Erastian Decrees

William Oddie is on particularly robust form today.  Having read Dr Oddie's latest article, the words of the late Gerald Ellison, formerly Anglican Bishop of Chester and London, come back to haunt not just Anglo-Catholics still in the Church of England, but also any Anglican who believes that the Church of England should have ability to decide its own positions. 

Now, whatever one's views on the ordination of women or indeed on any other of the topics on which General Synod likes to spend its time, and whether a Catholic, an Anglican or anything else, does anyone really think it is desirable that a religious body should have these things decided for it by politicians?  Would the most ardent Anglican proponent of the legislation to introduce women bishops want the Church of England's 30+ years of deliberations on the matter to be decided upon by a committee of politicians with, let us be fair, perhaps not the greatest understanding of theology?  Surely there is a difference between accepting a Church by Law Established and having one's theology dictated by the latest crop of politicians?

Isn't this a modern day Gorham judgment in the making?  In the post Lines in the Sand, we explained how state interference prompted Cardinal Manning to leave the Church of England for the Catholic Church, and we hinted at modern day political manoeuvrings to make sure that the Church of England decided the way that politicians wished it to decide.

It is an extraordinary co-incidence that we are talking about this issue on the eve of the 179th anniversary of John Keble's Assize Sermon, in which he protested about the then government's interference in the question of Anglican bishoprics in Ireland.  That sermon is usually cited as the beginning of the Oxford Movement, the movement in the Church of England that eventually gave rise to what we have historically referred to Anglo-Catholicism, and to a revived sense of the importance of the church (the Church of England) having control over what it said it believed, rather than the state decreeing what it believed.

In the interesting set of comments provided on our post Missing the Point (for which, dear readers, many thanks), we answered a point by motuproprio agreeing that the Trojan Horse that has led to the current situation was the Worship and Doctrine Measure 1974, which in fact sought to keep the Church of England's decisions for the Church of England.  In 1972, when still Anglican Bishop of Chester, Gerald Ellison summed up the General Synod debate on that legislation with the following words :

I think it will be generally agreed that the least qualified body to decide the doctrine of the Church of England is Parliament.

In 1974, by which time he had been translated to become the Anglican Bishop of London, he said to the February session of General Synod :

Before granting this freedom, Parliament is entitled to guarantees that the Church of England will not depart from its traditional doctrine and position.

No comment, other than to say that it shows how far things have come in 40 years.  The Church of England had to promise not to change itself, but now risks being forced to change further than even it seems to be able to agree clearly and formally that it wants.

Gerald Ellison ended his 1974 speech with these words :

It is for many of us a matter of principle that the Church is the guardian of the purity of the faith and its voice through its synods should be decisive.

How unfortunate that legislation intended to replace parliamentary "interference" ended up, mixing metaphors here, opening a Pandora's Box that would lead back to the exact same starting point.  If Dr Oddie's report is correct, then Gerald Ellison's good intentions have been squashed.  The Church of England's voice, through its synods, will not be allowed to be decisive if it doesn't decide what politicians want it to decide.  The parliamentarians are not, as seemed to be the concern in 1972, upbraiding the Church of England for departing from its traditional doctrine and position, but for quite the opposite: for trying, in however limited a way and with however limited support, to take into account theological arguments, and for trying to maintain the broad church approach in which the Church of England could try, however unsuccessfully, to be all things to all men, simultaneously holding all manner of mutually incompatible theologies in order to attempt to keep together a national church.

There is no attempt in our blogpost to argue for or against what the General Synod is debating.  That is another story, although one could certainly argue that the mind of the Church of England does seem to be relatively clear, and probably not entirely out of line with what parliament might perhaps force upon it.  No, our point is, like Dr Oddie's, that when your church has its decisions made for it on rather important matters by the state, then you really are in an Erastian environment.

As Dr Oddie said :

......an Erastian Church is ultimately a secular organisation, though one in which religion is permitted, so long as it doesn’t clash with the ethical principles which govern secular society.

How can one reconcile that with the Anglo-Catholic vision of old?  How can one reconcile that with the well-known and oft-repeated line of Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury shortly after the Second World war, that

The Church of England has no doctrine of its own, save that of the one Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church.

Celebrity cleric Giles Fraser has also been writing recently on this heated debate, but although his article contains one or two rather naughty throwaway lines that betray either ignorance or deliberate oversight,  what he says does seem to sum up relatively accurately what is perceived to be the mind of the Church of England, that women will be anglican bishops, end of story.  Like Dr Oddie, his conclusion is that those who do not like this must either adapt and accept, or leave.

