Sacraments — Steve Macias

Minor Sacraments and Dominical Sacraments

Anyway, so this chapter is actually pretty easy to understand, so we'll start here, switching from Thai food into what this book titles the minor sacraments as opposed to the major or dominical sacraments.

So remember last week we talked about two sacraments being the Lord's Supper, which is also called Holy Communion, which is also called the Holy Eucharist, which in historical medieval Christianity was referred to as the Mass, from the last words in the service for dismissal, but the second sacrament we talked about was Holy Baptism, the initiation rite where we're made in union with Christ, so we talked about those two dominical sacraments and how they were established by Christ and generally necessary for salvation.

So the difference between what we studied last week and this week is inside the minor sacraments, one, they are not necessarily ordained in their ritual or ceremony or ordinance according to Christ's interaction, so you'll see that today, though Christ is the origin of the family, the idea of humankind of family, the actual marriage sacrament was practiced by Christ with his disciples as we receive it today, so these are minor sacraments, I mentioned last time that the articles of religion describe these as commonly called sacraments, much like our Book of Common Prayer is common prayer, but we should acknowledge at least that in the history of the Church this distinction has been debated, so what we call minor sacraments in some parts of Christendom are called not sacraments at all, so sometimes in very Anabaptist or Baptist or Presbyterian or other Protestant denominations, the idea of marriage being a sacrament is kind of heterodox or anathema to them, they don't like that idea, so we'll go over what makes these a sacrament in historical view, and I also want to reiterate what we said last time, that the number seven is a historical number, not a biblical number, so when we say these are the minor sacraments, we're saying as the Church throughout history has received them, we have recognized these as the minor sacraments, but the numbering is a historical number, so as I believe I mentioned last week, the Orthodox Church doesn't put a number, the Eastern Orthodox Church doesn't put a number on the same, lots of things in life are sacramental, but it's helpful to us because since the Council of Trent, which is in the Roman Catholic Church, has made it a matter of dogma, meaning you can't change it or challenge it in the Roman system, there are seven sacraments, so it's important for us to respond to, as inheritors also of the Western Church, what they say, and so this distinction is very important to say that there is a difference between the dominical sacraments and the minor sacraments, and so our articles of religion in the back of your prayer book actually talk about those sacraments and uses that phrase commonly described, and again we mentioned last week that the articles are largely responses to our biblical faith, not necessarily a confession in the same sense, so page 607 of the book of Common Prayer 1928, so if you have your prayer book, it's on the very back of it and it has those articles there, it says there are two sacraments ordained of Christ, our Lord, in the gospel, that is to say baptism and the supper of the Lord, last week, this week, those five commonly called sacraments, that is to say confirmation, penance, orders, matrimony, and extreme unction are not to be counted for sacraments of the gospel, but being such have had grown partly of the corruption following the apostles, partly our states of life allowed in the scriptures, but yet not having like nature of the sacraments with baptism and the Lord's supper, for that they have not any visible or sign or ceremony ordained of God.

So in our chapter today he goes through those things, but that sets the Anglican picture, saying we recognize seven-ish sacraments, but these later sacraments are a different distinction, kind of similar to how we understand our Bible, we recognize 66 canonical books of the Bible, but then we read the words of Jesus, he quotes from this apocryphal, yet we recognize the apocryphal are not of the same type of scripture as the gospels or the Old Testament.

Visible Signs and Inward Graces

Now, in our book it talks about the basis of the minor sacraments, and it would be helpful for us to be reminded of the distinction between the sacraments, we're on page number 39, distinction between the sacraments having visible, visible or outward signs, and invisible or inward graces.

So as he goes through each sacrament, he's going to use that kind of sacramental principle to show that for something to be considered a sacrament, it has to have grace both in an outward sign and inwardly spiritual sense.

So I can't invent, say for example, the baptism of dogs, right, because we could invent a ritual, say, I really love my dog, or I want my dog to be with me in heaven, but if I invented a ritual, outward sign, there is no promise in the gospel, there is no grace mentioned, there is no standard, there's nothing in the propitiation of Christ offered to the dog as an inward spiritual grace.

So while we might come up with an outward ceremony, it does not have that inward grace that makes it a part of a sacrament. But as we go through each part here, we'll see that in the life of a Christian, there are things outside of the church, specifically outside of the Lord's Supper and outside of baptism, that promise grace.

