Some Anglican friends have wondered why so many of us non-Anglicans are so interested in that communion's auto-destruction. Believe me, it's not Schadenfreude, at least not for the interested parties I know. Part of it -- I'm thinking in specific of an Anglophile RC priest friend -- is a true love for Anglican prayers and piety, which he hates to see disappearing as the C of E collapses. For me, and I think for lots of conservatives, what's happening to the Anglicans is fascinating because they are on the tip of the spear of modernity. One way of another, few churches will escape what the Anglicans are going through. The sexual revolution is breaking a wealthy, venerable and once-powerful national Christian church. It's fascinating to watch, and of course very, very sad. Yet it must be admitted, or at least I must admit, a sense of black comedy watching folks twist themselves into pretzel knots trying to salvage what is at this point unsalvageable.
Damian Thompson, one of the Telegraph's bloggers, reports today that liberal establishment Catholics in the UK are trying to keep Anglo-Catholics from coming over to Rome. Thompson:
Then there is this priceless garbage: "Rome knows however that the Catholics in the pews should not be upset too much. In England at least, these Catholics are by and large pretty liberal. Many of them would like women priests, or at the very least married ones. The last thing they want is a whole group of woman-bishop-hating clergy coming over, with their wives and families, and enforcing some kind of new doctrinal orthodoxy on dioceses that are working very well without them and finding their own accommodation with Catholic orthodoxy and modern life."It's true that the tiny proportion of Catholics who take their line from the Bishops' Conference bureaucracy and its house journal, the Tablet, feel this way. "Rome" doesn't, and nor do young Catholics, who are more conservative than their guitar-strumming grandparents, who are still boring everyone senseless reminiscing about Vatican II. The "new doctrinal orthodoxy" that terrifies the Sandalistas is taught by Pope Benedict and resonates loudly with more and more traditionalist Anglicans. It's called Catholicism.
I was thinking over the weekend about a post from James's blog (by guest poster Demophilus) in which, seeking a via media between Anglican progressives and "fundamentalists", he said that absent a connection to Canterbury, Anglicanism cannot exist. Demophilus:
To not go through Canterbury would be, simply, to no longer be Anglican. There is a historical relationship between a certain place and a certain way of worshiping the Christian God, and the identity of "Anglican" is bound up with that relationship. Like all identities it is contingent. You can complain about it but it is what it is. Put differently, "conservative" Anglicans are complaining about what it means to be Anglican more than anything else. No one is forcing them to stay in communion with Canterbury, but they must accept that communion with Canterbury is the basic principle of being Anglican. What they don't have the right to do is unilaterally redefine their terms -- which is what they are doing.
Demophilus is dunning the African Anglicans who are making noises about breaking communion with Canterbury in the name of preserving Anglicanism from the innovators. His is an interesting argument, one that I'm instinctively inclined to accept. But then again, let's say that the Bishop of Rome became apostate or vacant, and the validly elected pontiff established his throne in, I dunno, Denver. Would Roman Catholicism cease to be Roman or Catholic because the Bishop of Rome was no longer in Rome? It would of course be a terrible tragedy if the pope left Rome (it has happened before, though), but would Catholics prefer a pope who no longer held to the dogma of the Catholic faith but who remained in the Vatican to a pope who moved to Denver but confessed the orthodox Catholic faith?
Similarly, what is the value of maintaining communion with Canterbury in the name of Anglicanism, if one has concluded that Canterbury is functionally apostate?
Did the Jews need the Temple in Jerusalem to practice Judaism? As it happened, no. That does not diminish the tragedy of the Diaspora, and of course the comparison to the Anglican situation is sloppy. And diaspora Judaism was substantively different from Temple Judaism, which featured sacrificial rites. Still, the Jews of the Diaspora had no choice but to figure out how to practice their faith in exile. Isn't it possible that the Anglicans of Africa and elsewhere who oppose the progressives might find some way to preserve what is essential to Anglicanism only by formally breaking with Canterbury?
I don't know the answer to this question, and if the answer is yes, then obviously that's a bitter, bitter irony of history. Still, I think it's a more than fair proposition. But let me put it to the room: to what extent must Anglicanism be explicitly connected to England to be Anglican? To what extent must any religion be explicitly connected to a geographical entity to be itself?
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It's difficult to compare religions, or religious sects. They are asdifferent from each other as are individual human beings, or discrete cultures. They are more like cultures that individuals in that the dividing line between them is often blurry.
In a very basic sense, Christianity is not as much a "place-based" religion as its sisters Judaism and Islam. Islam could continue without the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, but it would be very traumatic for the faith, whose central tenets demand pilgrimage and prayer facing these two cities. However, Judaism continued in spite of the sacking of Jerusalem. It experienced a little death, it is not, many would argue, what it SHOULD be. But it is still strong and vibrant and viable, after all these centuries. It thrives now far beyond the borders of what would have been possible had things turned out differently.
