Double Standards

Posted on Thursday, 2 May, 2013 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

It is quite astounding. Young Fogey for some time has been pushing for Roman Catholicism. I thought he was quite ultramontanist in his ideas, constantly going on about the necessity of an “infallible authority”. Well, he seems a pleasant person with lots of interests and eccentricities like his love for classical automobiles and other artefacts of the “old days” from hats to razors to what gentlemen used to put in their hair to make it shine. They say – whatever floats your boat, and I have my own interests and eccentricities, including boats that float!

We can’t always be totally coherent in our thinking, balancing our beliefs with pragmatic considerations. It’s no use believing in something that has absolutely no practical application. One is brought to think of Tantalus and the water that is so near yet so far, giving rise to the English word tantalize.

My attention was brought to the following opinion by the fact it links to one of my articles.

Fr C on low-church Pope Francis. Again, if he just leaves us alone I’ll be fine. If not, if Francis turns out to be Paul VII, laymen have several options: go back to hunkering down at the lowest Sunday Novus, as for the past 40 years; Greek Catholic; or the SSPX or other irregular trads, as long as they’re not a separate church in principle. We will have the Mass. I know: what about sacraments that depend on jurisdiction? State of emergency in the church: if the local putative Catholics are really liberal Protestants, you do what you have to. Archbishop Lefebvre’s eternal Rome, not local usurpers.

Though this person speaks of the absolute necessity of being a Roman Catholic, the approach is the fairly classical theory of the traditionalists, almost a form of dissimulated conciliar Catholicism. The authority is no longer the Pope but the notion of Tradition and the consent of the body of the Church, even if an Ecumenical Council is not involved. This was precisely the disputed point between Paul VI and Archbishop Lefebvre. For Paul VI, the Pope is the living Magisterium. For Archbishop Lefebvre, the Tradition limits the use of Papal authority. This second position would certainly make sense to me, but many conservatives place the authority of the Pope as an absolute.

I simply go through a few phrases of this quote.

Again, if he just leaves us alone I’ll be fine.

This is exactly the spirit of Gallicanism or Germanic conciliarism. The Pope is a symbol of the Church’s unity, but of the bene esse of the Church, not the esse. It is also the attitude of Germanic progressives today – one can’t have one’s cake and eat it!

If not, if Francis turns out to be Paul VII, laymen have several options: go back to hunkering down at the lowest Sunday Novus, as for the past 40 years; Greek Catholic; or the SSPX or other irregular trads, as long as they’re not a separate church in principle.

I admire the courage of those who have persevered over the years. We do have to remember that far more have abandoned any practice of Catholicism. It is a frequent assumption that the numbers plummeted because of the liturgical changes. This is unlikely because even officially approved Tridentine masses remain very marginal. I won’t speculate about the causes, but the traditionalist theories are too simplistic. So, the distinction between Catholic and schismatic is not being a “separate church in principle”. This gives justification to more serious ecclesial aberrations like priests operating without episcopal oversight or becoming episcopi vagantes under some pretext of “epikeia” or “emergency” canonical situation. Quite frankly, the constitution of Continuing Anglican Churches is more healthy in ecclesiological terms than this kind of brain-twisting.

Indeed, there is the problem of Sacraments depending on Ordinary Jurisdiction – marriage and penance-absolution. Who is to be the judge of a genuine canonical “emergency” or a priest flouting Church discipline and following his own fancy? That is unless they are going to be a Church with only five Sacraments, and less than that if they have no bishops.

Perhaps our friend could come to the conclusion that it was sunny weather yesterday but raining today. Continuing Anglicanism is far from perfect, and human error makes life difficult – but we are a Church of all weathers!

Indeed, conciliar ecclesiology makes more sense…

Update – YF answers me on his blog:

Tuesday, continued: answering Fr C’s questions

Fr C writes here on this. When I met him online years ago he was a trad but not in a usual militant trad mold; simpático with me in some ways. We have less in common now he’s joined Continuing Anglicanism but his criticisms of things and people in the Catholic Church, including the trad movement, sometimes are right.

  • Infallible authority doesn’t necessarily mean ultramontanist. Roman Catholic doesn’t either. The last Pope, for example, wasn’t ultamontanist and never was. In a way his abdicating teaches a lesson he’s taught all his life as a professor and priest about the limits of the papacy (the man’s fallible; the office ex cathedra not). I understand Vatican I actually put the brakes on ultramontanist opinion by clarifying what papal infallibility is not. All more or less Catholic groups believe in a kind of church infallibility: the Eastern churches for example, and I think the Union of Scranton believes something like high Anglicans about the consensus of pre-‘Reformation’ churches’ belief, expressed as the Vincentian canon, being the source of doctrine. Catholicism believes the Pope’s a subset of church infallibility; an essential part of the church, but only part of the church. Tradition’s guardian, who can’t change doctrine.

  • Trads do have a lot in common with old Western conciliarists such as the Gallicans and old Germans, and with the East in this regard: papal minimalism, or the traditional Catholic religion largely runs itself.

  • Today’s German progressives, like mainline Protestants, want to change doctrine to fit secularist culture; we don’t, and can’t anyway. Even the Pope can’t.

  • No to going to priests operating without episcopal oversight, unless there really is no other option (exactly what the church teaches). Being under a bishop is Catholicism 101 right out of patristics.

  • Continuing Anglicanism’s not an option, because while ’50s-high-Episcopal-style churchmen like Fr J. Gordon Anderson are great, very close to us, I’m afraid they’re wrong about classical Anglicanism; it’s not Catholic.

