Now more than ever

Those of you who want to see the Anglican T.V. presentation of the CCP creation of a "new province" may click here. However, this is strictly FYI, inasmuch as we cannot endorse the creation of a church body that includes a very broad and wide tent of theological disparity. Although we pray for these Anglicans as fellow Christians, and especially as Anglicans of a sort, we must remain separate from a "province" that builds its constitution on the principles of the Jerusalem Declaration of GAFCON. Concerning that statement, no finer analysis can be found that the one written by Archbishop Mark Haverland. We posted that statement here, as well as a statement by Fr. John Hollister.

Near the beginning of his statement, Archbishop Haverland wrote: "GAFCON produced a now widely published statement which does not address the innovations that led to the formation of our own Continuing Church in 1976-8: namely the ‘ordination of women’, a new and radical Prayer Book, and a pro-abortion policy." This brings me to my main point. As much as some of us may be on the side of our "Common Cause Partnership" (CCP) brethren and friends emotionally, this new "province" begins its life with the same infection that has killed the Episcopal "Church" and is killing the worldwide Anglican Communion. It may progress more slowly, but it cannot fail to progress.

The result is that, in the day to day world of our churches in real life communities, "where the rubber hits the road," such a church body creates an unfortunate competition for the hearts and minds, and therefore the affiliation, of well-meaning Christians who desire to be faithful and orthodox. In all honesty, and in all sincerity, we know that the truth is stated in our own Affirmation of St. Louis. As a result of the formation of this new "province" our fidelity to, and proclamation of the principles of our Affirmation, is called for now more than ever. Because this new CCP province, led mostly by Bishop Bob Duncan, includes toleration of modern practices that were never allowed in the Apostolic Catholic Tradition of the Church (in which Tradition and for its members, the New Testament was written and recognized as part of the whole Canon of Sacred Scripture), this new church body adds it voice to the general confusion of the world. To use C.S. Lewis terminology, it retains the errors common to our age.
_____

Regarding the entire CCP and GAFCON movement, it is their claim that their main issue is not simply the Homosexualist heresy in some modern Anglican churches, but rather fidelity to scripture and its teaching. To that we answer in two ways. The first is contained in what I stated above, that the Scriptures come from Holy Spirit working within the Church, for the Church, and can be understood rightly, therefore, only with the aid of the entire Apostolic and Catholic Tradition. The second thing we say to them, in reply, is that while we may accept the sincerity of their claim, why has it taken this one issue of Homosexualism to move them to action? Why did they not join with us to resist equally anti-scriptural behavior and doctrine? I am afraid that we know the answer, about which I wrote a controversial article some time ago, which appeared in the pages of Touchstone, and which you may find here.
______

One more thing today. Regarding the above, I want to make available to our readers an analysis from Fr. Geoffrey Kirk of Forward in Faith, United Kingdom (FIF/UK). Although Fr. Kirk is not of the Continuing Church, his writing is always worth reading. This article is particularly relevant to all of the above.

the way we live now

Geoffrey Kirk has been listening to Bishop Gene Robinson and finds him percipient in his understanding of the issues

What would we do without Gene Robinson? He is the bellwether of the liberal agenda. Like God himself, if he did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.

Long ago, when women's ordination was no more than an idea in the mind of Christian Howard, many of us were warning that gay marriages and gay bishops were the logical corollaries. Of course we were ridiculed. The issues were discrete and distinct, it was said. No connection between them could reasonably be posited. Evangelicals in favour of women's ordination were especially adamant on the subject. I recall one particular Archdeacon...but it would be churlish to mock the retired.

Now Gene (bless him!) has come forward with a belated vindication of all those fears - as if the progress of the agenda were not now plain for all to see. Gene was addressing a conference of gay American Roman Catholic priests (like diligent Pharisees, revisionist liberals will encompass sea and land to make one proselyte, and with the same result). He concluded with the following advice: 'It's too dangerous for you to come out as gay to your superiors, but I believe that if you work for the ordination of women in your church, you will go a long way toward opening the door for the acceptance of gay priests.'

It is worth setting out, therefore (for those who still doubt it) why Gene is right about the connection between women's ordination and gay bishops, and to state as clearly as we can what that connection is.

