Destroy this Temple…

Posted on Saturday, 25 August, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick


Strasbourg Cathedral as a Temple of Reason in 1793-94

I have read some opinions on this blog responding to my postings concerning the unhappier aspects of human nature and the downside of clericalism. Clericalism is not merely a problem in the Church but in every public organisation where an elite is created by education and complicity. You will find this in every institution of politics or business, education, law and even charitable organisations. How do you deal with it when it becomes corrupt and complicity extends to protecting the guilty? The natural reaction is to destroy the institution and then pick off the escaping rats one by one, like when the Nazis were defeated in 1945 at the end of World War II.

What do you replace the destroyed institution with? It turned out rather well for Germany. The smaller fry of the old Nazi regime were allowed to stay in the police, civil service, etc. and they died out as they got older. The present-day bands of neo-Nazis are marginal and present little in the way of a threat to stability in Germany and the European Union. Things were allowed to resolve themselves through compromise and picking off the worst rats through the various war crimes trials in 1945-46.

To what extent ridding the Church of paedophiles will restore the credibility of the whole is a matter of individual judgement. If Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus is to be the rule, then the priesthood and sacramental nature of the Church must be done away with to prevent any possibility of corruption and complicity arising in the future. We have only to look to the Reformation and the more radical reformers like Calvin and Zwingli. We can go further and seek to abolish all religion and make atheism the norm like in revolutionary France or the Soviet regime. Will this solve the problem of human nature? Richard Dawkins would say “Just the ticket”, whilst most of us know that nature abhors a vacuum.

We have the vision of all churches and monasteries being emptied of all “churchy” things. It happened during the French Revolution, with classical rationalism being turned into an ersatz religion through the Goddess Reason. The monasteries were sold off as stone quarries. We could now imagine the UN deciding to send troops and police units into the Vatican to evict all the bishops and monsignori, and then turn the buildings over to the Italian State, the EU or the highest private bidder. Is this what we would like to see? Perhaps we are so little different from the people who voted for Hitler in the 1930’s!

Whatever is done, if anything is done from the outside, it is sinful human nature combatting sinful human nature. Corruption in the Church is something that disgusts us all, but the solution can only come from within the Church, and to some extent by its being deprived of paying customers and their money.

If Christianity goes, so does all our culture, as T.S. Eliot once said (more or less). The motivation for humanism in the Renaissance time came from Christianity. No other philosophy or religious system promotes the intrinsic value and rights of the human person. All other systems advocate competition and the elimination of the weakest, which is the natural principle held by all species of animals.

I don’t know what others will propose to replace the priesthood and sacramental / liturgical life of the Church. Suppose that all that is gone, repressed, made illegal. Is all that we have left is DIY spirituality? What form would that take? Do we adapt eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism for western consumption, as was doubtlessly tried in the 1960’s by people returning to the west from India, Nepal and Tibet? That said, we do have things to learn from peaceful and humanist spiritual traditions, and I am myself curious to learn more about Dom Bede Griffiths who incorporated elements of Hinduism in his Benedictine monastic way of life.

I still haven’t read Dreyer’s Benedict Option, so I am still prevented from offering an informed opinion. There are Christian communities around, Protestant and Catholic, incorporating lay people with families, not only monks and nuns. To what extent are those communities hierarchical or democratic? Are those communities the only way?

I am attracted to the idea of the alternative community based on a democratic government and a reaction against modern consumer capitalism, ecology, a philosophy of life with much in common with Romanticism. Perhaps some culture of this kind can partially assimilate a notion of Christianity that is open to democracy and anarchism, small numbers in the community and, if there is a priesthood for the sake of a sacramental / liturgical life, they have to be “ordinary guys” in everyday life and not tin-god clerics. Perhaps this is suggestive of the “basic community” of Latino Americano Marxist communists. I think that Distributism would be more in order, and allowing people their own philosophies of life. We have to learn to live with diversity, just as long as it comes from nobility of spirit.

Any church of the future has to be a marginal community without political privileges or masses of real-estate and money. This is already a reality with Continuing Anglicans and independent Catholics like the Nordic Catholic Church, whose priests have to earn their own living through work or their old-age pension. In the light of everything that has been tried and found successful or a failure, we need to re-think the priesthood and not discard the precious things the donkey is carrying (referring to my older article with the Aesop fable).

Remember, if churches have to be suppressed by secular authorities, there would be bloodshed as in the past. The transition has to be slower and without constraint. If our little Churches can excel in virtue, beauty and nobility, then we will be lights in the darkness, a powerful and quiet witness in a world that already knows that money isn’t the end of history.

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The Wooden Leg

Posted on Wednesday, 22 August, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

There is a film from 1935 about the infamous mutiny on the Bounty of 1789, the earliest which depicts Captain Bligh as a sadist who loved whipping and keel-hauling his crew. Historical evidence now tends to set William Bligh (1754 – 1817) in a more sympathetic light as a master seaman and is a little more critical of Fletcher Christian (1764 – 1793) and the mutineers who settled on the Island of Pitcairn. In the earliest film, there is the delightful but pathetic image of the alcoholic and crippled ship’s surgeon who had a different story for each person he conversed with about how he lost his leg. The character, at least the one in the film, is a fabulator, a chameleon, a false construction of a hollow personality.

Research on pathological lying has been around for a long time. The word mythomania is more commonly used in its French version, but it exists in English. Modern psychiatry doesn’t seem to isolate it as a distinct condition but rather characterises it as a symptom of conditions like borderline personality disorder. We are targeting the person who constantly tells lies, not always with a clear objective in view. Lying is often a part of the manipulative personality, which is close to those with BPD and NPD. It is not usually an isolated symptom but a part of a wider pattern of behaviours.

Sometimes, pathological liars can believe their lies and construct a delusional world. They lose control of their lies and awareness of their effect or lack of credibility to others. They become addicted to the false construction of their minds and it sometimes ends up in criminal behaviour like fraud. As many priests are caught with their fingers in the till as with their trousers down in the wrong place! For further study of this question, I recommend:

You can also do a Google search to find other articles and book references.

Why have I brought up this subject? I have already discussed various characters in the ecclesiastical underworld. The worst I encountered was Gérard Roux who constantly lied about who ordained him, who consecrated him, and has been in trouble with the law several times for fraud and abus de faiblesse (using his fabulated ecclesiastical status to get lonely elderly people to give him their savings). I have never known cruder and more transparent false documents! I have known more harmless cases who simply constructed grandiose self-styled titles and expensive garb. I last wrote about this subject in Purple Fever. The real issue is the pathological personality. With the amusing image of the drunken ship’s surgeon on the Bounty, I have come up with the neologism of the Wooden Leg.