Just a couple of words from me. He is right to make the vital distinction between those motivated by fidelity to Tradition and progressives who fit in with modern culture and political correctness. As for Continuing Anglicanism not being an option, I have myself discussed the problems of basing everything on a Reformation “default”, something that does create a big difficulty between, for example, the Anglican Catholic Church and, for example, the school of men like Rev. Peter Toon.

If Anglicanism is “English Gallicanism” or “English Conciliarism” that would solve many contradictions, but I can only speak for myself, not for others. Some problems between those claiming to be Roman Catholics, traditionalist or otherwise, are as serious as if not more serious than between “old high-church” Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics.

Perhaps I was a little “binary” in my criticism of YF, but he can also be very binary in his writings. We both need to be subtle and nuanced.

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Work

Posted on Wednesday, 1 May, 2013 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Sometimes, we can get awfully sanctimonious about work, especially when someone else is doing it. We are indeed fortunate if our daily work involves helping people, as a doctor or a nurse does, or if we find fulfilment in something like a craft by which we create something new with our skill and hands. In such conditions, we are motivated to take pride in doing a first rate job.

Not everyone is so fortunate – that is when they are able to find a job or set up a business. Work can be degrading. Certainly, one of the greatest satires on the condition of workers in the industrial age is Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. Here, he is seen as an assembly line worker.

This film was made in the 1930’s during the Depression. Economic life in those days was still based on manufacturing and production. If you were unemployed, whether it was your fault or not, there was no unemployment benefit or indeed any kind of welfare state. I won’t go into all these arguments for or against state-controlled or private health and welfare, because the issues in each country are complex and there are several legitimate points of view.

Christians often fall into divers political opinions about the means of production and the men and women who have to work. There has to be a balance between the just remuneration of the workers and the investments from the company’s turnover needed for maintaining and developing production tools and its progress in its particular market. Beyond this just balance, there are the excesses of capitalism and socialism. These were the things at stake during Mrs Thatcher’s administration as Prime Minister in England. For me the ideal is something like the Cooperative Movement or Distributism. The Arts & Crafts Movement was something wonderful in its ideas, but it is not economically viable in the society we live in.

Work for most people is a hard slog with very little reward other than the salary they earn to maintain their lives and consumption. The more we earn, the more we need more and have to work to earn it. These are problems we all face in keeping the wolf away from the door and providing for our families. There is nothing romantic about most people’s jobs or anything remotely resembling job satisfaction or indeed anything in common with a self-employed carpenter two thousand years ago.

We generally aspire to be just and honest people and put our bit in for society and our own needs. For some, it is very difficult to be totally honest in an exploitive system, and it is easy to understand the person who decides to live in such a way as to need as little money as possible. There is an idea from some of the anarchists as to a legal way of avoiding tax – earn too little money to be taxable. But, this means a way of life that is incompatible with owning a house, a car, electronic gadgets and the like. There are also “alternative economies” for those interested in that kind of thing.

Thus I see the value of work as relative. There are different kinds of work. Doing your own garden is work, but you don’t get paid for it. Same with a woman (or a man) doing housework or renovation work. With the latter, you are earning money by saving it and not having to pay someone else to do the job. Some people like to be as self-sufficient as possible, though complete self-sufficiency or “survivalism” is an illusion. The more fortunate people fulfil their lives through a vocation, that sometimes is their paid work – for example doctors and social workers. Increasingly, we priests are non-stipendiary and have to have a job to earn our living. I do technical translations and teach technical and business English. I don’t really see that as a vocation, but it is much nicer work than having to work as a civil servant (the job is as boring as watching paint dry, but you get job security, a decent salary and a good retirement pension). Most people just have to settle for what they can get according to their marketable skills.

So, talk of a “spirituality” of work is very relative. Some people have jobs that enable them to take pride in a good job well done, and others are so degraded and exploited that such sentiments become very difficult.

Knowing something of real life makes me gag at some of the sanctimonious cant about thrift and work. I admire Pope John XXIII, for when he was a young priest, he defended workers’ rights in a time when such sympathies would earn a priest the suspicion of being a Modernist! I can understand the sentiment and intention behind instituting a Christian feast of work to “baptise” the secular one set up by socialists, but it will mean too many different things to different people.

I am lucky in that my work is pleasant, though irregular and not extremely profitable. I have the freedom of working at home and having only deadlines and quantity imperatives to meet, so I can go sailing when there is a gap, but it can be difficult to make ends meet. We all do more or less well in the current conditions of scarcity of work and financial crisis.

On this Feast of Saints Philip and James, my heart goes out to those in difficult and dangerous work, the exploited, the unemployed and those who work hard but earn their living with great difficulty. We have a duty to respect people’s work and treat employees with kindness, empathy and justice.

Churches have always engaged in society through social teaching, which is more or less relevant or based on reality. I would certainly say to some priests that they wouldn’t last five minutes on the assembly line!

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May Day

Posted on Wednesday, 1 May, 2013 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

MaypoleIt’s amazing what the first day of May means to different people. I wished my wife happy May Day this morning.

What’s so happy about it? The Feast of Work? Or if you’re extreme right, Joan of Arc?

Joan of Arc! I thought we Brits had burned her at the stake, thus causing the enmity between the Frogs and the Rosbifs!

The liturgical calendar gives the Feast of the Apostles Philip and James – Sarum and Roman before the time of John XXIII who wished to “baptise” the Feast of Work by instituting a feast of St Joseph the Worker. Some on the Internet get quite excited about this – I just continue with the traditional Apostle’s Feast.

