My perspective will certainly seem to some to be a little on the “innocent” side, as I have very little experience of Anglican institutional wrangling. I am isolated and have very little in the way of social connections with my fellow clergy. I have never been on a parochial church council, and I attended the TAC College of Bishops meeting in October 2007 from the point of view of an observer. We English love procedure at meetings and an appropriate length of time spent in ensuring that procedure is followed and the level of consultation is correct. I have spent more than half my life in France, in an environment of “ordered anarchy” for want of a better term. So, in these considerations, I am unqualified to enter into institutional considerations. I concentrate on properly theological and spiritual themes.
Following my last article on Post Brockton Continuing Anglicanism, I saw something glaring – the radical incompatibility between non-sacramental or minimal-sacramental Christianity and what is generally described as Anglo-Catholicism. Very often, we get hung up over meanings of words, so I’ll try to get this straight. Frequently, the term Anglo-Catholicism is taken to mean a tendency of the Church of England in the nineteenth century and onwards to our own time to aspire to union with Rome by imitating or “aping” post–Tridentine norms, and then adopting the post Vatican II changes when they were implemented. Alternatively named Anglo-Papalism, it is distinguished from the Old High Church, describing the theological movement of the Caroline Divines and the Oxford Movement and adopting a highly conservative attitude about classical Anglicanism being based on the Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-Nine Articles and, in general terms, the ethos of the Reformation. Thirdly, we have a more Evangelical tendency in the ACNA. It would be interesting to know how Anglo-Catholics fare in that communion.
For the purpose of this article, I would like the term Anglo-Catholicism to describe a maturing vision of the Church in its liturgical and spiritual culture as well as its theology. With the experience of Roman Catholicism and much of Anglicanism with modern / experimental liturgies, I would like to see the promotion of traditional western forms of the liturgy and church culture, which is one of the most positive aspects of the Continuing Anglican Churches adhering to the Affirmation of Saint Louis – the Missals.
My suggestion would be to concentrate on getting the Affirmation of Saint Louis Churches to meet together and get sufficiently agreed on doctrine and liturgical usage (optional character of the Prayer Book for the Eucharist in favour of the missals) and give second priority to dialogue with the old high-church and Protestant communions. Essentially, I see a distinction to be made, as in Roman Catholicism, between conservatives and traditionalists. Labels are always dangerous, so it is always the same matter of defining words carefully. Over simplifying, conservatism is a matter of keeping things the same, with the thought that variation involves error. Whilst I have reserves about the theory of doctrinal development (what in the mind of Newman settled his cognitive dissonance on the subject of papal infallibility), what I would call traditionalism is a quest for a living and maturing tradition in the communion of the Church. It is a kind of via media between believing something because authority teaches it and has the political clout to enforce it, and refusing the Church any character of a living organism. Perhaps Orthodoxy is closer to this idea of living tradition than anything else, provided it can open up and emerge from its own conservatism. The western Orthodox idea, however well or badly it has been implemented by Eastern Orthodox authorities, would seem to be the inspiring model for the Affirmation of Saint Louis, the give-away being the affirmation of seven Ecumenical Councils and the notion of the Undivided Church.
One way forward, for some, is the Ordinariate or Western Rite Orthodoxy. Some Anglicans can find their way in either the Ordinariate or the Antiochian and ROCOR vicariates. It is a matter of individual conscience. One thing that has caused problems in the TAC is clergy and laity joining another Church and leaving their Anglican community in a weakened and fragile state. I am not going to go any further into this issue, and whilst refraining from negative criticism of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, my aim is to make positive suggestions for the future of some Anglican communities.
It seems to me that most of the Affirmation of Saint Louis Churches are Anglo-Catholic. A great point has been made – that the Anglo-Papalist dimension has been removed by the Ordinariate. What is left behind is defined by another ecclesiology and understanding of the idea of the Undivided Church. The study of Old Catholic theology (ecclesiology based on the Council of Constance) is a great help in finding a new theological synthesis.
In the USA, the Anglo-Catholic churches are mainly the Anglican Church in America (ACA), the Anglican Province of America (APA) and the Anglican Catholic Church – Original Province (ACC). The more “Protestant” churches are those that are linked to the Global South and the Anglican Communion, and of course the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC). The ACC and the TAC have a significant international presence, and there is a number of smaller continuing Anglican Churches following Anglo-Catholic principles.