The Catholic Church is not reliant on the physical location of Rome in the same way. One can easily picture the Pope in exile in Switzerland, or Portugal, or somewhere like that, standing in a large square and proclaiming the beginning of the years of the Pilgrim Church of Rome, with very easy references to scriptural passages which declare that we are all of us, human beings, strangers in a strange land. Christians doubly so, since the Son of Man had no place lay his head. There'd be some statement of solidarity with all stateless and powerless migrant and refugee people everywhere. And the Roman Catholic Church would go on, probably more inspired than it had been in some time.
Anglicanism, too, can survive, but I think it IS tied a little more closely to a place, and more importantly schism would cause difficulties with the succession of Bishops (though I am aware that the succession is rather difficult as it is historically.) Also, you'd have several rival groups claiming THEY were the true inheritors of the Truth. This universally leads to bitterness.
I think the traditions and prayers and the whole concept of a middle way can continue, though, regardless. Perhaps the new heart of Anglicanism will be in Lagos, instead of Canterbury. If this steam of Christianity continues the faith and furthers the Kingdom of God, what does it matter? Jesus' teaching were always about the hidden power available to the underdog, a power reliant not on political posturing or sheer authoritarianism, but on God. It would be cosmic justice (since Karmic justice seems a bit of a mixed metaphor here) if Africa became the head of a Church whose founders colonized so much of that continent.
"For we have this treasure in earthen vessels to show that this power is not from us but from God."
If the C of E can be considered to be something other than a simple church of the reformation but part of a continuance of an older tradition then this actually gets pretty simple. But probably wont stay that way. When the RC and the Orthodox went there seperate ways, then the ancient division of the church into patriarchates became one of schism with the Patriarch of the West no longer recognizing the others and setting up, instead, a church structure that ignores the idea of churches based around nationalities.
When Henry broke from the RC, he essentially returned to the idea of national churches and created a new patriarchate and also resurrected ceasero-papism. The RC of course, no longer recognizes such an organization and, doctrin aside, would have declared this to be schismatic, if not down right heretical.So the Cof E follows an old organizational model. Now, England expands into an Empire and took its church along for the ride. When the empire receded, the Church becomes, organizationally at least, a conciliar church with a patriarch (the archbishop of canterbury), who is the first among equals. Now though, we see the problems of disunified doctrin. Organizationally speaking, the conservative southern churches should set up national churches and a new synod or council and not worry about being "Anglican" since they are not english. Whether they are in communion with Canterbury or not should not matter to a self sustaining autocephalus church. THe Russian and Constantinopolitan churches have not always been in communion and Rocor just recently restored communion with Moncow, these things can change without changing the essential nature of a church. Unfortunately, I think that the Conservative churches will try to maintain the label of anglican as a way to validate their existance. The tragedy is that its not necessary, and may end up seriously harming their credibility.
A couple of nights ago I was watching a wonderful film version of Jane Austen's Persuasion and afterwards was overcome with a deep sense of sadness that the culture described in the film is almost entirely gone. Yes of course there was a great deal wrong with it and no one was more aware of its deficiencies than Austen but it was also so humane and so beautiful. And what exactly is it that the current inhabitants of the United Kingdom are proposing to put in its place? I shudder to think. Personally, I think Anglicanism has less to do with Canterbury than with the Prayer Book. It was the only thing that held the communion together, the only thing that all of them shared in common, since there is no magisterium or binding confessional statement. Since the abandonment of the Prayer Book, all you have had is a communion of churches that used to be Anglican, and that share a common memory of what it was once like to be Anglican. That is hardly enough to keep it together indefinitely.
Rod: two thoughts:
1. The demise of ECUSA is greatly exaggerated. About 100 out of 7000 parishes want to split. If you look back in history, this happens nearly every time a new doctrine or change occurs. Happened when women were ordained; happened when ECUSA (aka TEC) updated the Book of Common Prayer, etc.
2. The Anglican Communion split two weeks ago when GAFCON published the Jerusalem Document, declaring IT the instrument whereby a church is considered "Anglican". 200 bishops are not attending Lambeth, but some 800 are; the 800 are NOW the historic Anglican Communion. The other is the new Jerusalem Communion, to put it more accurately.
The two camps are no more reconcilable than one group of scientists who declare a geo-centric solar system accurate, opposing another group of scientists who declare a helio-centric solar system accurate. They are totally incompatible. It's best we all go our separate ways, and see which solar system florishes, and which does not. :)
As to Catholicism and Rome--the word "Roman Catholic" is a relatively recent description. It was used in the Age of Reformation as a epithet(curse words, more or less).(The appellation should be Latin Rite, or Roman church, since the mystical body of Christ also included the Armenian Church, the Coptic, the Orthodox, and yea even St. Augustine of Canterbury’s Anglican Rite--thanks to King Henry VIII, and his daughter, Elizabeth).
There were originally five pillars of the church, Jerusalem (under St. James), Antioch (set up by Peter and Paul), Alexandria (by Mark), Rome, ad finally Constantinople.
So the Bishop of Rome does not have to be in Rome to be prelate over his charge.
As a matter of fact, several times the Latin Rite pope was NOT IN ROME. St. Theresa of Avila (if memory serves) had to convince one Pope to return there, from Avignon, France.
We believe Napoleon ha taken one pontiff from the city, as did various
Barbarians forced the Pontiff's evacuation.
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