Sydney, gender and submission (ii)

"The Bible's word".  This is how The Briefing defended Sydney's proposed marriage rite.  The Sydney Morning Herald quoted one of Sydney's assistant bishops:

The panel chairman, the Bishop of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth, said ''submit'' was a deeply biblical word.

And so it is decided.  Ephesians 5:22 says it.  But is this how Scripture authoritatively interacts with and shapes the Church's life and doctrine? 

No, it's not.  "The Father is greater than I" was a text beloved of Arians and Semi-Arians.  The Church - as "a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ" (Article XX) - recognised that this text had to be read within the wider Christological narrative contained in Scripture.  Outside of this narrative, it was possible to read John 14:28 in a deeply misleading fashion.  And thus homousion - which, the Arians never ceased pointing out, is not a Biblical term - became a cornerstone of orthodoxy. 

So what then of Ephesians 5:22?  As Craig Uffman has stated in an excellent article on the Covenant site:

The subject of [the Apostle's] letter is not the hierarchical relationship between a man and woman in marriage. His subject is the Church — his letter is about how to be the Church. Here let me add an aside: this text has historically been among the most important biblical sources in our reflections on how we are to be the Church: for example, the recent reflections by the Anglican Communion called the Windsor Report — on how to be the Church — relied heavily on Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. For Paul’s subject is just that — how are we the Church we are called to be?

In the same way that John 14:28 does not seek to address the eternal relationship between the Father and the Son, so the intention of Ephesians 5 is not primarily to address marriage: it is about ecclesiology. 

For the Apostle the Church's life is to be shaped by that 'mutual submission', which he demonstrates in his reordering of 1st century AD Graeco-Roman social relations: husbands and wives, fathers and children, masters and slaves, are to "be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ".  This mutual submission, as Bryden Black states in a comment on the reflections by Anglican Down Under on the Sydney rite, reflects the inner life of the Holy Trinity:

One of the beautiful features of von Balthasar’s Trinitarian theology is his insistence on a form of kenoticism through and through for each and every Person ... This “mutual submission” is then explicated via three sets of key 1st C social relationships ... this thread and the later one re “submittedness” highlight what happens when a fuller, richer biblical scope is not permitted.

Black's call for a "fuller, richer biblical scope" goes to the heart of the weakness of the theological case for Sydney's proposed marriage rite.  It suggests something of the weakness of the prevalent theological approach in Sydney: "the Bible's word".  Put simply, this is not how catholic and evangelical theology is done.

That Anglicanism is called to reflect on the nature - the sacramentality - of marriage is obvious, not least amidst the doctrinal confusion so evident in some Anglican contributions to the same-sex marriage debate, in which the significance of gender in creation and redemption is rejected.  Sydney's willingness to articulate a sacramental understanding of marriage (admittedly not a phrase Sydney would employ!) in contrast to secular narratives, is to be welcomed.  The failure, however, to ground this in an appropriate reading of Scripture and an authentically Trinitarian theology has resulted in a proposed marriage rite and an accompanying theological rationale which fails to articulate an authentically catholic and evangelical vision.

Sydney, gender and submission (i)

Anglican Down Under has drawn attention to the latest reflections on gender emanating from the Diocese of Sydney.  A proposed marriage rite for the diocese includes the following question addressed to the bride:

Will you honour and submit to him, as the church submits to Christ?

Needless to say, many in Sydney have been robust in defending the proposed rite and its theology.  The Sydney Morning Herald carried a column arguing that the rite was indicative of a "deep strain of misogyny" in Sydney Anglicanism.  An article in The Briefing responded:

As Christians we should not worry too much what the SMH or society in general says on these things.

Another contribution in The Briefing killed off any possible 'mutual submission' defence of the proposed marriage rite:

We should avoid using the slogan entirely. It’s lazy, and it’s a bad way to read the Bible.

In an opinion piece in the SMH, Archbishop Jensen sought to place the revised rite in the context of an alternative to the "libertarian and individualistic philosophy" (and, yes, the Church is called to challenge this philosophy).  However, one line stands out with reference to his defence of "submit":

This is not an invitation to bossiness, let alone abuse.

It is difficult not ask that, if this defence has to be made of the proposed rite, should Sydney not be asking itself some hard questions? 

The situation is not helped by a discussion paper published by a body related to Moore Theological College.  Julia Baird of the SMH quoted from it:

Listed on its website, among teaching resources, is a paper titled "Christian women and leadership", which asks: "If we accept that the Bible teaches male headship, then should Christian women accept positions in the corporate workplace where they will be leading men?" The billion (or 80 cents in the) dollar question.

The author, Caroline Spencer, concedes this might be an "irksome question to raise in our post-feminist, industrial world" - you think? - and stresses that this is not about assessing the capabilities or value of women. Just their position.

The answer she gives is that women can be promoted above men, but only if they do not start acting like men, "because, while male headship might not be extended into the corporate workplace, it should still be respected. Male headship is part of God's good ordering for all society - not just his church."

The Briefing responded by declaring that "the views of Caroline Spencer ... about how women might conduct themselves in leadership in the workplace are not the views of the diocese nor of Moore College".  Imagine, however, an institute related to an Anglo-Catholic seminary published a paper stating that the BVM is co-redemptrix.  Or a liberal TEC seminary publishes a paper suggesting that marriage equality should embrace partnerships of three people not merely two.  Would Sydney and Moore dismiss the paper as 'not the official views' of the relevant body?  Or, rather, would they interpret the paper as evidence of a theological style and method?

If a key dimension of the new evangelisation is the Church's engagement with contemporary culture, one really does have to wonder about Sydney's abrasive approach to issues of gender.  Speaking into postmodernity's confusions over gender matters is part of the Church's mission: but the Church will seek to undertake this in a manner which does not give credence to the popularly held view that the Church is a patriarchial institution.  The response from secular society was therefore entirely predictable and now the Archbishop of Sydney is required to put in print his view that the diocese's proposed marriage rite "is not an invitation to bossiness, let alone abuse". 

Catholicity and covenant will return to the theological issues behind Sydney's proposed marriage rite, but it is profoundly difficult to see how the Church's mission and witness is aided by Sydney's stance.  What is more, there is an anomaly worth reflecting upon.  One of The Briefing articles notes:

By the way, anyone who comes to an Anglican church is still offered the choice of completely symmetrical vows if they prefer.

++Jensen also mentions this in his article:

Both kinds of promise are provided for in the Sydney Anglican diocese's proposed Prayer Book.

This suggests that the "submit" question in the proposed rite is not a first order matter of faith: if it was, it would not be a mere option.  If this is not a first order matter of faith, should Sydney have allowed it to become a matter of confrontation that does not serve the Church's mission and witness?

"You will be changed into me"

You will not change me into you like the food your flesh eats, but you will be changed into me.

Confessions VII. x 16 - the Eternal Word addresses Augustine "in the region of dissimilarity".

