Duke of Edinburgh to Retire from Public Engagements in August: May 4, 2017


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I've thought about this more than once since Christmas. I'm surprised we do not see the Duke at Church anymore. It's one thing to retire from public life. It's another thing to not go with the family to Church when one had done so all one's life.

Does the COE accommodate the infirm (I am not assuming Phillip is infirm) by taking any kind of service to them? Is there televised church service for people no longer physically visiting a church? How does the COE handle this?

I do realize weekly attendance at service is not a requirement in the COE. But beyond that, I am frankly wondering how Phillip might be maintaining contact with his religion of choice.
 
I've thought about this more than once since Christmas. I'm surprised we do not see the Duke at Church anymore. It's one thing to retire from public life. It's another thing to not go with the family to Church when one had done so all one's life.

Does the COE accommodate the infirm (I am not assuming Phillip is infirm) by taking any kind of service to them? Is there televised church service for people no longer physically visiting a church? How does the COE handle this?

I do realize weekly attendance at service is not a requirement in the COE. But beyond that, I am frankly wondering how Phillip might be maintaining contact with his religion of choice.




Do we even know if the Duke is religious ? He was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church and was only received officially in the CoE in 1947, although he had been attending Anglican services since his school days really.



I don't know about televised services, but, if Anglicans are like other Protestants, I assume they don't practice private communion as both Luther and Calvin were adamantly opposed to it (please, correct me if I am wrong). Private communion for the sick and the elderly is of course common in the Roman Catholic Church.
 
I have never had the impression that the DoE is particularly religious, unlike the Queen who has spoken often over the years about the support and comfort her faith offers her. If Philip is not attending church services because it's difficult to sit in the pews for that long, or whatever else might be preventing him, the Anglican church does offer Eucharist, usually administered by a lay visitor. It's usually given to the sick or infirm, someone who otherwise isn't able to make it to the service. Which is unlikely to be the case with Philip, considering how often we see him tootling around Windsor driving his carriage. I suspect church services just aren't something he's interested in, for whatever reason.

I wanted to clarify that the elements offered to shut-ins and the infirm have been previously blessed by a priest, the lay visitor does not conduct an entire service, just carries the bread and wine to the recipient.
 
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I do wonder if Philip has stopped going to church altogether of just stopped going in public. It is a well-known fact that the Queen always gets photographed at these services at Sandringham over the Christmas period so maybe he sees it as a type of public duty rather than private worship and avoids it. Of course this year we must also bear in mind that after his recent crash he may be keeping an extra low profile and still not be up for a church visit yet.
 
Do we even know if the Duke is religious ? He was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church and was only received officially in the CoE in 1947, although he had been attending Anglican services since his school days really.



I don't know about televised services, but, if Anglicans are like other Protestants, I assume they don't practice private communion as both Luther and Calvin were adamantly opposed to it (please, correct me if I am wrong). Private communion for the sick and the elderly is of course common in the Roman Catholic Church.
When my grandmother was dying her Lutheran pastor would visit her and give her private Communion. But she was physically unable to attend church so maybe that's a special case
 
There have been reports, not sure how accurate they are, that he has turned more and more to the Orthodox faith in recent years for spiritual comfort so maybe he is privately attending Orthodox churches with no fanfare.

He may also be going to one of the other churches on the Sandringham Estate e.g. Anmer village has its own church as we know that William and Catherine have taken George there for the children's Christmas Service in the past.

We don't see the Queen go to church other than when at Sandringham and Balmoral or Easter at St Georges yet we do know she goes to church every Sunday. That means that there have to be places for her to go either within the homes or churches where no one reports on her going. That may also be happening for Philip if he wants to go to church.
 
That’s the beauty of retirement: you can do and not do what you want.
 
There have been reports, not sure how accurate they are, that he has turned more and more to the Orthodox faith in recent years for spiritual comfort so maybe he is privately attending Orthodox churches with no fanfare.

Interesting - now that Philip is retired he can attend any church he pleases or not attend church at all. Under his official duties I can imagine that he was required to attend the CofE services at St. Mary Magdalene's since the church follows the country's official religion. There is a large Greek Orthodox community in London so perhaps he has started to attend a church somewhere in the city under wraps.
 
There have been reports, not sure how accurate they are, that he has turned more and more to the Orthodox faith in recent years for spiritual comfort so maybe he is privately attending Orthodox churches with no fanfare.

That's very interesting. I wonder how reliable those reports are? Do you recall what the sources were?

As I said, Philip has never struck me as especially religious, but, after all, we never really know what is going on inside public figures, even ones as familiar to us as Philip.
 
That's very interesting. I wonder how reliable those reports are? Do you recall what the sources were?

As I said, Philip has never struck me as especially religious, but, after all, we never really know what is going on inside public figures, even ones as familiar to us as Philip.

As I said, although Philip was baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church, he was raised in England and was never a practing Orthodox as far as I know. In fact, he frequently attended Anglican services long before he was formally received into the CoE.

In that sense, Philip is nothing like Queen Sofia for example, who converted to Roman Catholicism to marry Juan Carlos, but remained pretty much an Orthodox at heart and is unknown to attend Orthodox services when she is in Greece.
 
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