Last week I completed and uploaded to the AIC’s You Tube and Podbean channels all the remaining episodes in The Lives of the Saints – Second Series.   All thirty-one episodes are now linked from the Digital Library (for the videos) and the Podcast Archive (for the podcasts) pages at www.anglicaninternetchurch.net.   I’ve made several changes to the appearance and organization of the site, hopefully making it easier to find the electronic and print resources visitors are looking for.

Getting the project to completion allows me to focus the rest of A.D. 2017 and most of A.D. 2018 on our The War on Christianity series of videos and podcast; on updating several episodes from the New Testament Bible Study videos of a few years ago; and developing a marketing plan for the AIC Bookstore Publications.

The War on Christianity series has been reorganized, with the addition of at least two and  possible three new episodes that will provide a better bridge between Episode One, which examined the nature of the threat using actual examples of violence from around the world in A.D. 2016 and 2017, and the teaching episodes intended to offer self-defense through knowledge of Church doctrine and through the actual application of traditional teachings.

The slides and script for Episode Two are almost complete.  In them, I put the on-going “War on Christianity” into the historical perspective of the spread of the Church Universal from the day of Pentecost up until now, emphasizing the meaning of the Nicene Creed’s statement that the Church is “one Catholic and Apostolic.”  I pay tribute to the original Apostles named in Scripture and to the second, third and fourth (and later) generations of Bishops, Priests, Deacons, scholars, and theologians who, many times forfeiting their lives in the process, organized and spread the Christian Faith from the Holy Land literally across the world.  As always, the slides are illustrated with icons, frescoes, mosaics, paintings and photographs intended to enrich the viewing experience.  The episode ends with a series of slides on the membership and region-by-region and, sometimes, country-by-country distribution of its membership.  I suspect the data will surprise many.

As always, I thank you for your interest in and support for the online ministry of The Anglican Internet Church.  May the Lord bless you in all that you do in His Name.

Glory be to God for all things!  Amen!

After thirteen months of research, including the often-frustrating search for suitable illustrations, I have come to the end of The Lives of the Saints – Second Series.  Earlier this week I uploaded the final three episodes to You Tube and this morning approved their release to the public and uploaded the podcast versions to our PodBean channel.  Purchase of images used here and in the AIC Bookstore publications is made possible by donations and from royalties generated by sale of our twelve books.

Episode Twenty-nine celebrates St. Leo the Great, the first Roman Catholic pope of the many who took the name Leo to be called “Great.”  He presided at Rome from 440 A.D., when he was elected by acclamation. until his death in 460 A.D.  A very strong supporter of the decisions of the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople (First meeting), he regarded the doctrinal rulings of the Councils as having equality with Scripture, since they were based upon Scripture.  He did not attend, but did write a letter which was read at Chalcedon supporting the dual nature of Christ decision of that Ecumenical Council. His remains are enshrined in an altar inside St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome.

Episode Thirty celebrates St. Clement of Rome, claimed by the Roman Catholic Church as the second Pope.  Other accounts place two, and in some cases, three, men between St. Peter and St. Clement.  St. Clement enjoys the distinction of having had his Epistle to the Corinthians (late 1st C.) considered in the first five centuries of the Church Universal as canonical, that is, equivalent to Scripture.  I quote from the his epistle several times in hopes to helping bring his work to the attention of modern listeners and readers, most of whom have never heard of Clement of Rome (or Clement I).  He presided at Rome from about 88 A.D. to around 99 A.D., when he died a martyr’s death on the Black Sea near southern tip of present-day Crimea.  The episode includes a 6th C. image of St. Clement which I extracted from a much larger frieze at the Basilica of St. Apollinare at Ravenna, Italy, one of the finest surviving examples of Byzantine art and architecture in the Western Church.  St. Clement is the Patron Saint of mariners and is often depicted with an anchor.