"I believe you have already done what I am asking of you"

Today the Common Worship calendar commemorates St Monica.  Augustine's reflection on Monica's dying wish - "remember me at the altar of the Lord" - is one of the most beautiful patristic reflections on prayer for the faithful departed.  Here we see why the Church commemorates and prays for the faithful departed at the Eucharist.  We are bound together in Love with them, together utterly dependent on the Love set forth in the sacrament of redemption:

I now petition you for my mother's sins.  'Hear me' through the remedy for our wounds who hung upon the wood and sits at your right hand to intercede for us ... Now please forgive her her debts if she contracted any during the many years that passed after she received the water of salvation.. Forgive, Lord, forgive, I beseech you.  'Enter not into judgement' with her.  Let mercy triumph over justice ... I believe you have already done what I am asking of you; but 'approve the desires of my mouth, Lord' ... She desired only that she might be remembered at your altar which she attended every day without fail, where she knew that what is distributed is the holy victim who 'abolished the account of debts which was reckoned against us ... By the chain of faith your handmaid bound her soul to the sacrament of our redemption.  Let no one tear her from your protection.  Let not the lion and dragon intrude themselves either by force or by subtle tricks.  For she will not reply that she has no debts to pay, lest she be refuted and captured by the clever Accuser.  Her answer will be that her debts have been forgiven by him to whom no one can repay the price which he, who owed nothing, paid on our behalf.

Confessions IX. xiii 35-36.

Restoring the lost beauty

Crunchy con Rod Dreher draws attention to a New Yorker article by Jonathan Chait which argues that political conservatism in the States is losing an increasing number of debates because of its lack of "cultural power".  Dreher goes on to quote from the Imaginative Conservative:

Who is today the paradigmatic conservative intellectual, the kind of individual to whom educated and reading conservatives look for authoritative judgments and to whom they ultimately defer? He seems to be a cross between an intellectual and a political activist, less a thinker concerned with the fundamental and enduring questions of life than a “policy wonk,” less a learned scholar than a media pundit. Although possibly bright and articulate, this type cannot long be distracted from his absorbing interest: politics and politics-related questions and schemes. He seems untouched by philosophical depth or by any deeper aesthetical need or sensibility.

Now, drawing a comparison between the challenges facing the Church and her proclamation in the public square and the challenges experienced by political conservatism is an exercise fraught with danger.  The Church's proclamation and a conservative political agenda are most definitely not the same thing.  Political conservatism seeks power in the polity, while the Church cannot be shaped by the dynamics of political activity if she is to be faithful to her vocation. 

The issue raised by Dreher and the articles he quotes, however, does have relevance for the Church.  Dreher ends by stating:

Conservatives should be a countercultural presence offering a compelling rival to the moral and aesthetic vision that dominates the American public square.

This is precisely what the Church should be living and sharing - an alternative "to the moral and aesthetic vision that dominates the ... public square".  How is the Church sharing its aesthetic vision?  Anglicanism, alongside the other churches, has a rich patrimony of music, poetry, art, and literature on which to draw.  But the patrimony requires constant renewal.  It needs new music, poetry, art and literature. 

And it needs ongoing reflection on the aesthetic.  ++Rowan has, of course, exemplified such reflection in, for example, his work in Dostoevsky, his own poetry and commentary on poetry, and his recent exploration of Lewis. It might be suggested that - alongside his engagement with the New Atheism - this will prove to be the most enduring aspect of ++Rowan's teaching while at Canterbury.

But how does Anglicanism carry this forward after ++Rowan?  It is not, of course, a question that is at the centre of Anglicanism's current debates.  Potentially, however, it is of greater significance to the Church's future witness and mission.  As Alison Milbank has stated of "an apologetics of the imagination", it enables "non-believers to understand that Christianity is not narrow but a vision ... restoring the lost beauty of the world".

Under the sign of the Fathers

Every time, in the West, that Christian renewal has flourished, in the order of thought as in that of life ... it has flourished under the sign of the Fathers.

Henri de Lubac quoted in David Grumett's De Lubac: A Guide for the Perplexed.

Listening to Milbank: where does Anglicanism fit in?

This John Milbank lecture, delivered in Moscow earlier this year to an Orthodox audience, implicitly poses some important questions for Anglicanism.  He begins to by setting the cultural and societal context for theology.  The 'progressive' mode - shaped by 20th century liberal Protestant German theology - is, suggests Milbank, fundamentally stuck in the 1960s, failing to addressing a very changed context in which the relationship between state, market, society and church has radically altered.

A much more fruitful mode of theology, says Milbank, comes via creedal orthodoxy, nouvelle theologie and re-engagement with the Greek Patristic tradition, opening up the potential of a Church ironically better able to speak into a secular culture from the perspective of analogy, gift, beauty and imagination.

Towards the end of the lecture, Milbank interestingly notes the significance of the sacramentality of marriage to the Church's self-understanding.  Notice also his reference to the importance of the exercise of the imagination by artists and literary figures in grasping the glory of Incarnation and Redemption.

Milbank is almost certainly the most influential and interesting theologian in the contemporary English-speaking world - and he's an Anglican.  Anglicans should, then, be listening carefully to his insights and reflections.  So what does the broad-sweep of theological trends given by Milbank in this lecture mean for Anglicanism?  What does it mean that a significant portion of North Atlantic Anglicanism is still shaped by the passing paradigm of liberal Protestantism?  What should be the theological focus for those seeking evangelical and catholic renewal within Anglicanism?  And how can we as a Communion build on a school of theological renewal - Radical Orthodoxy - that offers much in service of the Church's mission and proclamation?

Culture wars, judgment and forgiveness

The relationship between Patriarch, Putin and Pussy Riot was always going to look distinctly 'other' to those of us in the West - whether we are Christians or secular.  As Tim Kelleher has stated in a posting at First Things, "whereas developments in the West led to separation of church and state as the default position of the contemporary polis, the East has traveled a different path". 

Leaving aside, however, the differences between the historical experiences of Western Christianity and Orthodoxy, Kelleher makes a key point that applies to the Church amidst the culture wars in the polities of the secular West:

The Church is called to be the Church—royal, priestly and prophetic—dwelling in graced tension with any and every temporal institution. To my knowledge, the Church has never viewed itself as a fortress in need of protecting. Rather, especially in the East, it is the image of the hospital—a place of forgiveness and healing—that is prescriptive.

The satisfaction of humbling one’s opponents is no match for the evangelical power of forgiving them. Thus, Patriarch Kirill’s demand for severity seems to strengthen the perception given voice by Pussy Riot, that the Church is able, willing, and eager to supply spiritual muscle in the cause of eliminating opposition to Mr. Putin. In so doing, it only helps enlarge popular acceptance of the most negative stereotypes of Christianity in general, and Orthodoxy in particular.

Becoming merely another political actor, shaped by the dynamics of political partisanship, is perhaps amongst the foremost temptation facing the Church amidst the culture wars.  As O'Donovan states in The Ways of Judgment, the implications of the Church so conforming to the polities of this world are dramatic:

It is the decisive test of a political theology, whether and how clearly it can articulate this counter-political moment in the New Testament proclamation of the cross, with its moral implication: "Judge not, that you be not judged!" ...

[The Church] is the bearer of a discourse that defers judgment, seeking further reflection and a discourse "between the times" in the moment of God's patience.  This discourse is its life, both as an announcement and as a lived display.

Both Kelleher and O'Donovan remind us that in the public square, in its political theology, the Church is called to be conformed to the Crucified One.  The assertion of power, the desire for victory and for the defeat of opponents is a denial of the cross - and, ironically, deprives the Church of its authentic dunamis.  To again quote O'Donovan:

The cross challengs the aesthetic basis of representative rules and authorities.  The ugliest of sights, the humiliated and tortured figure with "no form or comeliness", has, in a decisive reversal of visual-aesthetic value, become the subject of profoundest attraction.