To begin with first principles: what is human life for? To this question orthodox Christians have traditionally replied that it is to be lived in obedient service to God and in the hope hereafter to enjoy him for ever. For liberal Christians, on the contrary, it is self-evident that the end of human existence is self-fulfilment and self-realization. We are, quite literally, an end in ourselves: I exist in order fully to express the person that I am.

From such an understanding it follows that anything which limits or curtails free expression of the self is wicked and destructive. Social or sexual stereotypes not only limit human freedom, but destroy individual potential. We are made, not to conform but to choose. Each person has an inalienable right to be what he or she wishes to be and (so long as the rights of others are respected) to do what he or she wants to do. The argument between liberal and traditional Christians therefore is one of teleology. Catholic Christians find fulfilment in conformity to the given ('...whose service is perfect freedom'). For liberal Christians the highest good is the affirmation of the self (T am what I am').

From this liberal understanding two things follow.

First, it follows that there can be no legitimate reason to prohibit anyone, at any time, from any role, social or sacramental, to which they believe themselves to be called. All professions should be open to both women and men, and no restraints (other than those strictly dictated by biology) should affect men and women in their relationships one with another.

Secondly, it follows that arguments in favour of such restraints and prohibitions must be maliciously self-interested ('...he would say that wouldn't he'). So the arguments for an all male priesthood are seen as part of an over-arching patriarchalist conspiracy and the arguments against gay marriage seek only to sustain the privileges presently (and unjustly) accorded to married heterosexuals. This hermeneutic of suspicion, moreover, attaches not only to contemporary protagonists but to the whole of the tradition and to the Scriptures themselves. There can be no appeal to authority because all authority is necessarily tainted.

Whilst it is by no means certain that Gene has worked all this out consciously, he knows it subliminally He knows that the principal difficulty for homosexual-ists is the explicit prohibitions of Scripture, and that it is not enough to appeal to some over-arching trajectory of'inclusivity' against them.

Scripture itself must be relativized and neutralized. And what better to assist in that process than the ordination of women - where no specific text of Scripture can be cited, and where the unbroken tradition of two thousand years can be portrayed as a perversion of the real meaning of the Bible by a self-interested and repressive clique?

And if Gene knows only too well the uses of the hermeneutic of suspicion, he is just as clear about the dialectic of guilt. Women's ordination in The Episcopal Church was swept forward on a tide of liberal guilt - guilt for the church's attitude to black Episcopalians, which found institutional expression as late as the 1980s. The improbable analogy between slavery and an all male priesthood was a significant factor in the campaign to ordain women; perhaps the most important. Now the displacement of guilt is to be deployed (even less plausibly) in favour of gay marriages and the ordination of practising gays.

Rome, of course, is a tough nut to crack. Thus far the liberal tide has broken against that rock. Humanae Vitae still stands, and women's ordination has been declared to be beyond the Church's competence. It is obvious that if the Doctrine of Self-Fulfilment is to replace the notion of obedience to Revelation (if the gospel of Rousseau is to replace that of Jesus Christ) a breach must be made. Where better to begin, in a Church which accords such honour to the Mother of God, than with the role women play in the sacramental life?

It must by now be clear to every diligent observer that the Catholic Church is crucial in the fight for the very survival of Christianity in the secularised West. If the culture of secular humanism (or de-humanisation, as it appears to faithful Christians) is to be resisted and finally overcome it will be through the exercise of the Roman Magisterium.

Gene has, characteristically, got it absolutely right. If Rome can be forced into retreat on one major issue (and, improbably as it seems at the moment, women's ordination may well be that issue) then the dam is broken and the rest will follow. If Rome stands firm, then the vaunted experiments of The Episcopal Church will wither on the vine.

A Critique of a Reaction to an Announcement

Archbishop John Hepworth has forwarded to me the following comment, written by Fr Samuel Edwards, in response to what the archbishop calls a "quite illiberal attack" on the Traditional Anglican Communion by Dr Peter Toon.


The issuance of a statement by the College of Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion has incited a heated response from Dr Peter Toon that was uncommonly quick even by his standards. The operative section of the statement is reproduced below as an aid to my readers as I endeavor to evaluate Dr Toon’s response:

“The Bishops and Vicars-General unanimously agreed to the text of a letter to the See of Rome seeking full, corporate, sacramental union. The letter was signed solemnly by all the College and entrusted to the Primate and two bishops chosen by the College to be presented to the Holy See. The letter was cordially received at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Primate of the TAC has agreed that no member of the College will give interviews until the Holy See has considered the letter and responded.”

