Now here's an intriguing thing. When I visited the parish of St Mary the Virgin, Arlington ... sorry to go on about this, but it really was memorable to see with my own eyes the sort of arrangement which the Ordinatiates could give us ... Fr Hawkins very kindly gave me a few copies of a post-card size reproduction of an ikon of John Henry Newman. It appears to have been 'written' in 1991 (!), by someone called Robert Lentz (Info?????). But at the top the inscription reads Ho Hagios Ioannes ho tes Anglias. And he is sporting a very natty halo. Who had canonised him in 1991?
He is holding a scroll inscribed in English "The voice of the whole Church will in time make itself heard" (quoted from???????).
__________________________________________________________________________________(Albuquerque, Albuquerque New Mexico, www.natural-bridges.com
Wikipedia has a note about Robert Lentz. The links in the note give several views of his paintings.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lentz
O dear. Think technically excellent 'icons' of Harvey Milk, Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez, Albert Einstein, Black Elk,Steve Biko - and some clever 'conceptual icons'(like his Lion of Judah or Celtic Trinity or Apache Christ or Christ Sophia). Think new-age, homosexualist and feminist, 'native' and even wiccan 'spirituality'.
ReplyDeleteAA in M
One can only imagine why this fellow left the Orthodox Church, and why he loves John Henry Newman. Newman's "development of Doctrine" must be something that liberals simply love. It would appear that with the adoption of this theological position anything will be and is possible...including the ordination of women. Perhaps leaving the Cof E for Rome is simply more of the same...only perhaps a bit slower.
ReplyDeleteHow can you not know who Robert Lentz is? He "wrote" the Gay icon of Ss. Sergius and Bacchus, which of course I came to for its Arabic inscription.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually quite a fan, although I wish he did statues instead.
I can't figure out why Lentz hasn't done S Peter Damian!?! Though there is, naturally, his icon of "Quetzalcoatl Christ."
ReplyDeleteHow special.
Golly, when I read the title of this post I thought Fr. Hunwicke had received a letter from Rome and had been given a new appellation...
ReplyDeleteWhat would the Easterners say about pseudo-icons of, not the well-reputed but not-yet-canonized, but of all manner of dubious persons? I expect they would consider them to be dangerous portals whereby evil influences could make inroads.
ReplyDelete(After all, pious Russians are wont to make the signum crucis over their mouth if they yawn, lest a devil dive in! so I doubt they'd be too liberal about odd icons.)
I fear Mr Lentz is a prisoner of "prelest" - a Russian term for spiritual deception and delusion.
I myself once bought a quite nice reproduction icon of St Dominic... which had on the reverse a most unflattering blurb, which contrasted sweet St Dominic's preaching with the anti-Albigensian crusade whereby, it alleged, Innocent III "slew more than Diocletian"! I scratched the offending sentences off.
I've seen a copy of the Newman icon, and feel that the inscription he carries so biasses the presentation of that holy man as to vitiate the image as a vehicle of prayer.
Please, good people, icons are painted, not written. This business of icons being "written" is a cutesy play on words beloved of some American Orthodox - usually the same people who like to refer to churches as "temples".
ReplyDeleteSorry, Michael, while you are correct about painted and written, the word temple is the basic Greek (naos) and Slavonic (hram) term for the building in which the Church gathers. Ekklesia and tserkov are the terms for church. Rubrics and other liturgical directives, descriptions and so on use temple. Informally and certainly perhaps more easily we do refer to church. But even those who refer to church often use the term temple and they do correctly.
ReplyDeleteAA in M
Thank you for this.
ReplyDeleteAs it was explained to me, khram can be correctly rendered into English as temple, church, or house. However, it is not normal in British English to refer to a Christian place of worship as a temple.
I have seen a number of English translations of the liturgical texts which render it as temple and they are all North American in origin. The official translations of the Sourozh Diocese (Moscow Patriarchate), the Thyateira Archdiocese (Constantinople Patriarchate), and the UK Antiochian Deanery all render it as house, which is also how it is rendered in the Brookood texts. (Although Brookwood has now departed into schism, their text became the English-language standard for ROCOR in the UK). I do not have access to the text of the UK deanery of the Parish Exarchate. It does very much seem that the use of temple in this way is an American preference. While it may not be incorrect, it sounds very unusual to British ears because we just do not use the word in this way.
I hope that Fr. Hawkins and the members of his parish will get rid of (ie destroy) the Lentz images they have naively accepted into their midst.
ReplyDeleteSince it appears that Fr. Robert Lentz is a Greek Catholic monastic in canonical standing within the Roman Catholic Church there would appear no reason for Fr. Hawkins, or members of his parish, to destroy such "ikons."
ReplyDeleteAnglicans converting to Roman Catholicism must be willing to embrace many liberal attitudes, including the 1979 BCP, that Rome does not seem to have a problem with.
Having finally taken a look at the Anglican Use BDW, I must say that my original problem with a Byzantine style invocation in the Western rite Orthodox version of the Gregorian Canon has been greatly modified after seeing what they have done with the Roman Canon...not to mention their very modernist other liturgical "rites."