The Church is not called to be a combatant in the culture wars.  Hers is the very different vocation to be conformed to the cross in the public square - before powers and rulers, before those who insult, reject and deny her proclamation.

Communities of the Word: monasticism and renewal

In a comment on a recent catholicity and covenant posting, Father Jonathan/The Conciliar Anglican suggested that "a renewed monasticism" would be an important gift from catholic Anglicans to the rest of the Communion.  Today's commemoration of St Bernard of Clairvaux emphasises the significance of monastic communities to the renewal of the Church.  ++Rowan's lecture at San Gregorio Magno al Celio articulated this significance:

What would a church life look like that saw itself as shaped primarily by the Word in such a way that the relation to God’s call was the single determining factor in holding a community together? It is possible to read the history of monasticism as a continuing wrestling with this question. The monastic community did not depend on race, family, natural affinity ...

To be a community of the Word, then, is to be assembled by the authority of Christ’s call and, in response, to speak Christ’s own language. This is what is utterly new and distinct about the Church, and in this sense monasticism is a reminder of the Church’s newness, its perpetual recovery of what makes it different from any other human gathering ...

And the willingness to undertake such self-critical reform is one of the reasons for the wider Church to celebrate the monastic life and to learn from it. Christian communions can become wedded to nation, class and family (either literally, or in the shape of a comfortable middle-class attitude to ‘family values’); they need to be recalled to the truth that it is the Word—the free outpouring of God the Father in the eternal reality of God the Son—that creates the Church: creatura verbi, in the old terminology. We are sisters and brothers in the Church not because we naturally and instinctively belong together, agree, or speak the same language; but because we are summoned to be together in our strangeness to each other, and to be faithful to each other in that strangeness ...

The monastic community models the Christian life as one in which the ultimate determining agency is the Word of God. Decisively, what makes the Church the Church is not any kind of contingent affinity or planned strategy of alliance but the single fact of the Word, heard in worship and echoed in worship (in a very particular sense in the psalms understood as the prayer of Christ, our language being taken up into his). Since the Church always needs signs and reminders of its nature when it is tempted to slip into the tribalism of race or class or ‘agenda’, the dependence of the monastic community simply on the Word is a gift to the Church’s self-critical energy.

It is difficult to think of a more persuasive case as to why catholic Anglicans should be putting considerable prayer, thought and resources into exploring how new monastic communities can be encouraged to take root and flourish.  In addition to the traditional monastic community, this might look like the Benedictine companions at St Paul's DC.  Or like the 'Benedictine parish' model in St Paul's, Riverside, Illinois (and see The Benedictine Parish from Akenside Press on this).  Or it might be the forms of 'new monasticism' associated with Fresh Expressions.  The vocation of such communities is to recall the entire Church to her identity as creatura verbi - an identity all too easily obscured amidst ecclesial culture wars, ideological obsessions and politicised ecclesiology. 

Again, this suggests that the future for catholic Anglicans - after decades of intense involvement in Anglicanism's civil wars - is a quite different approach.  Synods, conventions, protests, petitions: they have not renewed the Church.  Far from it.  But creating a space for the emergence of monastic communities (traditional or the 'new monasticism'), encouraging and fostering vocations to these communities, availing of the space they offer to be shaped by the Word and prayer, this points to a considerably more important and enduring means of renewing the witness and mission of Anglicanism within the Church catholic.

On how to do theology for the Church

From an interview with Hauerwas in John Wright's Postliberal Theology and the Church Catholic, two short but beautiful comments suggestive of how Anglicans should be reading the Fathers and other teachers of the faith:

These were not historical theologians that we read about, but that we learned from.  They were our friends, who we learned how to think with.

---

It's one thing to read Aquinas; it's another thing to pray with someone who reads Aquinas.

"Satisfied touching the mercy of God": sacramental confession and Anglican-Roman approaches

This week's Tablet (the main RC publication in the UK) has a fascinating story on contemporary English RC attitudes towards Confession.  John Cornwell writes:

The impression that the faithful have abandoned confession – the Sacrament of Reconciliation – throughout the world is overwhelming.

Researching a book on confession these past two years, I have found it difficult to ascertain reliable figures. Questionnaires on religious practice in the UK and Europe no longer even itemise the rate of attendance. In the United States, the 2008 census by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (Cara), revealed that only 2 per cent of Catholics confess regularly. Anecdotal evidence for Ireland and the UK suggests a massive decline since the 1960s, and yet a mixed current picture is emerging.

One priest told me that in his rural parish in Oxfordshire, no one has come to confession for 10 years. Another in a Midlands industrial district reports that he never gets more than two penitents on a Saturday evening.

One might be tempted to say that contemporary RC practice has become more, well, Anglican.  The comment is made somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it does reflect a set of affairs where the difference between the lived reality of Anglican and Roman communicants is not noticeably different in terms of approach to sacramental confession.  In the words of Hooker:

The difference of general and particular [i.e. sacramental] forms of Confession and absolution, is not so material, that any man's safety, or ghostly good should depend upon it.

Cornwell does state, however, that the narrative in the Roman tradition is not simply one of decline in the use of Confession:

And yet, there are inner-city parishes and cathedral churches where the sacrament is popular among every age group, including young adults. Many, seeking anonymity, are from distant parishes. A 26-year-old woman who converted to Catholicism aged 16, speaks of “queues” for confession at the Brompton Oratory and St James’s, Spanish Place in London.

My guess is that "anonymity" is not the only - of perhaps even the most significant - aspect to this.  The parishes mentioned almost certainly place an emphasis on the formation of priests as confessors and spiritual directors.  Rather than simply presuming that a local parish priest has received the necessary formation (or indeed possesses the necessary gifts) for this particular ministry, penitents are seeking out centres where priests have received the formation required for sacramental confession.  In a way, it is not entirely dissimilar to the 1662 exhortation:

Let him come to me, or to some other discreet and learned Minister of God's Word, and open his grief; that by the ministry of God's holy Word, he may receive the benefit of absolution, together with spiritual counsel and advice ... (LEP VI, 4.15).

The words of 1662 - "spiritual counsel and advice" - also point to a closer relationship in Anglican practice between sacramental confession and spiritual direction than would previously have been the norm in the Roman tradition.  It is, however, open to suggestion that current English RC practice, as outlined by Cornwell, is reflecting a similar approach.

For Anglicans, there is much to reflect on here.  There are great strengths in our pastoral - as opposed to juridical - understanding and mode of sacramental confession.  The quite common Anglican practice of the confessor also being the spiritual director, has much to commend it in terms of shaping and forming disciples.  Where we might need to learn from the Roman tradition is, firstly, in the formation of those priests who will exercise the ministry of confessor, and secondly, in identifying and encouraging particular parishes/communities where the gift of sacramental confession is offered as a service to the wider church in a diocese.

Hooker ends his discussion of Confession and absolution by reminding us of its significance:

It has pleased Almighty God in tender commiseration over these imbecilities of men, to ordain for their spiritual and ghostly comfort, consecrated persons, which by sentence of power and authority given from above, may as it were out of his very mouth ascertain timorous and doubtful minds in their own particular, ease them of all their scrupulosities, leave them settled in peace and satisfied touching the mercy of God towards them (LEP VI, 6.17).

