Flight of the Heron read-along: Part V chapters 3-4

[regshoe]

But till my last moments my words are the same: there'll never be peace until Jamie comes hame...

The penultimate week of the read-along, and in these chapters we are still very Jacobite.

Next week we will, sadly, read Part V Chapter 5 and the Epilogue.

Comments

[luzula]

Ah, interesting! I didn't know that saints were still important in the Episcopalian church, and I guess that explains what Old Angus is saying. But yeah, I had gotten that it still stayed much closer to Catholicism than Presbyterianism did, which of course is a whole different thing.

[tgarnsl]

Saints are important, albeit in a kind of distant way. The church I grew up in would celebrate things like the Feast of St Francis of Assisi, for instance, and hold a special mass in honour of the saint (where everyone would bring in their pet animals to get blessed by the priest*), but you wouldn't necessarily do something like pray directly to a saint as you would with Catholicism. Scottish Episcopalianism set off on the path of Anglicanism but took one look at what John Knox was doing, went 'nope, that's too dour', and carried on with most of the bells and smells inherited from Catholicism. The alignment of many non-jurist Episcopalians in the 18th century with Jacobitism, and therefore the Catholic Stuarts, likely further influenced that continuation of semi-Catholic tradition, including saints. (Again, though, I'm no theologian, and while I know some of the history, I'm no expert.)

* Other denominations also hold services like this, but in my experience it tends to be less strongly linked to St Francis and more a general 'blessing of the animals'.

[luzula]

Interesting, thanks!

Scottish Episcopalianism set off on the path of Anglicanism but took one look at what John Knox was doing, went 'nope, that's too dour', and carried on with most of the bells and smells inherited from Catholicism.

I would have thought they went 'nope, that's too revolutionary'. *g*

[tgarnsl]

Haha, that's also very likely! I should say that I say this mostly tongue-in-cheek — the real history of religion in Scotland is very messy and even from the Reformation on it's complex.