But there is no way of unifying those who think women bishops are a theological impossibility and those who think they are a theological necessity. There is no bridge here to be built. In such cases the vast majority will has to prevail.

Dr Oddie says it like this:

Anglo-Catholics need to understand clearly that there is no longer a place for them in the Church of England; they are not wanted. They have, however, an alternative, in communion with the one true Church: the ordinariate has been erected precisely for them. If they will not become part of it, they will have simply to accept that they are members of a Church with women priests and women bishops and get used to it.

We referred above to the Church of England's old habit of attempting to hold everyone together, no matter the diversity and sometimes directly contradictory beliefs.  In this context, in a succinct and powerfully direct article in the London Evening Standard this week, Melanie McDonagh talked of the endless current CofE debate as follows:

The whole thing is preposterous, and not just for unbelievers who can’t quite get their heads around the notion that this is being debated at all. The point of the C of E is that it’s recklessly inclusive, a national church that seems incapable of turning anyone away. You can have ordained Anglican clergy who believe that God was made man and born of a virgin and those who can’t quite buy the Virgin Birth. You can have bishops who believe in the Resurrection and those who believe it is true in a very real sense, ie, not at all.

I would have said once that the only thing that actually unites the Anglican communion is a belief in God but that was before the Right Rev Richard Holloway came along, the former primus of the tiny Scottish Episcopal Church, who couldn’t make his mind up about it.

And with this extraordinary latitude on the things that actually count, the one thing they’re going to make a stand on is women bishops?

Well, preposterous it might be, but it is indeed the case that whereas the Church of England could for many years manage to hold utterly incompatible views on baptismal regeneration, and, as Melanie McDonagh says, on all manner of other pretty fundamental things, it seems that there will be a three-line whip imposed to ensure very clear acceptance of women bishops.  If the CofE itself fails to come to that conclusion, then it  appears that politicians (long known for their familiarity with scripture, tradition and, ahem, reason) will reach it for them.

As Dr Oddie rightly said:

The fact is that the Anglo-Catholics who are still determined to stay in the Church of England are in an impossible situation.

There are those among them who are attempting to call out to the old broad church nature of the Church of England.  The recent Better Together campaigns points to exactly that (although having the same name as the government's campaign against Scottish independence is unfortunate).  Well, if they really mean that, all well and good, but they should note that even those usually as poles apart as William Oddie and Giles Fraser agree that those staying will be better together in a Church of England that has willingly thrown off the understanding of Anglo-Catholicism that we at least have always held, and that sees the Gospel call to Unity as subservient not to theological understanding but to the rulings of politicians.

Dr Oddie says that they should no longer call themselves Anglo-Catholics.  Well, we take a very soft approach here on this blog, as you must all surely know, and we certainly accept that "Anglo-Catholic" has many different meanings.  We will not engage in that debate, much less will we cite Damian Thompson's very forthright and typically punchy summary of these matters towards the end of a recent blogpost covering a range of issues.

However, we would just mention to our former fellow Anglicans who wish to stay in the Church of England yet who are not in favour of the likely changes, that the Better Together campaign is producing some interesting reactions.  An admittedly non-scientific survey conducted by perusing Facebook comments indicates that at least some of those who might describe themselves as liberal Anglo-Catholics, perhaps members of Affirming Catholicism, view the Better Together campaign with confusion, or with suspicion, or with a perception (which may or may not be correct, we have no idea) that it is a form of olive branch, or said more cynically, a white flag.  For them, a movement which for so long proclaimed clearly its objectives and theology is now arguing a very different line.  What they perceive is that instead of seeking to tell the rest of the Church of England what it thinks is true, as it has long done, this movement now seeks a quiet corner in which to be one strand among the many.  You can understand why they are confused.

If Erastian practice is confirmed, then just how many such strands are allowed to exist will become a rather delicate point.

Clarifying the Clarifications

First of all, before moving to topic of this post, a word of congratulations to all the new deacons ordained for the Ordinariate this morning at Westminster Cathedral.  A photo of the new deacons, taken from the Ordinariate's Facebook page, is included below.  Oh yes, and it is indeed new Deacon John Hunwicke that you can see alongside his fellow new deacons in this photo.

Our post on the statement issued by the Church of England's House of Bishops earlier this week attracted a lot of readers, and some very interesting, informed and courteously made comments.  Do have a look if you haven't already done so, you can find it all here.

As a short postcript, we draw our readers' attention to a statement issued last night by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York.  You can find the full text here, but we set out below a few extracts and comments.

In summary, the clarificatory statement confirms the way we had understood the statement from the House of Bishops.   You see, there's proof for all you doubters about whether Anglican Patrimony exists, we are still capable of deciphering the dense language that emerges from Lambeth Palace and Church House.
 
