It was reported in the Church of England Newspaper (6 February 2009) that over 1500 people attended a Roman Catholic Mass which was celebrated in York Minster in January to mark the achievements of a Yorkshire Roman Catholic woman, Mary Ward, whose three uncles had died in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

York Minster is arguably the second most significant Anglican Church in England, being the Cathedral of the Archbishop of York.

Does it not strike you as strange that the great Reformation truths which were hammered out in the 16th century could be so blatantly set aside by the celebration of a Roman Catholic Mass in the Church of England?

A spokesman for the organisers of the mass said that the service was a culmination of a 400-year "struggle". Yet what of the struggles of Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer who died at the stake for what they believed, and who vehemently warned people against the evils of the Mass?

“The offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifices of the Masses, in which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, were blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits.” Article XXXI

Has the Church of England now publicly proclaimed a blasphemous fable and a dangerous deceit?

Or should we let bygones be bygones and embrace the ecumenical spirit of the age?