A Western Orthodox Catholic Church -- A Nineteenth Century Vision

TexAnglican ^ | 4/17/2006 | Randall Foster

[sionnsar]

There is a fascinating nineteenth century text on intercommunion between Anglican and Eastern Orthodox Churches available through Project Canterbury to which I would like to call your attention, Gentle Reader. J.J. Overbeck's Catholic Orthodoxy and Anlgo-Catholicism: A Word about Intercommunion between the English and Orthodox Churches is well worth the read. Hat tip to Meam Commemorationem. At this point the polemical tone of the essay is unduly harsh ("No popery! No Protestantism!" is not quite the right tone anymore!) and recent developments with the Anglican sphere probably mean that the Anglican and Orthodox worlds are further apart today than they may have been 140 years ago, but the essay is still thought-provoking today. (I cannot endorse the entire contents of the piece, but it will make you think -- perhaps cry out in agreement or objection!) A selection to whet the appetite:

Within the High Church there is a party who see "the abomination of desolation stand in the holy place," who lift up their eyes and look out for comfort and help, for strength and power, for rest and peace. They open the Catholic annals of old, consult the fathers of the Church, meditate in the Lives of the Saints. A new light dawns upon them. Happy hours are spent with Ss. Basil, Chrysostom, Augustine. "Well, let us again infuse their life into our Church!" A fuller belief is wrought out, scanty articles filled with substantial truth, long-forgotten sacraments re-introduced, ascetic life resuscitated. Excellent men they are these earnest High-Churchmen.

Would all the High Church were of the same stamp, but a good number of its members are nothing but mere Conservatives, and do not take the trouble to go beyond their actual church, whilst others, in premature haste, precipitate beyond the mark, delight in trifles, decorations, pompous garments, trimming up of churches, minute observances. They ransack Romsey and Bona, and astonish their people by their abstruse ritualistic learning rather than edify the same. They think to have our sympathy, since their innovations are but old Catholic usages gleaned in the East and chiefly in the West. But on the Catholic ground these usages are significant, instructive, wholesome, having historically grown up in their genuine soil. On the contrary, transplanted into a cold, heterogeneous soil, they die away or grow into superstition. These Ritualists play at ceremonies like children, forgetting that the soul is more than the body, and both more than the dress. It is a common mistake to take this class of Churchmen as representatives of the High Church. They are, not inappropriately, termed in a certain paper "Altitudinarians," as opposed to the "Latitudinarians" (Broad-Churchmen) and "Platitudinarians" (Evangelical Low-Churchmen). These ALP are indeed "der Alp" (the incubus) of the English Church.

Against those Attitudinarians Archdeacon Denison is the able exponent of High-Church principles. In the Norwich Church Congress ... he said: "he did feel that in this country they were in a dangerous position on account of a disposition to introduce too much of ultra ritualism--of observances which, after all, were only the exponents of a high state of doctrine which had been painfully arrived at, and which could never be put in the place of the teaching of the doctrine. No greater mistake could be made than for a man to say, 'I am going to teach my people doctrine by wearing certain vestments and using certain forms.' It would be a happy thing to go through the land and be able to see no clergyman vested in any way but in that to which all eyes had been accustomed. He had the utmost regard and respect for many of those who differed from him on the subject, because he knew that among them there were many of the most painstaking and hard-working of God's Ministers, and therefore he desired to deal with the subject tenderly. At the same time, he could not doubt that they were committing a great mistake."

[sionnsar]

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[GSlob]

Caesaropapism is MUCH worse than simple popery.

[wideawake]

With all due respect, the 39 Articles cannot be interpreted in an Orthodox sense - the Orthodox doctrine of the Eucharist does not permit it.

[FormerLib]

Caesaropapism is MUCH worse than simple popery.

It's much better to have neither Caesar nor Pope!

[Kolokotronis]

There was a period of time in the very early years of the 20th century when the presiding Orthodox hierarch of America +Raphael Hawaweeny was convinced by the Episcopalians that they really believed the same things as the Orthodox. +Raphael issued an encyclical which directed the faithful to attend Episcopal churches when an Orthodox one wasn't available. After a few years he learned more about Episcopalian theology and issued another encyclical revoking the first and directing the faithful to have nothing to do with Episcopal churches or priests. Here's a link to the letter:

http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/ecumenical/raphael_hawaweeny_episcopal_relations.htm

[FormerLib]

"I make this apology for the Anglicans whom as Christian gentlemen I greatly revere, that the loose teaching of a great many of the prominent Anglican theologians are so hazy in their definitions of truths, and so inclined toward pet heresies that it is hard to tell what they believe."

If that is what +Raphael witnessed at the turn of the last Century, imagine what he could tell us after an exchange with Episcopalian Bishops Spong and Vicki Gene!