Adam, Creation, and the Sacramental Nature of Life

And Dr. Rushdeny begins his work on the story of Adam and the Guardian, saying that Adam is established in a covenant of grace, that the breath given to Adam is grace, the job given to Adam is grace, the task given to Adam is grace, that he's never really working for his salvation in the garden, but he's living by grace.

So for Adam in the garden, all of life is by definition sacramental, right, this outward sign, whether it's his job, his vocation, his name, his breath, all of them are outward gifts, external identities of God's inward spiritual gifts.

And that's kind of the ideal state, right? So when Christ brings new garden or paradise restored to earth, he's attempting to restore the sacramental nature of all creation, that now being interrupted by sin, by flesh, this distinction that St. Paul makes of the spirit versus flesh, the goal of the resurrection is that the flesh will be reborn into the spirit and live according to the mystery of grace, or sacramentally.

Minor Sacraments and the Priesthood of All Believers

Now sacramentally in the minor sacraments is important because the minor sacraments and the affirmation of them keeps us from an extreme version of sacerdotalism, right? So sacerdotalism is the idea that we have a mediatorial priesthood, that somehow like the Roman church confesses, we need a priest to intercede with us for confession, or we need a priest to intercede with us to make a marriage valid, or we need a priest to intercede with us to give us the gifts of the Holy Spirit for healing.

But by embracing the minor sacraments in a Protestant fashion, as the articles do, we kind of break down that by saying, actually these dominical sacraments, sure there's a priest involved in those, there's ordinance involved, the church is involved, but these minor sacraments are enjoyed in a lesser way, there's a distinction here.

So the fear typically is if you start calling confirmation and marriage sacraments that you'll lean and lean more and more Catholic. But I would say that the articles, by explicitly making the distinction between the two and the five, are actually affirming the priesthood of all believers and our Protestant nature because of how they express grace being experienced by the individual without necessarily the intercession of a priest.

The Purpose of the Minor Sacraments

So that is kind of the purpose he gets to on page number 40. It says, what is the purpose of the minor sacraments? So page 40, what is the purpose of the minor sacraments? And here is the key word, lead us to Christ.

Lead us to Christ. These are faith A's. And so it's a way of using the things we already experience and recognizing that they are gifts and presents of God. So rather than seeing marriage as a good and lofty institution that the government should ordain or something like that, if we take marriage and view it in terms of a minor sacrament, we say marriage is something that God gives us.

Or if we take confession, rather than confession being something handled by the California penal code or by the federal government or local police officers, the sacrament of penance as a minor order says the idea of confession, absolution, restitution, restoration, those are actually parts of God's grace and so on.

Take the idea of marriage. He'll go through here and say, who are the ministers in marriage? Because a sacrament requires a minister and he'll confess here as the scripture confesses both old and new that the ministers of marriage do not wear stoles.

The ministers of marriage are not priests, bishops. The ministers in marriage are those who are making the vows, professing. The priest is there as a witness of what God is doing, but the minister is the bride and the minister is the groom.

So far from the sacramental idea being papalism, the minor sacraments really help us embrace the idea of the priesthood of all believers. So first one you get through and we're going to rapid fire through them.

So feel free to raise your hand if you have an extra question. First one he lists and our confession lists is confirmation. Confirmation, very simply, the laying on of hands for the receiving of the Holy Ghost.

Confirmation and Apostolic Succession

I've said it many times from the pulpit, confirmation was once attached to baptism. So when you were baptized, the bishop would also lay hands on you and you would immediately be taken to Holy Eucharist during that same service.

They were one and the same. You receive baptism with water, you receive the laying on of hands by the bishop, the gift of the Holy Spirit is given to you, you're strengthened. Now as the church spreads and the bishop is not the pastor of every local church, confirmation is over history separated from baptism.

But it's important that we all have that apostolic connection, that the guy who St. Paul laid hands on, who laid hands on, who laid hands on, all the way back that there's an unbroken connection of confirmation that you belong to the one Catholic church.

For the same exact reasons that baptism is taken away, right? We believe in an apostolic succession of our baptisms. We don't have Muslims baptize us, we have Christians baptize us. So all of us who are baptized can trace our baptism back to a Christian who was baptized by a Christian, all the way back to the apostles themselves.

