A little bird has forwarded me the Bishop of Oxford’s response to the current malaise within the Church of England. Oxford has long been amongst the more liberal Dioceses and a place in which the orthodox have certainly felt the heat. But this, for me, really takes the biscuit! Thank goodness I minister in a gracious and supportive Diocese!
Women in the episcopate
A lot of clergy, including me, feel very frustrated that the Revision Committee has gone back on the express will of Synod to legislate for women bishops through a simple Measure and a robust code of practice, and are proposing instead that there be statutory transfer of powers. (Fret not dear Bishop – they have since returned to Synod’s wicked desire and abandoned all hope of provision for Catholics! )
The effect is of course that we would have some bishops who are not bishops in the sense that others are, because their authority would be limited by statute, and this would be a radical departure in Anglican ecclesiology. (er…did that not happen in 1992 when women were first ordained?!) Of course I understand the argument – that the vote in General Synod on the amendment which proposed such a transfer of power would have been carried by a vote of all houses together and it was only because of voting by houses that it was defeated. Nevertheless, that is how things work in our Church, and the dismay of so many women priests now (and men of course, but I’m recording the cry of those directly affected) has been profound. Their cry goes up ‘How long?’.
I recognise that there are other cogent views held in the diocese (but do nothing to voice them as legitimate I note) and that there are real divisions, but we are not helped by dissembling. Let us disagree honestly and love one another! (Disagree whilst giving you exactly what you want and having nothing ourselves note) How the Revision Committee’s proposal will fare in General Synod next February I hesitate to predict, but I wouldn’t want to put my Winter Fuel Payment on it.
The Apostolic Constitution
Here’s another firework thrown into the field! Or is it a damp squib? The Pope’s offer of Personal Ordinariates to allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Roman Catholic Church while preserving certain elements of Anglican spiritual practice looks good at first for those who have come to feel that their real home is with the Holy See. However it seems to me that the details doesn’t look quite so attractive and I wonder whether it really offers much more that the existing routes individuals can already take? I also wonder what it really says about Rome’s seriousness over ecumenical dialogues and whether the ARCIC programme has a significant future. The Constitution needs close study and it behoves those of us who are not tempted to leave the Church of England to hold back and give space to those whom must think and pray. Nevertheless, I welcome the opportunity it will offer for some to make the journey their conscience now requires. I want everyone to find their true ecclesial home, and there to encounter the living God and serve a needy world.
Ok – why does this cause my temperature to rise? Firstly because there is no love, compassion or support for opponents of Women Bishops whatsoever. If one reads the subtext, those whose only ‘fault’ is to uphold what the majority of global Christians believe, and what was always taught in our own church until recently, can expect nothing whatsoever from +Oxford or the church of our birth. We are not to be given any provision at all. Our own cry of ‘how long?’ must be utterly drowned out by those strident campaigners who will not budge an inch that we may survive. I would ask the Bishop to remember that we are not petulant children, nor are we sinners, we are merely authentic family members holding a different theological view with personal integrity. To totally disregard us in this way is a complete failure of pastoral care on his part.
Secondly I detect here two untruths! First the shameless dig at Rome for disrupting ‘unity’. As has been pointed out elsewhere this is risible. How dare the modern liberal, who themselves campaigned to shattr ecumenical debate by ordaining women and now practising homosexuals, find the cheek to lay the blame for Christian disunity at Rome’s door? It would seem some people imagine that ecumenism = we have a licence to do what we want with total freedom but you must never question us or reach out to those we damage by our actions. I would suggest that when major Christian figures reach out to offer help to disaffected Catholics in the Diocese of Oxford, the Diocesan Bishop would be well advised to consider why this offer was needed instead of stamping his little foot in disgust! Had he, and others like him, treated us with more love and understanding we would not be standing in this place. The man who beats his wife has only himself to blame when she seeks attention elsewhere!
Which leads me to the final point. How dare the liberal establishment, who broke unity in Catholic orders when they first ordained women in 1992, now claim moral highground when consecrating them?! The argument used by +Oxford, that a simple clause measure restores unity, is of course true BUT (and it is big enough to give Aneka Rice competition) at what price? The price is the unchurching of those people unable to accept the innovation on legitimate theological grounds. You remember them don’t you Bishop? They were the ones who were promised a lasting and dignified place in the national church by the Synod.
