Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4 v 6-7
August 2010
Synod
I have always thought it to be a great privilege to be a parish priest in the Church of England. My overriding concern was not for any institution but the people and communities in which we live. The Church of England has survived so many traumas and conflicts over the centuries but it has still been able to stand as a citadel for generations who have made an honest attempt to make sense of their lives. Our parish churches bear witness to the generations who have been able to live and die on its foundations of the faith in Jesus Christ, despite Civil Wars, and dissenters, and conflicts of all kinds.
I found civil reasonableness and charity of the Anglican Church a practical way forward through all the past battles and the various traumas of our history. The Anglican Church took seriously the mediating theology of people like Richard Hooker - an Anglican of the 16th century - who advocated the idea of the ‘broad church’ which included both Catholics and Puritans, the Via Media. Hooker argued that church organization, like political organization, is one of the "things indifferent" to God. He wrote that minor doctrinal issues were not issues that damned or saved the soul, but rather frameworks surrounding the moral and religious life of the believer. He argued there were good monarchies and bad ones, good democracies and bad ones, and good church hierarchies and bad ones, but what mattered was the piety of the people.
In the 19th century the Church of England had rediscovered its identity as part of the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church not least through people like the American William Huntington who wrote an essay in the 1870s about the four points that summed up the foundation’s Anglican identity. This later became known as the Lambeth-Chicago Quadrilateral: The Anglican Church held to: The Holy Scriptures; The Creeds; The Sacraments; The historic episcopate. The Roman Catholic response to that Quadrilateral, at that time, was not positive. However after two World Wars and several decades things seem to be moving towards greater ecumenism.
When I was at University in the 1960s relationships between the Protestant and Catholic Church seemed to be a big issue. The protests in Northern Ireland were hotting up, the Second Vatican Council was in full swing and all rational and civil people were praying for peace and reconciliation.
1970 saw the establishment of the Anglican—Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC).
The final report in 1981 saw agreement on the statement of Eucharistic doctrine and ministry
The meetings continued with ARCIC II and the topics covered included the doctrine of salvation, communion, teaching authority, and the role of Mary the mother of God. By 2007 the commission issued Growing Together in Unity and Mission. The document goes on to say that “We urge Anglicans and Roman Catholics to explore together how the ministry of the Bishop of Rome might be offered and received in order to assist our Communions to grow towards full, ecclesiastical communion.”
Now we must recognise that all that work for reconciliation has been rendered useless by the ordination of women bishops and the controversies over homosexuality.
I was greatly saddened by the latest Synod’s rejection of the amendments of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York which would have ensured that Anglo Catholics had an honoured and permanent place in the Church of England as was promised in years past. The lack of provision for those unable to agree with the majorities at the General Synod, means that people like myself will be virtually excluded from the Anglican Church.
However, I shall not be leaving. I do not believe that the question of the ordination of women is settled and I remain unconvinced that it is in accord with God’s will. It appears to me that there is more to this issue than a simplistic modern argument about equality. I agree that the Church has not had an adequate place for women within its organization and structure, which corresponds to my understanding of Scripture or many other periods of the Church’s history. However, our society, in this country, at present, is in such a muddle over questions of sexuality, equality, family, motherhood and fatherhood that I don’t think it is capable of re-writing the Christian traditions of sexuality that have been our protection for so long.
Christ has been present at the heart of our parish churches despite the powerful movements of the past. The Anglican Church remains a broad church praying for peace and reconciliation and it must pray that it will find a way for Anglo Catholics to retain an honoured and permanent place within its ranks. Part of faith means ‘trusting in God’. St Thérèse of Lisieux 1873-1897 was a woman who encouraged a great number of priests. In one of her letters (129) she wrote ‘Trust triggers miracles!’ . We must pray and trust that God will ensure that the outcome of this issue will be a blessing for the Anglican Communion world wide, without the need for too many more martyrs.