The practice of sacramental confession is one of those gifts that catholic Anglicans can offer for the enrichment of wider Anglican life.  For that enrichment to occur, we do need to see flourishing catholic Anglican parishes and communities in which sacramental confession is practised, in which priests are formed for the ministry of confessor, and in which disciples grow as they experience the grace of absolution and spiritual counsel.  Evangelical and (creedal) liberal Anglican communities have their own gifts to contribute to the renewal of Anglicanism.  But this - sacramental confession - is perhaps the chief gift catholic Anglicans can offer.

"Plainly and inevitably Nestorians"? Hooker, Anglicans and Theotokos

Marking yesterday's Feast of the BVM, The Creedal Christian quotes from St Cyril of Alexandria's defence of the title Theotokos, recognised by the Council of Ephesus:

That anyone could doubt the right of the holy Virgin to be called the Mother of God fills me with astonishment. Surely she must be the Mother of God if our Lord Jesus Christ is God, and she gave birth to him! Our Lord's disciples may not have used those exact words, but they delivered to us the belief those words enshrine, and this has also been taught us by the holy fathers.

The same reasoning is present in Hooker's reflection on the Incarnation, particularly his critique of "the heresy of Nestorius".  Hooker explicitly affirms the stance of "St Cyril the chief of those 200 bishops assembled in the Council of Ephesus":

For as much therefore as Christ has no personal subsistence but one whereby we acknowledge him to be have been eternally the Son of God, we must of necessity apply to the person of the Son of God even that which is spoken of Christ according to human nature.  For example, according to the flesh he was born of the Virgin Mary ... If we should say that the person of a man in our Saviour Christ was the subject of these things, this were plainly to entrap ourselves in the very snare of the Nestorian heresy ... It follows against Nestorius, that no person was born of the Virgin but the Son of God (LEP V, 52 3-4).

We see in Hooker, then, the Christological imperative of Cyril's description of Blessed Mary as Theotokos.  In Cyril's words:

Therefore, because the holy virgin bore in the flesh God who was united hypostatically with the flesh, for that reason we call her Theotokos, not as though the nature of the Word had the beginning of its existence from the flesh (for "the Word was in the beginning and the Word was God and the Word was with God", and he made the ages and is coeternal with the Father and craftsman of all things), but because, as we have said, he united to himself hypostatically the human and underwent a birth according to the flesh from her womb.

Or as the Council of Ephesus rather more succinctly put it:

If anyone does not confess that Emmanuel is God in truth, and therefore that the holy virgin is the Theotokos (for she bore in a fleshly way the Word of God become flesh), let him be anathema.

The faith of Cyril and Ephesus, affirmed by Hooker, does pose some questions for those Anglicans - liberal and evangelical - who flee from describing the Blessed Virgin as Theotokos/God bearer.  Liberals, we can suppose, dislike the creedal Christology inherent in the title: that begs quite a few very significant questions indeed.  For evangelical Anglicans, however, surely an orthodox affirmation of the Incarnation requires - as Cyril, Ephesus, and Hooker state - a recognition that the girl from Nazareth was indeed Theotokos?  That the phrase is not used in Scripture is of little significance - nor is homousion.  It is also difficult to avoid Hooker's conclusion that a rejection of Ephesus means "we are plainly and inevitably Nestorians".

And for catholic Anglicans ... well, we need to be challenged to re-engage with the Christological roots of Marian belief and devotion.  It is not an ecclesiastical hobby nor a badge of ecclesial identity.  We confess Mary as Theotokos not to be like Romans, not to declare that we are 'High', but because "for us and for our salvation" the Word became flesh.  We confess Mary as Theotokos to remind the Church of her Christological centre.

(The icon depicts the Council of Ephesus.)

Looking over the Bosphorus: Canterbury and Constantinople, differences and agreement

The Conciliar Anglican's thoughtful and respectful reflection on the differences between Anglicanism and Orthodoxy will, no doubt, create quite a bit of comment.  Leaving aside the current and very obvious differences between Anglicans and Orthodox regarding the ordination of women to the ministerial priesthood and the episcopate, the Anglican-Orthodox dialogue of recent decades has produced some very significant agreement. 

What has this agreement to contribute to the discussion started by The Conciliar Anglican?  On two points in particular which he raises - Anglican and Orthodox approaches to Scripture and Tradition, and to the Filioque - the dialogue perhaps suggests that the divide is not as great as it may seem.

The Moscow Agreed Statement (1976) articulated a shared understanding of the relationship between Scripture and Tradition, expressing this in a manner that "offers to our Churches a solid basis for closer rapprochement":

Any disjunction between Scripture and Tradition such as would treat them as two separate 'sources of revelation' must be rejected. The two are correlative. We affirm (i) that Scripture is the main criterion whereby the Church tests traditions to determine whether they are truly part of Holy Tradition or not; (ii) that Holy Tradition completes Holy Scripture in the sense that it safeguards the integrity of the biblical message ...

The mind (phronema) of the Fathers, their theological method, their terminology and modes of expression have a lasting importance in both the Orthodox and the Anglican Churches ...

The Church cannot define dogmas which are not grounded both in Holy Scripture and in Holy Tradition, but has the power, particularly in Ecumenical Councils, to formulate the truths of the faith more exactly and precisely when the needs of the Church require it.

While there was agreement on Scripture and Tradition, Moscow witnessed something of an Anglican capitulation on the matter of the Filioque, a position refined somewhat in the Dublin Agreed Statement (1984) in which the Anglican side noted the importance of "a correct understanding of its intention".  Dublin also returned to the issue of the relationship between Scripture and Tradition, providing another shared understanding of the relationship:

Tradition, with Scripture as the normative factor within it (see Moscow Agreed Statement, Section III), is that which maintains our Christian identity, which develops and nurtures our Christian obedience, and makes our Christian witness effective in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The tradition of the Church flows from the Father's gift of his Son 'for the life of the world', through the sojourning of the Holy Spirit in the world to be a constant witness to the truth (John 15.26). The Church draws its life and being from this same movement of the Father's love; that is to say, the Church too lives 'for the life of the world'. Its tradition is the living force and inexhaustible source of its mission to the world.

The culmination of recent dialogue with the Orthodox has been the 2006 Cyprus Statement, The Church of the Triune God.  A quite brilliant study of the relationship between Trinitarian confession, Christology and ecclesiology, it is something of a highwater mark in Anglican-Orthodox relationships.  As one of the opening paragraphs beautifully states:

It is within and by the Church that we come to know the Trinity and by the Trinity we come to understand the Church.

The relationship between Scripture and Tradition was again reflected upon, producing a compelling account of Tradition as "charismatic memory":

When we recognise that the Scriptures and historic doctrinal formulations may speak with authority across cultural boundaries, we testify to our faith in the Holy Spirit. In and through the communion of the Holy Spirit, Christians in diverse contexts in time and space are brought into relation with the same divine Lord. That enables them to make their own the language of the first believers, the writers of the New Testament and the Fathers and Councils of the early Church. This is what Orthodox theologians mean by speaking of Holy Tradition in the Church as itself the work of the Holy Spirit, the ‘charismatic memory’of the Church. The Spirit brings to life for us the words of the Christian past that shaped the Church’s historic understanding of God in Christ. On this basis Christians engage confidently with their diverse cultural environments, trusting that the Spirit works through the Church’s constant endeavour to live and proclaim the historic faith in new, unfamiliar, and even hostile, contexts, in order to convert and transform them.

