The Blue Flower

To follow up from my previous article, I give some ideas about what I would like to see in Anglo-Catholicism as expressed in the Continuing Churches and how things could be in the future.

Rather than a revival of the kind of Anglicanism that was founded on the English Reformation and fettered to the State down to matters of ritual and interpretation of the Prayer Book, we need to have a broader vision, one of Catholicism without any qualifying adjective. This kind of Catholicism would be as understood over the first millennium and by the more pastorally-minded of Eastern Orthodox priests and bishops. There needs to be a profound sense of not founding a new church, but of rediscovering the living Tradition.

Wanting to reject all ecclesial development since the first three centuries of Church history is not a good idea. There were many healthy developments in the middle ages in spite of the presence also of some corruptions and accretions. One capital task for us all is learning to understand the Orthodox and helping them to learn to understand us. We have got to get beyond the notion of “conversion” to the “true Church” to an attitude of whole-hearted hospitality and welcoming of diversity in matters of liturgical traditional and culture.

As in all Catholic and Orthodox Churches the integrity of the priesthood and episcopate needs to be carefully safeguarded without falling into excesses of Donatism. Ordination is not “defiled” by its being conferred by the “wrong” bishop. It is valid or it is not valid. There need to be clear guidelines for conditional ordinations when they are judged to be necessary or appropriate. There needs to be a programme of education to combat neo-Donatism.

The legitimacy of the Church does not depend on approval by Rome or a canonical Orthodox authority, but on the integrity of its creedal orthodoxy and the integrity of its Episcopate. There needs to be a considerable amount of thought about the role of the bishop in the Church. The Church consists of human beings who are sinful through weakness, but steps need to be taken when weakness becomes a permanent state of evil, arrogance, pride, ambition and delinquency. Bishops need to be accountable to their priests and lay faithful so that an evil or unfit man can be removed with the minimum of damage to the Church as a whole.

The Affirmation of Saint Louis is an excellent basis of doctrine. There are also the agreed statements of a couple of decades ago between the Union of Utrecht and representatives of Orthodoxy. There is also the Declaration of Utrecht from 1889 to state a clear position concerning the definition and exercise of “papal infallibility” in the Roman Catholic Church. Like Old Catholics, Anglo-Catholics need to be aware of the unacceptable developments in Roman Catholicism to be encouraged to rediscover the older ecclesiology and basis of the Church. The emphasis should be on the idea of belonging to the universal Church of the whole of its history.

Anglo-Catholicism needs to be dedicated to the following orientations:

–         Theological study based on the Scriptures and Fathers of the Church, and all the noted theologians ever since.

–         The reform of excessive clericalism, a synodal method of government and subsidiarity. There needs also to be a healthy detachment from secular politics or the temptation to worldly power. The mission of the Church also is essentially religious and spiritual.

–         Commitment to union with other Churches of like theological convictions and with the Catholic Priesthood. Union is more through human contact and bonds of friendship than negotiations between bishops. It needs to be a work of the whole Church.

I see no tendency in the Anglican-Catholic to compromise on the essentials of the Sacramental integrity of the Church or traditional doctrine, for example giving in to temptations of liberalism or unhealthy forms of esoteric religion. For this, the Anglican Continuum should be praised. This puts Continuing Anglicans into a unique position in relation to Rome and the Western Orthodox vicariates. Even if conversion and absorption are out of the question, the duty remains to resume the dialogue when the current polemics will have abated.

The marriage of the clergy should be maintained as presently. Divorce and remarriage in the clergy is a real problem. Institutional procedures for annulments should be carefully researched and conducted according to acceptable canonical norms.

It would be fitting in the Anglo-Catholic world that churches should be appointed and liturgies celebrated in an “English” manner, avoiding the excesses of baroque Roman Catholicism. I would encourage more use of the Sarum or northern French liturgical rites and traditions rather than counter-reformation Roman Catholic custom. The resources are available and a printing house could easily publish the necessary books. The language of the people would normally be used, archaic English for English-speakers, but without excluding the possibility of reviving the liturgy in Latin, especially when sung. Some parishes in the ACA offer Mass in Latin for former Roman Catholics who prefer it.

Liturgy needs to be given its importance like in the mind of the Eastern Orthodox and monastic traditions of the east and the west. Liturgy expresses what we believe as Christians and how we build our relationship with God and our fellow Christians in the Church. Through beauty and communication with all the five senses, the liturgy has the power to evangelise the whole person.

A vital dimension of Anglo-Catholicism and the Old Catholic idea is the primacy of the conscience, not merely obedience to an authority. The right conscience needs to be formed by empathy for other people and through education, especially in the family. A correct understanding of magisterium would be instructing, guiding and teaching, rather than imposing a spiritually totalitarian regime in which the screws are tightened always in the same direction – until something breaks.

Many of these ideas may seem to have little to do with Anglicanism but rather to a wide vision of Catholicism without any restricting or qualifying adjectives. The term Anglican Patrimony has been discussed a considerable amount over the past few years in the context of the Ordinariate. It is discussed in a different way in a continuing Anglican context, often in conflictual terms. As I mentioned in my previous article, separation of the “churchmanships” of comprehensive Anglicanism into a number of communions seems inevitable, given the separation from the Anglican Communion and the Establishment. Anglo-Catholicism should see no shame in putting the Thirty-Nine Articles, Black Rubrics and other historical accretions from the English Reformation into a museum and appealing to Catholicism.

Freed from the fetters, I am sure the restoration of bonds of mutual friendship and fellowship in prayer can be brought about even if communicatio in sacris is still a few years down the road. To a large extent, we are responsible for building up our own hope in the future.

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…