We English have May Day which means an old pagan spring holiday. It was a day of dancing and seeing in the spring and its joys. For Catholics, it marks the beginning of the Month of Our Lady. We have maypoles and Morris dancing, and all sorts of things. May Day is longer a public holiday in England and is replaced by Bank Holiday Monday, the first Monday of May to allow an extended weekend without a “bridge”.

Mayday is also an emergency signal given by ships and aircraft in distress. We should give a thought and a prayer for those in danger on the sea. The word is said three times and information about the emergency is radioed out (position and heading, last known position if the vessel is lost, number of persons in danger, etc.). Why this word? It is distinctive when there is noise and interference. Also, it is derived from the French term m’aider, venez m’aider, meaning come and help me. An alternative signal is the well-known Morse Code signal SOS, but it was superseded by Mayday in 1927 with the use of radio. This signal is taken very seriously by the lifeboat and rescue services, and false alarms are punished very severely.

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A possible sign of the times – Piero Marini?

Posted on Tuesday, 30 April, 2013 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Article in French – Piero Marini, préfet de la Congrégation du Culte divin ? Une rumeur improbable, mais significative

* * *

I occasionally look at “Vatican-watch” sites to get an idea of what is going on.

We now read that there is an “unlikely” rumour that Archbishop Piero Marini might be nominated as Prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship.

The French article likens the present period of the Franciscan Papacy as a drôle de guerre, le period of 1940 when France tried to believe that Germany wouldn’t attack, and everything would continue more or less as before. All the same, everyone would jump in their skin each time there is a noise suggesting the sound of battle tanks on the brow of the hill.

Archbishop Marini was once secretary of Archbishop Annibale Bugnini and Papal master of ceremonies under John Paul II and the beginning of Benedict XVI’s pontificate. What makes some wonder is that Archbishop Marini had a long audience with the Pope last 4th April. It appears that the Archbishop would have asked to be nominated as Prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship to reaffirm the conciliar reforms threatened by the traditionalists infiltrated into the Roman Curia. Would Pope Francis risk such a divisive nomination?

Our French article contrasts the Benedictine Papacy as one with a clear programme of restoration, especially liturgical, but without a political agenda. Francis’ Papacy is more political but has no clear programme. It is now clear that he does not have a progressive programme, but is doctrinally and morally conservative. He is no liberal. On the other hand, are there any signs of him keeping some measure of control over those who do have a progressive agenda?

Most are agreed that it is unlikely that Pope Francis would undo the achievements of Benedict XVI’s papacy. What seems possible in this “middle-of-the-road” approach is that the “Newchurch” style in the dioceses of most countries will go largely unchecked, especially in matters of the liturgy.

Archbishop Marini, with his quite outspoken positions recently expressed, needs to be watched. If he gets what some say he wants, there could be trouble ahead.

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Radical Orthodoxy Revisited

Posted on Sunday, 28 April, 2013 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I am usually sensitive enough to pick up on the somewhat dated movement of some English academics called Radical Orthodoxy. As an Anglican movement attracted to ressourcement theology, neo-patristics and Platonism, it has seems exciting and appealing as a “third way” out of the binary dialectics between liberalism / atheism / relativism and fundamentalism / totalitarianism. I have drawn readers’ attention to this phenomenon before in articles like John Milbank on the future of Anglicanism.

As one begins to read this sort of thing, there is something a little “stuffy” and elitist, something that isn’t easy to read, and even quite discouraging. I don’t know about Dr Milbank, but Catherine Pickstock is all for the ordination of women and the status quo in the Anglican Communion. The things she writes about the liturgy are generally wonderful.

What is it about a theological movement of this kind that is in a relationship of osmosis with aspects of at least outward conformity with post-modern agendas? The frontiers seem to be quite blurred, which is understandable when considering certain forms of conservative Christianity.

My attention has been drawn to a blog article A Note on Late Modernity’s Strange Bedfellows. I have always seen radical orthodoxy (at least aspects of it, not “all or nothing”), stuffy though it seems to those of us who are outside the university elite, as a “third way” between and above the tendencies of conservative and liberal Christianity, an appeal to the Church of before the Reformation and Counter Reformation. Such a vision would be ideal for us in the ACC (at least in England) as we steer between the “two one-true churches” and the simplistic claims of “classic Anglicanism” based on the Reformation being the default basis, mandatory for all, and those who are so inclined being allowed to add a little in the way of vestments and ceremonies, “smells and bells”. I have always been interested in the idea of what I have come to term conciliar (as opposed to ultramontanist) Catholicism and the possibility of finding a way for it to subsist in the world in which we live. This is a problem I find in this essay.

Is there a convergence between some kind of “radical orthodox” approach (assuming it is a little less “stuffy” and elitist than the Radical Orthodox movement properly speaking) and reactionary traditionalism and neo-conservatism? Whilst some aspects are in common, such as opposition to secularism and liberalism, the intellectual roots are quite different. The big point is how a viable solution could be implemented in our society. We are all more or less marginal in our continuing churches, traditionalist communities and intellectual groups in universities.

I remember many years ago toying with ideas of “distributism”, a kind of idealistic reconstruction of medieval guild economy which would involve a moderate form of capitalism with everyone owning his own means of production. The co-operative movement came close to this ideal, and still seems to work very well in the farming community. That being said, it has for the most part emancipated itself from Christianity or any religion.

Various forms of Christianity speculate about how they could make Christianity influence society, often making the most of the notion of a “social Kingship of Christ”. This has opened churches to the temptation of collaborating with right-wing dictatorships in Europe and South America.

