Forward in Faith’s Conference has produced a variety of different views on the Pope’s forthcoming Apostolic Constitution; it has revealed the divisions at the heart of Anglo-Catholicism that may yet unsettle Rome’s plans for an orderly exodus from the Church of England into new personal ordinariates. However, Geoffrey Kirk’s comments leave me with the feeling that a disingenuousness and mercenary spirit lies at the heart of Anglo-Catholicism that I have long suspected. Fr. Kirk may think that he has come to the end of a long journey and now finally realises that he must become a Roman Catholic, but one would have thought that he had had long enough to come to this realisation before now. That he would make such a statement only once the Pope has given assurances that his ‘Anglican heritage’ will be protected suggests that some Anglo-Catholic clergy are interested in what Rome can do for them rather than in what they can do for Rome. Unless the Church of England is prepared to hand over church buildings (a crucial factor in keeping many clergy from converting in 1994), I suspect that no more will go over to Rome now than would have done anyway once the first woman bishop is ordained – and it is certain that, had the Pope done nothing, there would nevertheless have been an Anglican exodus on a modest scale.
Most interesting among the comments made at the Conference were those of the Bishop of Chichester. Without putting forward a particular point of view on the Apostolic Constitution in his keynote address, he nevertheless gently questioned the ecclesiology that lies behind personal ordinariates. If the church is a bishop and his local church, as both Scripture and Apostolic tradition dictate, one is making a dramatic departure from Anglican tradition by accepting from Rome a status that is not ‘churchly’ but effectively reduces Anglo-Catholic clergy to a kind of ‘chaplaincy’ to Catholics with peculiar tastes. After all, what is the Pope’s long-term intention? Will Anglo-Catholic personal ordinariates gradually integrate into the Roman mainstream, so that Anglo-Catholicism disappears altogether? Or will they be a permanent arrangement, still here in 400 years time, which suggests a major innovation in the canonical structure of the Church and a move, as I have already pointed out, against the ecclesiopolitical spirit of Vatican II?
Anglo-Catholicism at present is, in a sense, inherently unCatholic in its ecclesiology. Everyone knows that the theological extremities of different denominations touch, and at the lower end of the spectrum co-operation and para-church structures between Anglicans, Baptists and Presybterians are commonplace. However, the ecclesiology of low church Anglicans is such that this makes perfect sense for them. Likewise at the Anglo-Catholic end of the spectrum belief and practice is identical to that of the Roman Catholic Church. Roman Catholic doctrine prohibits the kind of permeability, however, that we see between denominations at the low church end, yet from the Anglo-Catholic side such permeability is longed for. In this way, Anglo-Catholics are unCatholic; they do not have the Roman Catholic confidence in their own identity as a church, indeed as the church. Those who now confidently assert that ‘The Anglican experiment is over,’ as one Forward in Faith delegate put it, are forgetting that Anglo-Catholicism was not merely a set of practices; it was once, at a time that has evidently been forgotten, an ecclesiological theory. What has become of ‘branch theory’, whereby the Church of England is regarded as a branch of the Apostolic Church together with the Roman and Orthodox branches?
The answer, perhaps, is to be found in the fact that the foundation of ‘branch theory’ has subsided. Anglo-Catholics are wont to claim that the Church of England was once Catholic in belief – and they are quite correct that from the Act of Supremacy in 1535 to the death of Henry VIII in 1547 Ecclesia Anglicana differed in virtually none of its doctrines from Rome. It differed in one important respect only; that the King of England, having imperial jurisdiction, was the Head of the Church in his dominions. The basis for this historical claim was Cranmer’s Collectanea Satis Copiosa of more or less dubious documents, but the essential argument was to be found in William Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man (in spite of the fact that Henry had Tyndale burnt for heresy). Tyndale argued that the King, as the father of his people, could not therefore accept the jurisdiction over his people’s church (the church being the embodiment of the people in a Christian commonwealth) of a foreign power. The King, therefore, is the Head of the Church of his people as he is at the head of the Christian Commonwealth. Arguments from history could confirm this too; in particular, the authority that the Byzantine Emperors had to summon Councils has long been a problem for the Pope’s exclusive claims in later centuries to be able to do so. The Byzantine Emperor was indisputably regarded as the Head of the Church and Orthodox rulers have continued to be so since (viz. the Tsars of Russia and the Kings of Georgia).
