Posted on 09/20/2006 11:49:27 PM PDT by monkapotamus
Ping.
Thanks for the ping, Alia.
How soon before the remnant starts nosing around the Unitarians for a little help? Seems so much in common between the two, at for the bit that remains.
Of course, if David Virtue had stood firm against female ordination in the first place, none of this need have happened. Somehow I think he thought that was okay but this is really over the line.
I feel bad for him, actually. All that good sense, wasted in that mausoleum.
The problem with the Episcopal Church of America is that they have lost their identity. Anglicanism is no longer taught to their children, but rather some pusedo-pan-ecumenical-everybody is ok-Christianity. Add to that the homosexuality thing and you have a disaster. I left the Episcopal Church in 1998 and have never looked back.
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I left in 1989. What I find is that the current problem is one that is just how the split that accompanied the original departure from Rome developed. From the start, there have been Anglicans of an individualistic bent (originally, Arminians and Presbyterians) and those of a Catholic leaning. The Kings at various times leaned to one or the other, which only increased the tenacity of each side (and the ferocity that accompanied switch-overs).
For a while there, back in the late 19th Century, there was a great deal of hope that Anglo-Catholicism had sufficiently captured the American Church that reunion with Rome or at least autochthonous status could be established. The Evangelicals resurged at the beginning of the 20th Century and have never looked back. It took 50 years to really destroy the Catholicity of core Anglican worship, but they were intent on their goal. It then took another 20 years for the damage to percolate into actual parishional practice, at which point most really hard-core A-C's departed. When they left, they took with them the voting ballast necessary to really sustain any kind of orthodox position within TEC. The result is as you see it.
Kind of thumbnail, and I can fill in plenty of details, but I think to say that this is a recent problem does not do justice to the magnitude of the apostasy that is involved, how long it took apostates to destroy a great Church and exactly how tenacious Satan is when he gets his teeth into a vital part of the Body of Christ.
I am curious about one thing in your analysis. Are you suggesting that a good deal of blame for the current mess can be laid at the feet of the Evangelicals?
You really touched upon something there.
As a cradle Catholic I feel strangely sad when I read these stories, because I realize that at some point large parts of the Anglican Communion, the ECUSA in particular, stopped being what Neuhaus would call "Catholics waiting to come home" (I intend no offense with this reference to anyone, just how I saw it) and have become something entirely unrecognizable.
I say that the Evangelicals insisted on imposing democratic governance on a church which was founded as a monarchy. The monarchic form was never removed, just denatured (partly by Parliament) so bishops gradually lost the fervor to assert control. Exceptional ones did anyway (such as Charles Grafton, Willaim White, Samuel Seabury, Levi Ives, etc.) but the main were administrators. The two forms of government can be compatible (witness our mixed secular government), but doctrine is not something that can be submitted to majority vote. It is either true from an unimpeachable source or it is false and even dangerous. Allowing democratic church rule allowed democratic interpretation of Scripture which allowed individualistic participation and local control The result is doctrinal chaos, eventually, sort of what TEC has now.
And it came in through the Evangelicals.
Now, the Anglo-Catholics failed to continuously and intensively educate and prophesy. So they come in for blame, too. But the action was rear-guard and I suspect not a little resented by folks in the pews. Given many of them really support democratic principles, their natural affinity will be with the Evangelicals and against the Anglo-Catholics and so went many votes in GCs down the years. It was a slow erosive process but very similar to what rivers do to mountainsides.
Well, you're right. I am a great devotee of Fr Neuhaus' work and ministry. I sympathize with him over the Novus Ordo and the Hymnal RCs use. I envy him the Magisterium. So we each have something the other could really use. That is to say, I really really prefer the full Missal text of the unexpurgated BCP, with the Gloria at the beginning, running from Introit to Final Blessing. One could intensify the Catholicity a little, but that would be to make unambiguously and perhaps even tediously explicit what is already beautifully and allusively almost one long hymn. As I read the Novus Ordo, the rite is not quite so explicit about consecration as is our allegedly Reformed text. People make much of Cranmer's gradual tilt to Calvinism, but it does not show in his BCP. It only showed up when Puritans got to change it later.