Cyprus also provided the most significant discussion of the Filioque.  Whereas Moscow represented Anglican capitulation and Dublin Anglican explanation, Cyprus witnessed a more robust presentation by the Anglican side of the theological rationale for the Filioque.  As a result, Cyprus acknowledged this theological rationale:

There are however dangers in a one-sided or polemical assertion of the Eastern doctrine that the Spirit proceeds ‘from the Father alone’. As we have already said, some argue that Greek patristic theology did not deny some kind of dependence of the Spirit on the Son within the immanent Trinity. It is certainly true that we cannot think of the Spirit proceeding from the Father without recognising that the Father is Father of the Son, just as we cannot forget that the Father who begets the Son is also the one who breathes forth the Spirit. The Spirit does not proceed from an isolated divine individual but from a person, a Father eternally related to a Son.

Reviewing the dialogue of recent decades, then, we could conclude that a shared Anglican-Orthodox understanding on the relationship between Scripture and Tradition has emerged.  We could also point to the Orthodox acknowledging the rationale for the Filioque, even if still very firmly rejecting its use.  None of this is to suggest that reconcilation with the Orthodox is imminent (it clearly is not) nor does it seek to imply that Anglicanism is 'western Orthodoxy' (again, it clearly is not). 

If one figure both explains and symbolises the differences between Anglicanism and Orthodoxy it is Augustine.  The re-reception of Augustine's teaching that was the Anglican Reformation stands in sharp contrast to Orthodoxy never really being at ease with (or, indeed, attending to) Augustine.  Add to this the very different historical contexts - Orthodoxy did not have to respond to collapse of Empire for 1,000 years after the Western Latin church had this experience, nor was it shaped in anything like the same manner by the experience of Reformation/Counter-Reformation and Enlightenment. 

And yet, despite these profound differences, Anglicanism and Orthodoxy can produce very significant shared agreements on the Faith.  Why?  Perhaps because, irrespective of the divergent understandings of Augustine and diverse historical experiences, both traditions are shaped by a commitment to live out patristic catholicity.  Or, in the words of Moscow, "the mind (phronema) of the Fathers, their theological method, their terminology and modes of expression have a lasting importance in both the Orthodox and the Anglican Churches".

"The stuff of glory"

He takes up the pieces where she lays them down and remakes her life in the stuff of glory.

From Austin Farrer's meditation on the 4th glorious mystery - "Taking up" - in Lord I Believe.

"A sign of hope": thoughts from Augustine and ARCIC II on the eve of the Falling Asleep of the BVM

In his commentary on ARCIC II's Seattle Statement, Charles Sherlock (an evangelical Anglican member of the Commission) notes that the "decisive moment" in the Commission's work on this statement occurred when Mary was considered in light of the eschatological hope of the "Pauline framework" of Romans 8:30 - glorified, justified, called, predestined.

Sherlock concludes his essay on the Statement by emphasising Mary's relationship to the Church's eschatological hope in Christ:

To view Mary, by faith, participating in the fullness of human destiny in Christ, offers a fresh sense of gospel hope to humankind - in this way she is indeed a pattern of 'grace and hope in Christ'.

This is perhaps most explicitly seen in the Statement's consideration of Mary's participation in the life and glory of the Risen Christ:

There is no direct testimony in Scripture concerning the end of Mary’s life. However, certain passages give instances of those who follow God’s purposes faithfully being drawn into God’s presence. Moreover, these passages offer hints or partial analogies that may throw light on the mystery of Mary’s entry into glory. For instance, the biblical pattern of anticipated eschatology appears in the account of Stephen, the first martyr (Acts 7:54-60). At the moment of his death, which conforms to that of his Lord, he sees “the glory of God, and Jesus” the “Son of Man” not seated in judgement, but “standing at the right hand of God” to welcome his faithful servant. Similarly, the penitent thief who calls on the crucified Christ is accorded the special promise of being with Christ immediately in Paradise (Luke 23:43 ). God’s faithful servant Elijah is taken up by a whirlwind into heaven (2 Kings 2:11 ), and of Enoch it is written, “he was attested as having pleased God” as a man of faith, and was therefore “taken up so that he should not see death; and he was not found because God had taken him” (Hebrews 11:5, cf. Genesis 5:24 ). Within such a pattern of anticipated eschatology, Mary can also be seen as the faithful disciple fully present with God in Christ. In this way, she is a sign of hope for all humanity.

The pattern of hope and grace already foreshadowed in Mary will be fulfilled in the new creation in Christ when all the redeemed will participate in the full glory of the Lord (cf. 2 Corinthians 3:18 ). Christian experience of communion with God in this present life is a sign and foretaste of divine grace and glory, a hope shared with the whole of creation (Romans 8:18 -23). The individual believer and the Church find their consummation in the new Jerusalem, the holy bride of Christ (cf. Revelation 21:2, Ephesians 5:27 ). When Christians from East and West through the generations have pondered God’s work in Mary, they have discerned in faith (cf. Gift 29) that it is fitting that the Lord gathered her wholly to himself: in Christ, she is already a new creation in whom “the old has passed away and the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Viewed from such an eschatological perspective, Mary may be seen both as a type of the Church, and as a disciple with a special place in the economy of salvation.

(ARCIC II Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ, 56-57.)

The Statement's approach to understanding Mary's participation in the life of the risen and glorified Christ coheres with the emphasis in the Augustinian reserve of Anglican Marian devotion.  This emphasis is perhaps best summarised in Augustine's words regarding Mary's place in the Body of Christ:

The Virgin Mary is both holy and blessed, and yet the Church is greater than she. Mary is a part of the Church, a member of the Church, a holy, an eminent – the most eminent – member, but still only a member of the entire body. The body undoubtedly is greater than she, one of its members. This body has the Lord for its head, and head and body together make up the whole Christ. In other words, our head is divine – our head is God.

In celebrating the Falling Asleep of the BVM, the Church celebrates her "most eminent member" sharing in the resurrection and glorification of the Christ - a sign that this is the hope and calling of the entire Church.  It is this hope and joy which lies at the heart of the collect used in most Anglican rites for 15th August: "Grant that we who are redeemed by his blood may share with her in the glory of your eternal kingdom".

Rather than being the "supreme culmination of [the BVM's] privileges" - as stated by Pius XII's Munificentissimus Deus - the Anglican affirmation is that Mary's sharing in the life and glory of the Risen Christ does not set her apart from the Church.  Instead, she exemplifies and embodies the Church's hope in Christ.  She is "a sign of hope" of the Church predestined, called, justified, glorified in the Crucified and Risen One.

"The same faith that the Church had for 400 or 500 years": Taylor and the Anglican ressourcement

On the commemoration of Jeremy Taylor, words from his A Copy of a Letter Written to a Gentlewoman Newly Seduced to the Church of Rome, illustrating the classical Anglican reliance on patristic catholicity:

I pray, give me leave to consider for you, because you in your change considered so little for your self, what fault, what false doctrine, what wicked and dangerous proposition, what defect, what amiss did you find in the Doctrine and Liturgy and Discipline of the Church of England?