In the comments on our article Missing the Point, we said that the clarification about what delegation meant and where the replacement bishop's episcopal status came from did not change anything, it was merely a statement of fact.  A helpful one, but still a clarification only, bringing about no change.  York and Canterbury said :

To take the simpler ...[amendment]...first: we decided to make no change to the provision in the Draft Measure by virtue of which the arrangements made by diocesan bishops under diocesan schemes for the exercise of ministry by a male bishop take effect, as a matter of law, by way of 'delegation. But we believed that it would help to spell out what is and isn't meant by the 'delegation' of the power to perform acts of episcopal ministry. Bishops are bishops because they are ordained in the name of the whole Church; but they are enabled to act as bishops in this or that particular area in virtue of various legal provisions. For those who are not diocesan bishops, this means that a diocesan gives them the legal authority to act as bishops - as pastors and teachers and people responsible for other ordained ministers.
'Delegation' describes the giving of that authority. It does not take anything away from the diocesan bishop who delegates; it just allows another bishop to minister legally in the diocesan's area of oversight. The amendment simply declares what the law and practice of the Church already is, and what we mean by delegation in other contexts.

So, the clarification of the clarification of the first proposed amendment is clear: nothing has changed (no disrespect intended, but isn't that a classic example of the typical Anglican model of governance).  There is no additional comfort provided to Anglo-Catholics, and there should be no implication of "taint" assumed by proponents of the ordination of women to the Anglican episcopate.
 
The clarification of second proposed amendment is also pretty clear.  A replacement bishop supplied by a diocesan bishop must be male and must share the views of the parish on the issue of the ordination of women.  There is no right for a parish to choose who the replacement bishop will be.  Therefore, despite the ongoing role (even if no longer in PEV status) of Ebbsfleet, Richborough and Beverly, a diocesan bishop need not call them in, but can call in a more establishment or mainstream figure, such as a nearby suffragan or retired anglican bishop (I don't mean to be rude there, it is no insult to anyone I hope, but I think what I mean is clear).

The earlier draft of the Measure already allowed parishes to request the diocesan to provide a male bishop to minister to them if their theological convictions were such as to make it impossible in conscience to receive a woman's ministry in this role. For this to operate effectively, a diocesan would obviously have to do what could be done to find a bishop who could work constructively with such a parish.

The amendment requires the Code of Practice which the bishops will draw up to offer guidance as to how this might be achieved. This was already something the bishops and the Synod would have been able to include in the Code. The change is that they will now have to include such guidance. It does not give parishes the right to 'choose their own bishop' or insist that their bishop has a particular set of beliefs. It allows them to ask for episcopal ministry, as spelled out in Clause 2 of the Measure, only on the grounds of theological conviction about women's ordained ministry. The precise wording in the Code remains something for the Bishops and Synod to determine but it attempts to take seriously the fact that, as has been clear all along, simply providing any male bishop would not do justice to the theological convictions lying behind requests from some parishes.

One can understand why Canterbury and York issued this clarification.  There had been a lot of comment, some of it very excited indeed.  I'm sure we have all read of the sadly infamous article commented upon at Let Nothing You Dismay.

As our comments on the Missing the Point blogpost suggested, we think that if for whatever reason, the legislation is not passed in the summer (without commenting on whether, from a personal perspective, any of us would wish that it should or should not be), then the negative fall out could be significant.  This will most especially be the case if the "pro" camp doesn't vote the legislation through.  The "pro" camp, the media and politicians will thereafter exert massive pressure on the new Archbishop of Canterbury to ensure the swiftest and clearest possible solution to what they will simplistically and erroneously - but successfully and convincingly - describe as a sacrifice by supporters of the ordination of women, made necessary by the bishops being too nice to meanie traditionalists. 

After all, who knows what the approach of the new Archbishop of Canterbury might be.  It seems unlikely that he will be as understanding as Rowan Williams has been.  The make up of the selection committee cannot, we suppose, offer much comfort to Anglo-Catholics. 

We have focused too much on developments in the CofE recently, even if given our history it is inevitable that we should.  One more mention then of the Ordination at Westminster Cathedral today, on which we will provide a report in a subsequent post.  Our prayers for all the candidates ordained deacon this morning.  Thanks be to Almighty God for sending so many good and holy men to serve in his Church.

H/T to the Once I Was a Clever Boy blog for this beautiful 15th century Catalan painting of the ordination of St Vincent to the diaconate by Bishop St Valerius.

