This is an interesting one in Virtue Online – Anglicanism, the Universal Church and the Octave of Christian Unity. Some parts of it could almost have been written by Soloviev!
Towards the end of this long article, I see where it is all going – the union of Anglicanism with Orthodoxy. What kind of Anglicanism? Obviously not what prevails in ECUSA and the Church of England, obviously not Calvinism. Is Orthodoxy ever going to be open to anything larger and ecclesial than small micro-manageable “ordinariates” or vicariates?
I also note that the author of this article, Fr Novak, a priest of the Reformed Episcopal Church/Anglican Church in North America, is not sidelining the Continuing Churches.
We also have a question of interpretation of “completing the Reformation”. The extent to which the Orthodox Churches might accept some Reformation developments and ideas might be a key to what can be united within Anglicanism. This all needs to be clarified from ambiguity. Ideas?
Here is what Fr Novak says, and comments would be welcome. The emphasis in bold type is mine.
* * *
What is Anglicanism’s future? Its future can only be found in completing the Reformation begun in 1534. That means corporate reunion with the ancient patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem as it existed before the Norman invasion of 1066. The provinces of the Anglican Churches in the Global South should simply enter the already existing Patriarchate of Alexandria, and the Anglican provinces in the West and North should simply enter into corporate union with the canonical Orthodox Churches in their nations. There are already Western Orthodox congregations in North America, Great Britain, Continental Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The Russian Orthodox Church, the largest of the national Orthodox Churches, has had Western Rite congregations for more than a century.
God has preserved Anglicanism, but not the Anglican Communion. Canterbury is lost, and it would be tragic if Anglicans tried to set up altar against altar in Alexandria, or tried to recreate something that Divine Providence has not preserved, whether it is in Kenya or elsewhere. I am not advocating that Anglicans abandon their identity and Church, and become something that they are not. What I am advocating is that Anglicans fully embrace what they have always professed to be – the English branch of the Catholic Church – and to enter into corporate reunion with the Orthodox Church with which they had been united for more than a millennium. I am not advocating a Western Rite Orthodoxy divorced from the last 1,000 years of history, but an orthodox Anglicanism reunited with Eastern Orthodoxy, and a rebirth of Anglican Orthodoxy. Metropolitan Jonah pointed the way at the first provincial Assembly of the Anglican Church in North America in 2009, and did so again at the second provincial Assembly in 2012.
With the present dysfunctional state of the Anglican Communion it is probably unrealistic to expect the orthodox provinces of the Anglican Communion to act together for corporate reunion, but if a beginning could be made in North America, or elsewhere, a way forward would be shown for millions of faithful Anglican churchmen. God often brings great things to pass from the smallest and most humble of beginnings.
It has been said that when God closes one door He opens another. Tradition is the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church, and the Holy Spirit has been leading us and preparing us for this moment in time for the last five hundred years. As Martin Thornton wrote in 1963, Anglicanism is “sane, wise, ancient, modern, sound and simple; with roots in the New Testament and the Fathers, and of noble pedigree; with its golden periods and its full quota of saints and doctors; never obtrusive, seldom in serious error, ever holding its essential place within the glorious diversity of Catholic Christendom” (English Spirituality, p. 14).
My prayer is that 2013 will be the year that Anglicans take action for unity in “the glorious diversity of Catholic Christendom.” We have nothing to lose in corporate reunion, but much to gain. I am convinced that we cannot even imagine what kind of renewal and revival we would see if we only learned to love one another again as Christ’s disciples should, and if the Body of Christ began to breathe again with both lungs, Eastern and Western. I love Anglicanism deeply, and have been working toward the goal of orthodox Anglican unity and Anglican-Eastern Orthodox reunion since 1997, when I was given that commission by Bishop Patrick Murphy.
Brother Roger of Taize has written, “When communion among Christians is a life and not a theory, it radiates hope… How, then, could Christians still remain divided? Reconciliation among Christians is urgent today; it cannot continually be put off until later, until the end of time. Over the years, the ecumenical vocation has fostered an invaluable exchange of views. This dialogue constitutes the first-fruits of reconciliation. But when the ecumenical vocation is not made concrete through a communion, it leads nowhere.”
During this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity will you pray for our bishops and priests in the Anglican Church in North America and its Ministry Partners, and in the Anglican Continuum, as well as for the bishops and clergy of the Eastern Orthodox Churches; and join with me in advancing this Biblical cause (John 17)? Four hundred years of dialogue is enough. May the year of our Lord 2013 be the year that the Reformation is completed and full communion and unity restored; and may this be the Octave of Christian Unity that prepares the way.