The problems with a “pan-Anglican” union seem to be theological and the source of Orders, together with a fairly “Donatist” view in some communions. The ACC is strict on the point of maintaining an absolute non-communion with those who have at any time being involved in the ordination of women, or even those who are ordained outside their particular episcopal lineage. The TAC has bishops generally descended from the same lines of succession and have never been involved in ordinations of women, but there are relationships of communion with Forward in Faith which is composed of Canterbury Anglican clergy.
I would be inclined to support the ACC position to some extent whilst adopting an open attitude with the TAC member churches and the APA. There seem to be grounds for theological agreement on the basis of the “western Orthodox” position of the Affirmation. Similar liturgies are used in all three communions, usually involving the use of the pre Vatican II Roman missal translated into “Cranmerian” English incorporating material from the Prayer Book of each country in question. Use of the Sarum liturgy is rare but does not go unnoticed on the occasions when it is used.
I think there could be union at two levels: full union when there is mutual recognition of each others’ Orders and theological agreement, together with agreements at a canonical and administrative level. Then there could be some kind of ongoing dialogue between the Anglo-Catholic union (whatever it would be called) and the churches upholding a “lower” kind of ecclesiology and theological position based on the Thirty-Nine Articles. The problem for some of the low-church conservatives is that they blame Anglo-Catholicism for liberalism and what drove them out of the Anglican Communion. The barrier seems to be insurmountable.
Another important aspect is that any union of the Anglo-Catholic churches should be of an open and inclusive character, ie. not with an objective of discrediting smaller communities accused of “imitating” or being impostors or deceiving the faithful. Everyone is someone else’s bogeyman, and such a mentality is destructive.
The ideal of an Anglo-Catholic union is that it would be a single episcopal synod, where bishops get together, get their act together, and make mutual decisions about jurisdictional matters, and if necessary, a reduction of the number of bishops in proportion to the numbers of parishes in each diocese. That would be the most credible objective, but perhaps one that could be achieved in a number of stages. I don’t know how it could be made to work, but I don’t see any prospect of success when trying to resolve differences between Anglo-Catholics and central / low churchmen, at least outside the British Establishment and the old Empire.
If the TAC could get together with the ACC and the APA, that would give a large and credible communion, even better if other Anglo-Catholic communions like the Diocese of the Holy Cross can be in on it. Once stability is ensured, then perhaps there can be further stages at gaining the confidence of other Christians whether or not they identify with Anglicanism. The category of Anglicanism needs to incorporate the Old Catholic vision in terms of episcopal ecclesiology and the integrity of the local Church as in Orthodoxy.
Obviously, there have to be institutional aspects, which are way above my “pay grade”, a matter for professionals of meetings and corporate life. I would hope that such would take second place behind questions of theology and validity of Orders.
Anglo-Catholicism is now going to be more moderate with the transition of the Anglo-Papalists to the Ordinariate. I hope it will not have to be fettered to the Articles and the Prayer Book, a continuation of the old cognitive dissonance from which even moderate Anglo-Catholics have suffered in the past. I am sure that suggestions could be made of suitable formularies, like for example, the old agreements made between the Orthodox Churches and the Union of Utrecht. There are lots of possibilities.
Also, a peaceful parting of the ways between Anglo-Catholics and broad / low Anglicans would free the low churchmen from having to accept doctrines not contained in the old Anglican formularies. It would do them a favour too.
Just a few ideas…
The Blue Flower 
Pingback: Suggestions for Anglo-Catholic Union « Fr Stephen Smuts
I would have thought that the obvious candidates for an Anglo-Catholic “amalgamation” would be the TAC (although its American branch, the ACA, has always had clergy and congregations that probably would not describe themselves as Anglo-Catholic), the ACC, the APCK (Anglican Province of Christ the King) and perhaps the EMC (the Episcopal Missionary Church, although its theological stance may have changed since the retirement of Bishop Millsaps) and maybe the DHC (the Diocese of the Holy Cross, which is basically Aglo-Catholic, despite its leader’s hopeful notion that the DHC’s role is to try to bridge both intra-Anglican and extra-Anglican theological and historical divides); the APA, by contrast, has always struck me as more Anglo-Catholic (to a degree) in “style” rather than substance (its embrace of the “Affirmation of St. Louis” has always been qualified).
