Fr. Funston’s sermon for Sunday, March 25, 2012, the Fifth Sunday in Lent, answers two parishioners’ questions: “What does catholic mean in the Nicene Creed?” and “what does it mean to describe the Episcopal Church as being ‘in the Catholic tradition’?”
This is the fifth and last Lenten sermon addressing a question posed by a parishioner and, in fact, I will try to answer succinctly two related questions that two parishioners asked. One was “What does the word catholic mean when we say it in the Nicene Creed?” and the other was “What do you (meaning me, Father Funston) mean when you describe the Episcopal Church as being ‘in the Catholic tradition’?” (If you could see the way I have typeset these sermon notes, you would see that I have capitalized the “C” in catholic in the second question, but not in the first. That’s an important point which I will address shortly. But let me start with a basic definition in answer to the first inquiry.