A Purple Weekend

Yours Truly processing at the beginning of the Consecration Service between Archdeacon Walter Baer and Rev’d Nathanial Bm © Sybille Yates

 

 

My last month as the Anglican Chaplain of St Clement’s, Prague, started with what can be best described as a ‘purple weekend’. It featured bishops – lots of them!

As I have explained many times previously on this blog, for legal and ecumenical reasons, St Clement’s is officially the English-speaking parish of the Old Catholic Church in the Czech Republic. Back in April 2016, at a synod meeting held at Želiv Monastery, Pavel Benedikt Stránský was elected to succeed the retiring Bishop Dušan Hejbal, as head of the Czech Old Catholics. Therefore on Saturday 1st April 2017, I attended what in English sounds like a contradiction in terms – the consecration of Pavel Benedikt Stránský as the new Old Catholic Bishop of the Czech Republic 🙂

 

 

 

Archbishop Joris Vercammen © Sybille Yates

The Consecration Service took place in the Basilica sv Markéty, located within the Brevnov Monastery complex in Prague. The service was presided over by the Archbishop of Utrecht, Joris Vercammen, whose role within the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht is very similar to that of the Archbishop of Canterbury within the Anglican Communion. Also participating were Old Catholic bishops from the Netherlands, Germany Switzerland and Austria.

Bishop-elect Pavel between two supporting OC priests with contrasting hairstyles 🙂 © Sybille Yates

However, because of the Bonn agreement of 1931, by which Old Catholics and Anglicans, mutually recognise each others orders, Anglican bishops from the Episcopal Church of the USA, the Church of Ireland, the Lusitanian Church – Portuguese Episcopal Church, together with my Church of England Diocesan bishop, Rt Rev’d Dr Robert Innes, also participated in the Consecration Service.

The service lasted for nearly three hours and was conducted mainly in Czech and German, with a little English. It was, as Bishop Robert has himself written, a test in humility for us English-speakers! But it was good to be there, and see Bishop Pavel take up his role as head of the Old Catholic Church in the Czech Republic, before my own retirement, as he and Bishop Robert will have joint responsibility, for appointing my successor.

On the morning of Sunday 2nd April, Bishop Robert was the Celebrant and Preacher at our Sung Eucharist for the Fifth Sunday of Lent – Passion Sunday. Wanting to engage the St Clement’s congregation with the very long Gospel reading – the story of the raising of Lazarus as recorded in John 11. 1-45, he got me to read it in five separate sections with his sermon interspersed between each section. You can listen to the reading and sermon here. Within the service, he also confirmed three members of the congregation, Sebastian, Radka and John.

The three confirmees, together with Bishop Robert, Rev’d Nathanial & Yours Truly © Sybille Yates

At an extended Coffee Hour with copious amounts of food, Bishop Robert met with members of the congregation, displaying his language skills by speaking in both French and Flemish/Dutch as well as English. Then, whilst I headed off to Brno for our regular monthly service in the second city of the Czech Republic, the Church Council met with Bishop Robert to discuss the future of the Chaplaincy and the strategy and timetable for appointing my successor. 

From l to r: Licensed Reader Jack Noonan, Rev’d Nathanial Bm, Bishop Robert, Yours Truly © Stephen Weeks

Electing a new Old Catholic Bishop for the Czech Republic

Želiv Monastery © Ricky Yates
Želiv Monastery © Ricky Yates

As I have explained previously in this blog, the Prague Anglican congregation legally functions as the English-speaking parish of the Old Catholic Church in the Czech Republic or Farní obec Starokatolické církve pro vericí anglického jazyka v Praze. This came about as the result of a covenant signed in September 2000 by Bishop John Hind, the then Anglican Bishop of the Diocese in Europe, and Bishop Dušan Hejbal of the Old Catholic Church in the Czech Republic.