Watch the Leo Video          Listen to the Leo Podcast

Watch the Clement Video       Listen to the Clement Podcast

Episode Thirty-one, the last episode in the Second Series, celebrates St. Catherine of Alexandria, formerly a favorite saint but in the last 300 or so years relegated to near fictional status.  Among the saints of the early 2nd millennium, largely as the result of the Crusades in the Holy Land and the Western discovery of her story, she was widely popular.  Her name endures today in various colleges, islands, and mountain ranges named in her honor.  A strong tradition in the Eastern Church is that her remains are interred at the Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, built in the 6th C. under orders by, and sponsorship of, Emperor Justinian.   There are many schools named after her, including St. Catherine’s here in Richmond, Va.  She is the Patron Saint of Virgins and all young women.  She met her death by beheading around 305 A.D.   The illustration is a detail in tempera and gilt on velum of the death of St. Catherine which I extracted from a larger work from the Menologion of Basil II, a form of service book with a Synaxarion of over 400 martyrs prepared for the incumbent Archbishop of Constantinople in the late 10th C.  The original is in the Vatican Library.  The illustration and the larger work from which it was extracted are included in the video.

Watch the Catherine Video     Listen to the Catherine Podcast

Now that The Lives of the Saints series is over, I turn my attention to The War on Christianity series of videos and podcasts.  I have reformatted the series to include at least two transition episodes between the opening video and the more teaching-oriented episodes which will follow.  The new material offers a summary history of the Church from the Day of Pentecost to Now, with data on Church enrollment around the world (Episode Two) and a separate episode (Episode Three) on three parts of the world where the Christian Faith was once the predominant religion: the Holy Land; Asia Minor; North Africa.

As regular viewers of this Blog and the AIC Web Site will have noticed, I have introduced a number of changes at the Web Site.  These are intended to improve the ease of use of the site’s unique video, print and podcast resources.   The changes include

• New messages on the two pages at the original host site at WordPress, referring all visitors to the Home Page at our official Web Site, also hosted by WordPress.com.
• Resetting and rewording of type and text for the Video, Podcast, and Virtual Library sections at the bottom of the Home Page.
• Visual changes in the links pages on the Digital Library page (host to Christian Education and Seasonal Videos) and to the new Podcast Archive page (host to the podcast versions of all three video series).

As always, I thank viewers for their interest in the site and encourage them to click the “Follow Anglican Internet Church” link, which will give notice of all new postings on Fr. Ron’s Blog.

Glory be to God for all things!  Amen!

I’ve gotten ahead on the production schedule and have now uploaded Episode Twenty-eight in The Lives of the Saints – Second Series, which honors the English Martyrs who were burned at the stake.  They are also widely known as The Oxford Martyrs, owing to the plain fact that they were tried, convicted and executed at Oxford in 1555 A.D. (Latimer and Ridley, with Cranmer forced to watch) and 1556 A.D.(Cranmer’s death).

The illustration is a recent professional-quality photograph by Jeremy West of the Martyrs Memorial at the intersection of St. Giles, Magdalen and Beaumont near Balliol College.  The monument was designed by George Gilbert Scott and was completed in 1843 A.D.  The steady deterioration of the monument was brought to an end by a refurbishing in 2003 A.D.

The episode features a short introduction placing the events in the historical context of the history of the Church of England from the 1620s through the accession of Elizabeth, with one picture each of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.  After that is a brief biography of Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer.  The very popular work, commonly called John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs but officially titled Acts and Monuments, is the source for many of the illustrations of the trial and executions.  I’ve left the gruesome details out of this Blog entry, instead posting the attached colorized illustration by Joseph Martin Kronheim of Plate V, Latimer Before the Council, taken from an 1887 A.D. edition of Foxe’s famous work

Watch the video

Listen to the Podcast

The three remaining episodes are finished and ready to upload to YouTube prior to the Feasts of Leo the Great (Nov. 10), Clement of Rome (Nov. 23) and Catherine of Alexandria (Nov. 29).

As always, thank you for your interest in the Internet ministry of the Anglican Internet Church.  May the Lord bless you in all that you do in His Name. Amen.