The Blue Flower 
A fanciful dream. If there is any tradition as fragmented and divided as Anglicanism, it is Eastern Orthodoxy. No doubt Fr. Novak’s ecumenical partners say a lot of nice, comforting things, but back home East it is a hornet’s nest. Those same ecumenical partners are loathed more by many Orthodox than the “Latins” are. Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople is chummier with the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury than with many of his own supposed brethren. He doesn’t speak for Orthodoxy—nobody does. And who or what can speak for Anglicanism?
Formal reunion would require unforeseen divine intervention.
I am going to agree with James C on this one. It is time to simply realise that dealing with the Byzantines is a great waste of time, and they lie.
Now perhaps the Oriental Orthodox…far more to my cup of tea.
This has all been said before. Those whom this subject interests ought to read two things. First, the wonderfully winsome little booklet, or tract, *Anglicanism and Orthodoxy: A Study in Dialectical Churchmanship* by H. A. Hodges (London, 1955: SCM Press Ltd.). Hodges (1905-1976) was a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading. A Methodist by birth and upbringing, and a teenage Methodist lay-preacher, he became an atheist as an Oxford undergraduate, and ten years later “a Catholic within Anglicanism,” as he once characterized himself. (The work was originally delivered as a lecture at the 1947 annual conference of The Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius.) Not an Anglo-Papalist — he was politely but firmly anti-papal — but a strong Orthodoxophile. (Indeed, Fr. Chadwick, IIRC I sent you a copy of *Anglicanism and Orthodoxy* a year or more ago, as I did more recently to Fr. Smuts.) Hodges comes to the conclusion in his lecture that the “telos” of Catholic Anglicanism is to “converge” with Orthodoxy.
The second thing is the very detailed, polite and positive critique of Hodges’ “thesis” that E. L. Mascall presents in his *The Recovery of Unity* (London, 1958: Longmans, Green and Co., Ltd.) from pp. 52 to 64 of that book; the critique ends on what I can only characterize as a nore of “hopeful demurral.” (Mascall was deeply involved with the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius from its creation in 1928 and for nearly 60 years thereafter, and he and Hodges were well-acquainted with one another.)
The discussion between the Non-jurors and EO in the early 18th Century is still quite fascinating and informative regarding Orthodoxy and Anglicanism. Thomas Lathbury’s book, A History of the Nonurors: Their Controversies and Writings, With Remarks on Some of the Rubrics in the [BCP]” (1845), is still readily available in a modern facsimile reprint edition. Chpt VIII covers their contacts with the East. He points out that an earlier account of the correspondence was drawn up by Brett and that the correspondence is preserved among Bishop Jolly’s manuscripts. Lathbury then claims he is now publishing “all the letters and Papers” from the Non-jurors to the East but only summaries of the East’s replies.
The Non-jurors likely got off on the wrong foot when their first proposal was that the Church of Jerusalem be recognized “as the true mother Church”. The East likely didn’t score any points by recommending a translation of their liturgy for general use; though both agreed the Non-jurors would send the East a translated copy of their liturgy. It is interesting that the East thought they were in “the principles of the Lutheran Calvinists” but they declare that “none of the distinguishing princples of either of these sects can be fairly charged upon us”. The discourses about Mary, the invocation of saints, icons, the eucharist, the intermediate state after death, scripture, councils, etc. are fascinating. Sadly it all came to naught.
If memory of his bio serves me, thinking Fr. Novak was an ecumenical officer for an Anglican jurisdiction. I respect his desire for legitimate ecumenism. Unfortunately neither the continuing Anglican and other Anglican communions (e.g., REC) are united enough to work together. And neither are the EOs, in most places. In USA, Antiochians are probably the most positive about such thoughts. But we have our Western Rite and that would seem to be the place we’d want to steer American Anglicans. Any form of large-scale corporate reunion seems like such a long shot at this time.
Something I find interesting about Fr. Victor’s thoughts… His REC parish is in Omaha, NE. Thinking it was formed some time around 2007 or so. I went there once in 2010. There has been an Antiochian Orthodox Western Rite parish in Omaha since 1990. It is still there and active. There had been a continuing Anglican church in Omaha, about a mile from our WR church but it closed around 2009 or so. And there is a very high church ECUSA parish that is going into the Ordinariate. While I was in Omaha from 1995-2010 and active in the WR church, we had pretty cordial relations with the ECUSA parish. But I don’t remember us having any interaction with the local Anglicans.