Under the covenant, we are treated both as a Chaplaincy in the Anglican Diocese in Europe, and as a constituent parish of the Czech Old Catholic Church. One consequence of this is that I am expected, along with one lay person from my congregation, to attend any meeting of the Synod of the Old Catholic Church in the Czech Republic when they take place. Fortunately, this is normally only once every three years as the meetings, which usually take place over a couple of days, are conducted entirely in Czech 🙁

Back in October 2010, Sybille I broke into our holiday to attend a Synod meeting held in Moravia, as mentioned in this post, whilst three years later in 2013, I attended the next Synod meeting, along with a lay representative, which was conveniently held in Prague. But last year, Bishop Dušan called an extra Synod meeting, in order to gain approval for his proposal to stay on as Bishop for a further three years beyond his sixty-fifth birthday in July 2016, exercising a provision within the Church’s constitution. Unfortunately, the date of that Synod meeting fell in the middle of our previously booked holiday in Poland, so I was unable to attend, nor could we find a lay representative to go either.

At that meeting in October 2015, the Synod decided not to accept Bishop Dušan’s proposal. Thus was set in motion, a procedure that had not happened for over twenty years – a further Synod meeting was called to take place in April 2016, to elect a new Old Catholic Bishop. As I have said numerous times, I do realise that ‘a new Old Catholic Bishop’, does sound like a contradiction in terms 🙂

This Synod meeting took place between the evening of Thursday 7th and the morning of Saturday 9th April at Želiv Monastery, located in the Vysocina/Highlands, about 100km south-east of Prague. I was accompanied by one of my Churchwardens, Stephen Weeks, who the Church Council had previously elected to be their lay representative. After an opening Eucharist, followed by our evening meal, the Synod meeting began.

Fortunately, whilst having supper, Stephen and I were overheard speaking to each other in English, by a lay member of the Synod called Vlad’ka. Like many of the Old Catholic laity, she had no idea of our existence as an English-speaking parish in the Czech Old Catholic Church and asked us in English, who we were and what we were doing there. Once we had explained, she kindly offered to interpret for us as she is a teacher of English to vocational students in Brno. She sat between us, interpreting all that was being said, enabling Stephen and I to follow the proceedings.

The evening session began with the two candidates to be the new Bishop, each making a presentation as to their understanding of the role and what they hoped to achieve if elected. There was then a short break, during which time written questions could be submitted to the moderator for the candidates to answer in the following session. Stephen and I compiled a couple of questions which we wanted to ask, which Vlad’ka kindly translated into Czech for us to submit.

The question and answer session went on until it was 22.00 which had previously been agreed as the finishing time for that evening. But it resumed again after breakfast, the following morning. Issues raised included the candidates attitude to same-sex blessings, what was the first things they would do upon becoming bishop and the question of the ordination of women as priests. Currently, the Czech Old Catholic Church only ordain women deacon, unlike their fellow Old Catholics in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Switzerland who do ordain women as priest.

We raised the specific question of their attitude to us being able to advertise for a successor to me, being open to ordained Anglican priests of either gender. My Church Council are unanimous that this should be the case, and fortunately we now have an Archdeacon and Bishop who are committed to supporting us in this. We did not get as clear an answer as we would like from the candidates, but we certainly did not get an outright rejection on the issue.

By the middle of Friday morning, there were no further questions. So we moved to a coffee break, to be followed by the election of the new Bishop. However, before the election could take place, a technical issue was raised. There were meant to be fifty-six Synod delegates but only fifty-five were present. The constitution provides that to be elected, a candidate needs a three fifths majority. Was it to be three fifths of fifty-five or fifty-six? After some debate, we voted that it should be three fifths of fifty-six 🙂

It took three rounds of voting before a conclusive result was achieved. The Synod elected Pavel Stránský, currently the Old Catholic priest in Zlín, to be their new Bishop. He was given a standing ovation and presented with a chain and crucifix, showing him to be the Bishop-elect. He then made a formal declaration, signed various papers and both he and Bishop Dušan were presented with flowers.