Glory be to God for all things! Amen!

A very productive week for the final days of summer.  To take advantage of the nice dry weather, I’ve been painting the outside of my house, but have worked in completion of three new episodes in The Lives of the Saints – Second Series, celebrating two saints in the Roman Catholic tradition and one from the Anglican collective memory.

St. Francis of Assisi, celebrated on October 4th (Episode Twenty-five),  is one of the most popular, or at least one whose name is widely recognized, among the Western Church saints.  No matter what you think about him, you can say without reservation that he was unique.  He anticipated by many centuries the environmentalist movement, wrote a poem which was turned into a hymn in the 20th C. in the Church of England tradition, (All Creatures of Our God and King. trans. William R. Draper, 1925 A.D.; and he can be found in many gardens, both public and private, in the form of a diminutive statue.  I’m unconvinced that he would have appreciated becoming a small garden ornament!  The illustration is the central detail I extracted from a larger work showing scenes in his life.  The source provided no details about either the artists, but I suspect it was not long after St. Francis’ lifetime, probably in the 13th C   St. Francis’ poem is the basis for Hymn No. 777 in the AIC Bookstore publication, The St. Chrysostom Hymnal, in which Draper’s translation is set to the arrangement of the German/Lutheran hymn, Lasst uns erfreuen.  He lives on in the memory of the Western Church in the Blessing of the Animals service, usually celebrated on his feast day in October each year.

Watch the Assisi Video
Listen to the Assisi Podcast

Learn more about the Hymnal.  Volume I.   Volume II

The Blessed William Tynedale, also celebrated on October 6th (Episode Twenty-six), deserves far more recognition than he receives in the modern world.   He is called “the blessed” because the modern Anglican world no longer designates faithful Christians as “saints,” probably thinking it is too Roman Catholic.   Such denial of the right to celebrate the men and women who have done remarkable work in the service of the Lord and of the Church is one of those regrettable shortcomings of the modern Western Church.  William Tynedale, pursued all across Europe until he was betrayed by a friend, was strangled, then burned at the state in Belgium on October 6th, 1536 A.D. for producing his New Testament in the English language, a violation of edicts of the Bishop of Rome.    The identity of his persecutors and executioners is long gone from human memory, but the work of the Blessed William Tynedale lives on in the King James Version and New King James Versions of the Bible, which are largely based upon his pioneering translations of both the Old and New Testaments.  Rather than post the gruesome depiction of his death, which is in the video, I post here Page One from Chapter 1 of his Gospel of St. John from either the 1525 or 1526 A;D. edition of his New Testament.  Many people, myself included, believe he deserves the credit that William Shakespeare generally receives for the creation of the English language.  His pioneering translation was adapted by his associate Miles Coverdale for the Great Bible of 1539 A.D. the first complete Bible in the English language (with credit also due to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who purchased copies for placement in all the churches of the Church of England, a goal ever achieved in his lifetime) and, a half-century later, without a word of recognition, provides the vast majority of the wording in the King James Version and its successor, the New King James Version.  For more on which words and phrases were unique to the Blessed William Tynedale watch the video or listen to the Podcast.  You’ll probably be surprised to learn how much of the Bible you know is the result of the Blessed William Tynedale’s creation of English prose phrasing.

Watch the Tynedale Video       Listen to the Tynedale Podcast

The third an final episode (Episode Twenty-seven) celebrates St. Vincent de Paul.  I’ve immodestly included my photograph of the stained glass window by Mayer of Munich at St. Joseph’s Villa Chapel, Richmond, VA (from the AIC Publication Paintings on Light: the Strained Glass Windows of St. Joseph’s Villa Chapel.).     St. Vincent’s memory lives on today, four centuries after his death, in the work of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul and the other organizations which are dedicated to continuing his charitable work.

Watch the de Paul video

Listen to the de Paul podcast.