Tyndale’s argument was the foundation for the doctrine of Divine Right, a belief that fundamentally opposed Rome’s claims of jurisdiction in spite of the fact that many who held it most passionately were attracted by other aspects of Rome. Archbishop William Laud, according to legend, was offered a Cardinal’s hat if he would convert to Catholicism. That he did not accept this offer has more to do with his respect for the rights of his Sovereign than with his abhorrence of Popery. The doctrine of Divine Right sustained the Church of England through the persecution of the Commonwealth and forged an identity that went on to sustain the Non-Jurors who were the definitive expression of High Church principles. Yet there is not a single case, as far as I am aware, of a Non-Juring High Churchman converting to Catholicism in the 18th century, even when Catholicism was the religion of his Sovereign.
In short, without the doctrine of Divine Right accepted as a serious proposition, genuine High Church Anglicanism becomes impossible. Divine Right, the foundation of the Church of England’s distinctive identity from Presbyterians on the one hand and Catholics on the other has subsided. The Anglo-Catholicism of the 19th century, although it harked back to Henry VIII’s Ecclesia Anglicana, lacked the profound belief in the King’s authority over the church; consequently it has lost its distinctive identity and slipped into being subservient to Rome.
By their willingness to accept Rome’s invitation, the Anglo-Catholics of Forward in Faith have proved once and for all that they are in no way the successors of the High Churchmanship of the Non-Jurors, who no matter how close they approached Rome in doctrine would never have accepted her discipline.
3 Comments
October 28, 2009 at 10:57 am
You seem to forget that the very Jacobus from whom we derive the name Jacobite was a Roman Catholic.
You seem to forget that the Byzantine rite of St Cyril and Methodius were permitted a liturgy in Slavonic rather than the Apostolic Greek, as a conciliaroity concession by Rome and yet they are still here after a thousands years.
If that was “a major innovation in the canonical structure of the Church” it is one that is still with us.
Why not the same for the Anglican-Catholic rite?
If you have identified an “ecclesiopolitical” spirit of Vatican II then you are on your own in so doing. N-one else has found one.
Insofar as there might be said to be one it is all in favour of the kind of offer the Pope has generously made to Anglicans who are fed up to the back teeth with the fatuous, self-negating, irrational, inconsistent, untraditional and frequently un-Christian nonsense that their current leaders so regularly spout.
October 28, 2009 at 7:34 pm
This post is intended as a criticism of Anglo-Catholics, not Roman Catholics. James II was the latter.
The Holy See has authorised numerous rites over the centuries, but as I understand it Sacrosanctum Concilium outlawed the use of any rite authorised after 1400. For Benedict XVI to create de facto a new ‘Anglo-Catholic’ rite is certainly against the spirit of Sacrosanctum Concilium.
I couldn’t agree with you more about the Bishops of the Church of England. Ultimately, the C of E’s terminal decline over the past three centuries is traceable to the departure of the Non-Jurors, who were the only men not prepared to perjure themselves for material gain. My point is not that the C of E is in any way better than the Roman Catholic Church; my point is that the Non-Jurors would never have accepted the Pope’s offer, and that Anglo-Catholics’ willingness to do so points to the inauthenticity of Anglo-Catholicism compared to traditional High Churchmanship.
November 6, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Sacrosantum Concilium contains no such prohibition, as you will find if you read it.
You may be thinking of Quo Primum of St Pius V of 1570. It forbade innovatory liturgies which were less than 200 years old (i.e. invented since 1370).
Sacrosanctum Concilium on the other hand, actually paved the way for a huge liturgical innovation – the Mass of Pope Paul VI – unwisely, in my view, but that is, nonetheless, what it did. On that basis, it is hard to see how a new Anglican-Catholic rite is out of keeping with that.
I agree that the Non-jurors were a great loss to the Anglican Church. My own ancestors were Scottish Non-jurors.
The arguments of Cranmer’s Collectanea Satis Copiosa and William Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man are unconvincing.
The King can no more be Head of the Church than could the Emperor who was the real head of the Christian Commonwealth (the kings being subsidiary to him but independently sovereign in their own realms).
Like Henry VIII, the Byzantine Emperors usurped the role of head of the Church but did so becuase they had broken with Rome (although the last Paleologi did convert to Russian-rite Roman Catholicism at the end).
The right of the Emperor to summon General Councils was never a problem for the popes since they happily sanctioned it for the first 12oo years of the Church’s history and even after they began to reserve the right to themselves (largely following rows with the imperial officers) the Emperor still had the right to preside and protect and occupy the first place, ahead of the papal legates.
However, having said that, I agree that it is very ominous for the future of this country that the state Church has allowed itself to be so compromised by values so completely alien to it and its constitution, let alone to Scripture and the historic, orthodox creeds and moral teachings.
On that we clearly agree!