After lunch, the Synod meeting elected a new Synodal Council, who with the new bishop, will run the Church for the next three years. Various other committees were also elected and then, with no further business to conduct, the meeting ended with the singing of the Te Deum.

Exactly when Bishop-elect Pavel will be consecrated has yet to be decided but I’ve been told informally that it will probably be sometime in September or October.

Yours Truly with the Bishop-elect, Pavel Stránský © Ricky Yates
Yours Truly with the Bishop-elect, Pavel Stránský © Ricky Yates

Two Ecumenical events from November 2015

My invitation
My invitation

November 2015 was quite an ecumenical month. Not only did I sit through a nearly two hour meeting in Dresden, conducted predominantly in German and attended by various German Protestant ministers and theologians, I also attended two important services in Prague, conducted in Czech.

On 21st November, I was an ecumenical guest of the Ceskobratrská církev evangelická/Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren – the main Czech Protestant Church. The service was to bid farewell to the Moderator and Synodal Council of the Church for the past six years, and to welcome and formally install their successors who had been elected a few months previously. The service was held in Salvátor Church in central Prague which is effectively the ‘Protestant Cathedral’.

Salvátor Church © Ricky Yates
Salvátor Church © Ricky Yates

 

 

 

 

Whilst the whole two-and-a-half hour service was in Czech, because of having guests from other countries, there was a simultaneous translation service offered in English and German for parts of the it and I was also given a printed translation into English, of the new Moderator’s sermon. There were inevitably one or two rather ‘interesting’ interpretations. The most notable was when the new Synodal Council members, were asked a series of questions to each of which they had to answer, affirming their commitment to their new roles. But what should have been ‘I commit myself’, was interpreted as ‘I oblige myself’!

One very nice bonus arising from this event was that most international guests attending the service, were in Prague for the whole weekend and were therefore looking for somewhere to worship on Sunday morning. So my good friend Rev’d Dr Karen Moritz, brought several fluent English-speakings guests, to our 11.00 Eucharist the next day.

 

 

Monika, Petra & Martin with Bishop Dušan following the Ordination Service © Ricky Yates
Monika, Petra & Martin with Bishop Dušan following the Ordination Service © Ricky Yates

The following Saturday morning, 28th November, I attended a Eucharist held in the Old Catholic Cathedral of Sv Vavrince on Petrín Hill, Prague, during which Bishop Dušan Hejbal ordained three new deacons – including two women! From left to right they are, Monika Johanka Mádlová, Petra Baslová & Martin Kovác.

Whilst the whole service was in Czech, I am now quite familiar with the Old Catholic liturgy, not least because it is quite similar to ours, and so was able to join in fairly well. And like us, the Old Catholics stand to sing their hymns, unlike the Czech Protestants who do so sitting, something I always find very strange.

 With Martin following his ordination as deacon © Ricky Yates
With Martin following his ordination as deacon © Ricky Yates

 

Following the ordination service, I posed for this photograph with Martin. He is Slovak but has done his academic studies in Prague and is also a fluent English-speaker. So I may well invite Martin to ‘deacon’ at St Clement’s on one Sunday in 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A somewhat purple week!

In a 'purple sandwich' between my Czech Old Catholic Bishop Dušan Hejbal and my Anglican Diocesan Bishop Robert Innes © Ricky Yates
In a ‘purple sandwich’ between my Czech Old Catholic Bishop Dušan Hejbal and my Anglican Diocesan Bishop Robert Innes © Sybille Yates

The Prague and Brno Anglican congregations of which I am Chaplain or Priest-in-Charge, are two of just over three hundred congregations that together form the Church of England’s Diocese in Europe. However for both legal and ecumenical reasons, my two congregations also function as as the English-speaking parish of the Old Catholic Church in the Czech Republic, or Farní obec Starokatolické církve pro verící anglického jazyka v Praze.

The Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht were formed in the late 19th century by Roman Catholics who could not accept the doctrine of papal infallibility and other teachings that came out of the First Vatican Council of 1870. The Church in the Netherlands has a slightly earlier history. As well as the Netherlands, there are Old Catholic Churches in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland and the Czech Republic, together with a scattering of outposts elsewhere. More information can be found in this Wikipedia article and their own website . The Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion, have been in full communion with the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht since the Bonn Agreement of 1931.

Once a year, the Bishops of the various Old Catholic Churches get together for a few days for their International Bishops Conference (IBK). The IBK is held in each different country by rotation. This year, it was once more the turn of the Czech Old Catholic Church to host the IBK. They previously did so in January 2009, the event being the subject of my first ever blog post nearly six and a half years ago.

As in 2009, following directly on after the IBK, there was a twenty-four hour meeting between the Old Catholic Bishops and those Anglican Bishops working in continental Europe. This took place between 14.00 on Friday 19th June until lunchtime on Saturday 20th. Back in February, I received a request from my Anglican Diocesan Bishop, Rt Rev’d Dr Robert Innes, for me to be the minute taker for this meeting. Apparently at some point since the January 2009 meeting, it was agreed that the Old Catholics would provide the interpreter whilst the Anglicans would provide the minute taker. Thus the lot fell on me 🙂

On the morning of Friday 19th June, I once more provided Episcopal Taxi Service, first of all picking up Bishop Robert from Prague Airport having flown in from Brussels, and delivering him to Hotel Kampa in Mala Strana, where the meeting was to take place. Then I returned to the airport to pick up Bishop David Hamid, Suffragan Bishop in Europe, flying in from London Heathrow. A combination of Bishop David’s flight arriving late and then me getting slightly confused in a maze of one-way streets, meant that we both arrived about fifteen minutes after the meeting was meant to begin. The whole experience was a good reminder as to why I don’t normally drive my car in the centre of Prague!

It being a private meeting, it is not my place to reveal here, the various matters that were discussed by the bishops other than the perennial issue of continental Europe being famously an area of ‘overlapping ecclesiastical jurisdiction’ 😉 I only really had two problems with minuting the meeting. One was on Saturday morning when both the German and the Swiss Old Catholic Bishops spoke in German rather than English. Trying to listen in one ear to the English translation of what was being said whilst also hearing the German, which I partly understood, made my task almost impossible. The other was frequently having to stop myself from joining in the discussion 🙂

Late on Friday afternoon, we all left the hotel and took the funicular railway to the top of Petrín Hill, in order to reach the Old Catholic Cathedral of Sv Vavrince. There Archbishop Joris Vercammen of Utrecht, celebrated the Eucharist with Bishop Robert as the preacher. Afterwards, we all duly posed for photographs.

Bishops © Sybille Yates
Bishops, (plus a few hangers-on 🙂 ) © Sybille Yates

An explanation as to who is who. From left to right: Petr Jan Vinš, Czech Old Catholic priest who interpreted from German and English into Czech. Bishop David Hamid, Anglican Suffragan Bishop in Europe. Bishop Matthias Ring, Bishop of the German Old Catholic Church. Bishop Dušan Hejbal, Bishop of the Czech Old Catholic Church. Bishop Pierre Whalon, Bishop in Charge of the Convocation of American Episcopal Churches in Europe. Archbishop Joris Vercammen of Utrecht, Dutch Old Catholic Church. Bishop Harald Rein, Bishop of the Swiss Old Catholic Church. Bishop Mike Klusmeyer, Bishop of West Virginia and the delegate of the Episcopal Church of the USA to the IBK. Andrzej Gontarek, representative of the Bishop of the Old Catholic Church in Poland who was too ill to attend. Bishop Carlos López-Lozano of the Spanish Episcopal Reformed Church. Bishop Dirk Schoon, Bishop of Haarlem, Dutch Old Catholic Church. Bishop John Okoro, Bishop of the Austrian Old Catholic Church. Bishop Robert Innes, Anglican Diocesan Bishop in Europe. Bishop Jorge Cabral of the Lusitanian Church – Portuguese Episcopal Church. Yours Truly. Petr Brzobohaty, Czech Old Catholic Deacon and Secretary to Bishop Dušan.