If Christianity has to be privatised and let go of the public and political world, what does it do? How does it emerge from marginality and express itself in practical and pragmatic terms? These are questions we really need to think about.

What do we want and what do we think we can bring about? What is evangelisation in practical terms, not only in the USA where people are still open to religion and spirituality, but also in Europe where the only outcome seems to be a resurgence of the extreme right?  For the time being, we only seem to have ideas of “bellwethers” and micro-communities, “new-monasticism” and faith communities surviving in an extremely hostile society. We may well be in survival mode for a very long time.

Yet, when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and someone told me about it, I thought it was a joke. No one expected it. Other walls are going to be coming down very soon, and we have to be ready to read the signs.

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Blogging Priests

Posted on Saturday, 27 April, 2013 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Fr Stephen Smuts has reflected one of my closely-held convictions, that blogging can be a true Christian ministry. He linked to The Anglican Catholic in Priests on the Blogs. We find quotes of Pope Benedict XVI and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow about the pastoral role in blogging. As I have experienced, the blog (or for that matter other social media like Facebook and Twitter) can be used for good or evil. If used for the purpose of pastoral ministry and Christian teaching, then it is excellent and should be encouraged by bishops and religious superiors.

It is spiritually and emotionally wearing, especially when we have to deal with conflict, in an environment where a person would be more evil or lacking in empathy in his or her expression than he or she would dare in a face-to-face situation. In a way, this is reassuring to the priest who asks himself whether blogging really is a true ministry.

If a priest has a regular parish ministry, it is obvious that priority should be given to that. Some of us live in countries where this is the only possibility for a pastoral ministry other than the contemplative and intercessory ministry of solitary Mass and Office. Many bishops are sceptical about internet ministries because of the dangers of trolls and other mischievous commenters. Has anyone been brought to conversion through a blog? I don’t know of any, but people do write to me to say that it has made a difference in their feeling of being so tired of everything.

There are more and more of us priests doing it and writing blogs on our own account as well as on behalf of our Churches. Many bishops are only beginning to discover what the Internet really is and what it is not. Church websites are vital, but the dynamism of the blog is what keeps it interesting to follow.

My Bishop uses Facebook to great effect, keeping the tone light and social. I think this is a medium I need to discover better, as I have remained aloof from it for a long time. Used well, the potential is tremendous. Twitter uses very short messages or “tweets”, a concept I find difficult to relate to. Facebook is somewhere between the blog and Twitter.

Internet media is no substitute for actually being with people and fully interacting, but it does provide a way to interact with others when geographical distance would make it impossible without telecommunications. Imperfect as it is, it is a tool to use for ministry, teaching and simply making friends (sometimes Facebook “friends” become real friends!).

We have to be open and positive and use the resources we now have.

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Extra-Mural Anglicans

Posted on Thursday, 25 April, 2013 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I like Deborah Gyapong, and I have always found her to be a good person seeking the best for her family and for God. We had many uplifting conversations on Skype.

But certain things get up my nose – Who holds the definition of Anglican?. She can write what she likes and quote Bishop Robert Mercer.

I too will quote Bishop Mercer.

* * *

EXTRAMURAL ANGLICANS

By Bishop Robert Mercer, C.R.

A lecture given on 20th June, 1987 at Saint Chad’s Church Canningham, U.K., by the Right Rev’d Robert Mercer on the occasion of the Northern Festival of the Anglican Society.

What is an Anglican? Somebody, who is in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury? Frankly I am ignorant about the state of intercommunion between the Church of England and the free churches (protestant) in this country, but somewhere in the last few years I have acquired the notion that members of the free churches are now formally and officially welcome at Anglican communion tables, though I suspect that this does not often much happen in practice.

Somehow during the last few years I have acquired the notion that the present Archbishop of Canterbury publicly received the sacrament after preaching in a famous Methodist church in London. In other words I am asking you: are the free churches now in communion with Canterbury? If they are though perhaps in a very Anglican way there can never be a very simple answer to a simple question if they are, nobody regards the free churches as being Anglican. At any rate we do know that the Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht are in communion with Canterbury, yet nobody regards them as Anglican.

And what about the Church of England In South Africa? It is certainly not in communion with Canterbury. They are, and always have been, in full communion with Sydney (Australia) and certainly their clergy and people, when they come to England, behave as if they were in communion with the Church of England, for clearly they are of British descent and origin. When Bishop Morris of Egypt, himself presumably consecrated by an Archbishop of Canterbury, accepted an invitation from the Church of England in South Africa to be their Bishop, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, wrote to tell him that by so doing he would automatically cease to be in communion with Canterbury. Fair enough! The man knew where he stood.

But did Bishop Morris thereby cease being Anglican? He continued wearing the same rochet and chimere in which he had been consecrated in Canterbury, continued to subscribe to the same 39 Articles and to worship according to the same Book of Common Prayer of 1662.

Three decades later Bishop Morris’ successor was consecrated by the same Archbishop of Sydney (an Australian called Dudley Ford). This same Dudley Ford travelled from Sydney to Cape Town carrying the same Book of Common Prayer that he always used, and subscribed to the same Articles of Religion. The Church of England in South Africa is not in communion with Canterbury, but is It Anglican? Nobody quite knows, although they are more recognisably of Anglican origin and descent than are the Old Catholics of Europe or the Independent Churches of the Philippines, who are in communion with Canterbury.

What is an Anglican?

