Ah, Simone....

"In all crucial problems of human existence the only choice is between supernatural good on the one hand and evil on the other." --Simone Weil 1909-1943

The Anglican Spiritual Tradition by John R. H. Moorman

Two things have made this type of sermon [the long, well thought-out sermon of the past] much less com mon nowadays than it once was: the parish communion and broadcasting. Both of these have cut down what a preacher has to say to five or ten minutes. In fact, a really skilful preacher can get into that space a real message and some positive teaching; but where are these skilful preachers to be found nowadays? Austin Farrer is a prime example. but his sermons were all preached to a limited audience of intelligent men in a college chapel at Oxford. The result is that people are not being taught the Christian faith as they used to be. They are, curiously enough, presumed to know it, though no one knows how. They are expected to have been somehow taught what to believe about God, about the Church and sacraments, sin and forgiveness, life and death. People think that children learn these things in confirmation classes, or at school; but this is not so, with the result that there are few Christians nowadays who could ‘give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you’. All that a Christian should believe is admirably set out in the ‘…Book of Common Prayer according to the use of the Episcopal Church’ of the USA’ in the form of an ‘Outline of the Faith’ which would make a fine basis of Christian preach ing or teaching. But there is nothing like this in the English Prayer Book except the catechism, which is very short and nowadays so much neglected.