A word also about the feast of St Philip Neri, Father of Oratorians.  His feast is being kept in the greatest style at the London Oratory today, led by HE Cardinal Burke.  We ask the prayers of St Philip Neri, and also offer our prayers, for that wonderful church, led of course by its new Provost, who like us is a former regular at St Mary's Bourne St, and with many former members of the Bourne St congregation in its pews.    Our fellow Catholics at the Oratory had the Theresienmesse as the setting of the Ordinary of their Solemn Pontifical Mass this morning.  Here is the Gloria, followed by a couple of photos taken by Eoghain Murphy of proceedings in Brompton this morning. 

Missing the Point

Some wonder if we are intruding when we, as individual members of the Ordinariate, reflect on what is going in the Church of England.  Some still in the CofE think that we should forget about all those beside whom we knelt at the CofE's altars, and give no thought to their situation.  Our response to that has always been that it is impossible for us to forget all that was good about our Anglican past (no-one in the Catholic Church has ever asked us to deny anything of our Anglican past), and of course no small part of that was those around us.  As such, we maintain a keen interest. 

Certainly, we rejoice in where we now find ourselves, but that does not mean that we blank out, in a Stalinist way, those who were around us week by week in the past.  A commenter on another blog recently highlighted that some Anglican parish websites, in cases where the previous incumbent left to join the Ordinariate, have adopted the approach of airbrushing him (and those who crossed the Tiber with him) out of their history.  That is not what we want to do.  Many of these people remain our friends, and even those whom we don't know have, in many ways, a shared past with us: how could we possibly not be interested?

Why the urge to comment today?  Well, because the Church of England's House of Bishops issued a press release last night, which in essence states that the Code of Practice that they intend to accompany the legislation to allow the appointment of women to the Anglican episcopacy will be amended only in a couple of minor ways before being presented to General Synod for approval in a few weeks from now.  One must certainly compliment the author of the press release on his or her lawyerly eloquence.  To cut it all down in the most bathetic of ways, in a simpler tone, the Code of Practice seems to say more or less the following.

If a parish situated in a diocese where the diocesan bishop is female petitions the diocesan bishop for alternative episcopal oversight, that diocesan bishop, respecting procedures drawn up in her diocese, will allow a male bishop (with similar theological views to the parish in question) to act on her behalf in that parish.  That male bishop, although no less an anglican bishop in his own right than she is in hers, would be acting on delegated authority only, and would in no sense replace the diocesan bishop or usurp her authority as diocesan bishop.  The CofE will commit to maintaining a supply of male bishops able and willing to act on this basis, and will not discriminate in ordination selection against those who are unable to accept in conscience the ordination of women to the anglican priesthood or episcopate.

A press release from WATCH expresses outrage that any amendments at all have been made to the previous version of the Code of Practice, but frankly the only change worth mentioning is that a replacement male bishop must hold views compatible with those of the parish seeking alternative oversight (the misguided previous versions talked only about a need to provide a male bishop, which erroneously implied that all opposition was down merely to outrageous sexism, and could be easily addressed by ensuring that the replacement were male).

I don't think anyone is genuinely surprised by the news from the CofE's House of Bishops.  No, this is was what was expected (and in some Anglo-Catholic quarters feared, because there is still absolutely no statutory provision), but it was also what the clear majority in General Synod and in Diocesan Synods up and down the country had voted for.  As a matter of fact, that is how the Church of England governs itself: one is free to agree or disagree with that as a system, but "theology by democratic vote" is the way things are now done in the CofE.  Something of a change from the words of Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1945-1961, often quoted by Anglo-Catholics thereafter as proof of the catholic nature of the CofE:

The Church of England has no doctrine of its own, save that of the one Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church.

It is precisely because the democratic position has been so clear that the tone of some of those in favour of the ordination of women to the anglican episcopacy has perhaps been, on occasion, less friendly than it might have been.  There has been an understandable sense of exasperation that after so many years of debate, when the majority will has been made clear, that discussions continue.

Yet, it seems to us that the whole debate is actually missing the point entirely.  The understandable heat that has built up on both sides is deflecting attention from a more fundamental question.  The massive disagreement is not really about the ordination of women, at least from an Anglo-Catholic perspective it shouldn't be, it is about authority and unity.

Once one see this, then suddenly a great ray of light dawns.

We need to move beyond the genuine emotion and well-thought through arguments on both sides of these debates and stop to reflect.  Where is the authority to decide? 

Blessed John Paul II didn't think he had the authority to make changes to introduce women to the priesthood of the Catholic Church.  Therefore, the objection from Anglo-Catholic quarters was historically that the CofE could not decide on this alone and thereby distance itself from the wider Church in both the East and the West.  I think I can speak for all the Marylebone group when I say that we have never been particularly worked up about the ordination of women or the other big debates of the day, per se.  They are not and have never been issues that obsess us.  What matters far more is whether any of us, individually or as an elected group in a General Synod, have the authority to change or redefine things. 