Nobody quite knows. But it would seem that communion with Canterbury is not THE deciding factor, and there is nothing new about this. You will know. When William and Mary came to the throne, several good Anglicans, not being disciples of the Vicar of Bray, believed that their oaths to the ousted King James had to hold fast. They could not in conscience accept their new rulers. They were therefore driven out of their bishoprics and out of their parishes. They were called ‘Non Jurors”.

They continued to wear the same rochets and chimeres, or the same surplices, that they had always worn, and they continued to worship according to the same Book of Common Prayer, though being Anglicans they could never resist the temptation to improve upon it, and so some of them had a go at producing their own Improvements.

Where the “Non Jurors” Anglicans or not? Were they in communion with Canterbury if they were not in communion with Canterbury’s King? At least two of these “NonJurors” are now regarded widely as saints Bishop Thomas Ken and William Law. They are regarded as representative of all that is best in our own tradition. Can any of us dare say that because they were not then in communion with that particular Archbishop of Canterbury, they are not Anglicans?

Because some of the Scots Bishops retained a certain emotional loyalty to the old House of Stuart, William and Mary gave them a rough time. In Scotland William and Mary were officially Presbyterian. In Scotland Anglican bishops and priests were harried and hounded by Anglican soldiers of a King and a Queen, who south of the border were themselves Anglican, and they were hounded by these Anglican soldiers for the civil crime of not being Presbyterian! Were these illegal Episcopalian bishops and priests Anglicans in communion with Canterbury, if they were not in communion with Canterbury’s King?

In America in the 18th Century, loyal Anglican priests and laypeople tried to remain in communion with Canterbury. They tried to receive Episcopal ordination from Canterbury, but Canterbury spurned them, because American relations with Canterbury’s King were confused and confusing. The Americans therefore went to Scotland for their orders.

Fr. Peter W.F. Clark, S.S.M., recently deceased, said, when asked about the ordination of women, “Don’t trust the bishops”. He clearly knew his Tractarian and post Tractarian history. I suspect, that if you were to ask an older generation of American Anglicans about Archbishops of Canterbury, they would reply, “Don’t trust the Archbishops”! Far from uniting the Anglican Communion, far from holding us together, former Archbishops of Canterbury showed such loyalty to the Kings of England, that they spurned and turned their backs upon good Anglicans in American and in Scotland.

What is an Anglican? Nobody quite knows. But it would seem, that communion with Canterbury is no deciding factor. And it would seem that today’s uncertainties have some precedence in the 18th Century.

Pope Paul VI was given to symbolic gestures. An Archbishop of Canterbury paid him a formal and official visit. The Pope chose to receive him and to embrace him in public, not in Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican in Rome, which symbolises the Papal claims, and which is built on the alleged site of Saint Peter’s grave. He chose to receive him in Saint Paul’s Church outside the city walls. He chose to receive him extramurally in a church which is built on the alleged site of the grave of Saint Paul.

It is almost as if Pope Paul were hinting, “Other sheep 1 have which are not of this fold”, or as if he were remembering how, when he came from Antioch, Paul withstood Peter to his face, and how Paul was right and Peter wrong as the Pope were hinting “You may be extra mural outside the walls, but you are still Catholic. You are our sister church, our equal church”.

Now really we live in an ecumenical age. We dialogue with people who are not even Christian. Baptist observers, Quaker observers, Roman Catholic observers also are invited to the Lambeth Conference, where they may meet in small groups and speak at public meetings, where they may make fellowship with, pray with and eat with Anglican bishops.

We dialogue with almost everybody, the exceptions being people like the Church of England in South Africa, of the same origin and descent as the Archbishop of Canterbury himself. Yet he spurns them drives them away.

In this ecumenical age the people with whom he most ought to dialogue, are the people closest to him. He also should make some symbolic gesture to them. He should also receive and embrace these extra mural Anglicans in some meaningful place and he should also give some hint of a greater unity beyond our present divisions. But ecumenism isn’t the work of Archbishops only.

The best things in the Church of England happen in spite of the official church, not because of it the Evangelical revival, the classical revival, the institution of theological colleges, the recovery of the religious life, the great missions overseas, the slum mission at home. All these things happened sometimes largely, sometimes entirely because of priests and people, not because of bishops.

Now things in other parts of the Anglican Communion may be different, but here at home In England you know your own custom. The people lead, and when its safe, the bishops will follow. When our Tractarian fathers had done their work the establishment graciously accepted them. And we have to go out and embrace these extra mural Anglicans, these “continuing Anglicans”, even though our bishops may not at present do so. Now who are these extra mural Anglicans?

I have already told you, there in South Africa and in Zimbabwe is also the Church of England In South Africa four square protestants, inclined to fundamentalism, though non theological factors also enter into it politics, racialism, apartheid and they are similar in many ways to a body in the U.S.A. called the Reformed Episcopal Church, four square protestants, who left the official church 130 years ago in protest against our Tractarian fathers.

Now you may say that these two groups of people are not likely partners in any future dialogue and I fear you are likely to be all too right! But this is not entirely true of the American group. One of their leading academics is an authority on and a very sympathetic admirer of Saint Thomas Aquinas. They are not fundamentalists. They have a strong sense of church order, discipline and tradition. I estimate, that they may be a good deal more flexible than the Diocese of Sydney, with which we are in communion, and perhaps a good deal more flexible than some people in the Diocese of Bradford, with whom you do presumably dialogue? 1 suspect that if we go out and embrace them and talk with them we may find that small beginnings may have great conclusions.

