Fr Smuts has reproduced an article – Vatican Prefers Tanks to Talks to Achieve Unity – that Dr William Tighe sent to a few of us. Read the article over there, as I see no point in reproducing it here. It helped to see an essential point – that we don’t have to criticise the ordinariates to remain legitimate Anglicans, and we don’t have to shoot ourselves in the foot to be positive about the ordinariates. The two issues are separate. Benedict XVI has instituted the ordinariates for former Anglicans – and continues the ecumenical dialogue with those who have remained Anglicans.
The implication in much of the barrage of polemics is the idea according to which Anglicans must forfeit their credibility and legitimacy for the simple reason that the ordinariates exist, and that they are bound to make their immediate submissions. Consciences are pricked and goaded, and decisions have to be made. Or do they?
I wrote a comment on Fr Smuts’ blog:
As time goes on, the whole thing becomes clearer in my mind. The problem is not about whether those who decide to adhere freely to the Roman Catholic Church should follow its rules and obey its authorities like the Pope and bishops. Converting to Roman Catholicism or Orthodoxy is exactly that – converting. There is no “political asylum” in a church other than the one we were brought up in.
Even if we went back to our original churches, we would still have to “convert” to them.
The real issue is remaining Anglicans and that option becoming discredited or invalidated by the existence of the ordinariate option. We do seem to have difficulties of conscience, as we each have our part to play in the fragmentation of Continuing Anglicanism. The alternative is remaining in or returning to the Anglican Community in union with Canterbury – and accept what they require, not 50 years ago but now. Is there a legitimate Anglican option? Perhaps to some of us, the existence of the ordinariates has taken away its legitimacy and consciences are prodded and forced, with the help of some sixteenth century or nineteenth century apologetics and their old litanies about “private judgement”.
The third option for those in the spiritual no-man’s land is giving up religion and lapsing into agnosticism and a secular life style. But, that has to be assumed logically.
The real issue is faith and reason, the relationship between authority and freedom, what kind of authority is legitimate. Does faith depend on being threatened by some kind of inquisition and state authority that supports the political ambitions of the Church? I constantly ask the question – if religion can only “work” if it is based on constraint rather than freedom and human dignity, then is it objectively valid. Does man’s aspiration to freedom depend on the rejection of religion? Often, the best apologists for atheism are people who call themselves Christians. The paradox of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor is that the Inquisitor is fundamentally an atheist!
I think it is right to say that the ordinariate is a sensitive and generous pastoral provision by the Pope for former Anglicans who are attracted by the cultural accommodation and are convinced by Catholic teaching and disciplinary requirements. What we need to discover is something else, whether there is any kind of Anglican expression outside the official Anglican Communion and the ordinariates that is legitimate – not a sham or something insincere.
We should separate the two issues. Is there any development of thought possible here?
Comments are welcome here or over at Fr Smuts’ blog.
The Blue Flower 
As one who is drawn increasingly to Orthodoxy, especially in its western rite form, I do not feel that moving there from Anglicanism is a conversion. I can see nothing that I do or say or believe now being in any substantial way different from what I would do or say or believe then; and this is somewhat different to conversion to Roman Catholicism.
My welcome to an old friend on this blog! It all depends on where one lives and the Orthodox communities to which one has access. In the USA, it will be a lot easier to make the transition with some continuity in one’s life. There are two main jurisdictions for the western rite – Antiochian and Russian Outside Russia. A priest needs to be sure that he has really got his wife and faithful to understand the issues…
For this reason many of the western rite Orthodox are often referred to, even by the former head of the Antiochian mission department, as the “half-converted.”
Yes, of course. There are always the non-Chalcedonian Churches – some might be open to “western rite refugees”. After that there are the “non-canonical” Churches, and some of them might be very good. There is a union of Gallican and Celtic Churches here in France, and they seem serious enough to me – just too far away to get to know them…
Well yes indeed. As Fr. Smuts draws his observations to a close we come to the core of the problem faced by those of us (in my case laity) who have left the Church of England and cannot in good conscience enter OLW. I can say for a certainty that many in this position are quite unsure of the way forward. So as Fr Smuts says ‘Is there an Anglican expression outside of the Official Anglican Communion and the Ordinariates which is legitimate ?’
The Continuum as presently constituted does not look much of a way forward to most ex C of E . I mean no offence to honest members of it in saying that. Allow me to be frank about this. The perceived problems I have heard expressed relate to the numbers of tiny, competing jurisdictions and percentage issues regarding the number of senior clergy, other clergy and miniscule lay membership. There are also questions raised about the formation process of some serving clergy in the Continuum.
I would express the wish that those in the Continuum who are well aware of these problems could work together to seek proper resolution of the issues involved. For my part I live in prayerful hope of the Nordic Catholic Church / Union of Scranton arriving on the shores of Cornwall and England.