The same thing is true for confirmation. Yet this also has inside of it a promise that the Holy Spirit will be with you for strengthening, for grace. So outward sign of confirmation, laying on of hands, inward grace of confirmation, the strength of the Holy Spirit.

Now confirmation after the medieval period is typically done, you know, seven, eight, nine years old, sometimes as late as later in life. In this particular book, he warns against the idea of confirmation being the renewal of your baptism, because they're separate things.

Baptism unites you with Christ, places you in an objective covenant with God. Confirmation is the physical laying on of hands that connects you to the apostolic authority. Those who are confirmed receive a real grace and belong to the visible church and possess the confirmed gifts, sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Penance, Confession, and Absolution

Now next one is penance. I mentioned last week that penance was considered by Martin Luther to be the third dominical sacrament, but for our purposes penance is going to be one of the minor sacraments, and for a good reason.

The Anglican tradition makes a distinction between penance in a auricular confession, or in speaking to a priest to receive absolution from a priest, versus the idea of having direct access to the Father through the individual's access to Christ.

So penance is a minor sacrament in this section, because you can receive penance by sitting in the pew and praying along the confession, and I stand up and I pronounce the absolution, all of you have received the minor sacrament of penance.

But you may also receive heard confession, meaning I can sit at the altar rail with an empty church, you can come in, and I can put on my purple stole, and you can sit there, and you can give a confession, and I can hear your confession, and I can pronounce absolution over your confession, and you can feel really great about that.

But this is different than the Roman Catholic sense in which your sins are bound to your soul, mortal, venial, however distinctions they make, your sins are bound to you until you make that personal confession, and until the priest says your sins are forgiven.

The Anglican says we do not need a priest to do that, because by virtue of your baptism, you already possess the authority to claim Calvary, to claim the resurrection, and have an advocate before the Father.

That's what Jesus is doing as a mediator. When we say through Jesus Christ our Lord, our prayer is going to the Father, through the Son, from us as individuals. Yet, it's important that we do confess.

During the season of Lent, it is a good tradition that individuals make confession. Now, in the West, it typically, confession is done with a priest, but that's not the only way to do oral confession.

In the East, individuals pick elders, so old people, or brothers, or pastors, or just people who are wise, and they make a confession to them, and they are able to work out their counseling that way. So much of the inner turmoil of modern culture has been thrust into the category of psychotherapy or counseling, when it should have been confessing one to another, or confessing to your pastor, and hearing what usually the counselor says.

Good that you feel guilty about that. God forgives you. Sometimes you need to hear another human being saying that, and that is what penance teaches us. Now, there's a phrase that the bishop who ordained me repeated often on the idea of confession to a priest, and it's important for us to remember.

It says, all may, so all may go to a priest to receive confession. Some should, right, if you have a particular heinous sin. Sometimes, if you come to the confession every week, and you don't feel like your sin is really done with, or you feel like there's unresolved anger, anxiety, tension in your soul, maybe it would be good to go.

But the final form is, all may, some should, none must. So, all, it's not required to get it. Now, rapid fire through these, you can tell the outward sign of penance is speaking, right, or hearing. Inward grace is your soul is bombed by the absolution.

And here he goes through a couple of things on what's required of confession, but we've reviewed that. Next sacrament is matrimony, or marriage. Now, again, marriage is a lifelong union of husband and wife established by a covenant between them.

Matrimony and the Covenant of Marriage

So, the sacrament, or the minor sacrament I should say, of marriage established between two people, an outward sign, so a covenant, a bond, a union, where they ask for God's blessing, and there's an inward and spiritual grace of two become one.

So, the minor sacrament there, in that it was not ordained by Christ, and it's not required that all people be married, but those who are in the estate of marriage do have an outside external form that looks a little bit different in different cultures.

So, different eastern churches wear crowns, and they say vows a little bit different, meaning there is not a prescribed ritual in the scripture that says put your right hand here, your left hand here, you do the hokey pokey, turn yourself about, no, but there is an external and an internal sign and grace.

So, that's very important. I think we're all in agreement on the sacrament of marriage, but it's also important in our day and age to affirm it as a sacrament, because today the state version of marriage is not really marriage.

So, man marries a man, not really marriage. So, there is an external form, but no inward spiritual grace, because God cannot bless what is contrary to his nature. So, it's important for us to continue to teach marriage as a sacrament in that way.

