Posted on 03/22/2017 5:11:30 AM PDT by BlessedBeGod
The treatment of Bishop Philip North, an Anglo-Catholic, shows the Church's prospects for unity are grim.
It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that the Church of England is at it again. Fresh off a truly disastrous session of General Synod (the Church's parliament), it has plunged itself headlong into further public ignominy.
The latest disaster concerns Bishop Philip North, currently the Bishop of Burnley. He was chosen by the bureaucracy to be the new Bishop of Sheffield (a promotion from suffragan to diocesan status).
Bishop North, however, is a traditionalist Anglo-Catholic, one of a sizable minority within the Church that tends to adhere more to traditional Catholic doctrine, as opposed to the Church of England's more Protestant tendencies.
Consequently, he does not accept the ordination of women, in line with the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and indeed the Church of England itself prior to 1992. This position brought on a series of events that have ultimately led to his withdrawal of his acceptance of the nomination.
It may seem to the outsider bizarre that North should have remained part of the Church of England, never mind become a bishop. This, however, would be to underestimate the Church of England's magnificent ability to make awkward but necessary compromises.
In 1993, Synod passed legislation allowing parishes that did not accept women priests to continue in their refusal. When the legislation permitting women bishops was passed in 2014, Synod also endorsed the Five Guiding Principles, which firmly stated that those who could not accept women's ministry were to be permitted to flourish to the highest degree within the church. All would gently agree to disagree, and operate as equals in loving but honest co-existence.
These lofty and inclusive principles now stand exposed as hollow lies after North was forced to withdraw his acceptance of the Sheffield post after a furious media campaign, driven by liberal clerics such as Radio 4 stalwart Giles Fraser and the Dean of Christ Church, Martyn Percy. Special-interest groups such as Watch (Women and the Church) added their voices to the howling horde. The support of the Archbishops did not prove enough backing for North. Nor did the endorsement of swathes of women priests in Burnley, who have grown to admire him greatly over the course of his tenure. In the face of concerted pressure, North cracked.
For this he should not be blamed; it is not common for ecclesiastical appointments to be greeted with angry letters from the local MP. A similar campaign had earlier prevented North from taking up a suffragan post at Whitby.
This tragedy is so hard to bear because it is widely agreed that North is something of a superstar. Notoriously hard-working, high-energy, and charismatic, he is one of the only senior figures in the Church to point out that its obsession with liberal cause célèbres (such as the recurrent question of same-sex marriage) is damaging its public image, and in particular its ability to connect with socially conservative working-class communities.
The bishops of the Church near-universally endorsed Remain in the EU referendum, another sign of the Church's consistently progressive bent. This was another wholly self-inflicted PR calamity; the national established church, which should have been a focus of national unity, made itself into yet another source of bitter division. North was one of few figures to emerge from that disastrous episode with any credit.
Reactions from North's supporters among the clergy run the gamut from horror to outright despair. Rebecca Feeney, an ordinand training for the priesthood at St Stephen's House, commented that: "There has been consistently misleading and polarising rhetoric about the Catholic position, which has resulted in immense negative press about Bishop Philip – someone a lot of women, myself included, would not have trained or be training for priesthood without. For many, he is a living embodiment of what mutual flourishing means, and in light of this, the treatment he has received is particularly strange and cruel."
Fergus Butler-Gallie, an ordinand at Westcott House, fired a mighty broadside: "I'd say that any affirmation that involves the personal smearing of a brother or sister in Christ is no affirmation at all and that, if anything, it makes the church look even more like a genitally-obsessed bunch of do-gooding hobbyists than ever before.
"The fact that the highest paid clergyman in the Church of England (Martyn Percy) can use the deanery of an Oxford college as a sniper's post to take down a convincing advocate for the very poorest in society (with a columnist for the Guardian feeding him his ammunition) will send one message and one message alone – we care more about our own sub-Freudian internal wranglings than we do about the care of God's people."
Future prospects for the unity of the church are grim. This episode has sent a clear message to conservative Anglo-Catholics that they are not wanted. The same logic that barred North from his diocesan post will surely be applied to suffragans before long.
The schismatic Sword of Damocles hovers over the neck of the Bride of Christ. No one wants the sword to fall; schism is near-universally viewed as a sin of terrifying magnitude. Nevertheless, an eventual partition looks far more likely today than it did yesterday. Future internal conflicts within the church will be fought in an atmosphere of heightened distrust: already an odour of stifling fear is choking off the church's effort to refocus on evangelism before it can even begin.
Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, is a talented man of great integrity and determination. That will not be enough to help him navigate the storm ahead. He needs a miracle. We must pray he gets it.
The "Anglo-Catholics" should just cut to the chase and join up with the English Catholics. They would be welcome, and bring a breath of liturgical fresh air.
