St. Thomas Anglican Church

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St. Thomas's Anglican Church
St. Thomas Anglican Church

Dedication:	Thomas the Apostle

Denomination:	Anglican Church of Canada

Tradition:	Anglo-Catholic
Administration

Parish:	St. Thomas, Huron Street

Deanery:	Parkdale


Diocese:	Toronto


Province:	Ontario

Clergy







Rector:	Fr. Mark Andrews





Other




Website:	www.stthomas.on.ca/

St. Thomas' Anglican Church is a parish of the Anglican Church of Canada in Toronto, Ontario. It was one of the earliest Anglo-Catholic congregations in Canada. It was established in 1874, moving twice before settling into its present building, in the Annex on the western edge of the University of Toronto's downtown campus.

The church is an Arts and Crafts building designed in 1893 by architect and parishoner Eden Smith (1858–1949). The building was altered in 1917 to add a baptistry.

The church is known for its high standards in music and liturgy, and is nicknamed "Smoky Tom's" for its use of generous quantities of incense. Liturgy at St. Thomas's is more formal and complex than would be encountered in all but a few Canadian Anglican churches today.

St. Thomas’s draws from the English high-church tradition within Anglo-Catholicism, as distinct from the Anglo-Papalist branch, which took its inspiration from contemporary Roman Catholicism. This tradition, as former rector Fr. Roy Hoult explains,^[1] sought

to rediscover the forms of dress and general tenor of worship that pertained in England prior to their senseless destruction at the time of the Reformation. Saint Thomas's is an example of this second kind of Anglo-Catholicism; its lack of lace and the predominance instead of plain albs and long surplices bear witness to this, as does the traditional Anglican arrangement of the chancel with its choir stalls.

The church has a long relationship with Trinity College, and more recently with Wycliffe College - the present rector, Fr. Mark Andrews, graduated from Wycliffe. As recently as the 1950s, Wycliffe banned its students from entering St. Thomas's.

Parish music director John Tuttle founded and still directs the semi-professional Exultate Chamber Singers, and also directs the Hart House Chorus at the University of Toronto, and at the beginning of Michaelmas Term 2006 will become musical director at Trinity College. The famous English accompanist Gerald Moore, who grew up in Toronto, was a sometime assistant organist at St Thomas'.

St. Thomas’s has services throughout the week, and in addition to an 8 o'clock Low Mass has three sung services on Sundays:

9:30 a.m.: A contemporary-language Eucharist with the priest facing westward, using the 1985 Book of Alternative Services

11 a.m.: A traditional-language eastward-facing Solemn High Mass, using the 1962 Prayer Book and the Canadian 1938 hymnal

7 p.m.: Choral Evensong using the 1962 Prayer Book, and Devotions to the Blessed Sacrament.

John Aimers was longtime editor of the parish newsletter. St. Thomas also has chapters of the Society of Mary and the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament.

In 2006, the Parish Vestry requested "the Advisory Board of St Thomas's Church to take under consideration women priests being included in the system of invited priests to celebrate and preach at the services of St Thomas's Church including the 11am mass at the High Altar as well as the appointment of women as assistant priests or honorary priests at the earliest opportunity."^[2] The motion passed by a margin of roughly two to one.

[edit] Further reading

Kent (General Editor), David A. (1993). Household of God: A Parish History of St. Thomas's Church, Toronto. Toronto: St. Thomas's Church, Toronto. ISBN 0-9697802-0-6.