I believe Fr. Victor isn’t enamored with our Western Rite; he shared some of his thoughts on the subject with me by e-mail last year. But I wish he’d publicly detail at length his thoughts about our WR. The WR is our primary mechanism or process of bringing in groups that want to worship within the historic Western tradition. I wonder if more might not be achieved by Fr. Novak and other Anglicans in USA regarding Orthodoxy and our WR if they would work to…refine…it or work with us in constructive ways to improve any deficiencies they perceive?
The second link does not dredge up Fr Mark Woodruff’s article, but something bizarrely different.
This appears to be it:
http://thecatholicleague.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/2013-centenary.html
Not to mention St. Wilfrid, who was as thoroughgoing a “papalist” as it was practically possible to be in Anglo-Saxon England.
But that doesn’t make him a papalist in the modern sense. I have very little problem with the Bishop of Rome as the foremost cleric and one who should be heeded if it is possible. However, since that day that see has evolved into something far beyond that. (I hope it’s not beyond the bounds of propriety here to say into something monstrous) If the pope is infallible, effectively the only judge of truth, and entitled to run the personal details of every Christian’s life, he’s not holding the same office as that revered by Hilda and Wilfrid. Benedict holds this position in what I (boy, listen to my hubris here!) would consider to be a more responsible manner than most – however, it is still this hugely extended office that he holds.
ed, What you discuss gets at an essential matter of the Reformation. The issue was Church dividing then. Your stance is so like what Melanchthon wrote when he signed the Smalcald Articles (1537): “if he would allow the Gospel, we, too may concede to him that superiority over the bishops which he possesses by human right”.
But unfortunately for Christendom and reunion, things have completely changed since even 1537, and made even more problematic for so many due to first Trent, then the dogma of the immaculate conception, then (and most esp.) Vatican I, and the dogma of the Assumption. (And the issue of Anglican Orders for Anglicans.) Vatican II confirms all of these newer official developments. So in regard to being Catholic or catholic, one is either fully with the pope or fully not with the pope? Can there be any middle ground with Rome?
Ed, very, very well expressed.
By the way, have you any idea what’s happening with “Swish” as Damian Thompson likes to call it? Are they still going or are they all in the Ordinariate now?
I think that “Swish” is still a going concern; didn’t the “advertising campaign” before the last General Synod session, with its inane slogan of “Better Together,” come from it, or its current leaders?
On Friday, Jan. 25, Fr. Novak posted an additional lengthy piece related to this subject on his Blog. Discussing the future of Orthodox Anglicanism:
http://frnovak.blogspot.com/
Many thanks for this link. I posted an article about an earlier text from Fr. Novak – https://sarumuse.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/article-on-the-octave-of-christian-unity/
It would appear that Fr Novak is being lead down a very primrose path regarding the western rite in Byzantium. One simply needs to ask, were are these parishes and monasteries that have been western rite for over one hundred years under the Russians? And that lie is simply the tip of the iceberg.
Dale, Even leaving aside our respective different perspectives on our Western Rite in the USA, I’m initially fascinated to know if his statements mean an essential agreement with EO on all things dogmatic. Or is he really mostly interested in keeping what he has and being recognized by the EO as a sister Church? I can’t tell: is his real goal and model corporate re-union with EO or corporate recognition by EO? I again suspect it is really more the latter. (As it was with TAC and Rome?)
I say this because IF he had wanted to go Western Rite, he could’ve for a long time. But as I’ve commented before, I don’t remember him having any interaction with the local Antiochian WR church in Omaha (St. Vincent’s of Lerins, where I worshipped from 1995-2010) and I do know we were very close and friendly with the Anglo-Catholic ECUSA parish of St. Barnabas (which is going into the Ordinariate). I met him once in 2010 and have e-mail corresponded with him a little bit. He seemed like a very knowledgeable and proud (in a good way) Anglican, but one who clearly wanted to stay separate from both Constantinople (ER & WR) and Rome, thinking that traditional Anglicanism had preserved the best of both the RC world and the Reformation. And he seems to have a very grace-filled active local parish, one he speaks very highly of . I don’t get the impression that he’d be inclined to lead just his church into EO WR. I’m thinking it feels more like they’d want to be part of a far larger group. One that wouldn’t have to follow the current liturgy or its rubrics. They’d want to retain their liturgy. So unless that were to happen, and it is probably a very long shot, I doubt he’d go EO WR. You and he might agree that it is too EO and not enough Anglican? 😉
Dale, You should go back and read some of his earlier blog posts. For example, here is the start of one…
Thursday, August 9, 2012
CATHOLICISM, CALVINISM AND THE THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES
There is a great deal of debate among self-professed orthodox Anglicans today regarding the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, as to whether they are Catholic or Calvinist. This debate has been caused by a growing number of Anglicans who are self-described as Reformed or Calvinist in theology.
