Veneration of Saints
Although direct prayer to the saints is a practice that was continued in the first Litany in English, it was not particularly encouraged after the English Reformation, it is an important part of Anglo-Catholics' public and private spiritual practices. In Anglo-Catholic theology, veneration is a type of honour distinct from the worship due to God alone. High church theologians have long used the terms latria for the sacrificial worship due to God alone, and dulia for the veneration given to saints and icons. They base this distinction on the conclusions of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787), which also decreed that iconoclasm (forbidding icons and their veneration) is a heresy that amounts to a denial of the incarnation of Jesus.
Article XXII of the Thirty-nine Articles states the "Romish doctrine" of the invocation of saints in the 16th century was not grounded in Scripture, hence many low-church or broad-church Anglicans consider prayer to the saints to be unnecessary. One example of Anglo-Catholic veneration is the annual procession in honour of Our Lady of Walsingham (see picture). It was suspended in 1538 and revived in 1922 by some clergy and lay members of the Church of England.
Read more about this topic: Anglican Devotions
Famous quotes containing the words veneration and/or saints:
“Erasmus was the light of his century; others were its strength: he lighted the way; others knew how to walk on it while he himself remained in the shadow as the source of light always does. But he who points the way into a new era is no less worthy of veneration than he who is the first to enter it; those who work invisibly have also accomplished a feat.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“We know of no scripture which records the pure benignity of the gods on a New England winter night. Their praises have never been sung, only their wrath deprecated. The best scripture, after all, records but a meagre faith. Its saints live reserved and austere. Let a brave, devout man spend the year in the woods of Maine or Labrador, and see if the Hebrew Scriptures speak adequately to his condition and experience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)