In other news, I have completed the slides, script and recorded the sound track for Episodes Twenty-eight and Twenty-nine (The English Martyr: Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer & St. Leo the Great, respectively) and the script and slides for Episode Thirty (St. Clement of Rome) and Episode Thirty-one (St. Catherine of Alexandria), the latter the final episode in the series.  Episode Twenty-eight will be released next week in time for the Feast Day of the English Martyrs, October 16th.   The recording of the remaining two episodes will be done on Monday, October 2nd, but will not be released until early November.

I’ve found some good sources of data on the history of the early Church and the story of the decline of Christianity in regions where it once was dominant, including the Holy Land, Asia Minor, and North Africa.  The material will appear in slide and script form in Episode Two and Episode Three of The War on Christianity, to be released late in October.

As always, thank you for your interest in and support of the Anglican Internet Church.  Glory be to God for all things!  Amen!

The entire Second Series of The Lives of the Saints is drawing closer to its final episode.  Early on Thursday, Sep 21, I uploaded Episode Twenty-four, focused on St. Jerome of Jerusalem, whose Feast Day is Sep 30.

Watch the Video

Listen to the Podcast

It was difficult to find good illustrations for St. Jerome.  Nearly everything, including the photographs of statues, is from the artistic traditions of the Western Church.  Most of these tend to show historical figures like St. Jerome dressed in papal outfits that did not exist until well into the 2nd millennium.   For this episode I used a public domain work, a circa 1480 A.D. fresco from Chiesa Ognissanti (Church of All Saints), Venice, by Italian artist Domenico Ghirlandaio, from which I extracted the detail shown at above left.

St. Jerome is nearly always depicted in a scholarly setting.  In this case, he is seated, looking straight at the viewer, working, pen in hand, at his writing desk.  Among the interesting details are his glasses, set aside for the occasion, scissors, a Bible manuscript, and, on the shelf above his head a Cardinal’s hat.  The position of Cardinal was not actually created in the Roman Church until the 13th C., just a hundred years before the fresco was completed.   Alas, artistic license at work.  The rendering is vivid, clear in its detail.  So clear that I think it suggests a St Jerome annoyed at the interruption to his work.

As always, I don’t comment on the relative value of each saint’s work, in this case St. Jerome’s primary accomplishment, the Vulgate Bible.  Viewers will get the opportunity to learn about an alternative version in Episode Twenty-six, which celebrates the work of the Blessed William Tynedale, who produced a quite different version of the New Testament in 1524, 1525 and 1534 A.D., and for his effort was garroted, then burned at the stake, in 1536 A.D.  Tynedale’s Feast Day is Oct 6.  That episode is complete and ready for uploading.

All remaining episodes in the series are finished.  Episodes Twenty-five (St. Francis of Assisi) and Twenty-six (Blessed William Tynedale) have been recorded and transferred to my Mac, ready for uploading to You Tube..  Episodes Twenty-seven through Episode Thirty-one (St. Vincent de Paul, The English Martyrs (Latimer, Ridley & Cranmer), St. Leo the Great, St. Clement of Rome, & St. Catherine of Alexandria, respectively) are finished and need only the voice and music track and correlation of voice to picture.  I expect to get two of those five recorded later this today.

Two projects like ahead.  First, The War on Christianity, with Episode Two scheduled for completion following the wrap-up of The Lives of the Saints.  Second, development of a marketing plan using Google, Facebook and Amazon resources to increase public exposure to the AIC Bookstore.  You might be seeing something of it sooner than you think when you search the Web.

As always, thank you for your support and your interest in this Internet-based ministry.  May the Lord bless you in all that you do in his name.

Glory be to God for all things!  Amen!