Can anyone supply me with some information on the current state of the EOC (Episcopal Orthodox Communion)? I read somewhere online that it was going to merge with the APA, but I have been unable to confirm this. Those interested in the history of this body might wish to peruse the websites below which I have linked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_Orthodox_Church
http://www.anglicanorthodoxchurch.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Anglican_Church
http://orthodoxanglican.net/
As you point out, with the departure of the most Catholic minded folks to the Ordinariates, those remaining will, by definition, be less so. You propose the remaining sacramental Anglo-Catholics to come to some kind of unity, leaving out the 39 articles folk; I can’t remember the right letters, so I won’t make a list.
You mention the ACC as one of the primary players. The ACC clerics that are the most vocal are, however, wholly behind the articles, and do not cease extolling their virtues. I wonder how broad this attitude it?
I can well imagine these problems, and the whole Continuum might crumble in time. I can only make suggestions that about 200 people a day read. After that, it’s for the bishops and synods to decide their future…
I am a clergyman in the ACC. The 39 Articles are, as far as I am concerned, irrelevant at best and heretical at their worst. Frs. Hart & Wells do not speak for the ACC. I think the ACC’s voice is best discerned in a book written by Archbishop Mark Haverland “Anglican Catholic Faith and Practice.”
The Book of Common Prayer is very important to most members of the ACC in my experience (though I can happily live without it) but for me it has always been and still is more of stumbling block than anything else. The Anglican Missals and the Anglican Breviary convinced me of the catholicity of Anglo Catholicism (oversimplifying a bit) but the Book of Common Prayer seems to me naturally Protestant but capable of being forced into Catholic service.
I came into the ACC from an Eastern Orthodox jurisdiction and the way I look at it is perhaps different from most. But it seems to me that many Anglo Catholics or Catholic Anglicans (whatever) struggle with the Reformation specifically whether or not there are elements in the Reformation which can claim continuity with the pre-Reformation Church and are truly “Catholic” and salvageable. Most seem to be willing to look at the 39 Articles and see their inadequacy and their lack of continuity with the Catholic Church from before the Reformation. What most seem to be unable (because for some reason unwilling) is to take a good hard look at the Book of Common Prayer as well. Many rationalizations still exist which try to portray at least the 1549 Book of Common Prayer as Catholic not by accident but rather by intent. I seem to be unable to disagree with Frederick Oakely’s suggestion that the only good thing the Reformation brought was the liturgy in the vernacular (I think in his article in the British Critic about Bp. Jewell).
Gregory +
To be sure … Like Frs. Hart & Wells I do NOT speak for the ACC either. Just for myself.
Gegory +
How much like the views of another Anglican Gregory (Dom Gregory, that is, whom I admire immensely) ; cf.:
http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?did=1297-tighe
Indeed. I must say that Dom Gregory is hard not to like … 😉
Fr. Gregory, Your list (“I seem to be unable to disagree with Frederick Oakely’s suggestion that the only good thing the Reformation brought was the liturgy in the vernacular”) seems very incomplete. As regards the Reformation and just the Western Church, many other “good things” include married clergy, the Bible translated from the original languages, the Bible translated into the language of the people who are encouraged to read it, communion in both kind, and the decrease in the temporal political power of the Church. (I’d agree with many others that the list also includes reorientations away from purgatory, indulgences, the super-treasury of merit, works righteousness, relics & pilgrimages, and an attempt to raise the level of education of both the clergy and the laity (e.g., see Melanchthon’s educational changes that led him to be labelled the Preceptor of Germany).) There was a lot of “good things” to come out of the Reformation; I say this as an EO (Western Rite).
Of course there were some beneficial elements in the Reformation but it seems to me that they are accidental. As for Oakley and me:”Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech” (From the ever useful Wikipedia). Of which both Oakely and I are guilty. What I tried to express is that I do not think that any of the “gains” from the Reformation were ultimately worth it.
Gregory +
Willam, As regards Dix and liturgics, have you studied Frank Senn’s magesterial work, Christian Liturgy–Catholic & Evangelical (1997)? I like how Senn speaks of Dix in the bibliography, “In spite of challenges to Dix’s theses and newer data, this remains one of the most coherently sweeping histories of the liturgy yet written.” Senn follows and expands Luther Reed’s seminal work (1947 & 1959) on liturgics in general, the Lutheran Liturgy, and Reformational liturgies.
Fr. Gregory, An interesting comment, esp. when one thinks of the history and current state of the Anglican Communion and Continuing Anglicanism:
“What I tried to express is that I do not think that any of the “gains” from the Reformation were ultimately worth it.”