When you join the Ordinariate, you are not asked to say that if you had the chance to make up your own religion, according to what you felt would represent a popular view in your times of what was good, you would come up with something that was word for word identical to the Catechism.  You are not asked to state that there are no hard teachings in the Catechism. You are asked to say that you accept the Catholic Faith as presented in the Catechism.  You are asked to say that in Christian obedience you accept that the Church is, using the words of 1 Timothy 3.15, the "...pillar and bulwark of the truth...", and that therefore you accept the teachings of the Church.  Specifically, you are asked to declare your faith through the Creed, and to say:

I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.

You are asked to say nothing more than you have probably sung a hundred times even in your Anglican days, now of course appreciating more completely the meaning of this verse from the hymn (Firmly I believe and truly) drawn from Newman's Dream of Gerontius :

And I hold in veneration
For the love of Him alone
Holy Church as His creation
And her teachings as His own

This has sometimes been criticised as meaning that you must switch your brain off upon becoming a Catholic.  That just isn't so.  Blessed John Henry Newman explained this point in the Apologia:

From the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no further history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying this, I do not mean to say that my mind has been idle, or that I have given up thinking on theological subjects; but that I have had no variations to record, and have had no anxiety of heart whatever. I have been in perfect peace and contentment; I never have had one doubt. I was not conscious to myself, on my conversion, of any change, intellectual or moral, wrought in my mind. I was not conscious of firmer faith in the fundamental truths of Revelation, or of more self-command; I had not more fervour; but it was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to this day without interruption.

He had not changed, he was not a different person.  What had happened is that he found himself in a place where what the Church taught was the Truth, however convenient or inconvenient the Truth might be. 

The excellent Let Nothing You Dismay blog summed up this dichotomy between visions of what the Church is, indeed of what truth is, in a post earlier this week in which recent news from the Church in Wales is mentioned.  That the author should select the same extract of the First Letter of Timothy, highlighted in 1.8 of Lumen Gentium and in paragraph 27 of Veritatis Splendor proves that the same concern is shared on both sides of the Tiber.

Here we have it - Church as representative focus group of existing opinion or as the faithful teacher and guarantor of a revealed and authentic Christian tradition, "the pillar and bulwark of the truth?"  We all have to make a choice (personally, it would now seem) as to which 'model' we are theologically, philosophically, and ethically or morally willing or able to accept.

If your vision of the Church, and if your vision of truth, is concordant with a system where majority votes can cause significant changes that can make Unity far harder to achieve, then the General Synod is for you.  Vote by vote, five-year elected synod by five-year elected synod, things can be changed dramatically.  That's one approach. 

The other approach, being that there is a Truth to proclaim, is indeed set out in, amongst many other places, the two documents mentioned above, the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium and the Encyclical Veritatis Splendor (both are eminently readable and approachable, especially the latter).  Veritatis Splendor, although addressing a different and specific context, opens as follows, calling all to look to the truth in obedience, however hard or uncomfortable that truth might be. 

It thereby recognises the objectivity, indeed the splendour of truth, that when the Catholic faith teaches that certain things are true, it does so fearless as to whether that truth will be a hit or not.

Called to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, "the true light that enlightens everyone" (Jn 1:9), people become "light in the Lord" and "children of light" (Eph 5:8), and are made holy by "obedience to the truth" (1 Pet 1:22).

This obedience is not always easy. As a result of that mysterious original sin, committed at the prompting of Satan, the one who is "a liar and the father of lies" (Jn 8:44), man is constantly tempted to turn his gaze away from the living and true God in order to direct it towards idols (cf. 1 Thes 1:9), exchanging "the truth about God for a lie" (Rom 1:25). Man's capacity to know the truth is also darkened, and his will to submit to it is weakened. Thus, giving himself over to relativism and scepticism (cf. Jn 18:38), he goes off in search of an illusory freedom apart from truth itself.

If we want the faith of the apostles, as handed down over millenia, then we have the Catholic Church.  If we don't accept that, if we want an approach where we ourselves can define what the truth is, then there are other options available.  As stated on Let Nothing You Dismay, the choice is this "...(the) Church as representative focus group of existing opinion or as the faithful teacher and guarantor of a revealed and authentic Christian tradition"

That concept of truth does not limit itself to the tougher moral teachings of the Church, but it brings with it an overriding concept that there is an absolute truth.  If we want to change things, we need to be sure that we have both a very sound basis to do so, and the clear authority to do so.  The mere fact that something appears to be "right" to a group of people, even to a majority of people, does not make it right: the popularity of something does not require that we bring it into being regardless of whether or not we can find any authority in scripture or tradition to do so.

