa Parks... I never met her, but you probably know that I bodyguarded
for MLK in a parade in Boston one day. I walked along beside the car he was
in, me on one side another guy on the other like secret service guys do. we
were supposed to jump in front of him if someone had a gun....
   Now that I think of it... what was I thinking??!
   Well I know what I was thinking, really, it was a time when a lot of us
realized that we needed to stand up and be counted.

Thanks for sending that in, Pops.