Don’t know if you read much fiction, but your comment has me thinking of two great alternate future novels where there was no Reformation. Read them a long time ago. One by the great English novelist Kingsley Amis, The Alteration. Thinking they came out in 1960s & 1970s.
Michael, I have never read Kingsley Amis’ novel “The Alteration” but I do remember reading, way back in 1970 a novel called “Pavane”. [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavane_(novel)%5D. It also treated of a similar theme. I remember in particular a reference to a papal encyclical that had forbidden certain developments “Petroleum Veto”. Obviously I cannot compare the two books but I thought Pavane was very intriguing.
Yes, that is the other book about an alternate future in England where there was no Reformation. An interesting book. You might check out Kingsley Amis’ work, too.
I read “Pavane” years ago, and found it winsome, but implausible; “The Alteration,” on the other hand, struck me as silly boiler-plate stuff, reflecting little more than ignorant English post-Christian anti-Catholicism.
As to Frank Senn’s book, I read it when it was published, and found much of interest in it. I must admit that I find the whole “thesis” of “Evangelical Catholicism” (Lutheranism) rather implausible. I hasten to admit that, down to 1660 or a little later, Lutheranism preserved far more “Catholic substance” in its liturgical practice and “devotional life” than did the Church of England (and its British sisters); indeed, one might argue that down to the 1620s the Church of England was, and thought of itself as, a Reformed body: read, for example:
http://books.google.com/books/about/Catholic_and_Reformed.html?id=stwluHDJsQgC
which is a wonderful (if long and costly) book. It was only on the issue of “Church Order,” due to the “Puritan” claim (or, rather, the claim of some “Puritans”) that a presbyterian polity could be found in the New Testament, and the “conformist” defence of episcopacy (first on the grounds that church polity was an adiaphoron, to be determined by the “civil magistrate;” then, that an episcopal church polity had a better claim to be “apostolic” than a presbyterian one; and, finally, that an episcopal church polity, and not a presbyterian one, was jure divino — a claim implicity made by Lancelot Andrewes, and subsequently explicitly by Richard Montague and Jeremy Taylor), that a kind of “Patristic” defence of the Church of England began to be advanced by some of its champions.
However, subsequently in Lutheranism, its Catholic “accoutrements” largely fell away in Germany and Scandinavia, due to the twin influences of Pietism and Enlightenment Rationalism, and have never really been recovered since, save by small and self-conscious groups. In addition, the universal Lutheran acceptance of Luther’s view (taken from St. Jerome) that bishops and presbyters are “one order” has exercised a baneful influence, as also the 18th-Century practical acceptance of Luther’s personal (if in his day theoretical) view that “lay celebration” of the Eucharist was unobjectionable.
As to Senn himself, one must, I suppose, admire him for his championing generic Christian orthodoxy in the ELCA. He is, however, a strong proponent of WO, and I well remember the proposal he advanced in the publication *Lutheran Forum* ca. 1993 that “Evangelical Catholic” Lutherans should seriously seek a kind of “uniate” status with Rome — on condition (one among several) that Rome should accept WO, or at least allow the proposed “Lutheran Catholic jurisdiction” to continue to “ordain” women for itself. That struck me at the time, and still does, as barking mad.
And while we are on the subject of excellent books, there is also this one:
Altars Restored – The Changing Face of English Religious Worship, 1547-c.1700
which is shorter than Milton’s book, but even more costly, alas!
William, Keith Roberts’ Pavane (1968) is more a series of linked short stories. It is considered a classic of the alternate history genre. But Kingsley Amis’ The Alteration (1976) is a novel; it won the 1977 John C. Campell award. Amis, unlike Burgess & Greene, was not an RC nor was he favorably inclined to their way of thinking (esp. on sexuality–Amis was quite the randy cad!). Will admit I’m a huge fan of Amis, having read nearly all his novels. My favs include The Anti-Death League, The Green Man, and The Old Devils. Even liked his lesser works, his entertainments (as Greene called his), like Colonel Sun (a post-Fleming James Bond novel). Don’t know much about Roberts. He, like Amis, was English. Maybe he was RC?