Dr Toon’s article – issued on October 16, 2007, the same day the TAC Bishop’s statement was released – is being circulated on the internet under the title, “Seeking Unity with Rome: Traditional Anglican Communion's Bishops hope for acceptance.” While about a third of it is something of a commercial for a new edition of Richard Hooker’s Learned Discourse on Justification, the remainder in many particulars distorts and misrepresents the TAC Bishops’ statement.

Indeed, and ironically, Dr Toon’s response (or perhaps more accurately, his reaction) is an example of the documentary eisegesis that he has rightly condemned when it is practiced by his theological opponents: The TAC statement is interpreted not in its plain and literal sense, but according to a pre-existing set of what can only be called partisan prejudices and ad hominem presuppositions. Because of this, it should not be taken as a serious contribution to the debate (which makes it a relative rarity among its author’s writings) but instead should stand as a monument to the result of not allowing one’s first reaction to be released for public consumption until it has been considered in an objective, calm and recollected state of mind. It may be that he who hesitates is lost, but it is probably more true – it certainly not less so – that he who believes will not be in haste.

Unfortunately, Dr Toon’s prominence as a commentator does not permit allowing his reaction to pass without comment. My critique of it will progress more or less from item to item in the order in which it appears in Dr Toon’s article.

Critique

Dr Toon remarks that, in light of his reading of the teaching of Hooker, others, and the “the fundamental Formularies of the Anglican Way, with their rejection of the excesses of Romanist teaching, it is most strange that a whole group of Bishops from the Continuing Anglican Movement (having seceded from the Global Anglican Communion) should feel so confident about the orthodoxy and biblical basis of Roman Catholicism that they seek full communion with Rome-on Rome's terms and according to Rome's doctrine and dogma.”

Several things here merit comment. The first, though not the most important, is the use of the term “Romanist.” While it is still heard from anti-catholic evangelicals (who have bought into the false equation of “catholic” with “Roman Catholic”) and, more strangely, from anti-Roman high-church Anglicans (who have bought into the dubious notion that because Rome has erred through excess on certain doctrinal matters, it is no longer a catholic church), the use of this term has become almost wholly pejorative and partisan. In other words, it has become a slogan designed to elicit emotion (and thereby substitute for thought) rather than a description useful for fostering thought.

Next is the parenthetical description of the TAC Bishops (or the Continuing Anglican Movement as a whole – the exact reference is not entirely clear) as having “seceded from the Global Anglican Communion.” One is tempted to ask what GAC is being referred to here: Is it the one which looks – in an anglicized version of the ultramontane ecclesiology that it finds so offensive in the Roman Church – to communion with the See of Canterbury as its defining element? (If so, this entity hardly qualifies as a communion any more: Since clearly it has neither a common faith nor a common ministry, it is at best an association based on historical descent.) Or does he mean the nascent association rooted in the Anglican Churches of the Global South, which in the first place has not yet taken its final shape and in the second place has among its members a variance on the matter of the ordained ministry that may either prevent it from coalescing or call into question its own catholicity when and if it does so?

Next, Dr Toon alleges that the TAC Bishops are seeking “full communion with Rome – on Rome’s terms and according to Rome’s doctrine and dogma.” Presumably in support of this claim, he reproduces the full text of the official statement. The problem for him here is that there is nothing in the statement that gives a single shred of support to his extraordinary claim. (For me, this is strong prima facie evidence that this reaction was written in the white heat of emotion rather than in anything approaching scholarly objectivity.)

After helpfully supplying the reader with the text, Dr Toon then continues to attempt firmly to fix the spin he has put on the statement by wondering, “why, if these men are so sure that the Roman Way is totally superior to the Anglican Way, they are not already in the Roman Way.” But, again, the text gives no support to the assertion, and to anyone familiar with the context out of which it speaks – which, it seems to me, is a restoration of the search for “communion without absorption” begun in the archiepiscopate of Michael Ramsey and the pontificate of Paul VI – it is almost nonsensical.

