I think I have begun to identify a problem of understanding between my way of writing and some of my readers – that is the sacrosanct dogma of “being positive”. I am not an American, but deeply a European. We might seem to be a dour people, but one that has learned to cope with adversity.
This is particularly brought home to me by a couple of readers who find my postings “depressing to the point of despair”. “It seems to me you’re a man with a broken heart”. I don’t have that impression myself – for as long as I am able to marvel in beautiful things and see good where good is to be seen. Those are my landmarks like the things like lighthouses and church steeples that guide navigators at sea.
I have read one or two things about psychology and about having to avoid negative thinking, lest it should become self-fulfilling prophecy. Keep it positive, and nothing will ever go wrong in life! Never say a negative word about the ordinariates or some other form of conversion of Anglicans to Roman Catholicism, because a depressing word from one will ruin everything for all. I have noticed how those who said a word out of place on the blogs would be shot down. I have often wondered where this tyranny was coming from.
Some researchers in psychology are sceptical about cultivating a belief in guaranteed success and anything being possible on the basis of that. It is the same kind of Manichaeism as those who are constantly fighting their shadow or “dark side”. Jung emphasised the need rather to “integrate” and reconcile the opposites, including good and evil. Such an idea is hardly to be found with the positive thinkers.
No amount of wishing away negativity or bad experience or disappointment will make it go away. I see a rock in front of my boat, and I could believe it would go away if I thought hard enough that it shouldn’t be there. It is simpler to steer away from the rock and save the boat. That rock exists, and has an objective existence independently from our wishes and beliefs. If the boat is dashed on the rock, it will sink.
The ancients understood the need to balance optimism with pessimism, the positive with the negative, with an openness to failure and uncertainty. The Stoics advised anticipating the worst. I remember that being drummed into me when I learned to drive a car. Anticipate the worst in every situation, and you will have fewer accidents that way. Anticipating the worst makes us sober and prepare us for coping with adversity. Recognising the fact that we can lose all we have makes us all the more grateful, and makes life liveable if the worst happens independently of our own thinking.
I have the impression that positive thinking is an effort of the will to stamp out realism and negativity. The positive thinker has to maintain the effort, lest anything negative should creep in and spoil his day. If you eliminate the word “failure” from your horizon, then you will simply be unprepared for when failure happens.
The ordinariates (as this subject absolutely has to be discussed and repeated for the bloggers to be remotely interested in anything) may be a resounding success for some, but are an abject failure for others. This is a dimension that just hasn’t been considered. They were successful for some, so the negative naysayers had to be “shot down” and banished to inexistence. This seems to be about the nerve of the problem, but don’t expect sober reality to get the upper hand anywhere.
I am not concerned for those who have succeeded, and who presumably will never have to face failure and adversity in the future. I write for those whose spiritual and ecclesial life has been ruined by the division of the TAC into “ordinariate spare parts” and smarting wounds in the silence that does not dare to speak up.
Man is at his best when he is struggling to make a new beginning after defeat or when adversity strikes. I believe this is the essential difference between Europeans and Americans, though this is changing with the crumbling of certitudes, security and what was believed only a short time ago to be invincible.
Christianity itself is changing, and can only survive in today’s world by becoming as bloody-minded and intolerant as Islam or turning to spirituality and the revival of prayer and simple living. Institutional Christianity and Catholicism will just not survive these changes. Only, the notion of “church” has to change and will change. That seems to me to be the reality that we prepare for, as infallible popes and magisteriums and all the other ideologies of the apologists fall into irrelevance. That side is over, a fact that will become obvious to Americans in a short time. Over here in Europe, the game is over. Institutionally, the future is dystopia in one way or another – secularism and political correctness. Even Islam will succumb. Spiritually, we are about to be purified as gold in the crucible.
That is what we have to prepare for – living in the brave new world without becoming “of it”.
The Blue Flower 
I’ve never seen this blog as pessimistic or depressing, but rather reflective and realistic. I also firmly believe we are living in a post-Christian world; that is a world in which Christianity is no longer the primary spiritual force or even the preferred spiritual choice for many people. However that is not to say that Christianity isn’t still alive, or that it is even in danger of dying out. It simply means that we may need to adjust how we practice our faith, depending on where we live.
