- on the no-debate list
Menu
Give second reading to the addition of the following section in Canon XIV
Source: Governance Working Group
Submitted By: Governance Working Group
If yes, has the General Synod Expenditures Committee considered the implications?
Yes No
EXPLANATORY NOTE/BACKGROUND
In 1992 the General Synod voted to delete from use and from further printings of the Book of Common Prayer the third collect for Good Friday. The prayer asked for God’s mercy on Jews for willfully rejecting and denying Jesus. It read in part, “Take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of thy word; and so fetch them home…”
The prayer’s removal was a recognition that the collect represented an obstacle in Jewish-Christian dialogue. Its continued presence in our official liturgies also did not reflect the church’s renewed understanding—especially in the shadow of the Holocaust—of Christians being joint heirs, with the Jewish people, of God’s covenantal promises.
A similar prayer, entitled “For the Conversion of the Jews” (found on page 41), remains in the Book of Common Prayer, even though it reflects the same attitudes towards the Jewish people as the collect that our church removed from use in 1992.
Rather than simply expunge this prayer, this resolution proposes that it be replaced with a new prayer entitled “For Reconciliation with the Jews.”
This new prayer attempts to express the same reproach found in the meditation on the cross, in the Good Friday liturgy of the Book of Alternative Services, in which Jesus Christ says from the cross, “I grafted you into the tree of my chosen Israel, and you turned on them with persecution and mass murder. I made you joint heirs with them of my covenants, but you made them scapegoats for your own guilt.” However, it attempts to do so in a literary style consistent with the Prayer Book.
The prayer “For Reconciliation with the Jews” was composed and approved by the Prayer Book Society of Canada, and in consultation with the Canadian Rabbinic Caucus, a representative body of ordained Jewish leaders from across the country.
General Synod 2019 gave First Reading to this motion, and it has been referred to the diocesan and provincial synods.
PROCEDURE FOR ADOPTION
(D)
Section 11 c) i) of the Declaration of Principles requires the enactment or amendment of all canons dealing with doctrine, worship or discipline to be passed by a two-thirds majority of each Order voting at two successive sessions of General Synod.
Note: This type of resolution must also be referred to all diocesan and provincial synods for information (not consent) after first approval by General Synod.
A website of the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.
40 “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. 41 Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous, 42 and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
15 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. 18 Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” 19 (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”
33 “No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a bushel basket; rather, one puts it on the lampstand so that those who enter may see the light. 34 Your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but if it is unhealthy, your body is full of darkness. 35 Therefore consider whether the light in you is not darkness. 36 But if your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, it will be as full of light as when a lamp gives you light with its rays.”
8 When Jesus had come down from the mountain, great crowds followed him, 2 and there was a man with a skin disease who came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” 3 He stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing. Be made clean!” Immediately his skin disease was cleansed. 4 Then Jesus said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”