For its doctrine, It is certain it professes the belief of all that is written in the Old and New Testament, all that which is in the three Creeds, the Apostolical, the Nicene, and that of Athanasius, and whatsoever was decreed in the four General Councils, or in any other truly such, and whatsoever was condemned in these, our Church hath legally declared it to be Heresie. And upon these accounts above four whole ages of the Church went to Heaven; they baptized all their Catechumens into this faith, their hopes of Heaven was upon this and a good life, their Saints and Martyrs lived and died in this alone, they denied Communion to none that professed this faith. This is the Catholick faith, so saith the Creed of Athanasius; and unless a company of Men have power to alter the faith of God, whosoever live and die in this faith, are intirely Catholick and Christian. So that the Church of England hath the same faith without dispute that the Church had for 400 or 500 Years, and therefore there could be nothing wanting here to saving faith, if we live according to our belief.

Taylor's words point to the self-understanding of classical Anglicanism: an attempt to retrieve the grammar and practices of patristic catholicity, over and against late medieval developments which obscured these and a Radical Reformation which explicity rejected them.  Perhaps the key dynamic of the contemporary Anglican crisis has been the decision by a significant portion of North Atlantic Anglicanism to replace a theological style dependent on the grammar and practices of patristic catholicity with - in ++Rowan's recent words - "the picture elaborated in the great theological schools of the European universities, especially in Germany, from the late 19th century onwards". 

Those seeking the renewal of Anglicanism, after this Babylonian captivity to the Enlightenment, could heed Taylor's words and rebuild a post-modern, post-Christendom Anglican theological style - in prayer, in study, in catechesis, in evangelisation, in liturgy - which rejoices in patristic catholicity.  It requires us to drink deeply from the well of the Creeds and the Fathers.  This - rather than political machinations, organisational efforts, and structural debates - would allow a renewed Anglicanism to emerge, reshaped by the grammar and practices of patristic catholicity. 

And we have before us the example of those Anglican teachers of the faith who have practised ressourcement in past eras: Hooker, Taylor, Keble.  Their witness and teaching laid the foundations for renewal, recalling Anglicanism to its vocation to live out patristic catholicity.  Praying and studying the Creeds and the Fathers after Hooker, Taylor and Keble: not a bad summary of a vocation for contemporary catholic Anglicans.

(The stained glass window of Jeremy Taylor is in St John's Parish, Malone, Belfast, Diocese of Connor.)

Laurence, Rome and the ecclesia anglicana

The inclusion of the commemoration of St Lawrence, martyr in the 1662 BCP calendar points to classical Anglicanism's willingness to recognise the historic witness and vocation of the Roman church.  St Augustine's homily on the the feast emphasises the relationship between Laurence's martyrdom and his ministry as deacon:

The Roman Church commends this day to us as the blessed Laurence’s day of triumph, on which he trod down the world as it roared and raged against him; spurned it as it coaxed and wheedled him; and in each case, conquered the devil as he persecuted him. For in that Church, you see, as you have regularly been told, he performed the office of deacon; it was there that he administered the sacred chalice of Christ’s blood; there that he shed his own blood for the name of Christ. The blessed apostle John clearly explained the mystery of the Lord’s supper when he said Just as Christ laid down his life for us, so we too ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. St Laurence understood this, my brethren, and he did it; and he undoubtedly prepared things similar to what he received at that table. He loved Christ in his life, he imitated him in his death.

Two things might strike the Anglican mind about Augustine's words.  Firstly, "the Roman Church commends this day to us ..."  The church at Rome 'commended' - not directed - the church at Hippo ("us") to share in the commemoration of Laurence.  This description of the relationship in the patristic era between Rome and the other churches - the primacy of honour - reflects historic Anglican belief. 

Secondly, we perhaps get an indication here of why the historic witness of the Roman church should be celebrated by the other churches.  It was in a particular, specific way in Rome that the forces of the imperium confronted the church of the Crucified and Risen One.  From the martyrdom of Peter and Paul to that of Sixtus II - Laurence's bishop, executed merely days before him - the church at Rome confessed the Cross and Resurrection as the imperium "roared and raged".  In celebrating the martyrs of the Roman church such as Laurence, Anglicans are reflecting on the universal Church's call to confess the Cross before Caesar.

The 1662 BCP's commemoration of Laurence - continued in most contemporary Anglican calendars - offers an alternative to the anti-Roman prejudice and rhetoric within Anglicanism.  This prejudice and rhetoric was once (but no longer) associated with evangelicalism and is now often present in the more aggressive manifestations of Anglican liberalism.  Classical Anglicanism offers a different way, respecting and celebrating the primacy of honour of that church called to walk in the way of the Cross in the city of the Caesars, so that the churches may be renewed in their witness before the contemporary imperium.

John Mason Neale and the catholic imagination

Richard Dawkins is a master mythmaker. His best fiction is that of the selfish gene. His great book of that title, published 35 years ago, described human beings as lumbering robots driven by immortal genes. It even had a brilliant, final twist.

Mark Vernon's recent Comment is free: belief piece on Dawkins points to what De Lubac termed "the drama of atheist humanism".  Understood in the terms used by Vernon, Dawkins becomes a response to the disenchantment of "a secular age".  He is, ironically, one of those "unquiet frontiers of modernity" (c.f. Taylor).  Thus Vernon notes of Dawkins:

His latest book ... trades on the genre [of myth] in its very title: The Magic of Reality. The book describes many myths, religious ones as well as scientific. Myths are powerful because they fire the imagination, encourage play and make great poetic stories. They can only do so when there is something true in them.

Even Dawkins, the current high priest of scienticism, is forced to recognise the landscape of the imagination.  It is an appropriate background to consider today's commemoration in the Common Worship calendar of John Mason Neale.  In a not dissimilar context of disenchantment occasioned by vast social and economic change, Neale understood the power of the catholic imagination.  His preaching placed his hearers in a dramatically different narrative to that of the protestant deism of the industrial revolution.  Consider his sermon for the Transfiguration:

Such an evening as this should teach us something of the glorious sight we keep in mind this day. When we were looking at those long lines of dark-brown gold that lay so quietly in the west, and at the intense brightness beneath them, where the sun had gone down, we might have remembered Him Who was as at this time transfigured before His disciples; when His Face did shine as the sun, and His raiment was white as the light. And we might have looked on to that day when, if by God's grace we are counted worthy to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, our own bodies will be as His Body was, glorious beyond the power of our hearts now to imagine.

Similarly for All Saints:

This feast belong to us ... Now we keep others in memory then we shall be kept in memory ourselves: now we celebrate others than others will celebrate us.

Above all, of course, it was in his hymnody that John Mason Neale most enduringly captured hearts and minds for the catholic imagination .  Thus, whether in a 19th century dreary milltown of the industrial economy or a 21st suburb of the globalised information economy, we find ourselves in a very different narrative as we sing of the Advent hope:

O Come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.

And at the beginning of Holy Week, we find ourselves in the crowd lauding the Man from Nazareth as his Passion approaches:

The people of the Hebrews
with palms to meet thee went;
our praise and prayer and anthems
before thee we present.

Much more than the Tracts for the Times, it was such preaching and hymnody that allowed the Catholic Revival to take root in parishes across England.  They gave expression to the catholic imagination in a manner which powerfully contrasted with the prevalent deism of industrialisation and a form of whiggish evangelicalism which often colluded with the prevailing cultural mindset.  The catholic imagination provided a counter-cultural narrative - in preaching, hymnody and liturgy - which embedded persons and communities in the Crucifed and Risen One.