Thing is, we're really thin on the ground now. Many have simply swum the Tiber (such as AnAmericanMother, I believe, here in FR), some have contented themselves with vaguely Evangelical alternatives (Church of God, Assembly of God, etc.), and some have simply given up altogether. And we have not helped our own cause by not being able to reunite just within the Continuing Church movement.
All in all, a tragedy in so many ways. But, my own obedience strictly maintains the Apostolic Succession. We celebrate the sacraments (all seven of them) with the highest devotion and reverence. We observe the Vigils, the Octaves and the many days of the Saints. My own vicar has just compiled what may prove to be the definitive Kalendar of the Saints, at least for the Western Tradition. Our altars are still attached to the east wall. We kneel for worship and for Communion. We use the bells and smells. We pray for the unity of the Church, and that we may be a part of it.
The differences are tiny, truly, but it seems that even that much difference is made to be too much. I do not know what would constitute true charity in the case, but I truly believe that good can come from all we have endured.
There are wonderful Anglican churches, not even remotely connected to ECUSA, scattered throughout the states. We belong to an Anglo-Catholic church that is true to orthodox Anglicanism in every sense.
http://www.anglicancatholic.org/main/dws.html
Other orthodox Anglican provinces within the states include:
http://anglicanpck.org/dioceses/index.html
http://www.united-episcopal.org/parishes/parishes.htm
I could not have raised two children in the midst of this madness.
I am a clergyman in APCK, TR. We have two parishes in NC, one of which I am the deacon in charge.
THis is the popular paradygm espoused by Roman Catholics and even ECUSA members, themselves.
Winston Churchill is very clear in book one of his History of the English Speaking Peoples, that the interests of Rome were always antagonistic to the interests of the English Christian church which was founded on a monastic model by St. patrick.
The Roman variant always dominated the European continent and was part of the Norman Invasion.
There is a very old Christian tradition that used to be singularly British but now has degenerated in secularism at all levels in the Anglican (British) church.
I believe you are misconstruing what I wrote. What I meant was that from antiquity, the Western Church has been ruled by monarchic bishops and this was as true in England as anywhere else. This continues to be the ecclesial form, but that form has now been subjected to democratic oppression and overrule. The two do not go together, as the subsequent history has seen.
It can be argued that King Henry thought that it was only a matter of changing one monarch for another, but he was sadly mistaken and the English Church has paid the price for that mistake. Now, the Roman See made some mistakes as well, one of the worst being to require English Romans to disobey the lawful sovereignty of Elizabeth. This put them in an impossible position because they were bound by two equally valid vows which utterly canceled each other out. That was an error of historic proportions, which only time has managed to smooth out, due to the eventual repeal of the Clarendon Code and the general relaxation of intolerance for non-Anglicans in England.
I understand the point you make in your post but you will have to help me see how it refutes what I wrote.
One last thing: St. Patrick founded the Irish church, and it was originally founded on episcopal lines (i.e., ecclesial monarchy). He never served in England and was in fact ordained and consecrated in Gaul. Due to the tribal lines in Ireland, the abbot quickly became the power in the church and often had bishops in his abbey choir. That has little to do with the English Church, however, which was founded as an episcopal ecclesium by St. Augustine, refounded on the same basis by St. Theodore and carried forward from that day to this.
Thanks very much for your reply.
I do realize that the Kingdom is not based in democracy. And while I agree that doctrine should not be settled through majority vote in an ideal world, even the creeds developed out of a conciliar process that was vote based.
It is not clear to me that Evangelicals democratic intentions were motivated by a desire to settle doctrinal issues in that way. Rather it was more of a reaction against the monarchy, which is also what led to the American Revolution.
I believe that there are many issues in the church--largely matters of what the Windsor Report defined as "adiaphora" and not core doctrines--that are legitimately settled through majority vote. Perhaps the best situation this side of Heaven is a republican form of governance--democracy that is not a mere polite form of mob rule, instead it is governed through majority vote but interpreted through the lens of a guiding document--in this case Scripture. Even God warned against the pitfalls inherent in a monarchical system, desiring that Israel view Him as king.