It is for this reason that we have the magisterium.  If you ignore the magisterium, making yourself and your peers the ultimate arbiters, then Catholic teaching says that you step away from the guidance that Christ has given us through His holy Church.  Blessed John Paul II said this in a lecture in November 1988:

....The Church's magisterium is among the means which Christ's redeeming love has provided to avoid this danger of error. In His name, it has a real teaching authority. Therefore, it cannot be said that the faithful have embarked on a diligent search for truth if they do not take into account what the magisterium teaches, or if, by putting it on the same level as any other source of knowledge, one makes oneself judge, or if in doubt, one follows one's own opinion or that of theologians, preferring it to the sure teaching of the magisterium....

.....One of the great experts of the human heart, St. Augustine, wrote: "Our freedom consists in our subjection to the truth."  Always seek the truth; venerate the truth discovered; obey the truth. There is no joy beyond this search, this veneration and obedience.....

....In this wonderful adventure of your spirit, the Church is not an obstacle to you: on the contrary, she is a help. By departing from the magisterium, you risk the vanity of error and the slavery of opinions: they are seemingly strong but, in reality, fragile because only the truth of the Lord remains forever.

There are of course those who do not accept the magisterium.  It is an entirely logical position for people who do not accept the magisterium to be in the Church of England: no-one suggests the contrary. 

However, for those outside full visible communion who claim to be in line with the Catholic faith, the big question is not really to do with the technicalities of what General Synod is doing.  No, the challenge is (more so after last night's press release than ever), if you say that you are following the Catholic faith, what do you mean by the Catholic faith, if not the faith defined by the Magisterium, held by the Catholic Church and set out in the Catechism, and requiring communion with the Successor of St Peter?  Anyone in that position should read the letter that we quoted in this recent blogpost.

Lines in the Sand

Another intrusion into the business of others: a few follow up remarks on the Church of England's General Synod-related blogpost we put up on Tuesday, given feedback received, and given developments in Synod since.

First of all, an apology that we didn't state clearly in that post something we have stated clearly in many other posts.  What we should have emphasised is that we fully understand that this is an extremely difficult time for faithful Anglo-Catholics left in the Church of England (and indeed the Church in Wales).  Many have adapted their Anglo-Catholicism to suit the times, but many have not, and this latter group now find themselves in a tremendously challenging situation.  Our blogpost gave rise to a very friendly and very gentle response on the always interesting Let Nothing You Dismay blog, through which we felt rightly reminded of the need to bear in mind the trials facing our Anglo-Catholic brethren, as all of us ultimately share the knowledge that, or are coming to the realisation that, the writing does indeed seem to be on the wall.

The second point we would like to make is a comment on a reaction to what happened yesterday in Synod.  The following statement, unattributed but supposedly from "the Traditionalists", quoted on the Guardian's website, is rather surprising.  So surprising, that, having been unable to find it elsewhere on the internet, I am genuinely unable to say whether it comes from Evangelical "Traditionalists" or Anglo-Catholic "Traditionalists".

We welcome the fact the general synod is open to the possibility of the House of Bishops amending the draft measure, and call upon the house to do so in a way that will provide properly for those unable in conscience to accept the oversight of women bishops. The archbishops' amendment is a long way from our original proposals for provision; what we are saying is that we are willing to work with it, or something like it, for the sake of the unity of the church.

This seems a very, very, very long way from "A Code of Practice will not do" for example, which was only a year or two ago a rallying call of many Anglo-Catholics.  Synod voted against there being any "substantial" change to what is already on the table.  Furthermore, the "unity of the church" being referred to seems clearly to be the unity of the Church of England.  As admirable a goal as that is, wider Christian Unity doesn't get a look in.

The reason the statement quoted above is so surprising is that for any Anglican who has given thought to becoming a Catholic, or to his/her place as an Anglican in the univeral Church, there has always been a line in the sand, or one or a number of straws that could break the proverbial camel's back.  Panglossian statements about the proposed legislation and code of practice make it very hard to know where a line in the sand might be these days, if there is one at all.

The line (or the straw) is different in every case of course, and since each individual Anglican begins from a different starting point and sees different kinds of changes in his/her own time and in his/her own province/diocese/parish, that is not in the least bit surprising.  At some point Anglicans who become Catholics decide that their beliefs mean that their home is in the Catholic Church, not in a branch of the Anglican Communion.  Sometimes, that process is initiated by something that the Catholic Church does (eg the Holy Father's call to Unity in response to requests from Anglicans, as expressed in Anglicanorum Coetibus) and sometimes that process is initiated by something happening in their own branch of the Anglican Communion.