We do not, however, believe, as the Roman Catholics do, that if you got married in a courthouse, or if you got married before you were a Christian, that somehow you have to redo it in the church. Because the husband and the wife are the primary ministers of the sacrament, the church is merely a witness.

Now, if somebody got married and they converted to Christ, say they got married in a Hindu temple and they moved to America and became Christians, what I would simply do is have a service to bless what God has already done.

So, I would ask for God's blessing on the marriage, and I would be not the minister of the sacrament, but like I would be in the wedding, a witness to say, truly God has done this, let's ask for God's blessing.

So, a little distinction there, why it's a minor sacrament. Now, next one is the idea of orders. Now, holy orders is also a controversial thing in Protestantism, because there are different views on what constitutes an office in the church.

Holy Orders and the Threefold Ministry

Now, we treat orders as minor sacraments because they have an outward form, because Christ did establish teachers, he did establish apostles, he did establish disciples, but he does not give us, in his life, the idea or the expectation of how that sacrament would be performed.

It's also not given to everybody. We read throughout the general epistles that there are certain group of Christians who may receive this outward sign and inward spiritual grace. They have to be married, they have to be men, right, in order to receive this special sacrament, and that they're given a special gift with that, or authority with that.

In the Anglican church, we confess that their three orders are bishop, overseer, episkopos. Those are all the same word. The second order is presbyteros, or presbyter, or in English, priest, priest. So sometimes the word presbyter is translated in English to elder, because it means elder, but the English language receives the word presbyter as prester, or priest.

We don't mean priest as in somebody who re-offers a sacrifice, or priest like the idea of Conan, the Hebrew word for priest, Kohen, there we go, I got that mixed up. Yes, so it's not a Levitical priest, it's not a sacrificial priest, it's not a Baha 'i priest, it's a presbyter, it's an elder, and we participate in the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist, but not as a re-sacrifice, but only as a remembering or memorial sacrifice, as we say.

And then the third order being the servant order, diakonos, or deacons, and from the very first council at Nicaea, this threefold order is established and received. So Constantine calls together all the bishops, and they give instructions.

Who gets to vote? Bishops. So by 325, who gets to vote? Bishops. So in these first centuries of the church, either the church has gotten completely off the board on its polity, meaning that there is no longer a faithful church of understanding who their own officers are, or bishops weren't received from the earliest days.

The second one being presbyters, they are given rule over local churches. Remember, initially bishops were the head of, say, the church in Galatia, but as the church spread, he appointed elders over local house churches, and those grew and grew and grew, and eventually the bishop would visit the various presbyters, and the servant of the bishop who would assist him in serving the presbyters was the deacon.

So threefold orders. And the sign for orders is the bishop lays hands on an individual, confers the gift of orders, and they receive an annual spiritual gift. In Anglicanism, the idea of ordination is permanent.

So once you're ordained a deacon, you remain a deacon until you die, unless they scrape the oil off of your hands when you're defrocked. So I think we have five more minutes, but that's important to recognize.

Apostolic Authority and Ordination

There probably are some questions about, well, what about New Testament? Where does it give us this idea of bishop versus presbyter? And haven't I read something before that the word overseer and elder are used interchangeably by St. Paul, that type of thing?

You need to ask the question, how do you make a new pastor? How do you make a new pastor? Does it come from my own volition? Do I decide today I'm going to be a pastor, I'm going to stand in front of a pulpit, if I'm a good enough preacher, my people will accept me, or has there been an accepted order to doing this?

And what the church has said is that the apostles appointed some men, laid hands on them, and those men were able to be pastors. And they received a special authority, a special grace, by the laying of hands by the bishops.

And the record is, let no man preach without hands being laid on him. Or, the other warning, lay hands hastily on no man. If the hands didn't do anything, why would there be bold warnings against it? So the hands are important, and that word sign, there's a sacramental identity there to it.

So that's important. And then there has to be a recognition of who was in charge once the apostles died. So if the apostles, by authority, are those who are witnesses of Christ, well eventually those who saw Christ will die.

70 years after Christ ascends into heaven, even St. John is, you know, dead. So no more apostles, who now gets to set aside the next group of pastors? Well the apostles passed on that authority to the overseers, those who had the authority of bishops.