As I’ve said elsewhere, though I am distinctly Anglo-Catholic, I see the propriety, even the necessity, for Anglicans to affirm and accept the brethren of more “protestant” inclination as authentic Anglicans. I believe we need each other, and further that our claims to legitimacy fall into dust if we do not keep and strengthen the union. The principle argument of AngloCatholics is that Anglicanism never ceased being Catholic, never lost its Apostolic succession. If Old High Churchmen and central churchmen are not fully Catholic, then the spurious argument by Rome as to the invalidity of our orders actually begins to make sense. A narrowly AngloCatholic milieu thus becomes a milieu of very questionable legitimacy.
Interestingly, Andrew has it right, ACC has a far stronger contingent of Article-centered clergy than does ACA at the same time that it tends to elevate the Affirmations to the status of a confessional document. I’m not alone in seeing a problem with the whole idea of a sectarian confessional document at all. It’s rather a protestant notion in my view. What need is there to distinguish ourselves as a different kind of Christian from others? Our objective has to be to become an integral part of an organic and indivisible Tradition.
I appreciate the diversity expressed here. Would something without the 39 Articles or any other formulary being compulsory other than the Lambeth Quadrilateral work?
What need is there to distinguish ourselves as a different kind of Christian from others?
This is one of my themes – being Catholic without adjectives, without pretending to be Roman Catholic. Or do we just do away with the word Catholic and call ourselves Sacramental Christians, or just Christians even though the title would get us confused with non-denominational Evangelicals?
The more comments that come in, the more Continuing Anglican bishops will read this blog and get ideas for their next meetings and synods.
I note this and ed pacht’s comment below approvingly. I have for some time now believed that the kinds of self-branding we have indulged in for centuries is itself a major obstacle to realising the “church”, the “Way”. When we are trying to identify those elements or characteristics which reside either explicitly or implicitly in Christian communities across the borders and generations as ‘catholic’, the nonsense of confining the term to one group readily becomes apparent. I think terms like “Catholic” and “Orthodox” – with capital letters – are too problematic and incongruous for groups who use them to assert ecclesial purity but whose reality has often been neither catholic nor orthodox in any sense everyone else will agree!
The far greater religious challenge is the question of whether one can call oneself a ‘Christian’. If sacramentality is identified as the key distinguishing theme in what people are wanting to call ‘Catholicism’ as opposed, say to – I don’t know, but perhaps – scripturality (for want of a better word), then to use a term like “sacramental Christians” at least has the merit of distinguishing what it is of theological essence that is common to groups with particular practices and other doctrines. But then, one might object, if a sacramental Christian is what we used to say was ‘Catholic’, why not simply use that term?
Well, that’s an argument too, though I think it comes down to the question that ultimately we have to answer the question, are all the disputing sects, churches, communities, commonly self-describing as “Roman Catholic” “Orthodox”, “Protestant” etc etc, “Christian”? If we say, of course, then we should all agree to have that in our descriptor. THEN we might just hesitate more before speaking of everyone we disagree with on everything or little as if they were evil, stupid or alien. The neo-Donatism that plagues so many communities might just then be diminished.
It is all about our foundational mindset. Did Jesus command that the first thing to do was set up an exclusive community and then work out what kind of and how grace and love would operate between us? Or did he command us first to love, which would open us to grace, despite and alongside the details of human difference? Well, the universe and the mystery of the workings of God and grace are a circular dynamic I think without a linear causality (which takes us into Pelagian and semi-Pelagian territory), so this reduction I suggest is not perfect, but I’m sure readers will understand what I am suggesting here.
If ‘Christian’ is too generous, too generic, too indifferentist, then It seems to me that the best description for those insisting on formal unity with the Pope, whether Roman, Mozarabic, or other Uniates, should be the old reformational “Papists”. Perhaps someone can suggest the best descriptor for the non-Uniate Easterns. “Protestant” might still serve in an “anti-Papist” context but in vew of the fact that there appears to be such diversity and that many sects and church groups were founded in protest against other Protestants, perhaps we have to come up with something else.
But really, one then gets back into the business of marking oneself off from other disciples of Christ.
Ed, Not being Anglican (though I routinely worship with them), the angst Anglicans appear to suffer over how they define themselves and their internal and external relationships within their own Communion and with other Christian Communions, is always most confusing. If Anglicans don’t know what “part of an organic and indivisible Tradition” they are in 2012, then they (a) have lost their way and (b) lost it a long time ago.
