She felt that lighting a candle had nothing to do with faith, and she was “troubled by the tendency in some Anglican churches to embellish worship with rituals which are not core to why we are there, and simply distract”. Just “being there quietly can be a prayer in itself.” When a candle went out, “did God cease to notice?” she asked, when presumably he was “supposed to notice when it is lit”. People should be encouraged to sit quietly in church, and “have an opportunity to reflect and pray”, she said. “Why”, she asked, “was a prayer, whether articulate or not, made valid by putting a coin in a box and lighting a night light?” It smacked of superstition, she said, and should be discouraged rather than the reverse. She objected to the argument that the gesture of lighting a candle in a church was in lieu of a prayer for the inarticulate. She had served on several committees, as a member and secretary of the PCC, and as a churchwarden. There was one objection from Sonia Elkin, a member of the congregation for more than 45 years. It was expected that those precautions would be observed.Īs required by the Faculty Jurisdiction Rules 2000, the proposals were published on noticeboards inside and outside the church. Neither was it seriously suggested that it would pose an unacceptable fire risk, although the insurers had suggested some standard common-sense precautions. No one had stated tha,t if there was to be a votive-candle stand, the proposed location was inappropriate, or that the proposed design for the stand was aesthetically objectionable. Parts of it date from the medieval period.
The best position was considered to be where the Book of Remembrance was sited, because the floor was stone, and there were no inflammable objects close by. The PCC supported a proposal for a design that used night lights, which were less likely to drip than tall candles. In the statement of need, they said that the church currently had no votive stands, and that many visitors and members of the regular congregation had asked whether they could have a place where candles could be lit, either as an act of remembrance or to accompany a prayer for someone who was ill or in distress. The Team Rector of St Mary the Virgin, Wimbledon, the Revd Mary Bide, and two churchwardens applied for the faculty. THE use of a votive-candle stand was not necessarily superstitious, and it would not be astute to detect superstition in the use of it, Chancellor Philip Petchey said in the Consistory Court of the diocese of Southwark last month, when granting a faculty for the introduction of a votive-candle stand next to the font, and for the Book of Remembrance currently occupying that position to be moved to the south wall.
0 kommentar(er)
