Stream 3 — How We Worship

SACRAMENTS AND LITURGY

Validity, the Open Table, and celebrating in this Mission

Approximately 6 formation hours | 3 units | Stream quiz and Liturgical Practicum

What this stream is about

This is the stream where your existing competence is most relevant and most likely to need adjustment. You already celebrate or assist at the liturgy. What this stream establishes is how the Mission understands validity, what it means by the Open Table, which rites it authorises, and what it means by noble simplicity.

The liturgical practicum at the end of this stream is the single assessment in this course that looks directly at your practice rather than your understanding.

What you will learn

• State the matter, form, and intention required for Baptism, the Eucharist, and Holy Orders without notes.
• Explain ex opere operato and why it is a mercy to the faithful rather than a licence to the minister.
• Explain why the Trinitarian formula is not negotiable, and why that restriction is narrow rather than general.
• Articulate the theological, rather than merely social, basis of the Mission's inclusive commitments.
• Defend the Open Table warmly to someone who disagrees, in your own words.
• Name the six authorised liturgical families of the Mission.
• Explain noble simplicity, and what it rules out in both directions.
• Identify the limits of local adaptation, and what must be proposed rather than done alone.

Units in this stream

• Unit 3.1 — The Sacramental Principle and the Triad of Validity: visible signs of invisible grace, matter, form and intention, ex opere operato, and what to do about doubt.
• Unit 3.2 — The Open Table and Inclusive Sacramental Practice: inclusion as doctrine rather than sociology, marriage, the Open Table, and answering the objection.
• Unit 3.3 — Celebrating in This Mission: the authorised rites, noble simplicity, gesture and colour, the shape of the Mass, the Daily Office, and the limits of adaptation.

A word before you begin

Unit 3.2 is the unit most likely to decide whether you and this Mission can walk together. The Mission's inclusive commitments are settled doctrine, not a pastoral tone or a question on which clergy may hold private reservations. That is said plainly not to intimidate you but to spare you: it would be a poor kindness to let you complete this course and discover at the viva voce that the difficulty was insurmountable all along.

Open Unit 3.1 and begin.