I guess finding when they lost it and where (or over what) might be a good place to start? Was it in the 1540s (a CofE that is Lutheran or Reformed)? 1550s (CofE vs RC)? 1640s (Laud vs Puritans)? 1680s (CofE vs Non-jursors & Free Churches)? 1790s (CofE vs Wesley)? 1830s (CofE split by Oxford Movement)? Some other time?
It seems likely that one reason the “Anglican Communion” has “survived” is its lack of specificity and willingness to accommodate so many different, competing views? Anyone wanting to “re-bottle up” Anglicanism in this century would likely create permanent divisions as people leave for other Communions or wall themselves off within a particular form or type of Anglicanism (e.g., Low, Broad, High, Anglo-Catholic)? Would that be a bad thing?
It seems likely that one reason the “Anglican Communion” has “survived” is its lack of specificity and willingness to accommodate so many different, competing views? Anyone wanting to “re-bottle up” Anglicanism in this century would likely create permanent divisions as people leave for other Communions or wall themselves off within a particular form or type of Anglicanism (e.g., Low, Broad, High, Anglo-Catholic)? Would that be a bad thing?
I’ll agree that the lack of specificity is in many ways a reason for such ‘survival’ as there is, but tend to consider it therefore as a strength (though one, that like most strengths, can become a weakness). I agree that the angst many show is less than a good thing, but from the standpoint of, “Why do we have to declare ourself to be any particular ‘part’?” We are what we are, can’t we just be it? Do we have to wrap it up in such specific verbiage? Frankly the intense specificity of both Rome and Orthodoxy leaves me unable to become part of either. To have minds made up in areas where I firmly believe Our Lord wants us to continue inquiring is a thing I actually find repulsive.
Would it be a bad thing to “re-bottle-up” Anglicanism in such a way as to exclude any of those “parties” be a bad thing? Well, I’ll shout it loudly, YES, YES. and YES – a terribly bad thing.
Hi Ed. If you’ll pardon this 6-month-late reply, I think you make a good point.
The question is, is there room under the Anglo-Catholic label for both those who “see the propriety, even the necessity, for Anglicans to affirm and accept [and, I assume be in full communion with] the brethren of more ‘protestant’ inclination” and also those (like Fr Anthony) who hope for “a peaceful parting of the ways between Anglo-Catholics and broad / low Anglicans”?
There’s something terribly schizophrenic about affirming “Christian brethren” and yet fearing to have anything substantial to do with those same “brethren”. If we are brethren, we need to interact as brethren, and that simply WILL mean nettling one another – it happens in human families, doesn’t it? Is the Church really any different? As one who does count himself as Anglo-Catholic, I’ll answer your question straight on. The label is a truly Christian one only if there is that kind of room within it, otherwise it is not a label one should willingly accept, much less proclaim. As for full communion, that always has to be an objective, a fervently desired objective, even though sometimes it has to be set aside for a time while problems are resolved.
“A peaceful parting of the ways”? It’s like a peaceful divorce – still, after all, an attack on the structure and permanence of marriage – not a good thing at all. There is only one Church – either we claim to BE that unique church in and of ourselves or we work hard to find ways to look as if we really mean that one-church business as applying to Christians in general. I don’t see a middle ground. No disunion within the Church is really acceptable.
I somewhat agree with you, Ed, although I think the divorce metaphor is an exaggeration. To keep this in perspective, we aren’t talking about leaving Anglicanism for Rome or Orthodoxy. We’re talking about Anglo-Catholics remaining in the Continuum, but deliberating about whether or not to (re)-establish full communion with evangelical Continuing Anglicans.
See my more recent article Herding Cats and Continuing Anglican Ecumenism.
I think relationships between Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals – outside the Canterbury Communion – have to be assimilated to the way Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy relate to Protestant denominations of any kind. There is the dialogue of love and then the dialogue of truth. What is characteristic of Catholicism (Roman, Anglo, Old or whatever) is not negotiable.
But where there are problems of terminology, language, communication, understanding – these need to be discussed. See the posting.
Exactly what I’m talking about. Whether it’s divorce or a legal separation, we have a situation where family members cannot share a meal with one another. That just isn’t right. It may be necessary for the moment but cannot ever cease to be painful. It just isn’t justifiable to let this go on without real attempts to find a way of reconciliation. Separation my be unavoidable right now, but it’s still desperately wrong. How are we working toward healing?
And yet many of us regard that assumption — that separation is desperately wrong — as a problem. (To be fair of course, it is as much a problem with Roman Catholicism as it is in Anglicanism.)
