Nava, I’m too tired to find a cite, but I’m sure you aren’t supposed to receive in a Catholic church if you aren’t Catholic. We had to do six months of instruction and catechesis about the Catholic faith in general, and the holiness of the Eucharist in particular, and then join, before we were allowed to receive. Anglicans have different beliefs about the Eurcharist ( they don’t believe in the Real Presence).
You can certainly go up for a blessing, though. Just cross your hands over your chest.
Just to chime in and agree with Lissa. The Anglican church is not one of the churches recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as in concert with beliefs on Communion.
For Our Fellow Christians
We welcome our fellow Christians to this celebration of the Eucharist as our brothers and sisters. We pray that our common baptism and the action of the Holy Spirit in this Eucharist will draw us closer to one another and begin to dispel the sad divisions which separate us. We pray that these will lessen and finally disappear, in keeping with Christ’s prayer for us “that they may all be one” (Jn 17:21).
Because Catholics believe that the celebration of the Eucharist is a sign of the reality of the oneness of faith, life, and worship, members of those churches with whom we are not yet fully united are ordinarily not admitted to Holy Communion. Eucharistic sharing in exceptional circumstances by other Christians requires permission according to the directives of the diocesan bishop and the provisions of canon law (canon 844 § 4).** Members of the Orthodox Churches, the Assyrian Church of the East, and the Polish National Catholic Church are urged to respect the discipline of their own Churches. According to Roman Catholic discipline, the Code of Canon Law does not object to the reception of communion by Christians of these Churches** (canon 844 § 3).
And even if you are Catholic, you would need to be free of grave sin before receiving Communion, unless it’s an emergency.
ibid
For Catholics
As Catholics, we fully participate in the celebration of the Eucharist when we receive Holy Communion. We are encouraged to receive Communion devoutly and frequently. In order to be properly disposed to receive Communion, participants should not be conscious of grave sin and normally should have fasted for one hour. A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to receive the Body and Blood of the Lord without prior sacramental confession except for a grave reason where there is no opportunity for confession. In this case, the person is to be mindful of the obligation to make an act of perfect contrition, including the intention of confessing as soon as possible (canon 916). A frequent reception of the Sacrament of Penance is encouraged for all.
I was going to jump into the thread asking what Lent is, but on reading, I think I have an idea. Lent seems like a good idea, especially in these (almost-formerly?) hyper-consumerist times. Time to slow down, get away from the jitter, reconnect with the centre. TDG’s remark about giving up something that gets between you and God is very interesting.
High probability that a church in Scotland will be Presbyterian - John Knox got hsi start in Edinburgh. Some Presbyterian churches use Saint names in the US, which confuses folks on a regular basis too (two of the churches in my area have St. names for example).
If a church identifies itself on its sign as Church of Scotland that means it’s Presbyterian.
If a church is identified as Scottish Episcopal Church, that means it’s Anglican.
Churches dedicated to the Holy Rosary, Blessed sacrament, Holy Family, or other specific catholic terms will be Roman Catholic, but churches dedicated to saints could be either Roman Catholic or Anglican, or even Presbyterian, like St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh, the mother church of Scottish Presbyterianism.
Not necessarily - a search on the Scottish Episcopal Church website turned up six churches dedicated to St. Michael and All Angels. The Anglican church follows the same traditions as the Roman Catholic church in dedicating churches to individual saints. However, churches dedicated to All Saints or Christchurch are, in my experience, more likely to be Anglican than Roman Catholic.
In churches that observe a liturgical calendar, Lent is the season of preparation for Easter, meant to be a time of introspection and self-examination. It’s the forty days before Easter, starting on Ash Wednesday. Since Easter is a movable feast, Ash Wednesday also moves around. This year, it’s the last Wednesday in February.
Ah well, I do rather tend to forget about the Anglicans. Oops. Mea culpa - I probably needed coffee input when I posted earlier but I did link to a list from the R.C. Glasgow for Archdiocese of Glasgow for Nava.