The suggestion that the TAC bishops are “hanging around the periphery of the Anglican Way constantly talking of heading off” is another tendentious distortion. One might question whether anyone still in formal connection with The Episcopal Church and the Canterbury Communion, given their accelerating slide into doctrinal dissolution and institutional chaos, has a moral right to talk about peripheries at all. And so far as I am aware, no one in the TAC Council of Bishops is talking – constantly or even occasionally – about “heading off.” The talk seems to be about talking with a view toward fulfillment of the Lord’s expressed desire for unity in his truth – not Rome’s version, not ours, but his.

Dr Toon goes on to insist that, “If these Bishops believe that there is no integrity to the Anglican Way and that its only future is in the Roman Way then by all spiritual, rational and decent principles they ought surely to cross the Tiber now and find on the other side rest for their souls-and we wish them well in their voyage.” Again, his premises are assumptions grounded neither in the plain words of the text that has provoked him nor, indeed, in any official utterance of which I am aware by any bishop of the TAC. If the diagnoses – that the bishops believe that the Anglican Way has no integrity and that there is no future outside the Roman Way – are incorrect (and they are) then the remedy proposed is, at best, inappropriate.

The suggestion that, if they had any integrity, the TAC bishops would swim the Tiber forthwith and cease troubling those are portrayed as real Anglicans is interesting to me as one who has been around the Anglican church wars for thirty years: It contains clear and loud echoes of the “go away and God bless you” attitude long expressed toward traditional and conservative Anglicans in The Episcopal Church by hard-core revisionists such as Barbara Harris and contemporary TEC corporatists (including some who are soi disant conservatives, such as the current TEC bishop of Central Florida). It makes one wonder whether similar tactics might be adopted at some point by those who agree.

A relevant postscript

For some time, and at least in two articles circulated on the internet, I have made reference to what I call a fundamental difference of perception between what I call “mainstream Continuers” (those who adhere to the Affirmation of St Louis, such as TAC) and “new traditionalists” (such as the AMiA and the majority of the Common Cause Partership) on the nature of the Reformation, both in general and in its Anglican form. It is my belief that these differences go a long way toward explaining the matters which have exercised Dr Toon’s concern.

Simply put, the difference is this: Dr Toon, together with a significant body of opinion among those new traditionalists who have given the matter any thought, at least implicitly regards the English Reformation as being a completed work. Seemingly on account of this, the Church of England’s formularies – in particular the 39 Articles of Religion and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer – have assumed a hermeneutical authority which sets them on a par with, or even above that of the Ecumenical Councils. By contrast, mainstream Continuers regard the Reformation as a work still in progress. In this view (which I believe accords with the mainstream of classical Anglican practice), it is the Articles and the BCP which need to be evaluated in light of the Councils and of Scripture rather than the other way ‘round.

(The reality of the situation is actually a bit more complex and confusing than one which simply sets the new traditionalists on the one side with the 1662 BCP and the Articles and the mainstream Continuers on the other with the 1928 BCP and the Seven Councils. Within the institutional camp of the new traditionalists are a number of people whose core convictions naturally place them in the ecclesiological orbit of the mainstream Continuers. Specifically I am thinking of those FiFNA dioceses, parishes, and people who make up a significant, albeit a minority, component of the Common Cause groupings.)

When responding to Dr Toon’s allegation last year that to accept the authority of seven rather than four Ecumenical Councils (and particularly that of the Seventh) was to go beyond genuinely Anglican principles, I expressed what I deem to be the mainstream Continuum position as follows:

… I think that the Reformation – including the English Reformation, which was far and away the most reforming and least revolutionary of the group – was an unfinished business, an opus interruptus, if you will. There are few things more frustrating than the movement which largely succeeds, yet remains incomplete in important respects, mostly having to do with the practical application of the triumphing principles (as my fellow Reagan revolutionaries in the political arena can testify). That being so, I do not believe that the Elizabethan Settlement of religion, for all its genius, is something the restoration of which ought to be pursued, not least because it is no longer possible to do so, since the idea of Christendom which it took for granted has long since passed from the status of a living reality to that of a poignant memory. The upheavals involved in the Great Rebellion (1637-49), the Commonwealth, and the Restoration Settlement (which produced the 1662 BCP) effectively stalled the completion of the English Reformation, and the process was not effectively re-started until the ecclesiastical reform movements of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Even then, it was a matter of “fits and starts” that had to await the collapse of Post-Constantinian Christendom to have a hope of fulfillment. …
[Samuel L. Edwards, “Dr Toon, the Anglican Churches,
and the 7th Council” (1 August 2006).]