And that's what we receive at Nicaea, affirmed with both sides of the church, east and west, of course. We have bishops, we have priests, we have deacons, and it remains unquestioned until the 15th century during the Reformation when they say, well none of the bishops are any good anymore.

So now we need to do something else. Funny enough, and this is, I shouldn't say it because we don't have time, but Calvin himself offered to have the church in Geneva come under the church of England.

And he wrote a letter to Edward, King Edward, and wanted the bishops to grant bishopal consecration over the pastors in Geneva. Unfortunately the letter was intercepted by Roman sympathizing bishops who made sure that the bishop never saw that letter.

So it was discovered years later. What could have been if Calvin had been an Anglican? But anyway, so the next one is the anointing of the sick. And I've actually had the pleasure of doing this. I mentioned that a few weeks ago.

Anointing of the Sick and Healing

The anointing of the sick takes the Bible seriously when it says in the book of James, is anyone sick? Call for the elder. What is the word? Presbyter. Call for the presbyter and let him get the oil and apply it.

So oil in the Old Testament is always symbolic of authority, kingship, priesthood, and the Holy Spirit. You might remember from the story of Noah's Ark, the dove that leads the Ark goes and grabs an olive branch.

And so that connection of dove being Holy Spirit and olive branch representing olive oil follows throughout the scripture. So whenever you ordain a king, you take olive oil and you anoint his head. Anytime you ordain a priest, you take olive oil.

This is the gift of the peace of the Holy Spirit. And so in the New Testament, when a Christian is sick, they call for the gift of the Holy Spirit by the anointing of oil. And for some reason, the apostles believed that this was important.

I mean they could by their shadow heal people, by their hands heal people, by their voice heal people, yet their instruction to the presbyters was grab this oil and put it on the people. Now the ceremony around the oil has developed over the years, so now in the church we have three types of oils.

We have the oil of the catechumen, so when you are baptized, they put oil over you that's been blessed. When you are infirmed, sick, we have oil for those who are infirmed and we also have the oil of the chrism or the oil that's been blessed by a bishop that the presbyter can use to offer the same blessings of confirmation.

And there's a history that developed with each of these things, but to know that from the very beginning in the Didache, the first century, the Christian church has used oil for the purpose of healing.

So although today in modern reformed Christianity there's this debate about whether the charismatic gifts have continued or ended, the historic liturgical church has always said God will be God and we're going to follow his orders and we're going to anoint for the healing and sometimes the healing is of the body and sometimes the healing is of the soul and they go to be with the Lord.

But that's again the external sign ordained by God by his scripture is pray, touch, and put oil on them. The internal grace is either the healing of the body or the healing of the soul. And so those kind of minor sacraments I think are important because they show that God still cares for this physical world.

We don't get lost in the Gnostic and heretical idea where everything exists between our ears. Marriage, and who our pastors are, and how we're healed, and all of these. Now I know we have to get set up for mass, but is there any questions for this one?

The Bishop’s Office, Authority, and Apostolic Succession

I've got a quick question. What exactly is the function and responsibility of a bishop and how does he get his office or authority?

That's a great question. That's a great question. So, historically, the bishop was the apostle. So who is the bishop in Corinth? Paul. Who is the bishop in Rome? Peter. Who is the bishop in Jerusalem?

James. And they have a jurisdiction and they kept the diocesan model of the Roman court. So Dr. Rushton talks about how even their uniform, the mitre, the idea of wearing a stole, these were borrowed from the judicial courts of the Roman system.

So the Christians who had parallel courts to the Romans, when Constantine came in, he kicked out the Roman judges, so notice that there's a legal sense here, kicked out the Roman judges and in their place established the Christian bishops who already existed in those places.

How did they get to be bishops? Well, the bishops historically were chosen by the apostles and then those successors, by the consent of three, would make another bishop. So, if you wanted to have, say, the mission of the church after first establishing the church in Corinth, say you wanted to go establish a church in Spain and the church is growing there and now they need their own bishop to do confirmation, to preach, all that.

The bishop in Rome and the bishop in Antioch and the bishop in Jerusalem would all grant their consent, they would travel to Spain, all of them lay hands on this new gentleman and they'd make a new bishop.

The bishops would create a new bishop and confer the authority of a new diocese unto them. And that's historically how new bishops have come and so throughout the years those new bishops have been all equal in status.

