TAC Orders

In the paper sent to the TAC, it is noted that there is a variety of opinion in the ACC on the Orders of the TAC. I have argued that TAC Orders are valid and that all contrary claims are based on false reasoning. The supplementary paper in which I did this, with some modifications, is here. I should note that this paper has no imprimatur or approval whatsoever from any hierarch in the ACC. I should also note that it contains three very short "stories" which are all intended to be amusing, but are also fictional. Only the last one is claimed to represent reality indirectly. The names used were deliberately light-hearted and are not intended to offend any member of another Church.

It is just my opinion, but I think that for reconciliation between the TAC and the ACC three things have to happen, even if they take time:

1. The TAC should throw down the gauntlet to those clinging onto the Anglican Communion and its present compromises, especially Forward in Faith and dioceses and provinces claiming to be orthodox but retaining communion with heterodox jurisdictions, including Canterbury. They should challenge them to cleanly break with heresy and leave the "Communion" or admit they are not willing to put their Catholic principles into practice, rather than encouraging them to remain incoherent and inconsistent by being in full communion with them.
2. The TAC should admit that Deerfield Beach was a schismatic act and counterproductive, however well intentioned, and that the ACC's doubts about Archbishop Clavier were proven to be prescient and fair.
3. The ACC should admit that the TAC has valid Orders and is not significantly different to itself in doctrine.

While the divisions among Continuing Anglicans are sad and frustrating, they are not reasons to lose hope. In each significant jurisdiction there is still good evangelistic and charity work being done, God is being worshipped and his people edified spiritually.

It should also be remembered that a large part of the reason the Continuers did not remain united is that, having established the original "Anglican Church in North America" without the normal authorisation and assistance "from above" due to the cowardice, indecision and sloth of most other "orthodox" hierarchs outside and inside ECUSA, they began in an isolation neither splendid nor chosen. (And this is also part of why the orthodox have progressively lost each battle within the Anglican Communion.) Thus, without the matrix of inter-Church relationships and mutually stabilising influences usual for Catholic jurisdictions and having begun in voluntary association (though in a way perceived as obligatory under Ecumenical Canon Law, which says that if the people find themselves under a heretical bishop or archbishop they must repudiate him and place themeselves under the jurisdiction of an orthodox bishop), it was all too easy for "every man to do what was right in his own eyes" (cf. Judges 17.6). Disputes that should never have been dividing became so.

However, it is also true that not all Continuers were willing to comply with the Affirmation of St Louis' solid commitment to Holy Tradition, and that some who have come out of the Anglican Communion did so over one issue where they happen to agree with the Catholic Faith. So, there are some groups that have formed and some other individuals who are not commited to Anglican Catholicism but "cafeteria Catholicism" and who thus confuse perceptions and make traditionalist Anglicans look even more divided than they are.