In the end, it may be that only when the varied attitudes toward the Reformation heritage of the Anglican Church are confronted – with specific reference to whether its objectives were or were not attained by 1662 – that both new traditionalists and mainstream Anglicans can sort out what it is they really want and with whom they have the most genuine affinity. In the meantime, (as Bishop Jack Iker) is fond of quoting, the challenge is to remember that, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” A major component of “the main thing” is this: “Ut unum sint.” No one’s arms are long enough to box with the one who makes that prayer.

Fr Samuel L. Edwards, SSM
Priest, DEUS/ACA/TAC
Waynesville, North Carolina
18 October 2007

Last One Out Turn Off the Lights

My head is spinning. I never would have imagined that it would happen so fast, but then it really didn't. It has been in the offing for four years.

The Common Cause Partnership (CCP) is born.

This is Explosion Number One, as predicted here just a few days ago:

"Anglican bishops from ten jurisdictions and organizations pledged to take the first steps toward a “new ecclesiastical structure” in North America. The meeting of the first ever Common Cause Council of Bishops was held in Pittsburgh September 25-28.

"The bishops present lead more than 600 Anglican congregations. They formally organized themselves as a college of bishops which will meet every six months. They also laid out a timeline for the path ahead, committed to working together at local and regional levels, agreed to deploy clergy interchangeably and announced their intention to, in consultation “with those Primates and Provinces of the Anglican Communion offering recognition under the timeline adopted,” call a “founding constitutional convention for an Anglican union,” at the earliest possible date agreeable to all of the partners.

"'We met deeply aware that we have arrived at a critical moment in the history of mainstream Anglican witness in North America. God has led us to repentance for past divisions and opened the way for a united path forward. To him be the glory,' said Bishop Robert Duncan, convener of the council."

Read it all here.

The Episcopal Church has been hit by the first major blast, as a whole host of groups and jurisdictions come together to form a new church. They are the American Anglican Council (AAC); the Anglican Communion Network (ACN); the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA); the Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC); the Anglican Province of America (APA); the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA); the Anglican Essentials Federation (AEF); Forward in Faith, North America (FIF/NA); and the Reformed Episcopal Church (REC).

Therein lie the elements that will cause Explosion Number Two, as I see little hope of such a disparate group maintaining any sort of real unity.

In the short term, however, we face the prospect of Avignon versus Rome -- two entities vying with each other as the true face of "mainstream Anglicanism" and seeking to convince the world of their bona fides. The Episcopal Church will no doubt retain its recognition by Canterbury, while the CCP will be embraced by the so-called Global South.

There will be more explosions to come, as catholic individuals, parishes and dioceses now belonging to the ten founding entities of the CCP find that there is no place for them in an institution that, in all likelihood, will continue to "ordain" women and worship with the 1979 "book of common prayer."

On that first point, the declaration says as much, when it states that one issue that will have to be dealt with is "How we will live together with bishops and congregations and dioceses that do ordain women and others that do not ordain women, affirming that we will not violate anyone’s conscience on this matter."

As to the second point, it hints as much when it says that two other issues to be dealt with are common worship and stating and maintaining a common Anglican ethos.

Both of these points are a far cry from the clarity provided by the Affirmation of St Louis.

I would so very much like to think that I am wrong, and that there will be no second or subsequent explosions; that the CCP could indeed be the foundation of a truly orthodox and catholic jurisdiction. But I fear that I will be proved right.

Let us pray for Bishop Duncan and all those involved in this bold venture, that they might take the steps necessary to prove me wrong. May God bless them.

And let us in the continuing movement not stand on the sidelines, pooh-poohing. Instead, let us seek dialogue with the CCP. They have already thought of that. The very final point included in their list of issues to be dealt with is this: Consistent with resolutions of Lambeth Conference, seeking to draw continuing churches, not members of the Common Cause Partnership, into fellowship.

Meanwhile, watch as the implosion now begins in earnest, as liberal, faithless "Anglicanism" begins to wither before our very eyes.

At least they'll save on their electricity bills.