I have already commented on James Atkinson-Wake. No one minds his being an independent priest or bishop running a chapel for a few alienated Anglicans or Roman Catholics. What is objectionable is his lying about being a legitimate member of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. He is a chameleon who even changes his name between David Bell and James Atkinson-Wake. Two priests, probably sharing the same pathology, left our diocese in the ACC to join the chameleon: Philip James French and Michael Clothier. The former is now a bishop “gloriously reigning”. I will not go into all the gruesome details related to me by my Bishop!

The ghost of Archbishop Hepworth again emerges in Peter Slipper- Bishop of Australia? The history of Peter Slipper is particularly sordid. To what extent Archbishop Hepworth was in good faith when he ordained Slipper is anyone’s guess, but the ordination was done in secret. The whole history of Archbishop Hepworth’s dealing with the Ordinariate question has revealed his own pathological lying probably due to some personality issue. Slipper is now a bishop, styled Bishop of Australia. It would appear that he is pontificating over a community formerly belonging to the Church of the Torres Strait (CTS), a member body of the Traditional Anglican Communion. He appears to be connected with the  Igreja Católica Apostólica Brasileira (ICAB) founded by Bishop Carlos Duarte-Costa and led for many years by Bishop Castillo-Mendez.

These issues, like the re-surfacing of the paedophile priest scandal in the Roman Catholic Church, are so many indicators of that curse of personality disorders, a true mark of Original Sin and man’s propensity to actual sin. These disorders come in forms of a spectrum, just like autism on the opposite side of the human condition. Other conditions like depression and bi-polar disorder range from the highly-functioning to those who have to be institutionalised in a psychiatric hospital. The problem with the Church is its dependence on sinful human nature. We don’t all suffer from the same condition, and “normality” seems to be a very narrow category on the knife edge between the scales of acidity and alkalinity on the pH spectrum in chemistry. Identifying and choosing perfectly “neurotypical” men for the priesthood seems to be an illusion – and even those of the knife edge of “normality” can also be tempted to sin.

I have been reading Shawn Tribe’s reaction on Facebook to Fr Jay Scott Newman’s article The End of the Imperial Episcopate.

Fr. Jay Scott Newman’s (JSN) ideas here about vestural reforms strike me as highly odd, highly problematic, and I couldn’t disagree with them more. That said, I am not surprised to see this sort of thing coming up. I’ve been told by some priests that some others have attempted, in the light of the current situation, to try to argue that traditional vestments and ceremonial should all be abandoned as “effete” as well (ignoring the fact that they have been for the most part abandoned to this point, and are only now slowly seeing a revival).

Back to the article in question, a few excerpts:

JSN: “We should encourage bishops to abandon colored sashes, buttons, piping, and capes and stick to simple black. ”

His rationale? :

JSN: “Exalted titles and elaborate uniforms… tend to distance bishops from their priests and people, and also subtly nudge them toward self-important and self-referential ways of thinking and acting. As the recent catastrophic scandals demonstrate, too many bishops have proven unable to act as pastors and evangelists and have instead behaved as managers and bureaucrats. ”

To call this attempted linkage a ‘stretch’ seems overly generous.

Incidentally, what is “elaborate” and “exalted” exactly? Who defines that and from what perspective or principles? This is a priest’s perspective but a layman might well argue that clerical dress at all is the very same and that the title “Father” (which JSN proposes bishops should be referred to) is itself too “exalted.” The reality is, however the Church is a hierarchy; it has an order, and the titles and uniforms — as in all levels and facets of society (sic) — reflect that order and hierarchy; they speak to the offices. This is very much embedded into our human nature — and it is something most naturally appreciate and are drawn to, even need, unless they are pulled away from it by some ideology.

As for episcopal dress today, JSN speaks as though prelates today dress for the most part like they did a century ago. Never mind the curious reference to capes (a virtually extinct animal on a prelate), the reality is that the bishops have already effectively abandoned their traditional dress for over half a century now. Bishops today are virtually indistinguishable from a priest or a deacon (far less so than the Eastern Church in fact, which JSN vaunts as an exemplar) seen usually in the same black clerical suit as priests or deacons with only the hint of a silver chain showing — and the cross hidden inside a shirt pocket. It’s how most of them show up at the parishes, their own cathedrals, diocesan events, etc. It’s rare to see them otherwise, so this is a pretty weak premise for that reason alone; their cassock likely gets pulled out of the episcopal closet as often a pair of blue jeans do — and possibly less.

What’s more, it hardly seems to follow that the way to make bishops act more like bishops and less like managers and bureaucrats is by stripping them of those very things which should remind them of their pastoral duties and office. We have seen the adverse effects of the loss of clerical and religious identity that have come with the loss of clerical and religious dress at those levels, so why in the world should one think it is going to work out just fine at the episcopal level is beyond me — especially when, as I say above, it’s what is already being de facto done. Clearly it’s not a solution; internal conversion and reform is (and arguably also the episcopal selection process itself).

JSN continues:

“…what has that spectacle [the church’s extra-liturgical ceremonial] wrought among the men themselves? How does that pageantry serve the gospel now, if it ever did? For the purification of the priesthood and the authentic reform of the Church, everything that is of Imperium rather than Evangelium needs to go.”

If you think you’ve heard this sort of thinking before it’s because you have; it was the very same set of principles that were used against the liturgical tradition of the Church, seen as corrupted by the Carolinigan court. (And, for the record, it would make very little sense to apply this sort of principle only to the one aspect of the Church’s life and not the other — ie. the sacred liturgy. Of course, that was already done in both theory and practice by the progressives and it’s not clear to anyone that the results have been exactly fruitful and without trouble.)

The liturgical and ceremonial life of the Church, while different and on different levels it needs to be said, are indeed interconnected, similar to how orthopraxis and orthodoxy are. When you start trying to cut the strings that intertwine them, the ball has a way of unravelling on you. Moreover, aside from being reminders, these things also have a teaching component for they speak to the dignity and duties of that office, just as the cassock and black worn by a priest does of the priesthood itself, or the habit of the monk. Here again, selectively picking out just the prelates but exempting the rest in this regard makes little sense from any perspective.