But more recently there have been other Anglican ‘schisms’. People in Canada and America have not known how to react to the invention of priestesses by the official Anglican provinces in those parts. Some have said “We stay in and fight.” That was a courageous and moral decision. But subsequent events have proved that to be a not very effective decision. So soon, the Anglican American Church and Canadian Church are to have women bishops. Others said thus far and no further! If our church officially and formally and flagrantly by canon embraces heresy we can only get out.” And that also was a courageous and moral decision, and I’d say that subsequent events have proved such a decision to be a realistic decision.

Those people who in recent years have left the official Anglican provinces of Canada and the U.S.A. think themselves as continuing Anglicans, though by the official provinces in those parts and by the Archbishop of Canterbury they are called schismatics, though continuing to practice the faith as our church has received it:

1. They worship according to the Book of Common Prayer, to their own edition of it.

2. They accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as containing all things necessary to salvation.

3. They accept the Apostles’, Athanasian and Nicene Creeds as summarising and interpreting those scriptures for us and as protecting us from other American vagaries such as those of Mary Baker Eddy and Joseph Smith (the Mormons).

4. They accept the three fold ministry of bishops priests and deacons and like our Lord and the twelve apostles and nearly 2000 years of Christian history they confine this ministry to persons of the male sex.

5. They practice the seven sacraments in all their fullness.

Dare we say that these continuing Anglicans are not Anglicans because they are not in communion with His Grace of Canterbury? Were the Non Jurors of the 18th Century not Anglicans? It is known that Bishop Ken and William Law are now recognized by Canterbury in communion with America and Scotland. In some respects Canterbury has caught up with reality, and may do so again!

These new extra mural Anglicans are people we must go out and embrace. They will be considerably easier partners in dialogue than the Church of England in South Africa or the Reformed Episcopal church.

They contain, as we do, differences in churchmanship. Some are high, some central and some low. Some are charismatics, others are not. Some like new modernised liturgy, others loath it. Some are ecumenically minded, some like to stay in their Anglican holes. So we shall be perfectly at home with each other! How can we embrace these new extra mural Anglicans, these continuing Anglicans at home and North America? (Actually they are now also In Mexico, in the Caribbean and in India and in Australia.)

1. We can subscribe to their publications.

2. We can correspond with them.

3. We can welcome them to our parishes in England.

4. We can go out to them in America and Canada and perhaps even Mexico (if we are looking for sunshine) and visit them. We shall gain at least as much as we give. They have lost money, respectability, the establishment buildings. (And it might do us no end of good to ditch all our buildings). They have the faith: and it is the faith that makes them so rewarding. Last year 1 had the privilege and pleasure of spending six weeks among them, and it is a long time since I have been so exhilarated by fellow Christians, and it may be we need them more than they need us.

Well if the Church of England invents priestesses and bishopesses. What shall WE do? Stay in and fight? That shall be a courageous and moral decision. But if the precedent of Sweden and North America is anything to go by, that will not be a very effective decision. Others of us might prefer to continue Anglican practice, even if the official C. of E. abandons it. And these extra mural Anglicans will tell us that there “are far worse things in life than not being in communion with Canterbury!”

Bishop Pike of California denied the divinity of Jesus yet he was in communion with Canterbury. Was he an Anglican In that he denied the creeds?

Mr. Cupitt of Emmanuel College, Cambridge is in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. Is he an Anglican if he denies the existence of God?

The Bishop of Durham denies, or appears to deny, the virgin birth and the physical resurrection of Jesus. He is certainly in communion with Canterbury. Does that make him an Anglican?

These extra mural Anglicans will tell us that it is not the Archbishop of Canterbury but the Lambeth Quadrilateral which makes us Anglicans Scriptures, creeds, sacraments, threefold ministry and I agree with them. After all, we have always said in our few hundred years of separation from Rome, that the decisive factor in being a Catholic is not communion with the Bishop of Rome, but our adherence to the Catholic Faith.

Now you are going to be told, ad nauseum, that in the U.S.A. these continuing Anglicans quarrel incessantly among themselves. Sadly this is true. And this they do, not because they are orthodox Anglicans, but because they are Americans! Quarreling in America is a way of life: It is an art form: it is a recreation and a hobby. Lawyers are now called “litigationists”. You have need of a litigationist more than you have need of a “shrink” or psychiatrist. And these quarrels are about personalities, about leadership struggles.

But such are not entirely unknown In the C of E. (The Barchester novels were written about England, not America!) Do we not have jockeying for position even now? It’s just that the Americans drag everything out into the open, whereas we British are more discreet about our malevolence!

In Canada there are no such quarrels. (There they refer to America as the “Excited States”). And it may be in the course of our dialogue with these continuing Anglicans that we could give them a sense of urgency about their own need for unity among themselves. Disunited we fall, and it may he we can help them to patch things up.

What is an Anglican? Bishop Pike? Mr. Cupitt? The Bishop of Durham? The Non Jurors? 18th Century Scotsmen and Americans? Can Canterbury really be the deciding factor? Well, what do you think? Perhaps, and only perhaps, the successor of Pope Paul VI will decide that the A.R.C.I.C. talks have more future with those who actually believe the creeds, who actually practise the Lambeth quadrilateral than with all and sundry who just happen, as a matter of accident, to he “in communion” with Canterbury.

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Deborah Gyapong on Being Catholic

Posted on Thursday, 25 April, 2013 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

These days, I tend not to bother very much with knowing how my former brethren in the TAC are doing since they went to the RC Church, whether through the Ordinariates or other channels. Deborah Gyapong has always been kind to me, since the days when we collaborated together on the defunct English Catholic blog, trying to bring out the best of Archbishop Hepworth and the movement towards the RC Church. We may have been mistaken, but we were sincere in trying to put things in the best light possible.

