The Rev. Dr. Peter Toon: May he go from strength to strength
[Ed. Note: Dr. Toon has struggled with this disease for several years. He is now in the Father's arms and that leaves a void here on earth. Cheryl M. Wetzel]
From: Auburn Traycik, Editor, The Christian Challenge
April 27, 2009
Dear Friends:
Shortly before midnight Saturday night, we were deeply saddened to learn that the Rev. Dr. Peter Toon – President Emeritus of the Prayer Book Society of the USA, scholar, theolog ian, prolific author and commentator on Anglican affairs – had passed away at his residence in San Diego, California, following a brave battle with a rare auto-immune disease, amyloidosis.
Word of this painful loss to faithful Anglicans came from our longtime friend, the Rev. Tony Noble, the Australian-born, Anglo-Catholic rector of All Saints’, San Diego; he had been devotedly ministering to the English-born Dr. Toon and his wife since the Toons moved a few months ago to San Diego, where the couple’s daughter and her (military) husband are based. Fr. Noble and we were frequently in touch about Dr. Toon’s condition recently, especially over the last week, in part so I could relay reports to concerned fellow directors of the Prayer Book Society, whose mission Dr. Toon had served and advanced so tirelessly and peerlessly in a number of years past.
“Tireless and peerless” might be a good way to describe Dr. Toon himself and all that he did or tried to do in support of the historic faith and liturgy. He leaves behind an incredible body of work that will doubtless inform generations of Anglicans to come. And while one might disagree with him on some issues or at some times - or if one is a liberal revisionist, at almost all times! - anyone who really knew him could not doubt that he spoke or acted out of sincere conviction and a deeply devoted concern for the Church that was never self-serving. He was never afraid, for example, to raise a question or address an issue that challenged or discomfited his own co-religionists!
And from our discussions with Fr. Noble, as well as the way Dr. Toon carried on in his thoughtful writing up until the last, it became apparent that Peter, having demonstrated how to live a life of vigorous and profound service to the Gospel, the Kingdom, and the Anglican Way, showed in his last days how to die in accordance with the same. He fought his disease, to be sure, suffering stoicly through the grueling chemo-type treatment for it. But he seemed to face the specter of his looming exit from earthly life with acceptance, courage, faith, and expectation.
Fr. Noble reported that on the final day of Peter’s life, he spent “a wonderful three hours” at the Toon home. Recorded English hymns were played – with Peter joining in or humming from his sickbed – and psalms and prayers were read.
After a hospice nurse came to respond to Peter’s own brave request that the oxygen he was receiving be discontinued, ”I asked him if he would like me to read the final commendatory prayers, the prayers of commending the soul to God,” Fr. Noble told us. “He said yes, but asked that it be just the two of us. It was very emotional, because he was quite alert and awake as I said those prayers, and joined in [them] as best he could. At the end of the final commendation…Peter’s last words…were, `Amen. Alleluia.’ And then he said to me, `Goodbye…See you on another shore.’”
Dr. Toon died later the same day.
Here follows an account of Peter’s life from his wife, Vita. Other tributes to Dr. Toon can be found, and are being received for posting on, the Prayer Book Society weblog, http://pbs1928.blogspot.com/ Further coverage will doubtless be forthcoming from (inter alia) the Society’s magazine, Mandate.
Peter Toon, 1939 – 2009
Peter, son of Thomas Arthur and Hilda Toon, was born in Yorkshire, England, soon after the start of World War II. After him came Paul, David and Christine. He attended Hemsworth Grammar School, Cliff College, Sheffield; King’s College, London; The University of Liverpool and Christ Church, Oxford University. He held three Masters’ degrees and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Oxford.
He was married to Vita for 47 years and they have one daughter, Deborah, who lives in California, and is married to Michael, a Naval Officer. Vita is a graduate of London and Oxford Universities, while Deborah is a graduate of Vanderbilt University in Nashville and the University of Texas at Austin.
After teaching religious studies in a College, Peter was ordained in the Church of England in 1973 in the Diocese of Liverpool. Since then he has served in parishes in both England and the U.S.A. and also as a theologian in theological houses in the U.S.A. and in England. In the last decade of his working life, he served the Prayer Book Society of the U.S.A. as its President and C E O.
Peter wrote and had published over 25 books, together with booklets, essays, articles. He also wrote many opinion pieces for the Web. He edited Home Words in England from 1985-2001 and The Mandate in the U.S.A. from 1995 to 2008. He was much committed to The Anglican Way as Reformed Catholicism, and to the importance of the historical Formularies—Articles, BCP and Ordinal. The woes of the Anglican Communion in recent days much distressed him.
As he died on Saturday, April 25th in San Diego, and as virtually all Vita’s and Peter’s relatives and friends are thousands of miles away, there was no public funeral in California, only a service for the family based on the classic Book of Common Prayer. It is hoped that his remains may be interred in the family grave in Yorkshire.
The address for Vita and Deborah in CA is: 2522 Boundary Street, San Diego, CA 92104, and the phone is 619-284-1432.
END
So sorry to learn of Father Toon’s passing. Our loss is Heaven’s gain.
“For Your faithful people, O Lord, life is not ended, but changed.”
Rest eternal grant unto him, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon him.