JSN: “The titles Your Eminence, Your Excellency, My Lord, Your Grace, or Monsignor do not come from the gospel,… They are echoes of the Imperial Court, now the Papal Court, and they obscure the scriptural and familial nature of the episcopate—both from the bishop himself and from those he serves. … his priests and people should greet him as Father.”

The main thing alarming in this suggestion, like the one before it, is the rationale behind it. — and lest it be forgotten, the term “Father” itself for a cleric is itself not “from the gospel” in the way JSN is applying it here. (Neither is it against it of course.) So here again, it makes very little sense to apply this to prelates but not further down the chain — but JSN does so.

Newman’s arguments against the ‘Imperium’ simply don’t follow and what’s more they are extraordinarily problematic in principle. While I appreciate and agree with his point that bishops need to act like bishops rather than managers, his attempt to tie this to the (all but now absent) ceremonial life of the Church is ludicrous. Bishops have lost their identity in great part, just as many clerics have, and it’s in the tradition (both interior and exterior) that they can be helped to find it again — not by dispensing of it. It seems like JSN himself hasn’t followed his own arguments through to their logical conclusions either — and where we end up is a very messy and all too familiar place. Either that or his arguments on this specific front are a case one who simply has a pre-existing axe to grind and he is trying to find ways to grind it.

Shawn Tribe has a point in the opposition between ceremonial and the ministry of the Gospel, which was central to the Reformation in the sixteenth century. Do we want a new Reformation? Perhaps with Islamic Jihadist puritans doing the statue and altar smashing? I tend to advocate a simplification of clerical dress after my time at Gricigliano: plain black cassocks or tunics with some specific Christian symbol like a cross. I have lived in a country (France) where clerics started wearing civil dress from the 1960’s with a small cross on the lapel, usually looking like executive staff from some large company. In my present state of life, I spend most of my life in casual dress because any external manifestation of my priesthood would lack credibility and would attract ridicule. Perhaps that might change in the future, but the hard lesson would have been learned.

I am very touched by two stories I heard at seminary. One was the fable by Aesop, An ass carrying an image. The French version by La Fontaine calls the fable L’Âne portant des reliques, a donkey carrying relics.

Un Baudet, chargé de Reliques,
S’imagina qu’on l’adorait.
Dans ce penser il se carrait,
Recevant comme siens l’Encens et les Cantiques.
Quelqu’un vit l’erreur, et lui dit :
Maître Baudet, ôtez-vous de l’esprit
Une vanité si folle.
Ce n’est pas vous, c’est l’Idole
À qui cet honneur se rend,
Et que la gloire en est due.
D’un Magistrat ignorant
C’est la Robe qu’on salue.

When people made reverences towards the donkey, the animal thought the honours were being made to him rather than the holy relics and images he was carrying. This message comes home to seminarians who love to wear buckled shoes and fringed cinctures from Gamarelli’s. The vestments a priest wears at Mass confer no honour on the man who is ordained a priest, but hide the person behind the sacerdotal character, the sacramental mystery of the Incarnation continuing throughout history from Pentecost to the Parousia.

The other story used to give seminarians a sense of perspective and sobriety is the Curé d’Ars dressed in a scruffy old cassock, but who wore the best vestments in church. So it was also with the slum priests in London in the 1860’s. That seems to be the priority and yardstick – distinguishing the man from the precious gift he bears. Abolishing the precious gift would be to cut off our own noses to spite our faces.

One thing that attracted me back to the ACC was the notion that the lesson was learned by our bishops and that what is in the jar is what it says on the label. We are not without sin, and have no stones to cast, but I am grateful to know that we are vigilant to keep the “bullshit factor” out and devote ourselves prayerfully to truth and the quest for humility. The real solution to this crisis is each of us seeking holiness through humility, prayer, service to others, self-denial and utter devotion to truth. It begins with each of us.

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The Enemy Below

Posted on Tuesday, 21 August, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick


The title of this posting is suggestive of a classic film about submarine hunting during World War II. It makes me think also of the mystery of good and evil in human personalities. The more I encounter or read about evil in all its forms, the more I oscillate between my desire to believe in human goodness and intrinsic value, and my temptation to give consideration to the extreme Augustinian ideas of men like Calvin and Jansen.

I have said nothing here and very little of Facebook in response to the scale of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests that has just been revealed by legal authorities in countries like the USA, Australia and the UK. The tendency is to blame the Church, clericalism, celibacy, men of homosexual tendencies.

I have been watching a documentary about Jimmy Savile:

This is just a short one. There are others on YouTube that discuss this energumen in greater detail, but already the ten minutes this video lasts sickened me. He was knighted by the Queen, congratulated by Lady Thatcher, admired for his humanitarianism and work for handicapped children – when he wasn’t buggering them. Finally the lid came off, and now he is dead. He was not a priest or a part of the clerical structure.

However, it is true that the culture of clericalism and secrecy in the Church can become the preserve of men without conscience or empathy, whose intention in life is evil. What happens now will depend to a great extent on the media and the way it is all politicised. There have been anti-clerical purges before, the nearest to home being the French Revolution and the Separation of Church and State in 1905. There was also intense anti-clericalism in Italy in the late nineteenth century, and the Kulturkampf in Germany. It is easy to sympathise with this destructive current that seeks to root out evil, but all too often replaces one evil with one that is far worse.

Paedophilia is but one manifestation of the harm evil priests and others have done from positions of status, power and influence. To understand this phenomenon, we need to have more insight into human sexuality when it deviates from mutual love (typically in marriage) and the family. It is something that is cleverly dissimulated behind a façade of charm. I have personally known two clerics who ended up in trouble with the law for sexual abuse. One was the self-styled canon Serge Clivaz, a Swiss priest ordained in a Spanish diocese through a kind of “ratline” in Rome finding diocesan bishops willing to fill in papers for some favour. (I know who was involved, but I won’t mention any names other than Fr Gregor Hess and Bishop Pavol Hnilica who are now both dead.) Clivaz was eventually employed as a priest at a traditionalist chapel in Lausanne, Switzerland and came across as someone very sure of himself, slick and worldly wise. I thought nothing of it. The local bishop (Geneva, Lausanne and Fribourg) wanted that priest out, and the patrons of the chapel then came to me to ask me to be a paid caretaker of the chapel. I did this job between March 1990 and November of the same year when I went to Gricigliano to pursue the priesthood. I wasn’t yet ordained, so one of my jobs was to find priests willing to come and celebrate Mass for us. What happened to Clivaz? No one would say anything clear. Finally, he was heard of from France, and it was about his being caught abusing young boys and committing suicide. This gentleman had heard about my “taking his place” in Lausanne and tried to stop my diaconate in 1993 by accusing me of looking for sexual partners in a public park. Monsignor Wach disbelieved the calumnies and had me ordained. I was not surprised to find out that he was the promiscuous abuser!