She certainly has been drawn into the prevailing ideology of the “true church” conservatives, but this was inevitable. It is a mechanism to cope with the variations and imperfections she is meeting, has met in the past and will continue to meet. The problem with going along with “true church” ecclesiology, logically, is to trash all other churches as “false” Catholics. The dichotomy is built up as with so many – you have to be Roman Catholic, in communion with the official structures of that Church, to be a true Catholic, otherwise one should be a Protestant or relinquish Christianity altogether to be seen as sincere. Deborah stops short of saying this, because she won’t see things in terms of their ultimate consequences.

She speaks nicely of Deacon Munn’s article on article on The Anglican Catholic blog, quoting it extensively. Both Deacon Munn and I seek to be irenic in this new endeavour, having learned from having seen bitter polemics in the past with even worse threads of comments. We want to build from the ruins and embers, so that Christ’s Church may be manifest in goodness and beauty.

Deacon Munn’s article strikes Deborah as expressing an immobilist position against doctrinal development as expressed by Cardinal Newman and documents of Vatican II like Lumen gentium. Indeed, having defended this theory myself, I see the limits. Look at it historically. It seems that Newman sought a way to believe in Roman Catholic doctrines that simply were not there in earlier periods of history. What really was in mind was Papal infallibility. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 recognised that St Peter had spoken through the mouth of Leo the Great, but such in its historical context was a far cry from the definition in 1870 of Vatican I or the madness Pius IX would have liked to have got through had it not been for the moderating influence of the “inopportunists”. Newman was very precise in his theory, with a number of criteria to distinguish true developments from perversions or heresies. The theory simply is imperfect, attractive though it is. I find it interesting, but it, like all theological discussion, belongs to the world of analogy.

Theological (and liturgical) immobilism also presents problems. If such a notion is held rigorously and absolutely, where or when is the time period of reference, the golden era? Such a view of the Church prevailed generally with most of the Fathers, the institutional Church, the scholastic theologians, St Thomas Aquinas, the Tridentine theologians, the Protestant Reformers, Bishop Bossuet and just about everyone until Newman and the early twentieth-century Modernists. All the polemics of the sixteenth century were about what was the belief and practice of the early Church, whether or not they understand that the pre-Nicene Church was a complete mess and hodgepodge of competing heresies and beliefs. So I am critical about immobilism too except in its role as a brake to resist imprudent “developments” or moves to express things differently or to adapt to changing conditions in history. In a well-regulated world, this is the role of an interplay of conservative and progressive politics, left-wing and right-wing, so that moderation may prevail.

Modern Roman Catholic ecclesiology seems to depend on the development theory, but very selectively. I frankly see little of the discernment of the criteria Newman set out in his book, about how an acorn becomes an oak tree, for example, and not a stinging nettle or a cow. So we have the notion of “organic” development and “hermeneutic of continuity” – which in practice often turn out to be exercises in resolving cognitive dissonance.

Of course, I no longer believe you can be capital “C” Catholic without being in communion with the Bishop of Rome—that ecclesiology is part of the faith and that includes visible, outward unity.

The problem is that there are obstacles to this aspiration to “visible, outward unity“. The Orthodox have been separated from Rome since the symbolic date of 1054, the Anglicans since 1534, the Old Catholics since 1724 and 1870, Ecône since 1988 when the illicit episcopal consecrations caused Archbishop Lefebvre to be excommunicated. Was Rome always pure white and innocent in these fractures in the human dimension of the indivisible Church? Of course not. The Popes and Roman Catholic bishops sinned as much as anyone else.

There are certain “developments” in the Roman Catholic Church that are plainly unacceptable to anyone other than Roman Catholics. Perhaps some of these things are on their way to being changed. Who knows?

The view according to which –

The view described above is often touted by those who reject any development of doctrine.   But the problem with this is a kind of “frozen in amber” view of the Church as stuck in one epoch.   I think we see the same kind of thing among traditionalists in the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), i.e.  let’s freeze the Catholic faith at the Council of Trent.

is somewhat tired and worn. Having spent time with ACC clergy and people, I don’t see this view prevailing. Some of our priests are enamoured of the seventeenth-century divines, but not all by a long chalk. I don’t see the fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries as times of “perfection”. Many things were wrong as in all periods of church history. Perhaps the crowds at Lourdes and Fatima are a little less into simony than the paying customers of indulgence merchants in the 1500’s, but there’s not that much difference. Deborah then throws us a sop by wishing us well in our efforts to heal our divisions. I also wish the Roman Catholics well in healing much more serious divisions between themselves! It is all relative.

Do we expect the Church to be “pure” or “perfect”? All Churches in their human dimension are imperfect and sins are committed. We have only to examine our own consciences and look at ourselves. That’s where the imperfection is. And that you will found in Venice, Paris, Moscow or Canterbury (at the big cathedral or the little cathedral!). Over the weeks and months since Pope Francis’ election, I have seen a difference between what he seems to represent and the pottage with which Roman Catholics had been served over the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s. There is something deeply spiritual which I recognise as big as a house! At the same time, I don’t see him as trying to proselytise the world into the Roman Catholic Church, but rather into faith in Christ in spite of the infinite variation of human conditions in the world. I think we will find him reviving the dialogue with the Anglicans (Canterbury Communion) and the Orthodox as well as the Reformed and Lutheran denominations. I have more esteem for this Pope as time goes on, but we belong to another ecclesial communion.

