A reflection on What makes the Traditional Anglican Church of Britain Traditional? has appeared in the TTAC website. It dates from the very beginning of this year. It seems as though the English member Church of the TAC has a new acronym, the TACB (Traditional Anglican Church of Britain).

The text begins by resuming the history of Continuing Anglicanism and the TAC in particular. Not once is the name of Archbishop Hepworth mentioned. The principle of Continuing Anglicanism is outlined together with the notion of Tradition.

The narrative about the ordinariate movement and the TAC’s role in it is interesting:

In recent years, rather than concentrating on promoting the Anglican Way and repairing the breaches among the ‘Continuers’, the Traditional Anglican Church in Britain, and the TAC as a whole have been  heavily preoccupied with attempts to achieve a spectacular goal; the healing of the rift with the Church of Rome with its more than one billion members. The TAC was led to believe that this might take the form of a coming together of what Pope Paul VI once described as ‘sister Churches’ in mutual reconciliation.

At the height of their hopes, in 2007, the then members of the College of Bishops and Vicars General, meeting at St Agatha’s, Portsmouth, solemnly signed a copy of the ‘Catechism of the Catholic Church’ which had been placed upon the altar, as an expression of their desire for such an outcome, and petitioned Rome for a response. After a wait of two years, however, it was made clear that although Rome was willing to provide special jurisdictions for former Anglicans in newly-devised ‘Ordinariates’, in which various aspects of Anglican culture would be preserved for the enrichment of the whole Roman Catholic Church, this could only be by means of individual conversion and implicit, if tacit, rejection of much of former Anglican sacramental ministry, whether exercised or received. And at the end of the process, the TAC would cease to exist.

The Vicar General of the TACB seems, as he has written, determined to engage a process of reconstruction and a recovery of a sense of identity and mission. Numbers of clergy are increasing, so we read, and St Katherine’s church in Lincoln is to be the cathedral for the future Bishop, who in his own words has been elected to be the TACB’s Bishop.

A lengthy section deals with the unacceptability of recent decisions and orientations in the Church of England, which would strengthen the basis of legitimacy of a traditionalist Church. The text is worth reading, and you readers may have your own ideas to express.

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An interesting posting from Deborah Gyapong – Interesting (revisionist?) history from England’s TAC. An expression of post-modernism? An interesting perspective. Still, I have a reader who promises to go and visit the TACB church in Lincoln and see what there is other than the cultural / educational centre and museum. As for letting the fox into the TAC hen-house and scavenging the scraps:

I still think the process could have been done with some more pastoral finesse, but I’ve come around to being thankful for what is, despite the many huge disappointments along the way.

Anyone who has run a farm will know that a fox will kill 50 chickens just to eat one! Well, perhaps the TAC chickens weren’t so tasty after all.

As I have said before, weakness and sin in others can be tolerated and we get on as best as we can, but how do we deal with evil? Most people simply don’t bother with church any more.