Another one I knew was an American, Fr Timothy Svea, whom I had known with the Oblates of Wisdom in Rome (1985) and at Gricigliano. The Institute of Christ the King’s lawyer was quoted: “the institute became aware of the accusations in March 2001 and had known nothing of them before that“. He seemed a model of piety with his rosary and breviary, and none of us suspected anything. How can such men be screened out? Scopolamine? Systematic psychoanalysis? Torture? Sorry to be facetious.

The clerical system obviously doesn’t cause sexual perversions and paraphilias. It will protect perverts if they are “discreet” and show talent in some other way. Those with charm and a thirst for power can go far as in politics and business, any human organisation where bureaucracy hides human defects.

To many people, the solution would be the suppression of the Roman Catholic Church by an international organisation like the UN, a repeat of the Kulturkampf and the French anti-clerical laws of the 1900’s. The winners would be big business getting the buildings and even worse psychopaths getting into control. Even Hitler didn’t dare invade the Vatican!

We can’t legislate against evil. Our police and law courts can catch as many bad people as possible, put them in prison or execute them. The demon whose name is Legion will send many more, and more after that. The sin and the evil are hidden and under our feet. Is it in all of us? We all sin in one way or another. There is a difference between losing our temper or saying something nasty about someone – and premeditated murder and rape. Most of us would be incapable of such heinous crimes, because we have consciences, care for other people, and would feel intense guilt and remorse if we so much as hurt someone by accident.

The evil psychopath, sociopath and narcissist are types of personality. They are born with it and are made so by an abusive upbringing. Perhaps that fact seems to confirm Calvin’s TULIP:

Total Depravity (also known as Total Inability and Original Sin)
Unconditional Election
Limited Atonement (also known as Particular Atonement)
Irresistible Grace
Perseverance of the Saints (also known as Once Saved Always Saved)

– at least for the question of total depravity. Are certain human beings born to be damned? Are they human? Are they demons disguised as humans? A story was told about the Curé d’Ars in nineteenth century France. A lady went to confession to the Curé of Ars. After she knelt, he began to tell her events from her past life. The story would have been told by her, since priests are bound by the seal of confession.

– Do you remember that you went to a ball on such-and-such occasion?
– Yes, I remember.
– Do you remember that at a certain moment a handsome young man entered the ballroom. He was quite elegant, appeared very upright and danced with several young ladies?
– Yes, I do.
– Do you recall that you had a great desire to dance with him?
– I recall that.
– Do you recollect that you became sad because he didn’t ask you to dance?
– Yes, I do.
– Do you remember that by chance you looked down at his feet and saw a strange blue light coming from them?
– Yes. I remember.

The priest added:

– That young man was none other than the devil who had taken that shape to tempt several of the young women there. He was unable to approach you because you are a Daughter of Mary protected by her, and you were wearing the Miraculous Medal.

The Curé d’Ars fought against traditional folk dancing in the villages. Imagine it if he were around today and saw the night clubs and the sexual revolution of today! As an Anglican, I am a little sickened by a lot of the gooey stuff about miraculous medals and various devotional practices that easily become fetishes in the older meaning of this word. On the other hand, if someone has the Faith and is devoted to the Mother of God, this might clarify things a little… The point is that some beings that appear to be human are not human but incarnated evil spirits. Is this something to which we can give any credence?

Was someone like Ted Bundy a human being or a demon? One of the founding principles of evil – something we learned from the Nuremburg trials – is that refusing the quality of humanity to certain persons banalises the act of killing them and absolves the killer from guilt. This is one big question I have about capital punishment as well as the crimes of such evil people.

Psychologists call this kind of evil by the three types of personality mentioned above: psychopathy, sociopathy and narcissism. All of these come in the form of a spectrum between the subtle manifestations to unscrupulous businessmen and politicians to electric chair fodder like Ted Bundy. Psychopathy concerns a very small minority of human beings or appearances of human beings.

It is all a big mystery, and we will never get to the bottom of it. Most of us know that we are not sexually attracted to children, and that we put the child’s integrity and innocence before anything else. I am personally repelled by the very status and power those personalities seek. Indeed people on the autistic spectrum are at the opposite extreme, like east from west, from those who want power and are devoid of empathy or indeed any kind of spiritual life. I remember the conversation at the retreat house in March 1993 with Monsignor Wach about Fr Clivaz’s accusations intended to stop my diaconate. I asked him how people could be like that. Was the Redemption by Christ limited as the Calvinists and Jansenists claimed? I am often overwhelmed by such thoughts, and I look to Nietzsche and his reflections on nihilism. There, we approach the heart of the mystery. The Russians seem to express it better in the Devils of Dostoyevsky and the philosophical studies of men like Berdyaev. Evil is nihilism, non-existence, nothing. Goodness is creation, the Word made flesh.

These are the thoughts of the Christian Holy Week and especially the Triduum with the iniquity of those who sent Jesus to die, from Judas to the High Priest and Pilate. Pilate sinned through weakness and the banality of his functions like a Nazi Obergruppenführer. The High Priest sinned through religious fanaticism and his good relations with the occupying Roman power (and Herod), and Judas would have been a common criminal interested in money and power. The Gnostics had a less comfortable notion about Judas against which we should not shut our minds. St Peter also sinned through weakness and fear of the evil around him, but he repented and “wept bitterly”.

Those who comment on the bureaucratic dimension of large “mainstream” churches and their clerical power structures have a point. There is much less likelihood of something like this happening in a little Church like the one I belong to. I say this, not in a spirit of self-righteousness but an observation of the fact we know each other. Perhaps, tomorrow, we will be shaken to the core on learning that one of our priests has been arrested by the police for child abuse! God forbid! The evil of the evil is hidden and disguised under a thick aura of charm. The real difference is that we would not cover up such evil under a shroud of secrecy and bureaucracy. We would not be complicit with the evil-doer, but rather with the side of law and decency, the good of the victims.