Looking at the process emerging from General Synod yesterday, two great Anglican converts of the past come to mind, as do their "lines in the sand". 

Cardinal Manning, once the Anglican Archdeacon of Chichester, towards the end of his Anglican days came up against a change that was implemented by the state, and although he fought for a while to protect the Church of England from the consequences, eventually decided that he could not even begin to achieve what would be necessary.  The change in question was the fallout from the Gorham Judgment in March 1850, when the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council directed the Church of England to grant its ordination to a clergyman who did not believe in Baptismal Regeneration.  The House of Lords voted against transferring this decision to the Church of England's Convocation, and the matter was settled by the state.  This way of proceeding, following other less significant difficulties, did not match with Manning's then view, a view held dear by generations of Anglo-Catholics, some even to this day, that the Church of England was part of the one universal Church, even if in impaired communion.  Manning did not agree that the teachings of the Church should be changed by parliamentary command.

If by any chance the Church of England's General Synod rejects the legislation before it in the summer, and delays the introduction of women to its episcopacy, one can only shrink in horror at the consequences.  Canon Jane Hedges, a potential frontrunner to be one of the Church of England's first women bishops, was quoted in a Times interview in 2009 about the strong support in Parliament for there to be women bishops.  Frank Field MP has tabled an Early Day Motion urging the Church of England to "get on with it".  Everyone is clear that the Church of England has decided to, and will, ordain women to its episcopacy, the question is how exactly to deal with those who dissent from that majority view.  However, if the legislation falls over in July because of a failure to agree on how to provide for dissenters, then surely there is a significant risk that Manning's nightmare of the state intervening to make the Church of England "behave" will happen once again.

The other great Anglican convert who comes to mind now is Blessed John Henry Newman.  There were various things that brought him to his conclusion about joining the Catholic Church, but there are perhaps two that appear most relevant today : the Jerusalem Bishopric, and the comparison of Roman and Anglican "innovations".

The "beginning of the end" for Newman was the 1841 initiative of the Jerusalem Bishopric.  This was an extraordinary, and in its original form, ultimately doomed project in which the Church of England was to work with the Church of Prussia to set up a focal point in the Holy Land for pan-European Protestantism.  The Anglophile King Frederic William IV of Prussia was keen to introduce episcopacy into the state-run Church of Prussia, Lord Palmerston and Lord Shaftesbury agreed with the venture, and the Anglican hierarchy (including our old friend Bishop Blomfield of London, mentioned in this earlier post of ours) was happy to see its influence extending to the "less perfectly formed Protestant Churches of Europe" without interference from Rome.

Evangelicals in the Church of England were delighted, but those with what we might now call an Anglo-Catholic vision were not.  Newman in particular was horrified at the idea that the Church of England would be admitting adherents of the "heresies" of Lutheranism and Calvinism to communion with it.

Newman did not see Christian Unity in terms of reaching out to relatively like minded state churches.  He saw it as union with Rome: taking into account the teaching of the Catholic Church, not moving away from it.

As to counter-accusations that the Catholic Church had a long-established habit of introducing innovations itself, Newman had the following to say, and perhaps this May 1843 quotation speaks louder than ever today:

At present I fear, as far as I can analyze my own convictions, I consider the Roman Catholic Communion to be the Church of the Apostles, and that what grace is among us (which, through God's mercy, is not little) is extraordinary, and from the overflowings of His dispensation.  I am very far more sure that England is in schism, than that the Roman additions to the Primitive Creed may not be developments, arising out of a keen and vivid realizing of the Divine Depositum of Faith.

One final point.  Some of the reactions appearing online to what is going on (apart from those of a Panglossian nature) display hurt and astonishment at the process.  Though it is little consolation to say this, feeling ejected from what one has regarded as one's spiritual home is nothing new, as this passage from The Parting of Friends (Blessed John Henry Newman's final sermon as an Anglican) relates, full of quotations from Isaiah in referring to the Church of England as a mother:

.....thine own offspring, the fruit of thy womb, who love thee and would toil for thee, thou dost gaze upon with fear, as though a portent, or thou dost loathe as an offence;—at best thou dost but endure, as if they had no claim but on thy patience, self-possession, and vigilance, to be rid of them as easily as thou mayest. Thou makest them "stand all the day idle," as the very condition of thy bearing with them; or thou biddest them be gone, where they will be more welcome; or thou sellest them for nought to the stranger that passes by.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.  Still, don't be disheartened, reflect and pray, ponder all these things in your heart : there is at least one place where you "will be more welcome", if that is the route you eventually decide to choose, and until then, please be assured that those who have made that journey before you know exactly how hard it can be to take those first steps on the road.