Dale, And here is an excerpt from one dated May 14th, 2012 from a post titled “Anglicanism: Evangelical or Catholic”:
“… Without the Evangelical spirit, there is no real Gospel to proclaim and no effective evangelism, and that is why Anglo-Catholic congregations tend to be greying and not reproducing. However, without the Catholic Body, Evangelical congregations tend to drift from Anglican faith and practice, and become increasingly like generic pop-evangelical congregations. Anglicanism is both thoroughly Evangelical and fully Catholic, and if we are to renew the Church we must see ourselves once again as Evangelical Catholics, committed to the classical Anglican formularies: the historic Book of Common Prayer and its Ordinal and Catechism, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, and the two Books of Homilies; and embracing the fullness of our Anglican inheritance: the Church Fathers, Doctors, Reformers, Carolines, and Tractarians. In all of Christendom, only Anglicanism is both thoroughly Evangelical and fully Catholic, and that is why only Anglicanism can serve as a bridge Church and a healing balm in a divided Christendom.”
There is an interesting one from July 20th, 2012 on the Filioque Clause.
Michael, I think that you are correct. I have been now following some of his articles, and they are excellent. I am under the impression that he is moving more and more to a Catholic position on many issues, but that is only my conjecture following his writings.
VirtueOnline.org had published an article, “Women’s Ordination and the Ecumenical Imperative,” by Fr Novak that is very interesting and contains a correspondence both with Msgr Steenson as well as Msgr Dondi of the Western rite Russians. Msgr Bondi had promised to send him an edition of the “Orthodox BCP” which I take to mean the edition done by St Mark’s, Denver (and not the rather horrible St Coleman’s prayer book); but Fr Novak does need to know that this edition, although very nice, I certainly have a copy, and cheap to purchase, is not approved by any Orthodox jurisdiction and has many traditions rejected by the Russians, such as Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and the feast of the Sacred Heart, to which I do hope that Msgr Bondi will let him know are forbidden in his denomination.
Since he has mentioned +Jonah several times and his presentation before the Anglicans in Texas, where he condemned Calvinism, one tends to wonder how strongly Calvinism is still an issue in the Reformed Episcopal Church. Although, one has to be careful with the OCA, when they speak of “Classical Anglicanism” they mean the Byzantine rite in English, and the translations of the OCA are odd at best.
I do believe that you are correct in intimating that Fr Novak seems to be hoping for a type of corporate reunion, much as what was hoped for by TAC from Rome, but the Byzantines can be, if anything, even more intransigent on this issue than even Rome proved to be. The Byzantines do demand complete and total submission.
Dale, Fr. Novak seems most interested in the Russian Orthodox, the OCA, and ROCOR.
I wonder how much actual first-hand knowledge Fr. Novak has with ROCOR in USA, in general, and with their Western Rite, in particular.
I’ve been told (and have seen some evidence of same on FB) that someone is trying to start a Byzantine Rite ROCOR church in Omaha. I believe there is an OCA mission in Omaha, along with the 2 Greek and 2 Antiochian (ER & WR) churches.
I wonder if he has ever spoken with the 2 ROCOR WR priests in my local area (one ordained in 2010, the other in 2012). ROCOR has tried, with little success that I’ve seen or heard about, these past 2+ years to grow this tiny mission. I’ve had the pleasure of talking with the inital (2010) priest at some length. He is very erudite and a great public speaker. He was a contributor to the Orthodox Study Bible. I believe a former college professor, a former ECUSA priest who then went French Orthodox Church, who has been thrice married and twice divorced. ROCOR re-baptised him as part of the process that led to his (re-)ordination. He had been using a Gallican liturgy. Possibly the only ROCOR church in USA to do this (if not also possibly the only in the world to do it in English)? Seems like their most recent activity has included doing Byzantine liturgy at the new local Serbian church, which lacks a resident priest.