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Summer Doldrums

Posted on Thursday, 16 August, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick



Gatteville lighthouse, north-eastern point of the Cotentin,
light visible from the Isle of Wight

Time has gone by since I last wrote anything here. Since my last posting, I have been at the campsite at Barfleur, and we will be returning home next Sunday. The Dog Days are over, and the past ten days or so have been characterised by cloudy weather and a westerly wind. I have my small boat Σοφία with me, much easier to launch and recover than Sarum, but less capable in stronger winds and chop.

Without doubt, I will be writing a little more on returning home. Church news has been quite depressing, especially the uncovering of yet more child abuse by clergy and covering-up by bishops. Our world seems to be polarising more and more between liberalism and the nationalist right. My own country faces more debates over Brexit, and those of us living in EU countries face having to apply for things like residence permits and driving licences. People become jittery, hysterical and anxious.

My thoughts turn towards my article for the next Blue Flower. I am presently re-reading Rob Riemen’s Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal which jumps about from one illustration of the ideal to another. However, the central theme is reflected in this quote:

Nobility of spirit is the great ideal! It is the realization of true freedom, and there can be no democracy, no free world, without this moral foundation. Whitman’s masterpiece, his whole vision, is exactly about this: life as a quest for truth, love, beauty, goodness, and freedom; life as the art of becoming human through the cultivation of the human soul. All this is expressed by ‘nobility of spirit’: the incarnation of human dignity.

The same theme is reflected in Romanticism and its offshoots throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is something to revive us when we go through bouts of nihilism, acedia and Sartre’s La Nausée, usually provoked by other people whose ideals in life are not ours.

We will be breaking camp on Saturday and returning home.

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Gallicanism

Posted on Tuesday, 31 July, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Over the past couple of days, I have found some dialogues on Facebook concerning Gallicanism. French Anglicanism? Maybe in a way, but modern Anglicanism. The version of Gallicanism of Archbishop Dominique Philippe is a little more classical using the Roman liturgy of Pius V, but tending to be attracted to some toxic alliances (no further commentary).

There are several churches in France using the title Gallican. Most of these little churches are served by bishops with lines of succession from René Vilatte. A few of them:

There are others that seem to consist of little more than a bishop and a few lay faithful.

The idea seems quite attractive as a kind of middle way between Old Catholicism and Anglicanism, the identification of the local dimension of Catholicism, whether English or French.

I would say that, historically, Gallicanism is dead. It was absorbed by Roman Catholicism in the nineteenth century with the triumph of Ultramontanism and the imposition of the strict Roman rite in all dioceses.

What is now known as Gallicanism in France is a variation of Old Catholicism that derives its sacramental life via René Vilatte, the famous adventurer, from Orthodoxy in India. Almost invariably, it is a combination of a very novus ordo – like liturgy with highly sentimental expressions of French popular Roman Catholic devotion. Most but not all of their altars are facing the people and chapels are furnished in poor taste with oversized statues and sentimental images. Quite often, without excessive accusations of dishonesty, priests and bishops offer a service of minor exorcisms and faith healings. If they spend their days doing that and not doing a job to earn their living, they have to charge for their services. Even with Archbishop Dominique Philippe who is more traditionalist for the liturgy, he is forming alliances with the old crook Gérard Roux, so it appears.

The salient characteristic of these churches is a reaction from the strictness of Roman Catholic doctrine and morals. They also try to justify their historical legitimacy, which to me seems to be a tall order. The idea is appealing, either that of reviving the old Gallican rites of the first millennium like the French western Orthodox, or medieval Catholicism as before the Revolution (which simply imitates nineteenth-century Roman Catholicism for the externals). Many bishops in nineteenth-century France sought to perpetuate the line of Louis XIV and the Council of Constance in limiting the power of the Pope in favour of the national Church. We find parallels with the national Catholicism of Henry VIII, the Monarch taking precedence over the canonical jurisdiction of the Pope.

Taking the Gallicans of Bordeaux as an example, they resumed their position is several points:

  • Acceptance of the marriage of priests and bishops
  • Female Diaconate
  • Rejection of compulsory confession
  • Banning of excommunications
  • Freedom in fasting and abstinence
  • Participation of the faithful in the government of the Church
  • Election of bishops by clergy and faithful
  • Consideration of the animal world in the reflection of the Church. This is illustrated by the famous animal blessings of the St Rita’s Gallican Church in Paris.

Continuing Anglicanism might agree with most of this except the ordination of women to the diaconate. However, these positions are not unreasonable, but are characterised by the ras-le-bol in regard to Roman Catholicism. Theological and practical training does not seem in most cases to be on the list of priorities of most Gallican churches.

Some Gallican prelates are trying to establish relations with Anglicanism, but the American Episcopal Church in France and elsewhere in Europe. They are considered by the Roman Catholics in France as dangerous competition and therefore cults to be discouraged.

Maybe my position is negative and sceptical. It is saddening because if a greater degree of integrity could be found in these Churches, our uniting Anglican Churches could be more forthcoming in reaching out to them. I keep an eye open, but I see little to hope for – unfortunately.

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Anglicanorum Coetibus Hermeneutics

Posted on Wednesday, 25 July, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

In about 2010 and the following year, we were all speculating about Anglicanorum coetibus and whose petition it was answering. Mrs Deborah Gyapong has written Syncretism? Bait and switch? A look at reality in the Ordinariates for Catholics of Anglican Patrimony. There have been some comments on Facebook.

At the time, Archbishop Hepworth was telling us that it was all about the petition from Portsmouth of October 2007, which I witnessed as a simple priest under the Archbishop’s oversight in his Patrimony. Certainly, at the time, Rome was unaware that Archbishop Hepworth was a former Roman Catholic priest and divorced-and-remarried. We in the TAC were unaware that Forward in Faith and some individual Anglican Communion bishops has been approaching Cardinal Ratzinger at the CDF for a long time. If the Portsmouth petition had no influence in the emergence of Anglicanorum coetibus, it was an amazing coincidence.

Monsignor Andrew Burnham, someone I am inclined to trust has said:

The approach I made with Keith [Newton] was in 2008. Once AC had been published, (Nov. 2009), we were summoned to Rome. Keith went there in January 2010 and the three bishops (I.e. with John Broadhurst) went back in April 2010 for a larger scale meeting (without TAC). Jeffrey. Steenson, Archbishops Wuerl and Collins, Longley and Bishop Hopes were there too. Subsequent to that three-day meeting, the CDF called in the TAC.