Neil
Is one source of difficulty in all this the collective memory loss of the English church as it was before William gained the English crown? Some glimmer of the reach of Orthodoxy is to be found in Sarum. Was Anglican Christianity ever really sympathetic to St. Augustine of Hippo, and the development of the Western doctrine of grace, and the Lutheran revolt? The English church has been torn apart since the Reformation, trying to keep protestant and Latin together. It hasn’t worked because there was always an underground river of thought, a notion of grace and human possibility, running beneath it and at odds with it. Is this why we struggle so much with Anglican Patrimony? Is it possible we unwittingly leave out so much of what grafts naturally onto English Christianity?
If over and over again we see clergy and laity acting cruelly, is it because they have as their paradigm a God with attributes which belong only to Caesar? Are we really struggling with a thousand years of blasphemy, and a memory which can never be recovered? No wonder that “brief Galilean vision of humility” (as Whitehead so eloquently put it) flickers uncertainly.
In other words, it is not possible to go back, but only to live in the present. The real Anglican patrimony is what we leave behind us when we are gone. If we cannot claim to have a noble ancestor we can try to be a noble ancestor. In spite of being exhausted by this whole business.
Personally, I feel defeated. I don’t really care whether I sit in a Latin pew, or a Continuing one, or an Oriental one. Not because they are the same, but because I am unable to have any feelings for any them. They have manage to kill, or nearly kill, something inside of me. I guess I am only mirroring their own indifference.
Still…Grace is everywhere.
If one needs to be reordained, reconfirmed (or chrismated as if confirmation had not happened), I cannot see it as anything other than a conversion, even if no opinion at all is changed. Perhaps, just perhaps, conditional ordination such as ACC insists on may be seen as somewhat different as it admits that maybe things were really OK – but I’m unconvinced. One is no more than half-converted if such rites need to be done for one to be accepted. Basically patrimony under such conditions is not patrimony at all, but rather a concession made by those accepting one. Rome has been gracious to its ex-Anglican converts in erecting ordinariates in which some aspects of their past (as deemed acceptable to Rome) are permitted – and Orthodoxy has been gracious in permitting Western rites, but these are, in both cases, gracious concessions to converts.
——————————————————–
change of subject: To my mind it seems a problem that it is so easy to define what is a Roman Catholic or what is an Eastern Orthodox (or what is a Lutheran or a Baptist or …) and so easy to distinguish either from all the varieties of contemporary Christians. Is God so limited that we can claim such a clear understanding of Him? Might it be that seemingly incompatible notions might both contain truth? I’ve long thought that this indeed is the insight in the much-vaunted Anglican catch-phrase “via media”. Truth is not so easy to box up. The human mind fails at a certain point and dogmatism (as opposed to the basic central dogma necessary for there to be a faith) manages to stand in the way of real seeking. This, fundamentally, is the reason I can’t become a convert to anything else, though I’ve converted one way or another many times in a long and convoluted past. In Amglicanism I find an anchor in Tradition and a freedom to inquire.
I am a member of ACA (the American TAC) with no intention to move elsewhere, but very much dissatisfied with things as they are. The stupidity of the personality driven divisions in Continuing Anglicanism, and the constant infighting are indeed repulsive. The lack of real formation among the clergy is also distressing. We won’t really grow, nor will we attract many of the young until we learn how to act like what we really are. Can that be? I believe it can — but those days have not arrived. Until then I fit nowhere else and am content to hang on and do my two bits worth to change things until they do change.
The comments about converting, esp. through chrismation as would be done in Orthodoxy, are interesting. My immediate thought: Doesn’t every family have some process or rite of initiation when someone marries into the family? The “here’s how we welcome you into our family” with the follow up of “we do it this way because it is part of our family tradition” sort of thing one sees in family get togethers or at the holidays. But it is a joyous celebration of joining the family, not a somber declaration of surrender. My perspective on the Antiochian Orthodox Western Rite in the USA is entirely positive. Many thanks to both Metropolitan Philip and Bishop Basil (Wichita, Kansas)! Having worshipped at St. Vincent of Lerins Orthodox Church (Omaha, Nebraska) for 15 years, the many former Episcopalians and Anglicans (including the former pastor and now retired archpriest) seem to have little or no trouble making the few minor changes. They notice a few additions to the liturgy and may miss the filioque from a sense of usage, but the look, feel, sound, and thought is too similar to traditional or conservative High Church American Anglicanism for them to feel anything other than…being home! (Same goes for this former Roman Catholic who was chrismated into Orthodoxy in 1987.)
