The Bishop of Dibley
7 July 2008 - 5 תמוז 5768 by Huw
ord reaches us that the Archbishop of Canterbury has actually begun standing up for his beliefs and the the Church of England has voted to give the full people of God the benefit of a doubt when it comes to participation in the the full church - including positions of authority.
Well then.
Glory to God for all things.
Still - it’s all rather like the council of Chalcedon, eh?
What will we do with the conservatives, the ones who won’t come, the one not invited, the ones who refuse to recognise the Authority? Will it be a case of what Dom Gregory Dix pointed out: that to be stuck in the past is to be in schism from the Church?
I think the main point is to recognise all parties are Christians - where they stand now: in need of God’s grace and getting it - and living it out as they best can.
As of yet, I’ve not seen that attitude much in any one…
My answer for more than 25 years since finding out about WO in the early ’80s is still ‘the larger church trumps everything; the larger church doesn’t do that’.
I didn’t sign on to be a liberal Protestant.
Both the Anglo-Catholics and the left see this is a communion-sundering issue. A battle of the absolutes, or which do you follow, an infallible church built on precedent or changing modern fashion, the will o’the wisp of liberal Protestantism?
A fallible church gives the management more power than the Pope ever dared. (Him on WO: ‘I can’t. I’m only the Pope.’)
Catholicism reduced to opinion or a style of dressing and services is no longer Catholicism.
Yes, we’re all Christians, and the young semi-orthodox in the Episcopal Church have things in common with me that I don’t with mainstream RC, but that doesn’t mean we’re in communion.
To give an example nothing to do with modern controversies, an Episcopal priest in my blogroll once mentioned infant baptism. The Baptists are our Christian brothers, she agreed, but that among other issues precludes being in the same church.
Re-reading Articles XIX and XXI (again nothing to do with arguments about the sexes - they seem to say the church is fallible) I understand why Anglo-Catholicism was doomed.
Why it came crashing down in my lifetime is one of my questions for the hereafter.
I still don’t regret experiencing it.
The faith in an English idiom even when dressed in Italian finery, with a sense of fun and tolerance not of heresy but of people’s failings.
I hope some will keep it going in the larger church where it always belonged.
Well, chaps, we had a good run.
Infant Baptisms: that’s the first time I’ve heard an Anglican describe them as being a church-dividing issue.
I know a lot of people who think the gender of the clergy is a dividing issue even though I’m not one of them. My faith is a little stronger than that: if this change is of God, it will last. If it is not, it won’t. *shrug* Like our understanding of sexuality, that will take much more than my lifetime to decide. In the mean-time, I have enough faith to let the Church work it out in all her aspects. Jesus never said nothing about it. We invented presbyters… and every other order. We’re working on it.
When Mtr Philip said that the church had the power to ordain women if she wanted to, it was former Anglican converts that rose up in anger and made him retract his words. I believe the community *does* have that power. And, like Paul and his gentile converts, it’s got to start someplace. We tend to imagine there’s a way to get us all in the same box (read, visible institution) and until we do we can’t make any changes at all. The church is like one big stained-glass window: millions of fragments arranged in a glorious mosaic. Some seem to wish that window was all one sheet of glass in one colour.
Some seem to imagine we broke the church and we have to wait for God to fix it. My faith is a bit stronger than that: I think the Holy Spirit has been shattering our petty human uniformity for the last 2000 years. We’re getting more Orthodox all the time.
Perhaps I do believe in an infallible church after all.
I’m sorry the boys have to share their toys with the girls. The “Chaps” have had it for long enough and every time you write that sentence you seem to prove an accusation of sexism. If sharing means the toys have cooties now, and you have to run away: that’s your problem. The Church is taking her time to decide this issue - nearly 2000 years. I’ve got time to wait.
I said communion-sundering not church-dividing because of course the church as both Revd Jane and I understand it (!) accepts infant baptism unequivocally. That doesn’t mean the Baptists aren’t our Christian brothers but it does put them not fully in the church and out of communion with both her and me.
Gender is when you’re talking about French grammar or buying electrical hardware; people belong to one or the other sex.
The issue is whether a bishop or group of bishops can change what the larger church has always done. The Pope, all the Eastern patriarchs (including the Orthodox) and the Polish National Catholic Church say no. Anglicans, Old Catholics and independent-sacramental-movement churches say yes.
Like with the Baptist brethren on their issues, a communion deal-breaker.