The CDF called in the TAC? Certainly not Archbishop Hepworth. The only time Archbishop Hepworth met Cardinal Müller was in Canada, and the Cardinal treated him quite coldly. I can only imagine there would have been groups of priests and bishops from the TAC making approaches independently from Archbishop Hepworth. The latter was being strategically sidelined to avoid his canonical irregularity spoiling the whole thing for clergy who had never been Roman Catholics. In the end (2012) Archbishop Hepworth had to resort to almost blackmail by accusing Australian priests of having sexually abused him as a young man. Perhaps the accusations against two deceased priests might have been credible, but not the one against Monsignor Dempsey. It backfired, and that was the end of Archbishop Hepworth as far as Rome was concerned – and for the remainder of the TAC that didn’t join the Ordinariates.

These “repeated and insistent” Anglican approaches to the Holy See are the stuff we’d all like to read about in a book one day. In the meantime, thanks for helping make it happen!

Fr Barker is currently writing a book about this very matter! Looking forward to it very much.

I hope to read the book by Fr Barker, and I trust he found my material on the TAC Archive useful. My own blogging from the time (The English Catholic) could only be partial because I did not have the information in retrospect (as is beginning to appear now) – perhaps this naivety will give authenticity to my writings as a “raw source”.

The later facts would bear out such a theory: once Archbishop Hepworth was out of the way, a good number of bishops and priests joined the Ordinariate. I was left on the beach, and although the TAC in England took me in as a priest on Archbishop Prakash’s behest, I honourably resigned and joined the ACC. There was no point in my applying to Rome on account of my own canonical irregularities, and also because there is no Ordinariate presence in France (other than an Ordinariate priest in ordinary parish ministry in a Roman Catholic diocese). What did I believe in? I joined the ACC because it corresponded with my belief as a Catholic and offered me the possibility to go through life with my head high. I am grateful to Bishop Damien Mead and our diocesan Board of Ministry, and honoured to serve as a priest in my small capacity.

In the end, I don’t matter and there is no reason why anyone should care about me. I witnessed the whole thing, even though many bits of information were out of my reach. I am glad the Ordinariates came into being, and meeting some of the English prelates and priests in Oxford was for me an honour. They are good men and their ministry is fruitful. May God bless them… Some good TAC bishops and priests found their way “home”, and that can only be a good thing. Being in correspondence with Dr Timothy Graham, who attends an Ordinariate parish, was largely at the origin of my idea to set up The Blue Flower. In Oxford, I kept out of harm’s way, but they were cordial. Some have become quite stuffy, but others have mellowed and become more open to the continuing Anglican world. I hope and pray there will be more contact and dialogue, even though we the ACC and other continuing Anglican Churches will not go into communion with Rome.

I am presently reading Ross Douthat’s To Change the Church, Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism, and it is quite harrowing as the author compares different interpretations of the present confusion and disorder surrounding the first ever Jesuit Pope. Catholicism is not an institution, but a Sacrament of Salvation, our faith in Jesus Christ the Incarnate Word and our communion that transcends all human barriers and intrigues. We are already in the Catholic Church and the Catholic Church is in us!

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Purple Fever

Posted on Monday, 23 July, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

Fr Jonathan Munn has written an article / sermon on How to recognise a bishop.

I have written a number of articles on independent bishops and their churches.

This is not an area where we can be too judgemental, because we get what we give. We call someone a false bishop, and someone will qualify our own bishops with the same adjective – because the person is a Roman Catholic, Church of England or Orthodox. So we go round in the same circles. We can certainly find the stereotypes of episcopi vagantes in men like the one who is styled (or self-styled) Cardinal Rutherford Johnson. There are many bishops of small communities, and there are some who appear to be making a complete mockery of it or are suffering from some kind of narcissistic personality disorder. Like Cardinal Rutherford, there is one in England who has deliberately pretended to be a Roman Catholic bishop, and has accordingly been exposed as a fraud.

Rather than judge others, I will describe my own personal experience, which will not come as a surprise to most of my readers, since I have been “outed” (with less than accurate information).

After my ordination in 1998 by Bishop Raymond Terrasson (consecrated at Palmar de Troya in 1976) some brother priests and I found that Bishop Terrasson was less than honest with things like money. We got involved with a bishop who proved even worse, one Jean-Gérard Roux. Roux was outed by a man in the south of France called Dominique Devie, who ran a website on this and other unsavoury characters. Roux took me to court in 1999 accusing me of libel for the website in question. The website in question was taken down years ago. My lawyer argued for a statute of limitations, which avoided all the rigmarole of talking about histoires de curé with a secular court. Roux lost in the civil court and appealed, and also lost the appeal. The article linked to above was based on the information given by the site in question, and is also covered by the statute of limitations for internet sites as defined by French law. I have no control over any part of Terence Boyle’s website. I link to this page with these reserves.

Another priest and I were lodged at the time in a large town house in Montmorillon, and the way Roux emotionally abused the owner (a widow) caused her to suffer from a stroke and die in hospital. Roux disappeared, and moved from his lodgings in Chaillac (Indre) to a community of religious ladies to the east of Paris, more profitable and with juicy pickings. A number of lay faithful and an elderly priest took over the situation with me in Montmorillon and contacted the family of the deceased. It was quite complicated, but it all worked out. With help from my own family, I bought a house in Montmorillon where we were two priests and five or six faithful. We belonged to no institutional Church and we were aware of that.

St Ignatius of Antioch said Ubi Episcopus, ibi Ecclesia – where the Bishop is, there is the Church. We had either to find a Church to join where our priesthood would be like the strings of the harp played by the Bishop, the one pastor of his flock – or give up the priesthood and revert to the lay state. Small as my community was, it was real. The community and the elderly priest encouraged me to seek and accept the Episcopate. We would have the essential basic elements of a Church in awaiting union with some more “canonical” Church. I was consecrated on 25th March 2000 in Gent in Belgium by Bishop Luc Strijmeersch who seemed to share the same traditionalist Catholic outlook as I did at the time.

As I became disillusioned with sedevacantism, I began to explore the world of Old Catholicism, hoping that something orthodox had remained of the old Dutch Church. It was not an avenue to follow. As people died in Montmorillon or returned to more mainstream traditionalist communities, I moved to the Vendée and bought a house to live in the deep countryside. I was frequently contacted by men wanting to be ordained and consecrated, sometimes by people in Africa thinking I could provide them with money and the conditions required in France for them to get an immigration visa. There was a Scotsman living in England who seemed to be sincere. I ordained him and immediately he was gone in a puff of smoke.

