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LATIN-AMERICAN ANGLICAN About US
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The Latin-American Anglican Church (Hispanic Missionary Archdiocese Territory of the Americas and Caribbean) is a part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, holding to the essential beliefs and practices of the Universal Catholic Church of the as declared by the Holy Scriptures, the Patristic and Insular Drs. from the 1st century to the 8th century ad, and the dogmatic degrees of the Seven Ecumenicals Councils, while rejecting modern innovations in theology and practices. This Church was instituted by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ 1977 years ago.
Our Church is Catholic Anglican Traditional, independent, autonomus and free jurisdiction. We single obey in faith, action and revealed truth, to God and the Holy Scriptures. God is for us our Supreme Father. Jesus Christ is our Divine Lord and Head whom we followed and we obey. The Holy Spirit is the true Vicar of Christ.
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We are a Church of Latin American Traditional Anglican people for Hispanic Christians of all countries of Latin American and for the Latin American peoples that live in any country of the world and that they have immigrated of their nations of origin.
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WHO WE ARE? WHAT DO WE BELIEVE?
We are of The Latin-American Anglican Church, a Church that traces its roots to the historic Catholic Church of the early Christian Fathers and the Apostles. We Believe:
That Grace and Salvation are found in Jesus Christ alone; The Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God; The Creeds(as the standard of faith) mean exactly what they say; Christian Morality of The Bible is the sole guide for the Church; The 7 Sacraments convey Grace and through them Christ is known and present; The Apostolic Ministry of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons was instituted by Christ; The worship of the parish is rooted in The Bible, is guided by the teachings of the early Christian Fathers.
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Our Church is structured in the scriptural foundations of the traditional Book of Common Prayer 1928; We do not compromise on matters of faith, doctrine, or morality. We believe in the power of prayer.
Therefore, we pray to the Lord to lead, heal, and transform our lives, our people, our communities, and the world.
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Tradition; Past and Present: Traditional Christians are often accused of being stuck in the past. However, the greater danger for Christians today is an uncritical acceptance of new teachings and practices.
Because "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever" (Hebrews 13:8), the faith of the past is the wave of the future. As God said through the prophet Jeremiah, "Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls" (Jeremiah 6:16).
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Territory Jurisdiction of The Hispanic Missionary Archdiocese of American and Caribbean
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Why we do not ordain women?
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Some individuals have asked why the Latin-American Anglican Church does not ordain women into the roles of deacons, priests, or bishops. This paper is an attempt to explain our position with out showing this Church or any of our people as female bashing or male chauvinistic in any way.
For we feel strongly that any woman can do any type of ministry within the Christian faith just like anybody else can, but you do not have stamped the title Reverend or Presbyter before your name to do your ministry for spreading the Gospel of Christ before this lost world.
But the historical priestly ministry of the Church that has been passed down to us since the time of the apostles has been strictly a male oriented ministry and so being so we adhere to those historical traditions that are both found in Holy Scriptures and The Church Drs.
In writing this paper we will look at the present day situation, the scriptural forms, and the church Drs. for us adhering to this principle. -Should women be Priests in the church? In discussing such a controversial and potentially explosive issue, the watchword surely must be: "Speaking the (Holy Scriptures )truth of love and service"
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A BIBLICAL EXEGESIS ON THE BISHOPS AND PRIESTS
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The predominant term used for the spiritual leaders in the church is Presbyter (presbiteros). The other term which is used for the spiritual leader is the Office of the 'Bishop' (episkopos) which occurs 4 times in this capacity. These three designations are used interchangeably in the New Testament for the same ecclesiastical office (cf. Acts 20:28; 1 Pet. 5:1, 2). Bishops are representatives and ambassadors of Jesus Christ for the church (cf. 2 Cor. 5:18-21).
In addition, they are stewards, for they have been entrusted with the welfare of the church (Tit. 1:7). Their primary responsibility is to care for (epimeleomai) the members of the spiritual body of Christ (1 Tim. 3:5) in word and sacrament, for which they will have to render an account (Jas. 3:1; Heb. 13:17). They have the complete priesthood within them. In the Second Century, the Church divided the office of the priesthood and bishop to help minister to the needs of the people.
Bishops have two main duties or functions in the exercise of their care for the church. First, they are to oversee the membership. Saint Peter exhorts the elders to "exercise oversight" (episkopeo) over the flock of God (1 Pet. 5:2). That is, Bishops are to superintend the affairs and activities of the church.
They are the guardians of Christ for His heritage. They are to protect the whole membership from false doctrine and heresy (Acts 20:28). Bishops are to exercise this management in an attitude of readiness, eagerness, and humility, without "lording it over those allotted to [their] charge, but proving to be examples to the flock" (1 Pet. 5:3).
The second duty or function of Biships is to shepherd the membership. Saint Paul exhorts the Ephesian Bishops "to shepherd [poimaino] the church of God which He purchased with His own blood" (Acts 20:28).
That is, Bishops are to attend or minister to the (spiritual and sacramental) needs of the body of Christ. This duty can be compared to that of a sheepherder who tends a flock of sheep. The sheepherder guides the sheep to water and pasture; he shelters and guards them; grooms and shears them. Jesus Christ likens His people to a flock of sheep (John 10:7-16). As sheep, believers require guidance and nourishment.
Christ Himself is the chief Shepherd (1 Pet. 2:25) Who "shall guide [His own] to springs of the water of life" (Rev. 7:17). Bishops, who are the undershepherds of the chief Shepherd, have a similar responsibility.