So the bishop in Rome is equal to the bishop in Jerusalem, equal to the bishop in Antioch and at Nicaea this is debated. Who is the most important bishop? Who is the least important bishop? And they establish something called the Pentarchy or they recognize the Pentarchy and they say of all of the hundreds of bishops around the world, there are five really central ones that were from episcopacies or bishoprics or cities that were established by the apostles themselves.

So obviously Rome, Antioch, Jerusalem those are important ones but also Constantinople and I'm missing one. So Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. That's such an important one, how am I missing that?

But these five claimed territorial jurisdiction, so it's like national churches and then there would be dioceses underneath them and as the church grew to a certain number they would get a new bishop, get a new bishop.

And so as that went down throughout the ages there was different traditions on how they would elect their bishop. So for example the story of St. Ambrose who is the mentor of St. Augustine of Hippo, how did he become a bishop?

Well he wasn't a deacon, he wasn't a priest, he was a Roman governor and the bishop of Ambrose of Milan, the bishop of Milan died and so the people said who's going to be our next bishop? And all the people, all the Christian people of Milan said Ambrose should be our next bishop.

And Ambrose said well I don't want to be the bishop and I'm not even a deacon and I'm not even a priest. And he ran away, they captured him, they put him in the cathedral and they held him down and they said Ambrose we make you a deacon and the bishop came and ordained him as a deacon and then Ambrose we make you a presbyter and they ordained him as a presbyter and by this time Ambrose finally consented and they brought in the bishop.

So there was this historical recognition that the acclamation of the people, we elect our bishop but then he is confirmed or consecrated by the church so there's this kind of two-fold identity which is a little bit different than say like the Southern Baptist Convention where you would say here's our candidate, yes or no, he gets elected, he's the new president right?

That's a very different way of governing and throughout history there's lots of challenges to this. What does it mean to have the consent of the people? So if you go back to the Magna Carta who gets to decide who the candidate for bishop is?

Does anybody have the right to veto? And so the English kings for example would nominate their bishops and nominate their bishops to be confirmed by the other bishops particularly during the Middle Ages they fell to the idea of Rome granting assent to it.

But there's different traditions there. The important thing to know is in historic Christianity we require in the idea of orders the consent of bishops to create new bishops. So you have to have apostolic authority, you have to have the laying on of hands.

It's typical that there are three bishops to make a new bishop and that they have a jurisdiction to be the bishop of. You don't create bishops of your house right? You make bishops of cities where the people are being governed under.

There's no free reigning bishops. Now you asked another question what does the bishop do? He is the pastor of pastors right? So he is and this is sometimes controversial to say and it shouldn't be. It's the basic unit of the church.

So the basic unit of society is the family right? So husband and wife you can't get any smaller than that. But the basic unit of the church is the diocese or the bishop. It's just like when we're going to talk about it today in the idea of Galatians.

The church in Galatia is one church even though it meets in several different houses, it has different pastors, different members. But it's one church under the apostle Paul. And so the basic unit of Galatian Christendom is under Paul.

So there's no like secret church in Galatia that also exists separate from Paul. So the bishop and his diocese have an authority over that. So St. Paul when he writes to the Galatians says stop doing this, start doing this, correct yourself on this because he has the authority over all of those temporal church duties.

And the bishop has the authority to create presbyters and deacons. My title here is rector. Rector is an ancient Latin idea meaning that the church locally, St. Paul's, is under the temporal jurisdiction of the bishop.

And I stand in his rectorship or the bishop has placed me as the pastor of his church. That's why we have an empty chair in the front, the cathedral, because that's the bishop's church. And when he's not here, I as the rector stand in his place under his authority.

Which is kind of an interesting topic. So what does the bishop do? He oversees the idea of holy orders. He offers confirmation. He's the only officer of the church who can give confirmation. And he also promotes the growth of the church and works with the other bishops having this kind of equal identity with every other bishop.

We have ten minutes to get started. But thank you. And we can talk more about that. It's a controversial thing, but it's also important to recognize we don't get stuck in Roman categories. So how Roman Catholicism post-Trent defines all of these things.

So there are various traditions. The English tradition says however it was done in England prior to the Reformation, in conformity with the fathers, is how we want to do it. Thank you.