And in case you (**Sunspace **that is) never made the connection, Mardi Gras (trans Fat Tuesday) is a big party because it’s the last day before sacrifices start being made on Ash Wednesday. I used to eat a big steak and cakey dessert but that makes fasting on Wednesday that much harder as my stomach is used to a big haul. :smack:
Another interesting bit of trivia, when the 40 days of lent is calculated, Sundays are not counted because Sundays are always feast days in the Christian calendar. While many modern people ignore this, and stay on their fast from Ash Wednesday to Easter, in the middle ages people could “break” their fasts on Sundays. So to expand on RandMcnally’s upthread sillyness, he could still kill hookers on Sundays on lent. A more serious example of rules-lawyering would be if I gave up television for lent, but used a Tivo/DVR to record all the programs I wanted to watch. Then, each Sunday, I could watch them all.
In Spain it seems they just can’t stop partying and the following day, Ash Wednesday, is the Burial of the Sardine, a mock funeral and burial of a sardine. It was painted by Goya a couple centuries ago: El Entierro de la Sardina I think the burial is in the decline in Madrid and does not attract as many people as it used to but it still might be in full swing in other places.
Pancakes. Lots of pancakes, with butter and syrup. (Shrove Tuesday in the Anglican tradition.)
Heh. 
And I always thought Maris Gras was a vile idea for a holiday because of that.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
:smack: I had thought about (Fr: Fat Tuesday) but this worked out better. Felix culpa.
ETA: Felix was the name of my parents’ pet snake, for the felix culpa reason.
Yeah, I guess Mardi Gras is a little repulsive… but feasting just before fasting makes psychological sense. It marks the beginning of the fast nicely. I guess.
Anyone else?
I don’t think it’s anymore repulsive than fasting. If something is worth giving up for 40 days, it’s worth giving up for the rest of your life. If you give something up knowing that it’s only for the period of Lent, just to make yourself feel pious, you’re not really giving it up. It’s just a game.
Lent is not about giving things up. It’s about reminding yourself of your mortal nature. It’s a spiritual practice, not a physical or material one. To treat it that way is to debase its purpose.
Muslims have a daily daylight fast for a month, and they feast every day in the evening. That has always seemed odd to me, because some days I’m so busy that I forget to eat at all until sundown.
I think it makes sociological sense, too. Los carnavales* in Barranquilla are when people drop all notion of social class and come together to celebrate their culture. I guess mardi gras is the same, though I’ve never experienced it. At one time, Christmas was the same way, but the middle class drove it into the home, so they wouldn’t have to face begging poor people.
*carnival derives from Old Italian, meaning “taking meat away.”
It took me more than 6 years of searching to find an edition of the Bible which wasn’t either the King James or in a similar incomprehensible dialect. I finally found a New Jerusalem Bible…
in a bookstore in Barcelona.
The prayers are all in archaic language. Even when I’ve gone to a kumbaya church (the Franciscans are always a guarantee that you won’t have people looking at you down their noses due to “inappropiate clothing” that would be appropiate in, say, a restaurant), I could recognize half of what was going on because of the rythms, but not because I actually understood the sentences being uttered.
Italian, no problem. French, no problem. Portuguese, no problem. English? Most of it might as well be in German 
When Lent begins, I know I have to start thinking about cleaning for Passover sometime soon
But the idea of never eating/doing something again can be a formidable psychological barrier to giving it up. If you give it up for 40 days, that’s not an issue.
When they were children, my uncle used to annoy my mother by drawing moonshine jugs on Easter eggs he was decorating. His logic was that it’s a reasonable symbol of Easter, since some people give up drinking for Lent. They were Lutheran, FWIW.
I am a Baptist, but I have celebrated Lent for the last few years as a way to focus on the sacrifice of Christ. This site, Ship of Fools: The Magazine of Christian Unrest has some interesting suggestions for doing something different for each day of Lent. I have enjoyed doing different things, rather than giving up one thing for 40 days.