This figurative tending or shepherding of the sheep is literally and primarily seen in the teaching and instruction of spiritual truth. Bishops tend to the spiritual needs of the flock of Christ by preaching and ministering the Word of God and his sacraments. Saint Mark records, "And when He [Jesus] went ashore, He saw a great multitude, and He felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things" (Mk. 6:34).
Accordingly, Christ has provided "pastors [poimne] and teachers [didaskalos]" for His spiritual sheep (Eph. 4:11). Christ has not provided pastors in addition to teachers, but pastors who are teachers. In Ephesians 4:11, Saint Paul is speaking of only one office.
Thus Saint Paul instructs Timothy that Bishops must be "able to teach" (1 Tim. 2:2). All Bishops must have the ability or gift to teach.
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Why we do not use the 39 articles of faith?
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It was asked to us why we do not use the 39 articles of faith has our Statement of Faith being though we are an Anglo Catholic Jurisdiction. Well the discussion was both a theological and historical why we decided not to use them. First let’s explain the historical background of originally there were 42 Articles of Faith draw up by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, which had influences from the Lutherans, which in ways we do not have problems with in some ways.
There was fighting among Catholics and Puritans Protestants of who would take control of English Church, during this time, we have the Reign of King Edward, and Mary, in which this fighting took place. When Queen Elizabeth I took control of the England to bring the religious peace she sat down both High Church and Low Church Anglicans theologians and clerics and asks them what can we use from Archbishop Cranmer statement that can be spell out our beliefs, that would neither be Papist, Anabaptist, Baptist, Quakers, or Presbyterian at all.
So they drew up the 39 Article of Faith to represent those views to make Anglicanism distinct, but this had the Anglo Catholics were upset because of some of the statement they did not agree with. And we find in the Tractarian or Oxford movement over a century and half later that they tried their hardest to reinterpret them in a more Anglo Catholic Manner. Our Major problem with the 39 Article of Faith is the Article 25 only speaks of 2 sacraments, when clearly the Historical Church before the Calvinist Reformation had taught that there was and is Seven Sacrament and the Real Presence of the Eucharist.
Our Statement of Faith simply puts the Catholic Faith in its simplest form easiest way of understanding the Catholic Faith, to be Anglo Catholic one does not have to submit to the 39 Article of Faith with all of its problems, just follow the Anglican Rite known as the Book of Common Prayer.
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Tractarian or Oxford movement
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The Tractarian movement began about 1833 and ended in 1845 with John Henry Newman's conversion to Roman Catholicism. It was also called the Oxford Movement because Newman, a fellow of Oriel College (part of Oxford University) and vicar of St. Mary's, the University church, and others were based there when they began the Tracts for the Times in 1833. (Unlike Cambridge, which was more liberal both in politics and religion, Oxford University in the 1830s was politically conservative and identified with the Church of England.).
Newman traced the movement to the Rev. John Keble's sermon "National Apostasy" (July 14, 1833; full text), which attacked Parliament's plan to disestablish that is do away with the official status of the Anglican Church of Ireland in that primarily Roman Catholic country.
Liberals argued that since most Irishmen were Roman Catholics, their taxes should not support the Anglican Church. In contrast, Keble, Pusey, and the other Tractarians held that since the Christian religion was superior to government, secular powers had no right to interfere in spiritual matters whatever the cause.
There were exactly 90 Tracts, the majority written by Newman, arguing in general that the truth of the doctrines of the Church of England rested on the modern church's position as the direct descendant of the church established by the Apostles.
Pretty obviously, such an argument was a conservative answer to the various contemporary challenges to the authority of religion in general, Christianity in particular, and specifically Anglicanism Catholicism, fueled by the same need for reassurance as was the Evangelical revival. Since the 16th century the Church of England had prided itself on being the via media, or middle road, between Roman Catholicism and a more radical Protestantism.
Newman broke off the Tracts in 1841 after Number 90, in which he argued that the Thirty-Nine Articles, by which the English Church distinguished itself from the Roman, did not necessarily conflict with Roman Catholic doctrine.
Rather, he said, they had been framed with enough ambiguity to avoid such a conflict and still meet Henry VIII's temporary political needs. Newman's method (according to Richard Altick) was very similar to the sort of literary criticism that attempts to recreate the author's intent at the time the work in question was written.
Many who had followed the Tracts inferred after Tract 90 that Newman would shortly become a Roman Catholic; cynics suggested that he already was one. His conversion in 1845 nevertheless came as a shock. Given the English antipathy to "Popery" (in spite of recent events like the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1828), Newman's conversion undercut the Oxford movement by suggesting that Tractarianism inevitably led one to Rome, and it also created a great deal of personal ill-will towards Newman.
The suspicion that while at Oxford he had not been honest about his beliefs or at least not about the direction they were leading him came out into the open in 1864 and lead him to write his Apologia pro vita sua, a spiritual autobiography which, remarkably, reversed public opinion of him.
The Oxford Movement added a conservative option to the lively atmosphere of Victorian religious debate. The Victorians who abhorred the atheism of the Utilitarians and the agnosticism of the scientists, were put off by the enthusiasm of the Evangelicals, found the Broad Church too latitudinarian to have any meaning left to its doctrine, and yet could not stomach going over to Rome, found these High Church Anglicans a perfect conservative solution.
The Ecclesiological movement, which wanted more ritual and religious decoration in churches and which closely associated with the Gothic Revival, was a natural partner to Tractarianism, for both movements looked back to the Middle Ages as a time when the Church met the needs of its parishioners both religiously and aesthetically.
These movements had some influence upon the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which also looked back to Raphael and his medieval precursors for their artistic inspiration. Of all those associated with the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood, Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti probably drew most upon the three associated movements involving Ecclesiology, Tractarianism, and the Gothic Revival. The Catholic Hopkins also drew upon these movements.
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