Isn’t there a middle ground, i.e. a way for different people to have legitimately different opinions concerning union?
I’m quite sure we don’t need a monolithic organization in order to express unity, but I am just as sure that it makes no sense for us to be rejecting each other as we most certainly do. Unity and union are two different concepts. Two brothers may each have his own separate household, each governed quite independently of the other, but in a healthy family they are able to show unity by sitting down to table together on appropriate occasions. Inability to do so is evidence of some problem producing unhealth in their relationship and weakening or destroying unity.. I think this is the case in the Church today. Our disunity evidences an unhealth and should be spurring us to seek healing.
This is why I brought out the notions of “dialogue of love” and “dialogue of truth”. Sacramental / liturgical Catholicism and the Reformation formularies are “systems” of theology that are utterly incompatible with each other and non-negotiable for those whose way these “systems” are.
However, I would not refuse someone for Communion on grounds of terminology, if that person believes that receiving Communion is receiving Christ in some way. I don’t ask questions except to those who think I should refuse Communion to everyone but themselves!
Perhaps we should just stop talking about unity – or putting square pegs into round holes – and concentrate on a dialogue of love. But, we have to face the reality that the game is over for us unless we come up with something original. Come over to Europe and ask the average person in the street what he or she thinks of Christians and churches!
This subject of unity and union prompts me to ask whether or to what degree we might expect us humans to ever achieve unity as opposed to union, or whether we have to accept that unity and union – both – operate in different relational dimensions, or, finally, what are the signs of real or deep unity in the religious dimension, and what assumptions are we taking for granted?
I am particularly teased by ed’s reference to sitting down to a meal together. I am sure you are aware of John Dominic Crossan’s view that this was absolutely central and essential to Jesus’ idea and programme for bringing about his eschatological kingdom on earth; that is, that the sign and a cause of love (and the unity of hearts) was ‘sharing a common table’. I was very struck by this when I first read his books on the subject. The idea of unity over common table has traditionally been hot-housed and arguably diminished by its interpretation as Eucharistic communion in an exclusively insider sense. This is why insisting on good standing, right belief, formal membership have been made for a long time prerequisites for sharing in the communion at eucharists or memorial sacramental suppers. This version thus arguably turns Jesus’ kingdom on its head. Instead of sharing the sacramental bread and wine at Mass to all as a channel of grace, the sharing is exclusive and presumptive. The body and Blood of Christ is, ritually, no longer shared (shed) for all.
The consequence, or a corollary, of this sacramental segregation is the general reluctance and historical discouragements of actually eating ordinary meals together. Jesus’ parable about the invitation to those on the street to his banquet has in effect gone right over the heads of his vicars and successors. Looked at this way, the disunity and / or disunion between the warring factions in Christianity is the direct result of a refusal to share meals, both sacramentally and domestically, with each other without conditions.
I want to put it to the forum that this above all shows that the Church – writ large – is only ever as strong as its weakest link, and that the churches – writ small and warring – are all weak, flawed and wrong. In each age the meaning of Jesus and the Gospel has to be articulated and understood by each individual who is drawn to the challenge. It will often involve a de-crusting of the weight of particularised interpretations and cultural or institutional ideology.
Various churches proscribe what they refer to as “communicatio in sacris” – the participation in another church’s sacrament. I would like to suggest that the abolition of this injunction is the first step to seeing each other as all children of God which is the first step to love, without which unity is impossible.
Can we achieve unity in love to the degree Our Lord wishes us to? Evidence is that weak and fallen humanity cannot, but the Gospel requires us to reach for the impossibilities before us, and thus to allow God to work out Jesus’ Sacrifice in us. It’s an objective. Right now what the world around us sees (heck, what I’m afraid I see all too well) is a bunch of unherdable cats with no desire at all to be united in those bonds of love. That’s not a very appealing picture. I’m thoroughly within, and I find it unappealing – what of those we are commissioned to reach?
Stephen K is perhaps going a bit too far in suggesting that the concept of “communio in sacris” be abolished and what old-fashioned Presbyterians called the “fencing of the table” be dropped altogether. St. Paul is clear that, for some, participation in the Sacred Meal may be a perilous thing, and that cautionary note needs to be evident. One of the corollaries of love is that we try to dissuade those we love from getting themselves in worse trouble. It’s not for our own purity, or for some misguided concept of sacrilege, but for the benefit if those others that we sometimes have to say no. Careful, though, our qualification to judge is severely limited by our own unworthiness and our own blindness, and its probably better to advise than to ban.
