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.

Cardinal Wiseman, Anniversaries and Vintage Pathé Film

It seems to be the season for anniversaries and occasions of note.  A little over a month ago, we marked the first "birthday" of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, and within the last week we have seen the birth of the second Ordinariate being formed under the provisions of Anglicanorum Coetibus, the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter.  Earlier this week, the one hundredth post appeared in this blog.  Today, we mark the death in 1865 of Cardinal Wiseman, the first Archbishop of Westminster.

Cardinal Wiseman is someone that Ordinariate members should probably study more.  His visits from Rome to England in 1835 and 1836 caused great interest among the Oxford Movement, not least for Dr Pusey and Blessed John Henry Newman.  In 1836 he was one of the co-founders of the Dublin Review, which was in fact published in London, and which published articles of interest on Catholicism not only for Catholics with an interest in such academic study, but also with a view to being a window on the Catholic world for interested non-Catholics. 

In the time he spent as a Co-Adjutor Bishop for the Central Area of England, and as President of Oscott College, he was central to the provision of support (not least material support) being provided by the Catholic Church to incoming Anglican clergy.  He maintained a lifelong enthusiasm for what some call the "zeal of the convert" and what others might more kindly call the excitedness of new Catholics, even when some of his fellow "cradle Catholics" were less pronounced in their delight at the phenomenon.  Cardinal Wiseman was also an ally of the ex-Anglican who was to become his successor as Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Manning (whom we mentioned recently here).

Cardinal Wiseman would have been rather amused at the Pope parks his tanks on the lawn-type fuss that greeted the announcement of Anglicanorum Coetibus.  In the summer of 1850, he was summoned to Rome, and following Pope Pius IX's announcement in Universalis Ecclesiae (29 September that year) of the re-establishment of the English hierarchy, Wiseman was elevated to Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of the Southwark (the first Bishop of Southwark was the man who later became Cardinal Bourne, and the first Archbishop of Southwark was the famous Archbishop Amigo**).  Wiseman followed this by speaking very grandly of the "restoration of Catholic England to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament" in a letter entitled "Out of the Flaminian Gate".  You can find the whole text here, but here is a little taster to give you some idea.

The great work, then, is complete; what you have long desired and prayed for is granted. Your beloved country has received a place among the fair Churches, which, normally constituted, form the splendid aggregate of Catholic Communion; Catholic England has been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament, from which its light had long vanished, and begins now anew its course of regularly adjusted action round the centre of unity, the source of jurisdiction, of light and vigour....

.....then truly is this day to us a day of joy and exaltation of spirit, the crowning day of long hopes, and the opening day of bright prospects. How must the saints of our country, whether Roman or British, Saxon or Norman, look down from their seats of bliss, with beaming glance, upon this new evidence of the faith and Church which led them to glory, sympathising with those who have faithfully adhered to them through centuries of ill repute for the truth’s sake, and now reap the fruit of their patience and long suffering. And all those blessed martyrs of these latter ages, who have fought the battles of the faith under such discouragement, who mourned, more than over their own fetters or their own pain, over the desolate ways of their own Sion, and the departure of England’s religious glory; oh! how must they bless God, who hath again visited his people,--how take part in our joy, as they see the lamp of the temple again enkindled and rebrightening, as they behold the silver links of that chain which has connected their country with the see of Peter in its vicarial government changed into burnished gold; not stronger nor more closely knit, but more beautifully wrought and more brightly arrayed.

The tone upset some, of course, but not as much as the mere fact of the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy upset some of the Protestant establishment.  There were a number of violent street protests (including smashing windows of Catholic churches), and a good few "No Popery" processions, but the new Cardinal did much to defuse the situation.  He issued a public letter in which he described the re-establishment of the hierarchy as merely a necessary practical measure for the Catholic faithful, and answered those who mocked him for "claiming jurisdiction" over Westminster by arguing that his real business was with the poor of the areas for which he was responsible.  The government of the day followed up by passing a law in 1851 forbidding, on pain of imprisonment and fines, any Catholic diocese in England or Ireland taking the same name as an Anglican diocese (the law seemed unnecessary, as the Catholic hierarchy had already respected this practice, and was repealed a mere 20 years later). 