I’ve finished and uploaded to YouTube Episode Twenty in The Lives of the Saints – Second Series.  Episode Twenty is focused on the life and contributions of St. Augustine of Hippo, so called in order to distinguish him from the later St. Augustine, Augustine of Canterbury.  St. Augustine is one of the half dozen most significant contributors to the doctrines of the Church Universal in the first five or six centuries A.D.   He is the most famous pupil of the great St. Ambrose of Milan, another formidable pulpit orator and Bishop of Milan.  For more on St. Ambrose, watch Episode Four in this series 

Episode Twenty includes four images of the great saint, including the oldest known representation of him, a late 6th C. fresco in a chapel on the lower level of the Lateran Palace, Rome (left, public domain), and Jaime Huguet’s egg tempera on wood panel, The Consecration of St. Augustine, painted for the Spanish monarchy in 1462 A.D. and now in the Catalan National Museum of Art, Barcelona, Spain.  Another Huguet painting included in the episode is one of a collection of paintings of famous men in the Louvre Museum, Paris.  There is also an illuminated letter from an 13th or 14th C. edition of his The City of God printed in Avignon, France, from a collection in the Episcopal Museum, Vic, Spain. and a color photograph of his tomb in the Basilica San Pietro d’Oro (St. Peter of the Golden Ceiling), Pavia, Italy.  I tell the story of his wandering remains and how they ended up in Pavia (twice).

Watch the Video.          Listen to the Podcast

The next episode in the Saints 2 series is focused on a lesser known but important figure in the early Church, St. Cyprian of Carthage, who is especially revered in the Eastern Church although his bishopric was in the jurisdiction of the Church at Rome.  Other saints in the final episodes in the series are the Blessed Lancelot Andrewes (Sep 25), Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael (Sep 29), Jerome of Jerusalem (Sep 30),  Francis of Assisi (Oct 4), Vincent De Paul (Oct 6), the English Martyrs (Oct 16), Blessed William Tynedale (Nov 6), Leo the Great (Nov 10), Clement of Rome (Nov 23), and, finally, the last episode in the series, Catherine of Alexandria (Nov 25).

I’ve begun work on the script and introductory video for a new series of 10-12 podcasts titled The War on Christianity.  In this new series I will discuss the ongoing war on two levels:  first, the physical threat (including bombings, mutilations and other terroristic events) and, second, the greater and more insidious threat which is being fought every day in the courts, legislatures, school rooms, and, regrettably, among the “leaders” of the modern Church, and in literature and virtually all artistic media.    In the series, I will present ideas on how individual Christians, acting at the personal and family level, can protect themselves in their daily lives. I will offer practical instruction on everything from understanding the doctrines of the Church (expressed in the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed and in the traditions handed down from the Apostles); suggestions for developing personal prayer habits; techniques for reducing the impact of the media’s overwhelmingly one-sided bias against religion (especially Christianity but not including Islam).  Only Episode One, the Introduction, will be available in video form.  The remainder will be exclusively in MP3 Podcast format and linked from a yet-to-be-created page on the AIC Web Site:  www.AnglicanInternetChurch.net.

A note for readers:  You may have noticed that my email address (front.stjohnanglican@earthlink.net) accepts messages only from persons already in my address book.  This is because I receive dozens and dozens of SPAM messages every day and don’t have time to sort them from the genuine inquiries.  My email provider (Earthlink.net) includes a Request to be Added to the Mailing list option for blocked senders.   If your message gets blocked, please complete the request form, which comes directly to me.  You can avoid this problem by asking to be added to the AIC’s Weekly Update, a short email that goes out (usually on Fridays) and which includes a message and links to the newest videos, books or podcasts.   Send me a request in writing at 7162 Soft Wind Ln, Mechanicsville, Va 23111 or call me at (804) 559-2690 (best times 9-4, M-F).  If your email is blocked, use the above-mentioned Request to be added…..   Your privacy will not be compromised. The email address in Weekly Update messages is blocked (BCC) and cannot be read by other recipients.  You can request removal of your name at any time with an email or written request.  We do not share names and addresses of supporters, contributors, and recipients of the Weekly Update with anyone or any organization.

As always, thank you for your interest in and support of The Anglican Internet Church.  May God bless you in all that you do in His Name.

Glory be to God for all things! Amen!