Again, Catholic = infallible church = limited power; Protestant = fallible church = unlimited power to contradict/change teachings. ‘L’eglise, c’est moi’ indeed. People accuse the Pope of thinking that but it’s the other way round.
My faith is a little stronger than that: if this change is of God, it will last. If it is not, it won’t.
Sure, the Gamaliel principle, which as a libertarian I accept and not only because religious liberty gives the church room to flourish. I defend the liberal Anglicans’ right to be. Not the same as being or pretending to be in the same communion with them. As I wrote to Chris Tessone recently, the Catholic position makes perfect sense to me but IF I and the larger church were wrong at least I can say I tried to be charitable and just and God will understand.
We invented presbyters… and every other order.
No. I’m not a Protestant.
There’s the good argument for WO, like Met. Philip’s improbabilist opinion, a perfectly good Catholic one along with impossibilism, that it’s a matter of discipline the whole church could change. A good Anglo-Papalist friend who unlike me grew up with a woman priest and later sided with the larger church on principle not animosity/misogyny believes that. If Rome did it he’d accept it.
Then there’s the argument ‘we invented the church/orders’, or ‘Jesus didn’t found the church’, which to Catholics demolishes the foundation of belief.
We tend to imagine there’s a way to get us all in the same box (read, visible institution) and until we do we can’t make any changes at all. The church is like one big stained-glass window: millions of fragments arranged in a glorious mosaic. Some seem to wish that window was all one sheet of glass in one colour.
One of my favourite responses to this argument is it doesn’t understand that traditional Catholicism is not monolithic. All those different cultures mean different rites, and there are different schools of theology and spirituality… but united in essentials. The apostolic ministry, too important to tinker with, is one of those.
Symphony not cacophany.
Yes, a visible institution: a communion. Some say Anglicanism isn’t a communion but simply a voluntary association with nothing holding it together so now it’s flying apart as the sun has set on the British Empire.
I’m sorry the boys have to share their toys with the girls. The “Chaps” have had it for long enough and every time you write that sentence you seem to prove an accusation of sexism. If sharing means the toys have cooties now, and you have to run away: that’s your problem. The Church is taking her time to decide this issue - nearly 2000 years. I’ve got time to wait.
I know you’re angry at the Catholic (Orthodox) Church for not changing to accommodate your desires - I think you really didn’t want to leave but were honest enough to admit the church can’t change that way - but please, Huw. This is beneath you. Do you throw this accusation - ‘You just hate women!’ - at your old friends at your former Orthodox church in North Carolina?
Tessone and his church are as committed to same-sex weddings as you are but he doesn’t call us woman-haters or homophobes because he knows we’re not.
In my blog entry on this news I chose two pictures illustrating Anglo-Catholicism at its height (in the 1920s) and made sure one group shot had lots of women to answer that accusation in advance.
I write that sentence, idiom and all, in the spirit of the good fellowship we had.
… the church as both Revd Jane and I understand it (!) accepts infant baptism unequivocally.
I meant although she and I may differ on where the church is/the boundaries of the church, infant baptism and only adult baptism obviously are not compatible in the (same) church.
To be clear I’m setting this out on it’s own.
I don’t believe you are sexist.
But “Well, chaps, we had a good run.” reads like you are. I don’t think that’s what you mean… but damn, it’s prissy anglo-philia (like my use of “colour” & “neighbour”) and, in this context it sounds rather like Bertie Wooster deciding that Aunt Agatha presence in the Drones’ Clubhouse makes the whole thing a bust.
In essence, it makes it sound like the rest of your article is window dressing.
I know that’s just my read - ie different from your meaning. But that’s what I’m hearing.
To be more clear -
I see the difference between your version of church and mine.
I’m not quite as angry as you imagine for the reason you imagine. I’m angry because there is no church that lives up to the hype: we’re all human institutions. The ones that pretend otherwise make me angry because I’d like to imagine they are true… but they’re not.
If you had some historical evidence for the rest of the argument, I’d go with it. History backs neither you nor I up with any solid foundations.
The book of acts says “Hey, let’s try something different to get our food distributed - and we invented deacons.” The rest follows the same pattern. If you assume Jesus started something with the 12 (which you can, if you read it one way) you get a different vision of Acts and all that follows. It all follows the same pattern there. But the book of Acts is not history: it’s propaganda. Which way you read it depends on that as well.
I’m ok with that.