The times are very different of course, but those who worried that the Ordinariate existed in order to "poach" happy Anglicans were as wrong as those who thought that Cardinal Wiseman planned to invade Westminster with the Papal Army in order to seize territory.

Cardinal Wiseman died on 16 February 1865, and a great procession followed his coffin from St Mary Moorfields all the way to Kensal Green.  His remains were at last transferred to the newly built Westminster Cathedral in 1907, where they still lie in the crypt, under a gothic tomb showing the Cardinal in full pontificalia.

Perhaps the Ordinariate should sing one of Cardinal Wiseman's own hymns more often, sung to a tune named after him. We mean, of course, Full in the Panting Heart of Rome.  His understanding towards those joining the Catholic Church from Anglicanism, and his knowledge of working in a time where the growth of Catholicism was treated with great suspicion, mark him out as one of those in the history of the Church in England who have shown the greatest of affinities with incoming ex-Anglicans.



Readers of this blog may have noticed a weakness on our part for vintage film.  That being the case, talk of anniversaries, of the re-establishment of the hierarchy and of Westminster Cathedral (a visit to which is described here) lead inevitably to some stunning Pathé footage of the 1950 celebrations marking the hundredth anniversary of the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England.

At the end of a week of celebrations, with several Masses on a grand scale, a garden party and various functions, on Sunday 1 October 1950, cardinals (including the famous Cardinal Spellman of New York, as well as cardinals from Toronto, Malines, Lyons, Berlin and Cologne), archbishops and bishops gathered from around the country and the world to mark this great occasion. 

In the afternoon, a great pageant of English Catholic history was held at Wembley Stadium, in front of a crowd of around 100,000, followed by a High Mass (shame on you who thought outdoor masses are a new and modern-rite-only phenomenon).  The crowd was at times very loud, as for example during the singing of Faith of our Fathers, Full in the Panting Heart of Rome and in the Latin of the Credo, but their total silence at the Elevation, during Communion and as they listened to a recorded address from Pope Pius XII struck those who reported on the event.  The mass was sung by the Archbishop of Birmingham, in the presence of the Papal Legate to the Centenary Celebrations, Cardinal Griffin, Archbishop of Westminster.

That same morning, there had been also the very grandest of Solemn High Masses at Westminster Cathedral, in the presence of six cardinals and seventy archbishops and bishops.  The film you can watch below will provide handy hints for future Ordinariate celebrations, if MCs ever have to find themselves managing the manoeuvring of multiple cappae magnae in procession, or placing the Gentlemen in Spanish Court Dress and the Cathedral Canons around the Throne, or wondering which direction an Archbishop as Apostolic Delegate (in the pictures it is the then Archbishop William Godrey, himself later to become Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster) sitting at the faldstool during a Solemn Pontifical High Mass should face during the genuflection at Et Incarnatus.  The preacher (according to this from the Catholic Herald) was Monsignor Ronald Knox (who was, as every Ordinariate member knows, a former Anglican clergyman).  I have stuck with the Catholic Herald's version of events, but various reports you can find on the internet provide conflicting accounts of who did what at the grand Sunday Mass: I suspect the confusion is because there was a whole series of barely less grand High Masses that week, celebrated by visiting cardinals as well as by Cardinal Griffin

The film, from the Pathé website, is very much worth watching, even if some of it appears to be in the wrong order. 




If clicking on the image above does not work, click here to watch the first film, describing the day's events.



If clicking on the image above does not work, click here to watch the second film, which contains some spectacular footage of of the Solemn High Mass at Westminster Cathedral.



If clicking on the image above doesn't start the film, then click here to watch footage from the Wembley ceremonies that afternoon.

**  Please note the welcome correction (to be found in the comments on this post) about the history of the Southwark bishops from Fr Sean Finnegan, Pastor in Valle, author of the excellent Valle Adurni blog, to which a permanent link is provided in the sidebar on the right hand side of this blog.

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.