There are, perhaps, lessons from John Mason Neale for contemporary Anglican catholics.  It is not our involvement in ecclesial politics which best serves the Anglican catholic vocation.  It is, rather, our shaping of local ecclesial communities through preaching, hymnody and liturgy drenched in the catholic imagination.  Preaching, hymnody and liturgy which orients evangelisation, catechesis and discipleship towards enabling a participation in the drama of the Cross and Resurrection of the Incarnate Word.  In the disenchantment of a secular age, living out the catholic imagination as a means of conversion and sanctification is the highest vocation for Anglican catholics.

"All for Mount Tabor ... nothing for Mount Calvary"?

On the Feast of the Transfiguration, words from a sermon by Mark Frank, reminding us that the Transfiguration is oriented towards the Cross and Passion:

When we will have nothing here but tabernacles to shelter us, when we think much to descend out of the mount to suffer with our Saviour, would not willingly part with any point of honour, safety, or advantage, for him, would have Christ glorified before he is crucified, contrary to his Father's decree upon him and us, that we should both first suffer, and then enter into glory; when we thus shun the cross, and will have nothing but the comfort; all for Mount Tabor or Mount Olivet--peace, and quiet, and glory, and triumph: nothing for Mount Calvary, any kind of suffering; all for being "clothed upon," not being unclothed or disrobed at all,-would avoid even death itself, which we cannot avoid; when we can brook no article of the faith but the ascension into glory,--then "you know not what you ask," as Christ said to the sons of Zebedee at another time; you know not what yon would have, ye know not what you say.

On the Eve of the Transfiguration

The immediate sequel to his preaching of the cross was a blaze of glory.  Jesus took Peter, James and John into spiritual retreat with him on a high mountain; they prayed, and he was wrapped in visionary light.  The Godhead shone in him, old saints conversed with him, the Father's voice declared him his beloved Son.

To-morrow, on August 6th, the Church keeps the feast of the Transfiguration, and learns anew the lesson our lips profess but our hearts forget; that even in the midst of this life the crucifixion of the will is immortality and glory, and the enjoyment of our heavenly adoption through Jesus Christ our Lord.

From Austin Farrer's sermon "Dying to Live" in Said or Sung.

The Psalter, the monastic style and countercultural space

Giles Fraser's reflections on despair and unhappiness perhaps suggest something of the importance of praying the Psalter in its entirety in the daily office:

The exhortation "Have a great day" has become the ideological camouflage of late capitalism and Made in Chelsea is its purest form. The economy is tanking. People are out of jobs. A loved one has died. A relationship has ended. Don't worry, be happy. Take a pill. Watch the Olympics.

No, the sort of happiness that's more than synthetic soma must hold together a range of conflicting feelings, of which unhappiness is one. And we must not be scared of unhappiness as a feature of a meaningful life. To express this as a contradiction: unhappiness forms part of the recipe for happiness itself.

This week's church readings included the über-miserable Jeremiah, who complained: "Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable refusing to be healed?" and refused to "sit in the company of merrymakers". Church, like therapy, is a countercultural space where people are given permission to bring distress.

Athanasius famously said of the Psalter, "in the words of this book all human life is covered, with all its states and thoughts".  Praying the Psalms in their entirety in the daily office (whether over the monthly or quarterly cycle), provides a means to bring all of life before the Triune God - including the times of despair, of darkness, of brokeness, of failure.  This might point to the cultural significance of praying the Psalms in the daily office in the monastic rather than the cathedral fashion.  The monastic style is more likely to gather up the breadth of our experiences - personal, communal, societal - in the Psalter's expressions of "all human life ... with all its states and thoughts". 

"A very different kind of materialism": the Church's proclamation and the Market

William Cavanaugh's reading of the economic crisis offers profound insights into the Gnostic presuppositions of the economics of modernity:

The financial crisis was not driven by materialism so much as by a desire to transcend material constraints.

To put it another way, far deeper than the desire for more "stuff" is the desire to overcome the limitations of the material world, of the human body and of death, and thus to be free from the scarcity and risk and dependence of a life that is materially based.

This desire to transcend material limitations is perhaps most powerfully reflected in the multiple ways that the global economy has become detached from reality.

Mindful that "the prevailing economic paradigm as a kind of spirituality", Cavanaugh states that this detachment from reality is confronted and challenged by two doctrines central to the Church's proclamation - Creation and Incarnation.

Creation is, of course, an affirmation of material reality:

The Christian doctrine of creation therefore approaches material reality with a profound realism and humility, a recognition of the limited and dependent nature of creation. At the same time, however, because it also recognizes that creation is good, there is no need to try to transcend reality and try to escape our creatureliness. To be a creature of a good God is a condition to rejoice in, not rebel against.

And it is from the perspective of the Incarnation that the Church regards creation:

For Christians, the erotic unity of God and material creation is affirmed in Jesus Christ. As Karl Barth argues, we do not begin with the reality of the physical world and then deduce that there must have been a creator. There is nothing given about the material world. Some traditions stress the unreality of the material and the need to escape it. Barth says that we only know the reality of the material world through Jesus Christ, whose reality affirms that God does not want to exist alone. As Barth says, "Because God has become man, the existence of creation can no longer be doubted."

Here Barth is following the path blazed by Irenaeus in his controversies with the Gnostics ... Irenaeus strongly reaffirmed the doctrine of the incarnation and thereby affirmed the unity between the God of creation and the God of Jesus Christ.

The consequence of the Church's proclamation is a "very different kind of materialism":

If the Christian tradition from its Jewish roots to its consummation in Jesus Christ is materialistic, however, it is a very different kind of materialism than that with which modernity is sometimes labelled. Biblical materialism does not insist that the material as we know it is all there is, but that we are limited by our being mortal, material creatures in space and time, and we must therefore approach material reality with an attitude of humility.

Cavanaugh's insights into the theological nature of the economics of modernity raise very significant questions for the contemporary Church.  A failure to evangelise, catechise and teach in a manner which nurtures disciples to pursue economic activity in a way which conforms to - rather than rejects - the doctrines of Creation and Incarnation undermines the Church's doctrinal proclamation and creedal centre.  As Cavanaugh states:

The idea that theology and economics are two separate pursuits is a thoroughly modern idea, the product of the last 250 years or so, an idea that Christians traditionally would have found bizarre.  If we can again see how doctrines of creation and incarnation are inseparable from our economic practices, Christians can help to heal the material world.

Grace and hope: Anglicans and the Ordinariates

Not a few eyebrows will have been raised when it was announced that Fr. John Hunwicke, after his re-ordination as a priest in the Ordinariate, celebrated his first Mass in the Roman tradition in the Extraordinary Form (as pictured).  It does appear to be something of trend, as the Ordinary of the US Ordinariate has recently issued a direction on the matter of Ordinariate communities using the Extraordinary Form (h/t The Way Out There);

Some of our clergy want to learn also how to celebrate according to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. They are certainly encouraged to do so, under the provisions of Summorum Pontificum and under the supervision of the local bishop, to assist in those stable communities that use the Extraordinary Form. But as the Extrordinary Form is not integral to the Anglican patrimony, it is not properly used in our communities.

The necessity for such a statement does, perhaps, indicate something of the tensions inherent to the Ordinariate project: maintaining the Anglican patrimony in a tradition which historically has rejected key elements of that patrimony.  To think of some other distinctive elements of the Anglican tradition - communion in both kinds, and married priests - it will be interesting to see if Ordinariate communities will be able to retain these aspects of the Anglican patrimony over the longer term.

