St. Barnabas in Pimlico

Completely by accident I discovered St. Barnabas in Pimlico, the first church of the Oxford Movement, a place I was quite unable to find on a map when I set out to go there on purpose in July. My feelings were rather mixed; it was "pretty" but with such muddied theology that the sparse simplicity of St. Martin-in-the-Fields is so much more attractive to me, even though I prefer a pure Gothic (Westminster Abbey) or Baroque (St. Paul's) to such sparseness. An Anglican church which looks like a pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic church simply looks odd, and I would tend to question any theology that emphasizes so much the need to separate the laity from the clergy (even if through a fabulous gold reredos!). Interesting to find Stations of the Cross on the walls, theologically unobjectionable to be sure and rather pretty. But alas, there were also the usual warning signs about reservation of the Most Blessed Sacrament, the kind more commonly seen in Italy or Spain, as if actually EATING Holy Communion would constitute a blasphemy. I find myself rather undecided about eucharistic reservation; as an RCC seminarian things like monstrances were completely scandalous to me, and reserving the eucharist 24/7 "for the sick" seems frequently to result in the kinds of eucharistic practices that seem superstitious at best. Yes, I believe in the Real Presence, but the eucharist is Really Present to be Really Eaten, not stared at in a jewelry box or worse yet waved around in a miniature fish bowl. But I have often felt very recollected in front of a tabernacle myself, so I can see how it helps some people pray, and perhaps that is the most important thing.