A busy July weekend

Prague from Petrín Hill © Ricky Yates

Last weekend – 14th-15th July, was both busy, but also most enjoyable. For as well as Sunday worship, I also conducted my third wedding of this year between Leigh, a Welshman and Klára, his Czech bride. The marriage took place in the Old Catholic Cathedral Church of St Lawrence on Petrín Hill from which there is this wonderful view across the centre of Prague.

This wedding presented very similar issues to those I outlined in my earlier post about my first wedding of 2012. Klára’s parents and older relatives have no English whilst none of Leigh’s family speak Czech. So I adopted the same solution, by getting the couple to produce a completely bilingual order of service to allow everyone present to follow the liturgy and Bible Readings, even when they were not being spoken in their own native language. And I again got my good friend Kvetoslav, Lay Vice President of the Czech Old Catholic Church, to help me with saying parts of the liturgy in Czech, as well as translating my words of welcome and explanation at the beginning of the service.

The weekend started with the wedding rehearsal at 6.00pm on Friday evening. Whilst I am quite familiar with the Old Catholic Cathedral, having attended numerous services in it with Bishop Dušan, this was the first time I had ever officiated at a wedding there. As I have frequently remarked in the past, the geography of a building does impact upon the way one conducts a wedding! Whilst the rehearsal was a little chaotic and slightly drawn out, it did resolve many issues, ensuring that the wedding service itself went smoothly the following day.

Klára and Leigh in the gardens on Petrín Hill following their wedding © Ricky Yates

The bridegroom Leigh, is the son of a (sadly now deceased) Anglican priest who I’d known when he was priest in charge of a group of parishes in the same Deanery as me. There were three other Church in Wales clergy present at the wedding, one of whom, the Archdeacon of Morgannwg, Leigh’s first cousin, gave the address which was interpreted, a paragraph at a time, by Kvetoslav.

At the end of his sermon, the Archdeacon said a few words in Welsh and made the familiar claim that Welsh will be the language of heaven. Loath as I am to correct an Archdeacon, I did inform him and the rest of the congregation that Czech, not Welsh, will be the language of heaven. Why? Because it takes an eternity to learn it 🙂

Even with only half the congregation joining in, we still did come close to causing serious damage to the roof of the Cathedral with the singing of ‘Guide me, O thou great Redeemer’, to the wonderful tune ‘Cwm Rhondda’. And at the end of the service, I was very pleased to successfully give the blessing tri-lingually, in Czech, Welsh and English.

The afternoon reception took place in Villa Richter, on the far side of Prague Castle with wonderful views across the city. The food and drink were plentiful and of a high standard and Sybille and I enjoyed making the acquaintance of various friends and relatives of the happy couple. The Welsh clergy and their families, made frequent enquiries about St. Clements, with numerous expressions of their intention to join us for worship the next day. We eventually left the celebrations soon after 7.00pm but I understand that a barbecue and further evening entertainment was planned.

As I outlined in my recent post, ‘Summer comes to Prague‘, during July and August, many of our regular congregation are away from Prague, either on holiday/vacation, or returning to their home countries to visit family and friends. So it was most encouraging to still have a very good number of members of our regular congregation for worship on the morning of Sunday 15th July.

As always, we also had the privilege of welcoming numerous visitors. As well as two American friends of one of our congregational members, we had four young men from the Netherlands, two young ladies from Sweden, a couple from South Korea, and a gentleman from Malaysia. But did we have any Church in Wales clergy and their families? No! Clearly the party went on far too long on Saturday night. I am considering the wording of my letter to the Bishop of Llandaff 🙂