As for liturgy in the vernacular, it is notable that amongst the criticisms of the liturgy at the recent International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, Msgr. Andrew Wadsworth - head of ICEL - disapprovingly noted, " the use of Latin in the people's sung parts was almost non-existent".

These comments and observations are not intended to be disrespectful of either the Ordinariates or the great Latin liturgical tradition.  The Ordinariates do have ecumenical potential, potentially allowing Rome's respect for Anglican tradition to further intensify.  As for the Latin liturgical tradition, it significantly shaped the Anglican liturgical experience (many of Cranmer's collects, of course, were translations of the ancient Latin collects).

It does give pause for reflection on the part of those of us who taken the Keble, rather than the Newman, Option.  Our concern was that Anglicanorum Coetibus envisaged something rather different than a 'united not absorbed' future for Anglicanism.  Instead, absorption would be more likely.  The Latin liturgical tradition, communion in one kind and mandatory celibacy would, over time, become the norm.

The statement from the Ordinary of the US Ordinariate suggests that this need not necessarily be so - and for this Anglicans should be grateful, even while noting the need for such a statement to be made when the US Ordinariate is only months old.  Reconcilation between Rome and Canterbury will not be aided if the Ordinariate project fails, if absorption is the outcome for those communities of former Anglicans making up the Ordinariates.  Such a scenario would suggest that 'united not absorbed' is not, after all, possible.

Rather, our hope should be that the Ordinariates become a kind of first fruits, signs - albeit fragile and numerically small - of the gifts Anglicanism can offer to the church catholic.  This will indeed be an exercise in hope.  In the Roman tradition, there are those seeking to use the Ordinariates as a militant vanguard to batter Anglicanism.  Amongst liberal Anglicans, there can be a barely concealed contempt for those former Anglicans walking the path of the Ordinariate.

Those of us who have chosen the Keble Option, however, will want the Ordinariates to retain significant elements of the Anglican tradition, that they might indeed be signs of encouragement for unity and reconciliation between Rome and Canterbury.  We - the vast majority of catholic Anglicans who have remained within the Communion - have not chosen to walk the path of the Ordinariates because we believe in the need for further, deeper Anglican-Roman reflection on the nature of papal authority and on Anglican orders, and an acceptance of the ARCIC statements - rather than the Catechism of the Catholic Church - as the basis for agreement on matters of faith.

For ultramontanes, the Ordinariates are a triumphal expression of the Roman supremacy.  For some Anglican liberals, the Ordinariates are where all Anglican conservatives should be - a home for sexism and homophobia.  But nothing is to be gained by allowing the Ordinariates to become another front in the ecclesial culture wars.  The witness of the Church in the post-Christian West requires a response and approach more authentically shaped by grace and hope.

For those of us catholic Anglicans (and it is important to again stress that this is the vast of majority of catholic Anglicans across the globe) who believe that our vocation to witness to catholicity requires us to remain Anglicans, we can yet prayerfully trust that our brothers and sisters in the Ordinariates will live out the hope expressed in Anglicanorum Coetibus - "maintain[ing] the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the [Roman] Catholic Church, as a precious gift ... and as a treasure to be shared" (AC III). 

We do so trusting that the sharing of such gifts and treasures will contribute to the ongoing work of ARCIC, giving to Rome a much greater familiarity with the riches of the Anglican tradition and therefore intensifying the search for unity and reconciliation.  We do so believing that Anglicanism has further treasures to share with the See of Peter and the church catholic, not fully recognised in Anglicanorum Coetibus.  And we do so in grace and hope, that beyond pain, disunity and setbacks the peace of the Crucified and Risen One will be lived out more fully by the churches.

On honesty and humility - Habgood on liberals, conservatives and Anglicanism

Having referred to John Habgood's Confessions of a Conservative Liberal in a recent posting, catholicity and covenant decided to spend an hour thumbing through an old copy.  The book was published in 1988, in the case of this reader, over half a lifetime ago.  And it does evoke something of a different age - the references to the Falklands War, the miners' strike, to AIDS, to the then Bishop of Durham's statements on the Virgin Birth and Resurrection, to a Church and society seeking to come to terms (or not) with the cultural revolution of the 1960s.

What is also striking about Confessions of a Conservative Liberal, however, is the sense that contemporary Anglicanism appears to have lost the liberalism espoused by Habgood - a quite different liberalism replacing it.  In defining what he meant by 'conservative liberal', Habgood first defines liberal:

We grow in knowledge only insofar as we are prepared to critcize what what we think we know alread.  True knowledge is tested knowledge, just as true faith has to be sifted by doubt.  That is why an illiberal faith must in the end be untrue to a gospel which promises abundant life and growth ... [Liberalism] is essentially about honesty, but an honesty rooted in what God has given us, both in revelation and in the created world.

That last sentence is perhaps key to understanding what he actually meant by 'conservative liberal', for he says of conservatism:

The essence of conservatism, as I see it, is to treasure what is given by tradition, what is best from the past, and what has proved itself by its durability.  It is to display a certain humility towards the things we have received and may not fully understand, and so conserve them as potentially fruitful for the future.

Implicit in these definitions is a sense of the necessary interplay between liberalism and conservatism.  Liberalism must reflect within the 'giveness' of conservatism.  Conservatism must be open to the reflections of a liberalism which honestly probes what has been received.  For Habgood, Anglicanism needs both:

I am unwilling to lose either conservatism of liberalism in the sense in which I have defined them.  In fact, I regard it as essential for the Church of England (and not the Church of England only) to contain both.

This rootedness necessary for a liberalism which authentically serves the Church has, for Habgood, a particular centre:

The creeds, which try to catch in words the essence of the Christian faith as it was defined in relation to particular historical conflicts, stand as permanent signposts of Christian orthodoxy.

It is a quite robust statement of the Church's creedal centre, reminding liberalism that the context for theological inquiry is the catholic creeds - that there is, in fact, something called "Christian orthodoxy" which defines the Church's confession and witness.

In a reminder that Anglicanism's current divisions stretch back into the 1980s, Habgood also addresses tensions within the Communion:

By the time this is published I hope the 1988 Lambeth Conference will have gone some way towards tackling the problem of authority ... It is true that Anglicanism, with its somewhat haphazard history, suffers from the tension between diversity and cohesion in a particularly acute form.

Here, it seems, is a recognition of Anglicanism's "ecclesial deficit".  And Habgood's answer?  It was not the casual affirmation of the status quo so evident in much opposition to the Covenant:

My own belief is that the best way forward is by strengthening the theological coherence of the Communion.

To hear such words from opponents of the Covenant today would go some way to signalling their acceptance of the fact that the status quo within Anglicanism falls short of what life in communion should actually be.  Rather than merely celebrating autonomy and independence, what - after the apparent rejection of the Covenant - can we Anglicans do to authentically strengthen our life together in communion and move from incoherence to coherence?

In place of the liberalism lof Habgood, we now have a highly ideological progressivism in parts of the Communion which seeks to deny theological conservatism a place in the Church's life and witness, which recoils from any concept of creedal orthodoxy, and which rejects a deepening of Anglicanism's life as communion.  Perhaps Habgood does reflect a past era, shaped by the attitudes and conventions of mid-20th century English Church and society, and a liberalism which cannot be retrieved.  If so, Anglicanism is self-evidently the poorer for it.