When your enterprise is largely dependent on funding from external sources, antagonizing any of those sources is not advisable.
The left has not only infiltrated schools, they have also infiltrated many churches.
How do we counter “mass” indoctrination? Not much left other than the choice we wish not to take.
Even Evangelical churches no longer preach more than peace, love and GIVE to the children. Nothing for Seniors. Praise choruses as youth don’t like real hymns with a message in them. I’m Assembly of God, just down 1 from Pentecostal, haven’t had a preacher preach the full Word since my late pastor died of a sudden heart attack, he’d be appalled at what is going on.
When this last 1 said no getting up to go to the RR when he was preaching I stopped going. I’m not just a Senior but have gastro issues that makes frequent trips to the RR necessary. All he preached was Peace, love and Give to the youth. There is a compromise that can be used to please both generations on the music.
Most likely to bring in the children, youth, and families.
This is a link to a PDF of a book about, in part, an individual involved in the effort to get communists into seminaries as sleepers. I only started reading it but even early on you can see an example of why communists in education can be very dangerous.
Please join the Ordinariate!
This is a good thing. Any conservative still attending the church of England needs a kick in the pants to get out and find a real church.
Get ready to sail the Tiber.
Of possible interest.
It has saddened me that Elizabeth, in so many respects a great monarch, fell down in a religious duty to correct her wayward sons Charles and Andrew with regard to marriage, and failed to make any form of protest against the imposition of gay marriage and female ordination. When the gay thing came up in Holland, the King left the country rather than appear to go along with the parliament’s decision to impose it.
Now Charles inherits a deeply corrupted institution.
A few comments, though.
It has saddened me that Elizabeth, in so many respects a great monarch, fell down in a religious duty to correct her wayward sons Charles and Andrew with regard to marriage
I certainly agree that the monarchy has failed to some extent in this, and the Queen shares some of the blame for that.
and failed to make any form of protest against the imposition of gay marriage and female ordination.
Constitutionally, she couldn't. Not in public. Of the issue of gay marriage (which is a matter of civil law), the only way by which she could constitutionally intervene was her power to 'warn' the Prime Minister against it in their private audiences. I have no idea if she did or not, but that is the only thing she can do under the conventions of the British constitution. And on the issue of female ordination, her hands are even more tied. The Queen's role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England is often misunderstood. She is not really the 'Head of the Church' in terms of having power to control it. Her role is explicitly (and this is part of the Coronation oath) to protect the rights of the Bishops to run the Church as they see fit. It's been that way since 1688 when Parliament wrote the oath specifically to limit the powers of William and Mary and set England (and after 1701 Britain) on the path to becoming a Constitutional Monarchy.
"Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the gospel and the Protestant reformed religion established by law, and will you preserve unto the bishops and clergy of this Realm, and to the churches committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges as by law do or shall appertain unto them, or any of them?".
The Queen must yield to the Bishops on how the Church of England is run. Her Oath does not allow her to overrule or undermine them. Supposedly she has the power to appoint them, but since 1976, she's only ever been offered one choice by the Prime Minister, who themselves, is normally only offered two choices by the Synod (Margaret Thatcher did refuse a Synod nomination - but only once).
When the gay thing came up in Holland, the King left the country rather than appear to go along with the parliament’s decision to impose it.
I do not believe that to be the case. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands (Holland did not have a King at the time, although her son is now King) signed Holland's same-sex marriage Act into law on December 21st 2000.
The only similar situations I can think of to the one you are describing here is King Baudouin of the Belgians who took advantage of a provision in the Belgian constitution in 1990 to avoid signing a Bill concerning abortion - Belgium's constitution allows a King to temporarily cede the powers of the Monarch to the Council of Ministers. The Queen doesn't have that option under the British constitution. If she left the country to avoid giving the Royal Assent to an Act or Parliament, she'd simply be temporarily transferring that power to two of the Counsellors of State - other members of the Royal Family (there are five Counsellors of State - currently the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, Prince Harry, and the Duke of York (it is generally the Consort, and the first four adults in line to the throne). In the absence or incapacity of the Queen, any two Counsellors of State working in concert can exercise the powers of the Monarch - until recently it's normally been the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York (as the Duke of Edinburgh normally accompanied the Queen overseas), although the Duke of Cambridge has now taken his uncle's place. Should the Queen make other members of the Royal family do something she's not prepared to do herself?
You are correct that it was King Baudouin of whom I was thinking. I’m not suggesting ER2 should have done exactly as he did; but in her own way, I wish she had taken a stand in some fashion and communicated it to the public. What was the PM going to do, depose her? I doubt he could have pulled it off. If I recall correctly, it was Cameron who shoved gay marriage down everyone’s throats and overrode the Christian schools’ teachings about sexuality. His power soon was ended. Her influence remains.
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