In 2002, I was contacted by the Order of St John, an organisation claiming legitimacy from the Russian Prince Troubetskoy and led by Dr John Grady in his vast property near Benton, Tennessee. My flight was paid by the Order and I was accommodated in a lovely modern house in the grounds.

I was dubbed by Dr Grady and made Prelate of the Order. I was not really interested in titles and honours, but rather in ministering to a community of people who have been badly served by fanatical or eccentric priests who had come and gone. Perhaps I would build up a small commandery in France. I took a lot of stick from American traditionalists who were concerned that this order should be condemned as bogus. The Order still exists in a reduced form under new leadership, but Dr Grady gave his property to the Diocese of Knoxsville as a retreat centre and has since died. It is not for me to judge the OSJ, but something happened that shook me to the bone.

Dr Grady presented an elderly man for ordination, who seemed to be the hope of the priory at Benton. In the summer of 2003, I collated his file of papers with due care and asked for a background check, which came up clean. However, after his ordination, it turned out that he was credibly accused of impropriety with young boys, though he had no criminal record. How that ended up, I have no idea.

Dr Grady wanted to get the OSJ regularised by Rome. It was just not realistic, because irregular clergy are not regularised by Rome. Rome would not recognise an Order of St John alongside the Order of Malta. The project of getting in with an Indian diocesan bishop came to nothing. The numbers were too insignificant for that to happen. In late 2003, I resigned, for I was living in France and the OSJ was of interest only to Americans. It was a harrowing experience for a simple priest in episcopal orders who was available to be of help at a pastoral level. I also had the ordination of a priest who was under a very dark shadow on my conscience, even though I took the proper precautions (background check from the American authorities).

I spent two years reflecting on things, the very meaning of my vocation, still harassed by fanatics and those seeking easy ordinations. This was a world of lost and wandering souls, just as I was wandering (I was living in a fixed place, but I was Bishop of Nothing). I ordained a third priest in 2004, a young man from Lyon who had done a course of theology and had done some seminary. He remained in contact with me, and eventually joined the Greek Old Calendar Orthodox. Who was I to stop him? He was reordained, and I have no idea whether he is still with the Orthodox. In late 2004 I decided to cease any episcopal act or even to use the style or dress of a bishop. I reverted to being a simple priest and contemplated the future. And if I returned to Anglicanism in a continuing Church?

I began to contact the TAC in early 2005, mainly through Father Graeme Mitchell in Australia. We had had discussions about the liturgy by e-mail, and since I was living in no TAC diocese, it would be appropriate to apply to the Patrimony of the Primate, then under Archbishop Hepworth. I was received and licenced in the TAC on the feast of the Curé d’Ars 2005. That was the official end of my episcopate which brought me relief and blessing.

I had been asked to become a bishop by a small community, and it seemed right at the time. I was young and had no leadership skills, and I must have looked silly all decked out as a post-Tridentine bishop. I still have all the “tat”, but have not worn it since 2004. I tried the ring a few months ago, and it is a tight fit. I took it off again and put it back in its little box. With me, it just didn’t go to my head, and I kept a realistic view of the whole thing. I have known of other bishops who relinquished it one way or another, reverting to the simple priesthood or even reverting to lay life. In the end of the day, the “ecclesial context” – even the OSJ – was never sufficient to justify my being a bishop.

Throughout my time in the TAC, I remained a simple priest, and it has been the same thing since the débâcle of Archbishop Hepworth and my joining the ACC under Bishop Damien Mead. My experience confirms the constant teaching of the Church about her lofty expectations of bishops. A bishop is first and foremost a pastor of souls and his presbyterium in his diocese. The various things a bishop wears in the street, at the chancery office, at the cathedral, in choir, vested for Vespers and Mass, attending a synod of bishops are but symbols of his gift and office to teach, sanctify and govern the faithful. Was I doing that as Prelate of the Order of Saint John or in my little community at Montmorillon? I don’t think so.

What was more important than anything was to serve a Church, which I am now doing as a diocesan priest and member of the European Deanery of the ACC. My chaplaincy is described here. The internet is an instrument of ministry. For any question of “parish” work, I live in a country and region where people are devout Roman Catholics or nothing at all. France is in a poor state in terms of faith and religion. The Revolution ruined everything, as did the growth of the Catholic bourgeoisie in the time leading to the anti-clerical attacks against the Church in the 1900’s.

There are far too many independent bishops and men living in delusions and illusions. I am now one less of them whatever sacred character I may bear in my soul. Some of those characters like Roux or Cardinal Rutherford Johnson (I don’t like using inverted commas, because I will respect the way someone styles himself without any judgement of his legitimacy or lack thereof) commit the same stupidities as adventurers like Vilatte. However, within, I cringe for the sake of decent Catholic people and for the misled souls dressing up to the nines for no useful purpose. Some independent bishops are doing humanitarian work, like Archbishop Jerome Lloyd in Brighton, cooking good food for homeless people. He is almost atoning for the arrogance of others assuming the Episcopal Office. I have heard of some Old Roman Catholic bishops in America who have real churches, parishes and even a seminary. Goodonem! – as one of my sailing correspondents would say.

We cannot exactly judge a “true” bishop by whether he is in a mainstream Church like Rome or Canterbury, but we can ask if that bishop’s church is a true Church. A Church, in the Catholic meaning of the word, is not merely a community of people, but is also a sacramental manifestation of Christ through the Bishop and the Eucharist – celebrated by himself or a priest he licences for the purpose. A Church can be very small. All the characteristics of a Church, in which the Universal Church subsists, is found in a single diocese. However, there is a further dimension: the communion of bishops, typically in a synod under a Metropolitan Archbishop. These are characteristics that developed from about the second century (St Ignatius of Antioch) through the medieval era and held in common between the western and eastern Churches. What is important is the Church that chooses its clergy, or by kindness accepts “orphaned” clergy from elsewhere under certain conditions – and not a self-styling individual seeking to “found” a Church to justify his assumed status.

What if the ACC asked me to be a bishop? I would not like it one little bit, any more than Cardinal Ratzinger becoming Pope. I don’t have the aptitudes to lead, and that is essential in a bishop. Someone in that situation needs to balance his own distaste for becoming someone “important” and the needs of the Church. So far, so good, we have a really good Bishop in England, and that isn’t going to change any time soon! It is my honour to serve him as a priest.

