Yes it does matter

(Note: before launching into this essay, expect the next chapter of the Laymen's Guide to the Thirty-Nine Articles probably next week. We are on XXV, which is longer than most of them.)

______________________

How often have you heard this? "Yes, but what really matters is that the sacrament is valid." I am afraid I just do not know why sacramental validity is what really matters, as opposed simply to being something that matters. Of course it is important. Is it more important than good sound preaching? Considering the miraculous supernatural power that accompanies the Gospel by the working of the Holy Spirit, I would say not. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power (δύναμις) of God unto salvation to every one that believes (Romans 1:16)." Is it more important than true worship? "But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeks such to worship him (John 4:23)." Is it more important than fellowship with other believers? "That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ (I John 1:3)."

Of course, to anyone properly taught who can read the Scriptures intelligently, the sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood is tied to all these things in no small way. It is mystically connected to preaching the Gospel, as we do what He commanded in remembrance of Him. It is certainly connected as well to worship and fellowship.1 And, yet each of them can stand alone in daily practice without celebration and administration of the sacrament. So, what is the real reason anyone hears the line, "Yes, but what really matters is that the sacrament is valid?" The real reason is the evil fruit of low expectations.

The Pauline Standard

We have been given a high standard to look for in men who are to be ordained. Their manner of life and their education in true doctrine has to meet the level set in the Pastoral Epistles, most clearly in the third chapter of First Timothy, and the first chapter of Titus. Frankly, it is not a very high or impossible standard at all. It is simply a standard that helps to assure that clergy can feed the sheep, and care for God's children as good fathers care for their families. Indeed, Paul looked at the home life in married men as a norm for determining fitness to take on the heavy responsibility of caring for the household of God, summarizing it in I Timothy 3:5: "For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?" 

The standard has to do with morality, education and competence. The character of a man and the house under his care cannot be mended with ordination. If these qualities are poor, the ordination ought not to take place. The validity of the ordination is not in question, or else Paul would have had little reason to write a warning against rashness on the part of the Ordinary: "Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men's sins: keep thyself pure (I Tim. 5:22)." The validity question does not even come up, quite apparently because it is assumed. 

If all we look for is a valid sacrament, then we may well endure the "ministry" of a wolf in sheep's clothing. If the problem and the danger were not real, would Christ have bid us "Beware?"2 Writing in the Second Epistle to the Church in Corinth, Paul went as far as to warn that some men are Satan's ministers.3 His warning in that chapter was not about cults, but about ministry that had taken place in the church, in their own church. 

Was the sacrament valid at their hands? It may well have been, and probably it was administered. Often, it most certainly is valid in like hands; but, that validity is not all that really matters. The Church has to discipline and correct, and even remove. 

Recent Controversy and Sexual Abuse

It has been hard for me, personally speaking, to begin to write again with any frequency after the long battle over the whole issue of the ordinariates and Anglicanorum Coetibus, when a large number of Continuing Anglicans were being pressured to convert to Roman Catholicism under a confusing pretense. A lot of this came from their own bishops, for Rome was actually clear and honest and very upfront about what they were offering, and what it did not mean, from the start. The pretense and confusion were from certain supposed Anglicans. I weighed in after after receiving letters and emails, and even phone calls from not only the United States, but also from Australia and Canada, asking me to write about it. 

Religious controversy is not what I want to engage in, and I was burned out a bit for a time. Nonetheless, looking back, it still rubs me the wrong way that some of the people I know were insisting to me that that whole subject of clerical sexual abuse was off limits. I did not accept that advice. Why was it off limits? Pope Benedict XVI, apparently very insensitive in some practical matters despite his theological brilliance, appointed William Cardinal Levada to be the first spokesman to the Anglican world. Cardinal Levada has a record of shielding and reappointing known sexual predators second only, in the United States, to Bernard Cardinal Law.  

The subject could not be off limits, and still needs to be treated seriously. First of all, it needs to be treated seriously because, as quite a few people know from their own painful life experience (including me), it is no small matter to have been a victim of child sexual abuse. It has to be dealt with. The subject cannot be off limits, also, because there is only the slightest evidence that Rome might ever really try earnestly to solve the problem. It did not begin in 2002, but merely came to light.

If the standard is so low that wolves in sheep's clothing have been protected due to a shortage of clergy and of men with "vocations," then the real problem with Rome's whole system requires a very real reformation. It has yet to happen. The question I had put before the readers was this: If people are urging Anglicans to leave their own heritage and put themselves, their churches and their children, under the care of the Roman Catholic Church, did they not pick one of the most ironically awkward times in history? What has Rome done to earn the trust? Indeed, why is it not clear they have earned the opposite? 

The answers, to my hypothetical question, were all theoretical and based on Rome's own peculiar dogma concerning the papacy. The most disturbing answer, in this context, came from a writer who really showed how low the expectations can be:

"You need to strongly suspect that there may be something ontologically present in a progressive, praise-band parish in a scandal-ridden Roman Catholic diocese that is lacking in Anglicanism’s greatest shrines, because, contrary to what may seem to be much visual evidence to the contrary, the former is a constituent member of the body in which the fullness of the Catholic Church subsists while the latter is not."4

Obviously, we disagree with him about our place in the Church itself. It is worth looking at this quotation, however, because it is shows how bad things get due to low expectations and abandoning the standard set by St. Paul and written in Scripture. What would constitute a "Scandal-ridden Roman Catholic diocese" more than the whole cover-up of clerical sexual abuse? Ah, but (and in the worst context from one of the most horrifying examples), "All that really matters is that the sacrament was valid." 

Our own house

I know what I have written above is not very ecumenical, but I do not apologize at all. I hope Rome gets its house in order. But, what about the Continuing Church? Do we have it all figured out? 

We are coming to a time when many divisions are finally healing. The 2011 Provincial Synod of the Anglican Catholic Church Original Province (and our Second Province, headquartered in India, was well represented too) brought together the leading bishops of the Anglican Catholic Church, the Anglican Church in America, The United Episcopal Church North America, and the Anglican Province in America. This new generation of leading bishops have committed themselves to becoming one Church.

But what drove us all apart? Was it possibly related to ambition, and wrong priorities? Is it not obvious that for too long Evangelism, important, indeed imperative as Christ's own command in the Great Commission, has been neglected in many places?  The result in many of those places is a weak church, dying off with no outreach. Ah, but "what really matters..." 

Division and apathy about Evangelism (i.e. a church with no real ministry), are soon to become dinosaurs. Instead, we may see a lively and spiritually powerful church in many locations. This will be more than possible if we begin to do many things well. One of those things is to return to the Scriptural standard set so long ago, concerning who ought to be ordained, and who may continue to exercise ordained ministry.    

_______________________________________

1. Indeed, the same word translated "fellowship" is also translated "communion." The word is κοινωνία, and to appreciate the connection, compare I Corinthians 10:16 to I John 1:3

2. Matthew 7:15

3. In II Corinthians 11:13-15 we read: "For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works."

4. Written by one Brother Stephen and posted July 14, 2010, for the "Anglo-Catholic Blog," a blog that supported the most flawed interpretation of the Roman constitution.