By Fr. Michael Rennier, Crisis Magazine, March 30, 2023
The Rev. Michael Rennier is a Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of St. Louis. He is the Web Editor for Dappled Things Magazine, a regular contributor at Aleteia, and posts Sunday homilies here. His book The Forgotten Language – How Recovering the Poetics of the Mass Will Change Our Lives, is available from Sophia Institute Press.
In an appendix to the Book of Common Prayer, the liturgical book that Anglicans have been using ever since Henry VIII revolted against the Catholic Church, you can find a doctrinal statement called the Thirty-Nine Articles. Each article addresses a specific theological position that was held by the Anglican Communion. (Today, this statement would be extremely debatable.) Back when I was an Anglican pastor, I led a small-group study of each and every article, which we went through in painstaking detail. I remember, at the time, substantially agreeing with most of them. …