Not too long ago a large segment of a Charismatic Episcopal parish (a group which has its orders from the Brazilian National Catholic Church) were received into Antioch, they, including the priest, were all re-baptised (they even posted a youtube of this event…since removed). This happened at St John the New Theologian Antiochian Church in San Juan Capistrano, California. This is hardly a “rite of initiation” into a family. It is a demand for submission, it tells the already Christian convert that the were never Christians in the first place. The Russian Church outside of Russian routinely receives only by re-baptism. It everything is so wonderful with the western rite in Antioch, why is its use forbidden in England and Europe?
This was one of the declarations of the recent 2012 “western” rite conference of the Russian denomination:
” While we understand the need to be pastoral with those who may wish to practice various post-schism feasts and practices such as Corpus Christi and Benediction, the Metropolitan recommended we avoid them. The act of converting to Orthodoxy, even in the Western Rite, involves much more than “changing the picture on the wall.” Since some practices were established post schism, our Bishops will take the necessary time to review their Orthodoxy before granting approval to practice them within the ROCOR Western Rite. It is important to note that this is not a judgment against the use of these practices as much as it is recognition of the need for our Bishops to review and approve them in advance of accepting them.”
It would appear that the “half-converted” are not really welcome.
“It would appear that the “half-converted” are not really welcome.”
And why should this be surprising, or even exceptionable, as the Orthodox Church, like the Catholic Church — and I believe also, subject to correction, the Oriental Orthodox — believe themselves each to be THE “one holy catholic and apostolic church” confessed in the Nicene Creed, and so will carefully scrutinize, and if need be alter, any exoteric customs, practices or rites which outsiders, “converts” if you will, wish to bring in with them?
Exactly my point. Please see the first comment by Fr David McCready.
It seems there are three choices:
1. Stay in your church of origin and just go along with everything.
2. Accept the discontinuity between your church of origin and start all over again in “someone else’s” church.
3. Give it all up and go secular.
Most of us yearn for some continuity and sense of stability in our lives, but that seems to be the one last illusion to relinquish.
All I can speak comfortably about is what I know, esp. what I’ve witnessed. The only time I’ve personally witnessed a “re-“baptism at an Orthodox Church (Greek Orthodox) was actually a conditional baptism and I was the sponsor. The individual was Pentecostal and believed he’d likely been baptized only in the Name of Jesus and not using the Trinitarian formula. I don’t believe he had any baptismal documents or records so there was no way for either he or we to know for sure. So he was immersed (conditionally). And yet even here it was a joyful receiving into not a surrender from. During my time at St. Vincent of Lerins (Omaha, NE, established 1989), from 1995-2010, I saw numerous converts (including my then wife) received by chrismation. I never saw one adult convert received by re-baptism. If memory serves me, the converts I saw chrismated came from Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, and Evangelical backgrounds (though some had been in more than one denomination and some of the Evangelicals were baptized Roman Catholic as babies). Each had been baptized using the Trinitarian formula. (I was received into the Greek Orthodox Church by chrismation. At the time, 1987, I showed the priest my Roman Catholic baptismal records which clearly show the Trinitarian formula was used.)
My experience with ROCOR and their Western Rite is much more limited. In the sole case I’m personally aware, ROCOR essentially treated all of the prior sacraments received by that person as having been non- existent. He was re-baptized and re-married. I’ve never heard a theological explanation for this and it appears to me, based on what I’ve seen, heard, and read, to be entirely different than what the Greeks, Antiochians, and OCA do in the USA.
Anyone wanting to learn more about the Antiochian Western Rite in the USA should look over our official Missal, Hymnal, etc. and compare them to their Anglican/Episcopal and pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic counterparts. My Missal (1st edition, 1995), shows/discusses approvals by both the Patriarch of Antioch and Metropolitan Philip. Some “Western” feasts like Christ the King (last Sunday in Oct.) and Our Lady of Walsingham (Oct. 15th) are clearly authorized and celebrated.
Yes, and only in the USA. Did you miss my posting of the dean of the Antiochian English deanery? He says that none of these rites are Orthodox. The chancellor of the Australian diocese has already stated that the use of the western rite in the Philippines (which has by far the largest numbers of western rite Orthodox) is only temporary until the “proper” liturgy of St John’s is learnt. I am not at all surprised that the large numbers of temporary western rite orthodox in the Philippines are never mentioned; they are being Byzantinised as I write.
Being American and living in USA, my focus is on what I experience and what is readily available here. If Orthodox Christians who live in England or the Philippines (where I lived in 1990 & 1991) want a viable permanent Western Rite, then they need to work for it and make it happen. But in America, Metropolitan Philip has been very supportive of our Western Rite. Same goes for Bishop Basil in Wichita, KS. I don’t know much about Orthodox UK deans, but given the Patriarch’s involvement with the Western Rite in USA, someone pretty high up in the hierarchy (higher than one dean) appears to want us in America to have and maintain our Western Rite. I’d encourage anyone in USA who is potentially interested to check out our Western Rite. Might be right for you? Might not?