It strikes me that the current problem in the Episcopal Church is not a matter of democracy gone bad, but of Bishops gone bad. Those who are sworn to protect the received faith have become active enemies against it. Surely the average Evangelical stands against the kind of decisions that have come out of the HOB and GC in recent years. The majority of Anglo-Catholics I know have tended to support the heretical bishops.
In the interest of full disclosure: I was raised Presbyterian--hence my democratic sensibilities. 11 years ago I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church and attended the most Anglo-Catholic parish in my dioceses until I could stand it no longer. As a result I am too Evangelical for many and too Catholic for many others. And I fervently look forward to the time when these labels disappear.
My dear newheart, I have meditated long and very seriously on what you have written, which is well thought-out and I believe entirely sincere.
I was guided to a source from within our Anglican heritage whose work I am not sure many now take any comfort, but I thought to try to summarize what he said.
In his first volume, +Charles Grafton (Bp, Fond du Lac) examined the claims of Rome as against the Scriptural data, the testimony of the ancient Fathers and the facts of history. He also considered those claims in respect of our own and he came to the conclusion that our own claims are authentically Catholic, Apostolic and as sure reservoir of Christ's saving grace and the way of salvation.
However, he did not arrive at this conclusion easily. One aspect he was particularly careful to examine was our tendency to break into factions, notably what are called 'low', 'broad' and 'high'. I myself tend to the high side, but in my own limited development as a churchman I interpreted this to be the same as being Catholic in terms. This does not appear to be a reasonable equation. Rather, when I review what I have preached I find myself taking elements of all three parties into my professed theology.
Bp Grafton writes: "Every school, high, low, or broad, has its own danger. The subjective or low church system, unbalanced by the objective side of religion, leads to a denial of the visible Church, its priesthood, and the sacraments as instruments and effective signs of grace; the broad, or rationalizing, to a denial of all that is supernatural in God's Word, and of authority, and the Church's inherited dogmatic faith. The extreme Catholic or pro-Roman one, by his devotion to Western scholasticism, centralization in government, mistaken interpretation of Scripture, impatient with the condition of the English Church, turns in faint-heartedness to the papacy."
From this we see the essential need for all three elements at once. If one neglects any of the three, one falls eventually into fatal error and may imperil one's salvation. When I speak against Evangelicals, then, I am not speaking against evangelicalism as part of a lively faith, but against those who rule out the objective truth of the threeford ministry, the efficacy of the divinely-appointed sacraments and the authority of the Church to carry on the work her Savior gave into her hands. It is democracy in church matters shorn of any other restraining force that has worked majority-rule mischief, as I see it.
Now, that does not rule out that it may well be bishops themselves moving into this position. There have always been such prelates, I think, and you say rightly when you say that there have been great reformative forces in congregations that call for the restoration of Catholicity.
As to the majority of your Anglo-Catholic acquaintance, I cannot speak. I think that the great danger in Anglo-Catholicism is a tendency to assert divine authority for oneself, to search for a programme for salvation as a kind of protocol of redemption. This is what one might call mechanical Christianity. When I see that in myself, I rebuke myself because salvation is a free gift growing out of faith. All the good I do, all the repentance to which I may be called only serves to prove that I am and can be no more than an unworthy servant who cannot do his full duty by his Lord and Savior. My own inadequacy must be supplied by His perfection. So it is just as false to assert strict pro-Romanism as to utterly reject it.
My own Anglo-Catholic acquaintance have rejected the heretical drift of the Episcopal Church, preferring to worship in the wilderness than to populate buildings now turned to the aggrandizement of Man and the endorsement of his worldly ways.
So, I grant your point, but I thought I might say in my defense that the situation is not that we can do without the parties, but that the truth is maintained by the best that is held by every party. Each left to its own wanders from the right way, but the diligent inquirer can take from all what is right and true.
(LQTOS - laughing quietly to one's self): Both BelegStrongbow and I, along with a few other FReepers in the Religion forum, are APCK.
My personal synthesis:
"Evangelical zeal, Catholic tradition and Anglican liturgy"
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