January 09, 2005

Beyond Tom Becket's Jurisdiction

Busy, busy, busy. Thanks to Year 11 reports, Year 10 coursework, lesson planning, and sorting out a new classroom, not to mention things at home, I have hardly had a chance to blog about anything. It's not that I haven't had things to say - just no time to say them.

Even as I am typing this, I am in the middle of putting together a lesson on Henry II and St Thomas Becket - oh, wait, 1170 is after 1054, so I have to call him just plain Tom Becket, I suppose.

Now even though the East and the West can't recognise each other's post-Schism saints - since of course being the real Church only that Church can actually glorify/canonise - I have always wondered if there are those on each side of the 11th century divide who are just a bit uncomfortable with the miracles attributed to the intercessions or relics of the other side. I know all the boilerplate answers, even going so far as the standard, "We know where the Holy Spirit is, but we don't know where He is not." (In other words, there are things we don't know that we don't know - this would be a great one for Donald Rumsfeld.)

I'm probably far too ecumenical for a lot of my fellow Orthobloggers. Someone may be piling up the kindling to burn me at the stake, but think both sides may be assuming too much in their ability and or jurisdiction to effectively declare the other lot to be outside the Church.

But since I deal with Becket as a history teacher and not an RE teacher, this doesn't affect my lesson planning one bit.

Posted by david at January 9, 2005 11:41 PM | TrackBack
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