Facing Facts

As its 2.30pm debate begins, it really would probably be safer and fairer to avoid any comment on this week's General Synod in the Church of England.  Having left the Church of England, the debate has no direct impact on members on members of the Marylebone Ordinariate Group, other than being a source of concern for those of our formerly fellow Anglo-Catholics who are very anxious at the moment.

However, it might nonetheless be topical and not too much of an intrusion to comment on one particular aspect of the debate.  Not the fundamentals, but the way in which the debate risks heating up unnecessarily.

There is much outrage about the seemingly unsympathetic attitude of some of the most notable proponents of the legislation to bring women to the Church of England's episcopate.  An article has appeared in The Telegraph, and the blogosphere is aflame (for example, see here, here and here).

It is true that some might have expressed themselves in more diplomatic language, for example the Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin has painted things rather starkly in this recent Telegraph article.  This section in particular has caused much upset :

The Church is desperately trying to hold everybody together, and we haven’t understood that this is not going to be possible. To try to do that is to put on a sticking plaster that is going to curl at the edge and fall apart. It cannot be sustainable. The whole thing is a mess. We need to say, as a Church, 'We ordain men and women.’ Full stop. All the way to the top. For those who feel that they can’t live with it? They’re adults. By all means, go to Rome. Join the Ordinariate. Don’t stay and make demands of the Church. It’s wrong.

However, if one scrapes away the veneer of the tone and looks at the underlying message, is the Revd Hudson-Wilkin really saying anything that unreasonable or unrealistic?  All she is saying is that the Church of England has made up its mind about ordaining women to its episcopate, and that those who don't like it will just have to accept it and act accordingly.  There is no magic solution that will be acceptable to everyone.  As to the tone, well, after 37 years of debate, surely we can all (including the Revd Hudson-Wilkin) be excused a little frustration.

Is what she says in the article really any different from the message that Dr Chartres, the Anglican Bishop of London, was giving to his clergy when he made it clear that he did not wish them to use the new translation of the Roman Rite?  In what remains our most read blogpost by some margin, we wrote the following :

The difficulty is not so much that the Bishop of London is strongly critical of any of his clergy adopting the new translation.  Rather, it is his argument for taking this approach.  In short, he says that Anglicanorum Coetibus has called bluffs : those who wanted to use texts issued by Rome that express communion with the Pope have headed off to the Ordinariate, those who remain should not be following instructions issued by the Pope to those in that other communion.  His conclusion is that if people in the Diocese of London use the new translation, they are rejecting the instructions of both the Catholic Church and those of the Diocese of London.

The messages sound strikingly similar, and in fact are rather simple : this is what is happening, this is what the Church of England has decided, and if that's not you, then you need to look elsewhere for something that is. 

While instinctively and historically we have enormous sympathy with the comments of the Revd Ross Northing on a current post in the blog of the famous Anglican Bishop of Buckingham (Dr Wilson's tone is far more brutal and strident than the Revd Hudson-Wilkin's, especially in his responses to comments on his blog), despite coming at things from a different perspective of course, it is hard to disagree with the comments made by Erika Baker on the same post.

I still don't understand why those who are deliberately members of the CoE suddenly claim that it isn't the church ...... when they don't like its decisions. Yes, there are those who believe that the CoE doesn't have the power to make this decision.  But the CoE disagrees and it has made that decision and it has had women as priests for a long long time now.

We can do little more than refer once again to Geoffrey Kirk's excellent recent article in New Directions, and to a recent blogpost written by Fr Ed Tomlinson.  Links to both of these can be found in the second half of this recent blogpost of ours.

The reality is, and there is no point in debating the rights and wrongs of how we got here, that the Church of England has made certain decisions.  People can either live with them or they can't.  The levels of frustration, and sadly animosity, increase on both sides when there is an inability or an unwillingness to see the new reality.  As Mark Twain never said, Denial Ain't Just a River in Egypt.

Enough intrusion.  For those in the Church of England who might join the Ordinariate, perhaps the next few days and indeed months will be an important step in that process.  Decision making can be difficult, and has always been able to be so (see this article on how it agonised Dr Eric Mascall): all we can do is assure you that we do not regret our decision for so much as one second.

For those in the Church of England who do not feel comfortable with the idea of joining the Catholic Church yet are unhappy with the likely changes, we hope very much that you find a way to respect and cherish the Anglo-Catholic heritage that has formed you.