Yes, there are extant barriers that can’t be ignored altogether, but the motivation must always be the kind of selfless love that led the Son of God to the Cross, and led Him to hang around with those who could never be worthy of His presence.
> Various churches proscribe what they refer to as “communicatio in sacris” – the participation in another church’s sacrament. I would like to suggest that the abolition of this injunction is the first step to seeing each other as all children of God which is the first step to love, without which unity is impossible.
Why does it seem like ecumenism is always turning into, The people who believe X just have to realize that they are wrong and that those who say Y are right ?
Peter Jericho, your question relates to ecumenism but taken more broadly it asks why whenever someone proposes something different does it involve saying someone else is wrong?
Are we doomed to think and act in this either/or fashion? Is any action x of ours a rejection of all other actions, y? Is any thought or plan a condemnation of plan b? Does the presumed ‘rightness’ of something we think or believe necessarily mean the wrongness of something else? We certainly take it, in a day-to-day sense, as if this were so. Even the theory of relativity does not quite posit that time x is time y, but rather that from any single standpoint time x can co-exist with time y perceived from another standpoint.
We talk about God – mostly – as if God were separate and distinct from us; God is always ‘other’. Were we to read the mythos of the Fall differently, we might say that the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was the stuff that made God and creation identical, “like one of us” [Gen. 3:22]. But we don’t because our minds and imaginations cannot cope with such metaphysical identity. So we have no way of knowing – except in a subjective mystical experiential mode – whether, just because we can articulate this kind of concept, it is in any way true.
So we are generally left to comprehending and talking about things as ‘other’ and any single thing is the non-other-thing.
This is getting into the metaphysical and meta-ethical level and of course they are only further questions that occurred to me. Was my suggestion to adopt common sacramental and domestic table a programme for ecumenism? Or rather, more radically, a characterisation of what I thought was the ‘essence’ of any Christianity worthy of the name? The Christianity of history and human experience at the institutional level seems to be characterised by disputes, exclusions, prejudices and hatreds of all kinds all in the name of orthodoxy (denominational truth) and orthopraxis (denominational virtue). Is this what Jesus intended?
So yes, I suppose I am suggesting that exclusive sacramentality may be the wrong way to go about things. There is a rationale to it but not one I think is working to advance the character of Christianity. I think any church that maintains it reflects Jesus’ foundation perfectly or essentially whilst it remains a splinter, however large, obviously thinks the essence of Christianity is, or involves, something other than unity and peace. There are still men and women, Greeks and Jews, slaves and free. We are talking things of the spiritual, hence psychological, dimension here. Ed is suggesting that everyone has to move, otherwise nothing will change. He thinks counsel rather than prohibition is a way of resolving the tangles and problems of quarantine. I was questioning the very basis of quarantine in the first place and asking myself whether the only way to ‘be’ (unified) was to start to ‘do’. I think his suggestions are worth considering and trying, and if not enough, then mine. What do you have to lose?
> taken more broadly it asks why whenever someone proposes something different does it involve saying someone else is wrong?
Indeed. And more specifically, can’t two groups both call themselves “Anglo-Catholics”, even if one group wants full communion (or intercommunion, etc) with (conservative) Anglicans who are more Evangelical, and the other group does not (or is less enthusiastic about it)?
Peter, Your comment–“can’t two groups both call themselves Anglo-Catholics”–seems approachable from so many directions, theological and otherwise. From the otherwise, it made me think of Orwell’s comments about politics and language. Words have meaning. The meaning of words changes over time. The meaning of words can be manipulated. Those who control language and words…have a lot of control. Wasn’t there a character in Animal Farm who said something like “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others?” Could “Anglo-Catholics” be substituted for “animals” 🙂
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humility – I think I’m right, but am I? – the realization that rapprochement is achieved when both parties move. That’s what I believe is required of us all. Differences that seem important can’t be swept under the rug – but humility and openness are essential in solving them. If we really want unity we’ll be willing to work hard to achieve it – and we will move in that direction. If we don’t want unity more than we want to have our own way, divisions will never be eased and we will be cemented into our self-worshiping sects.
I don’t think we need to worry as long as we spend time with non-church people and just being a normal person with them without bringing up “the subject”. That can also help us to get out of our sectarianism without tying our brains in knots thinking about how the irreconcilable can be reconciled.