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A Storm in a Teacup

Posted on Saturday, 21 July, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

My attention was drawn to an article in Fr Robert Hart’s blog – Convert Orthodoxy as Media Echo Chamber and the use made of it by You-Know-Who to portray Anglican / Anglo – Catholics as faux Catholics. I had brushes with Fr Hart in the old Hepworth days of the “Coeti-bus” and various other analogies of public transport from various players in the game. Since then, the Continuum shows little more than Fr Hart’s sermons, which of course are very good and edifying. Occasionally an article like this one emerges when we are reminded about the “two one-true churches”.

It is more an American problem than anything else. Our friend in California portrays his “faux” Catholics as hipsters, or people who follow certain fashions, who perhaps lack originality of thought, or who do not conform to his middle-class standards.

We Europeans are wont to quip about Americans lacking culture, but the same problem is here too. Europeans started being faux Americans a long time ago, and Americans remained on the whole quite religious. The USA is about the unique exception of the proportion between consumer capitalism and the extinction of religion, faith or spirituality. I suppose you get the same level of proselytism by Roman Catholic and Orthodox converts in cities like London. It happened to me and my fifteen years as a Roman Catholic were a curse (though there were some blessings). Europe still has that Cujus Rex ejus religio. You practice the religion you were born into, or none at all. Even New Age and the cults are out of fashion these days. Materialism and über-rationalism are still “in”.

Some people get so worked up about what other people are up to. People do many things that make me squirm like taking drugs and getting tattoos, or listening to infernal machine noises that some call “music” – but who am I to stop them. They and I belong to different worlds. They and I have different values and priorities.

One thing I suggest is more independence of spirit. Perhaps you have to be autistic to understand it. We don’t have to live and march in lockstep with other people. We can live our own lives whilst respecting the freedom and good of others. If religion is fashion or something to define our outward appearance, then it won’t do us much good.

My Baptist sister wrote to me a short while ago to contrast a “relationship with Jesus” and “religion” in its meaning as a code of observances and “works”. I don’t relate to that somewhat simplistic dualist distinction, but there is a point – the relationship with God and the Incarnate Word and our knowledge of God and ourselves. That certainly is the priority over outward observances and traditions. Christ laboured the point as he fustigated the Scribes and Pharisees. C.S. Lewis made a wonderful point as he came up with the idea of Mere Christianity – the core of beliefs and practices we all have in common.

It is insulting to call the Church I belong to faux because it is not in communion with the Pope and within the norms of their canon law. The word faux is the French word for false or fake or bogus. Used in English, it seems to mean the other French word pastiche or imitation, like a modern house built in an old style. It can be used in a very derogatory way, or it can be a good thing. The nineteenth century saw the building of some very fine neo-gothic churches in the wake of the Romantic movement. I see nothing wrong with appealing to the past for good ideas and a reference when we are lost and confused with modernity.

Whichever Church we belong to, I think is unkind and even cruel to disturb members of others communities to get them into our pews instead of theirs on the pretext of our boutique church being better than theirs. Again, institutional Christianity comes up against the same pierre d’achoppement as in the eighteenth century. It has had its day, unless we find what it was really about – which is not power / money structures. Proselytism and self-righteousness eventually lead to the Déesse Raison in the place of the statue of Our Lady and the guillotine in the town square, because when the salt loses its savour, it is fit only to be rejected and thrown away.

It is about the intrinsic value of each and every being of creation and its reconciliation with the Creator through inner knowing and love. Let us, each one of us, reconcile ourselves with ourselves, and thereby with God. Then perhaps there is some hope.

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Blue Flower Statistics

Posted on Thursday, 19 July, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

My site statistics page informs me that The Blue Flower has been uploaded 230 times since I published it on my static website As the Sun in its Orb.

The summer 2018 edition is available here free of charge for downloading.

Once summer is over, I intend to start planning the winter edition. All those interested in contributing something are welcome to contact me. I am inclined to write something on truth and theories of knowledge in the thought of the German Romantics, Novalis in particular. Patrick Sheridan (Russian Orthodox layman) has studied Tolkien in depth, and I think he wants to write something. I am concerned about the notion of truth in the search for a via media between fundamentalism in its different forms (but all claiming truth as their “property”) and post-modern scepticism. The more authors who sympathise with this theme and come forward, the better. There is no limit to size or number of articles, since these first issues are in pdf format.

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Hasta La Vista, Baby

Posted on Wednesday, 18 July, 2018 by Fr Anthony Chadwick

I find myself in the Spanish-speaking blogosphere.

I have never learned Spanish, but my knowledge of Italian gives me an idea of some of it – and I ran the text through Google translation to get something very vague. It was a help. I don’t know who runs Sursum Corda or what his “position” is. Perhaps he is Orthodox with a soft spot for western rites. They do exist in Spain and Latin America.

He mentions The Blue Flower without seemingly really understanding what it is about. I do have an interest in Radical Orthodoxy as one expression of neo-Platonism and at a distance from scholastic literalism, but it is just one current of thought among many others. We need to be open-minded so as not to be victims of fixed ideas that hold us prisoners rather than freeing us to seek the truth.

It’s not a bad or unkind article. I am grateful for that. I doubt that Latins would be inclined to leave comments, but we’ll see. Perhaps an old confrere at Gricigliano we called La Gran’ España. Olé!

The author of Sursum Corda is planning an article about Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục. I wrote this one three years ago, and the subject matter has been flogged to death by the Archbishop’s defenders and adversaries, mostly in the USA. The sedevacantist world has settled down quite well now, but has been very similar to continuing Anglicanism in the 1990’s with the same problem of mitre-fever and immature men in the Episcopate. I see the variations on the same constant theme of human foolishness. I am grateful to see things settling down and becoming more stable, both in my own Anglican camp and with those identifying as Roman Catholics in spite of their canonical rupture from Rome.

I attach more importance to ecclesial coherence than the exact form of the rites of ordination in the Pontifical and our Anglican Ordinal. I have no problem with the validity of Anglican Orders in spite of the Reformation and the radical changing of rites. The same thing happened in the Roman Catholic Church with the novus ordo ordination rites, and they still have a valid priesthood. We do well not be obsessed with these issues of validity, but rather to live as Christians and adjusted human beings.

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