Posted on 12/30/2008 11:05:11 AM PST by NYer
On his TNR blog, Damon Linker flags the schism within the Episcopal Church as the most important and worrying religious development of the past year. Here's an excerpt:
With 100,000 members, the schismatic Anglican denomination is so far quite small, though it may well grow if conservative dioceses around the country decide to take the option now presented to them and bolt from the Episcopal Church. But regardless of the numbers involved, the rupture in the church is historically significant and culturally troubling. The Protestant mainline that once ruled and to some extent united the nation continues its decline, split into squabbling factions facing each other across a cultural chasm. Arrayed on one side are liberals of every theological stripe; on the other are defenders of orthodoxy and tradition. The first views the second as ignorant bigots; the second sees the first as moral degenerates. Barack Obama may have managed to win 53 percent of the popular vote last month, but that doesn't mean the country's division into "red" and "blue" spheres of cultural influence has come to an end. Indeed, the split in the Episcopal Church indicates that it persists and may even be deepening.
Damon is troubled, and understandably so, by the fact that American churches are breaking apart based on positions congregations and individuals within them hold on culture-war issues. I don't see how any serious believer, whichever side he takes, can be cheered by schism. But I am inclined to think of schism as the second-worst option, if the only other is to accomodate one's church to a serious heresy.
As Damon notes, the stance a believer takes on issues like abortion, homosexuality, order and authority in the family, and a related constellation of concerns, typically places one within one camp or the other. It's no accident that there's a thread connecting stances on both sides; i.e., there's a reason why Christians who oppose abortion rights are more likely to oppose same-sex marriage rights, and vice versa. It all comes down, in the end, to Authority.
If you believe that Scripture, or Scripture and the institutional Church, is the Authority for deciding questions of meaning and morality, then you are far more likely to fall on the traditionalist side of these questions. If you believe that individual conscience is the Authority, then you are likely to be a progressive.
I don't see how the two can be reconciled, unless it is agreed by a majority that the church in question doesn't really stand for anything beyond itself. If you really do believe that Scripture and Tradition are wrong about same-sex relationships, and that it is a matter of basic justice that the teaching be changed, then you aren't going to stop fighting for that change within the church. If you believe that we are not free to throw off the authority of Scripture (and Tradition) in such matters, then to have your church declare these matters open to negotiation would be to hollow out the meaning of what the church is supposed to stand for, all for the sake of a superficial unity.
The question ultimately is this: Are there matters over which there can be no compromise, and in which a compromise would destroy the essence of the institution? If there are, then schism is better than agreeing to disagree for the sake of keeping the family together. Right? If schism is always worse than heresy, then how can it be possible to draw any boundaries beyond which individuals and congregations, progressive or traditional, will not go?
"... So that if any presbyter or bishop or metropolitan dares to secede from communion with his own patriarch and does not mention his name as is ordered and appointed in the divine mystagogy, but before a synodical arraignment and his [the patriarch's] full condemnation, he creates a schism, the Holy Synod has decreed that this person be alienated from every priestly function, if only he be proven to have transgressed in this. These rules, therefore, have been sealed and ordered concerning those who on the pretext of some accusations against their own presidents stand apart, creating a schism and severing the unity of the Church. But as for those who on account of some heresy condemned by Holy Synods or Fathers sever themselves from communion with their president, that is, because he publicly preaches heresy and with bared head teaches it in the Church, such persons as these not only are not subject to canonical penalty for walling themselves off from communion with the so-called bishop before synodical clarification, but they shall be deemed worthy of due honor among the Orthodox. For not bishops, but false bishops and false teachers have they condemned, and they have not fragmented the Church's unity with schism, but from schisms and divisions have they earnestly sought to deliver the Church" " Canon XV of the First-Second Council of Constantinople (861 AD)
Heresy always leads to schism (but not all schisms are caused by heresy).
Not worried about this. The economic situation is going to drive the Episcopal Cult under within 12 months. Many of their “churches” are already on the verge of closing or declaring bankruptcy.
Simple answer - No. It is better that there is the Catholic Church and 3,000 Protestant denominations than a Catholic Church that no longer defends Catholicism.
Any doubts, look what happened to the Republican Party and their "Big Tent" philosophy.
3,000? Try 40,000! Yes ... like cancer cells, the non-Catholic denominations continue to split and divide faster than Wikipedia can keep track.
The irony is great- the Episcopal Organization has over the last few years pointed out how much money it will be able to spend on suing the righteous and faithful in the worldly courts. Now a down economy is cleaning out those bank accounts and the Episcopal Organization is begging for money so it can continue the law suits.
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