The Vicar Speaks
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All material below is copyright © by The Reverend Carl Somers-Edgar who asserts his right to be recognised as the author and owner of all rights associated.
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Puzzle of Saint Peter 
Faith and Function
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Bishops
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Changing Us
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Unpopular Religion
"...He was just the sort of feller that we would want to make sure that our churches are filled...but, things go wrong!" |
Petrine Privilege
"...the Bishops are just not sort of elected functionaries, they are..." |
The Truth about Us
"...that the purpose of human life is the world beyond this one..." |
Persons and Passions
"...you might ask yourself, " Well then, why isn't the Gospel of Judas in the New Testament? " and the answer..." |
God's Foolishness
"...God has had and always has had absolutely everything God could possibly want from all eternity, and yet..." |
God and Nature
"...not that awful sort of gratitude that you're required to feel at Christmas time ..." |
Finding the Answer
"Now that's not the sort of thing that modern churchmen want to hear. They want to hear that the world is somehow a good place and that..." |
Asking the Shepherd
"Now, a lot of people think that prayer is about asking for things, especially if nobody else has been able to give them to you..." |
Believe and Live
"...why would the author of this Gospel - St John's Gospel - make this outrageous claim? A claim which has been made ever since, I might say..." |
Being Real
"...He was exceptionally human, and He wasn't much liked by the ecclesiastical establishment for it..." |
Christ is Risen
"...God is our Saviour because only God can do this for us. You've got to live when you're dead...'" |
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Holy Legalism
"...rules and regulations are something which people hold on to very often, even when they're quite meaningless..." |
Following Abraham
"...and it's not going to make any sense to anybody whatsoever..." |
Sin and Repentance
"... sin is a very important part of our lives, it's something which by and large we're rather fond of..." |
All Change
"I was an innocent young man, and..." |
A bigger God
"...it's become odder and odder ... and it's become rather overwhelming..." |
Family Life
"But obviously this is a story which has a very special kind of meaning and it's also a meaning which is clearly not easy to find." |
Christian Initiation
"...in recent years, Anglicans in particular have become a little bit concerned about the relationship between these two great Sacraments." |
God on the Wire
"I sometimes wonder why the universe is as big as it is." |
The Word Written and Unwritten
"...words, however wonderful they might be, cannot in any way encapsulate the whole of God's nature..." |
Knowing how to know
"...that's why we have so many churches and denominations in the world..." |
At Midnight Mass
"The original Christmas took place in darkness...it was utterly and absolutely obscure and for 300 years it was persecuted..." |
Theory and Reality
"...to a certain extent we seem to have lost the plot a bit, which is why the Chrisitan religion is a wonderful thing..." |
Waiting in purple
"...how could it be superficial when the Almighty God becomes a suffering human being..." |
Here comes the Judge
"...and this is a happy hunting ground for all the weirdo sects that you could possibly imagine..." |
For All Souls
"...and he said ' Well you may be just apes, but I am a child of God.' " |
The Christian Sacrifice
"...it became necessary for the Church to explain that yes, they did, even if it didn't look like it." |
Revelations
"You know the story that the Bible begins with a man and a woman in a garden and ends with Revelations. Well..." |
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Paying the Price
"...and the answer must be, The Cross of Christ.'" |
Holy Evolution
"...evolution is a necessary part not just of this world, but of the next...'" |
For St Luke
"I still find St Luke's Gospel in some ways ... the one that's easiest to love...'" |
Egghead Sandwich
"...egghead knowledge is not the only knowledge that's required...'" |
Being Reformed
"...if you were the elect, then you had to behave like the elect. Of course, behaving like the elect wouldn't make you elect...'" |
Calvin's Tulip
"In the 16th century, people were a bit concerned about how they were going to be saved.'" |
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Opening Pandora's Box
"...I thought to myself, 'Only a very brave man or a fool would attempt to preach on the subject' - you can guess which I am.'" |
The Assumption
"...it's God that's doing it to them, so who can they turn to?..." |
Rites and Prayers
"...the liturgy encapsulates the experience of centuries of worship..." |
Eucharistic Fashion
"...the fact that so much of the New Zealand church has let it happen is a very terrible and awful and wicked thing but, they've got all the empty churches they like to prove it." |
God with us
"...therefore the creation of the universe is an act of overwhelming generosity on His part..." |
The Bread of Truth
"...we don't do Truth in our culture - or rather, we do a multitude of truths..." |
Mother of the Word
"...the Blessed Virgin has appeared in all sorts of guises. I've seen her twice as a black Virgin..." |
Church Unity
"...it's interesting isn't it how everything's forbidden until it becomes compulsory..." |
Corpus Christi
"...the extraordinary thing about this service is that it is the very centre of Chrisitan life..." |
Rogationtide
"...It's called Rogation Sunday because it's followed by Rogation Monday, Rogation Tuesday and Rogation Wednesday..." |
Charismatic Summer
"... saying 'at last, at last, now Saint Peter's Caversham will be converted to Christianity' ..." |
Satan's God
"...I don't imagine for a moment he was thrown out of Heaven, he left!..." |
Doubt and A N Wilson
"...I was used to giving him good advice about what to believe ... and he didn't always seem to want to listen to what I had to say ... which is rather surprising..." |
The Great Spirit
"...I found The Father and The Son a bit frightening...then I found The Great Spirit..." |
Gritting Your Teeth
"...For some 15 years or so I was a Police Chaplain..." "...God likewise has suffered and endured..." |
Trinity
"...and all those nasty clergymen made it all terribly complicated with doctrines like The Trinity, but..." |
Restoring Humpty Dumpty
"...now they say 'Huh, my opinion's as good as the Pope's'..." |
The Benedictine Vision
"...discretion is the mother of virtue..." |
The Lesser Brethren
"St Augustine....saw the great difficulty we have in following the will of God." |
Anglican Unity and New Ideas
"...there are more Anglicans in Japan than there are in New Zealand..." |
Fundamental and Transfigured
"...trying to understand why people are fundamentalists..." |
Surviving death naturally
"...[she] turned to me ... and said 'O Carl, you don't really believe in that do you?'..." |
The Annunciation
"...she would have known profoundly ... that she was going to be involved in something absolutely overwhelming..." |
The Point of Repentance
"...repentance means ... that we should change our minds, change the way we think..." |
Who did He think He was
"..this is the very essence and heart of our religion, so of course there is a number of things about it which are important..." |
The Woman taken in Adultery
"...they slink away one by one because they are not able to justify themselves." |
Understanding the Sacraments : i
"The Christian religion does not believe that human beings and God are the same thing." |
Understanding the Sacraments : ii
"There are a number of theories of the way in which Christ is present in the Sacrament..." |
The Gospel without guilt
"Now I think it has to be a bit like being in love..." Background Readings: Jeremiah 1.4-5, 17-19 Corinthians 12.31-13.13 Luke 4.21-30
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Lessening the guilt
"...not only just a fantasy, but it's actually a rather irreligious fantasy..." |
The Burning Bush
"We should follow the example of the Eastern Church in this as in just about everything..." |
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