The promises of God are (in my mind) too often viewed through institutional lenses. We have been told over and over that “the church” will not fail (Mt. 16:18) but there are a variety of opinions about what Jesus meant by “church”. The Kingdom of God will not fail, but that doesn’t mean that it will always look and feel the same as what we have come to expect. The institutional church could collapse tomorrow; however the faith founded in Jesus Christ would still go on.
To use a very simplistic example: say something happened to cause every grocery store and restaurant to close. Would we all simply quit eating? Of course not! We would learn to grow our own food, or gather with others who could do so, and adapt to the situation. Humans are very good at surviving when faced with physical death; we can be just as good at surviving when it comes to our spirituality.
Have you ever wondered what James would think of the way modern Christianity is practiced? Would he even recognize it to be the same faith as that practiced in Jerusalem prior to 70 AD? The church has gone through many changes over the past two thousand years, and it will go thorugh more. Let’s face it, the Christian faith has faced much worse than what we are facing now, and it has done quite well in spite of all the obsticles (including those created by Christians themselves).
So no, I do not feel this blog is too dark or pessimistic. In fact I find it challenging and alive with hope and promise for the future. Keep it up! Thinking outside the ecclesial box is fun.
+Ed
Blessings Anthony +
I agree with my namesake + Ed. I go through the same motions as you, sadly being in the Continuum for the last 10 years has been challenging , but more so depressing . Here in Australia with all the fanfare of the Ordinariate on one side and a broken ACCA./TAC , we all know why, on the other side. I had thoughts of returning to the ACCA/TAC if it becomes a going concern, but Bp.Robarts gave me such a slap in the face in e-mail, that I have got second thoughts. I get all the enthusiasm from Bishop Michael Gill and Father Stephen Smits to get with it rather sooner and later, but it aint that easy. I am also contemplating my future in the Continuum. Once thing I know for sure is that God has called me to the Priesthood, yes our God has yet to reveal to me where , what branch of the Church.and it will be in His time not mine ,something I need to remind myself.
Grace and Peace
Father Ed Bakker
Bendigo
Australia
I hope you have reported/forwarded the response you got from Bishop David Robarts to the Acting Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion.
How strange, Father, that you should end your post by quoting The Tempest (via Huxley). I had a thought yesterday to post a comment likening you to Prospero!
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Dear Father,
“struggling to make a new beginning after defeat”
For many (most? all?), the Ordinariate is the same thing.
Success is what you make of it.
Peace!
Success is what you make of it.
Sounds like the Prosperity Gospel. N’est-ce pas?
“Positive thinking” and “positive confession” are, to my mind, nothing but a form of ritual magic, a basically godless view that what we do or say will have assured results, and that departing from the prescribed words or actions will have assured negative results. What nonsense! Of course it’s an abuse to concentrate only on the bad things — but it is just as serious an abuse to ignore them as if they do not exist. There is evil, and if we are not aware of it, it will catch us. The devil “goeth about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, resist him steadfast in the faith.”
I’m known, on the Anglican Diaspora where I’m a moderator, and in other places and situations, for my strong insistence that attitude matters. It does. A bad attitude can be deadly poison. But that does not imply that nothing negative should be said. Sometimes it must. Rather, we are bound, as St. Paul said, to “speak the truth in love.” With a sincere desire to heal, and a desire for the ability to embrace.
While I don’t always agree with everything you say, Father Anthony, I’ve never been the least disturbed about your attitude, and keep coming back because your words of analysis and caution do need to be both said and heard.
That said, the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, though it often appears that their onslaught has had much effect, and that effect shows itself more often in the faithless distortions of the structure of the church by its own people than in the attacks of outside foes. Thus the church is always changing and always under reform and reconstruction. It has to be. The Patristic church has little resemblance to the church in the book of Acts, the early medieval church has little resemblance to the Patristic church, the late medieval church is not very much like that of the early Middle ages. The churches of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Counterreformation are not like any of the former, and today’s church is unlike anything that has come before and unlike what may come to pass. The core faith, the Scriptures, the Sacraments, the Apostolic Succession remain and are eternal – the way in which these are expressed and understood is bound in time, becomes corrupt, and needs to change until at the very last she, the Church, is finally without spot or wrinkle or blemish or any such thing – as she never yet has been, but most surely shall be.
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I find it very telling that honesty is so often construed as being “negative.”