Deborah’s transition, in solidarity with most of the community in which she worshipped, involved a rupture between her “false” Catholicism and her “true” Catholicism. She and they will have to live with that break in their spiritual experience. It is not for me to judge them or any of the other Anglicans who followed the Anglicanorum coetibus trajectory. However, many of us reject this “break” as harmful and unnecessary. Deborah has suffered, as she told me and expressed publicly on her blog. It was necessary for her, but it is not a convincing argument for the ACC to embark on a path in which it has never shown the slightest interest.

Holy fear? Self sacrifice? Temptations to break the Church’s laws? Wanting one’s own way? All this sounds like some of the Jansenistic claptrap I have come across in France and the Cachez-moi ce sein que je ne saurais voir of Tartuffe. Such notions cannot be rejected entirely, but they are relative to many other aspects of ecclesial and spiritual life. Perhaps we might be that much more convinced by the “true church” rhetoric when we see entire Orthodox patriarchates and synods going over and submitting to the great infallible Pontiff who plainly doesn’t want to be one. When we see fruits of the ecumenical movement by the Anglican Communion repudiating women’s ordination and drawing close to Rome, perhaps we might be persuaded of being wrong in our isolation at the margins of ecclesial life.

In the total absence of such a movement, there is a question of survival – which also is relative in terms of our mortality. Security is an illusion – but who will swim in the sea when there is a perfectly good boat they can get into and the ship is on another sea?

We are far from being unanimous in believing that the will of Roman Catholic popes and bishops is automatically the will of God. Otherwise God himself will lose credibility as he has for the majority of western humanity.

I am happy for Deborah in that she has had spiritual experiences and confirmations of her choice. Others of us made similar choices in the past and were seriously misled and mistaken. I cannot judge others by my suffering and nor can she judge others by what she interprets as happy spiritual experience. Roman Catholic spirituality is full of tales of miracles and wonders. I recently watched the old film The Song of Bernadette. It is moving, and sick people were miraculously healed at Lourdes, as still occasionally happens. I have no experience of miracles (as in purely supernatural events by which the laws of nature are suspended, like healing of illness or levitation)  in my own life, but I cannot refuse the possibility. It is a question of trusting credible witnesses as in law. A part of me sees the good in popular religion, spiritual experience and the wonders of God, and a part makes me want to stay down-to-earth, sensible and more trusting of the liturgy to manifest the Mystery of God.

We as Anglicans are not “into” popular religion in a big way, and that is perhaps something we lack. We have few monastic communities and people consecrated to the contemplative life. We don’t have shrines or miracles as a rule. Walsingham is sober and discreet compared with Fatima or Lourdes. But there are undeniable spiritual fruits outside Rome and conversions to Christ.

I believe the Catholic faith subsists in the Catholic Church.

Indeed, insofar as Catholic transcends the boundaries of the Roman Catholic establishment. As Deborah and others equate Catholic with Roman Catholic, it also subsists elsewhere. Who are any of us to judge which are the “bogus” and which are the “true”? I hope the pontificate of Pope Francis will discredit triumphalism and proselytism once and for all, that dialogue and a truly Catholic unity movement may resume in the future.

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Ars Celebrandi

Posted on Wednesday, 24 April, 2013 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I have published a posting on The Anglican Catholic with the title Ars Celebrandi. It is something I constantly read about from the mouth of Pope Benedict XVI and in Roman Catholic blogs. It is a haunting theme, and the Pope’s words cut no corners. The liturgy is not theatre or showmanship but priestly spirituality.

It is a theme that accompanied me during my seminary days in Rome, Fribourg and Gricigliano. In the 1970’s and 80’s, there were many generous souls with the ideal of a priestly vocation, unsullied by cynicism and disappointment, who sought a way to the Catholic priesthood. My impression as I met some of them at the Czech College in Rome will remain with me my entire life. Between the Czechs who had heroically left their country with documents in one shoe and a little money in the other – and that’s all they carried as they escaped the KGB – and the young French and Swiss deacons looking for an Italian or Eastern European bishop to incardinate them, the sadness was as crushing as their hope was radiant.

The priesthood is our life, whether we are called to parish ministry, teaching or the contemplative life. It is everything to he who has been ordained, something lay folk often find too difficult to understand.

The purpose of the priesthood, what is common between the three main ministry models, is the liturgy – the Mass and the Office. It is something we live to the core of our souls, and it never leaves even the priest who has for some reason relinquished his orders.

The presence of this deep spirituality in the Anglican tradition is something often underestimated and dismissed by Roman Catholics. This is a big mistake.

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The Anglican Catholic Blog

Posted on Tuesday, 23 April, 2013 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

The Anglican Catholic is a new blog, which I hope will become quasi-official in our Church and run in a totally different spirit to that of this personal blog. Please stop and view the About page, because this gives the initial spirit. This page also gives instructions for those who wish to become contributors. Essentially, if you fit the stated requirement and send me your e-mail address privately, you will be sent an invitation to become a contributor. Follow instructions for obtaining your password directly from WordPress. This blog site is user-friendly and easy to learn to use as a contributor.

When I was in England for the Synod and my reception at the hands of Bishop Damien Mead, we discussed this possibility together with Deacon Jonathan Munn. We agreed that the blog should be quite “high-brow” intellectually and that polemics should be avoided as much as possible. The objective is raising the profile of our Church in mainstream society, which we do by being ourselves and being “what it says on the tin lid“.

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