I have just seen an email text from someone called "Robert Hart", in which he dismisses four recent books on Queen Mary I with half a dozen words of hysterical abuse against that monarch.
Who on earth is this person Hart? What are his historical credentials? Is there anything I can do to stop any more of his views cropping up on my computer screen?
Though I have myself butted heads with Fr. Hart, I believe his opinions are of the intellectual variety and I respect him. He can be a hot-head (like myself) but I believe this is because he likes banging ideas about as if ideas were fists. He has been through an ecclesiastical wringer few can boast; and, as it were, shipwrecked on more than one occasion only to bounce back full of piss and vinegar. God love him for it!
ReplyDeleteHe has two brothers. Once upon a time, all three were ordained ECUSA priests: fairy tale over; one left for Rome, one for Byzantium and R. Hart to the "Anglican Continuum." Thus he knows vicariously what the other "jurisdictions" are about, especially I note, what the Roman Church is currently about regarding his Roman sibling - without sharing details, he suffers a complete miscarriage of justice and charity from the Roman Church, most unsatisfactory and most un-Christian. God give him strength.
Sometimes we get a chip on our shoulder and as a result we role-play, what may be a well founded prejudice, against an innocent party. Thus our role-play is injudiciously exercised.
I don't understand Fr. Hart's acidity towards you Fr. Hunwicke. I believe it is unjustified and unprofitable (yet not all to bad profit as far as I'm concerned, for I first found your site as a result of his bitching about your admiration for the "silent canon"). I should think the two of you have much good in common. Anglicans have always enjoyed spirited open debate (unlike our Roman brethren about which Newman complained following his shift) but the debate has, since V2C, become much more vicious. Fr. Hart has been loosing sight of who the real enemies to the faith are and in doing so he is becoming one of them. There has been a marked change in his writing since he aligned himself with the "ACC." As some have recently and most excellently warned against Jansenist/Donatist behavior, it is widely known that within the ACC these heresies are legion. Perhaps he has fallen under this nefarious influence and has lost objectivity?
One correction, please. The younger Hart brother, David, was never ordained: he became Orthodox as an undergraduate, and is now an Orthodox lay-theologian.
ReplyDeleteThe Hart parents, both still aming the living, poped right after the election and "consecration" to the episcopate of Barbara Harris in 1989.
Actually, two. Robert Hart was never an Episcopalian priest, either. He was a church organist, but was ordained only after he became a member of the Dicese of the Chesapeake of the now-defunct Anglican-Rite Synod in the Americas in 1995 or 96.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the corrections!
ReplyDeleteSuffer no corrections from Ukrainians.
ReplyDelete