Well now we see what the promise of some is worth. Nothing. Indeed the very ones claiming to desire Catholic unity today are the ones who were happy to break it previously in order to transform the church according to their desire. This is clever political posturing for certain and it effectively rolls us Catholics out of the bed- flipping the mattress once to usher in the unbiblical change- then flipping it again to hurl us out and restore order in the house. Well it may be effective but it is also wicked. And so it is that we have been utterly failed by our church. Fortunately many of us are not to bothered anymore…it increasingly looks as if a better home exists for us as the bishop himself concedes. Not that I am naive enough to think he points that out for my benefit but rather for his! Let those with eyes, see and those with ears, hear!
I had just started to relax and reflect a little when up pops the Bishop of Oxford with his uncomfortable words to make my blood boil yet again.
He appears to “understand the argument” in the same procedural way as a former Archbishop of Wales who thought it the work of the devil when he didn’t get his own way then declared it the work of the Holy Spirit when the measure to ordain women was carried by the slenderest of margins. Nothing has changed.
If the Bishop of Oxford feels frustrated how does he think those of us who have been betrayed feel? He wants “everyone to find their true ecclesial home”. We did at our Baptism but the cuckoos keep trying to push us out whilst telling us we should love one another. And he speaks of unity. How many tongues is that then?
Petros
Hi Ed, congrats on little Benedict. Our own little Benedict arrived back in Feb and is doing well.
I’ve been looking at some of your posts and I’d be interested to know just what it is that you mean by ‘Catholic’. Let me explain why I ask. Reading the offer from Rome, I wondered what I considered my Anglican patrimony to be. On reflection it seems that what I value most is precisely what I would be required to abandon in going over – that is the particular Anglican heritage of what it is to be catholic. It is precisely our (admittedly rather strained) ability to recognise Christ’s church in one another before turning to our theological and practical differences that constitutes for me the essence of catholicity. That is why I have always valued our status as a national and broad church which is committed to living and working together. I do not agree with everything which is agreed by synod, but to me it is an essential aspect of catholic identity that I accept it (while reserving my right to continue protest and discussion) as the mind of the (not infallible) church.
I must admit to feeling a certain despair when individual, congregational or party opinion is exalted over the mind of the church (which subsists at a minimum in the diocese surely). So when individuals and parishes talk about joining with GAFCON or Rome I wonder what part of my understanding of catholicity they do not share. I suppose I am asking where the church subsists. Are you able to make a truly catholic decision about Rome’s offer without your diocese (i.e apart from your sacramental unity with those with whom you may legitimately disagree)? If you protest that the Church has ceased (or will cease) to be catholic, what kind of catholicity has it abandoned – a Roman kind or the Anglican kind I attempt to describe above?
What really concerns me is that, given the responses to GAFCON and Rome’s offer, it appears that there are good grounds to suggest that my understanding of anglican catholicity is failing. I still hold out hope for it though.
Sorry for a long post, but I look forward to your response.
Thanks Ian!
And if you are the Ian Arch I think you are- well done for finding the blog! My answer is as tricky to give as the Anglican church is to pin down I guess. On the one hand I agree with you and I do feel that the whole ‘flying bishop’ scene is a total shambles and about as un-catholic as you could be!! That said it has been a necessary evil given the doubt over holy orders created in recent years. It is because I do agree with much of what you say that i did earnestly strive to accept the teaching of Synod in my early years as an ordinand and priest, despite grave reservations, in time my conscience said ‘enough’.
The problem I have is that any Church claiming to be Catholic need make decisions based on scripture, reason and tradition. Within the new emerging Anglicanism (a very different church from the one I grew up in) these have been added to. Now we so often see feeling and experience trumping the aforementioned. ‘I know nice lady vicars and they seemed so good’ ‘but Rita felt called as did Gene Robinson’
This to me is radical and dangerous. Our feelings cannot be trusted as any study of human nature proves. How many adulterers felt, in the heat of passion, as though their lust were noble?
I also find it increasingly impossible to claim a Catholic identity within a church that is repeatedly moving further away from both Rome and Constantinople. Both these churches have warned Synod in recent years concerning their action- they have always been ignored. And finally I lament bitterly the manner in which Anglo-Catholics are treated. At Westcott, where I kept my head down, it perpetually hurt me to hear Forward in faith spoken of in a manner fitting for the Gestapo. Having come from a FIF parish I found it confusing and hurtful. This ignorance and lack of charity is equally evident within Synod. I am sure you must agree we have not always had the easiest time of it.
So I guess I want to take up your model but apply it to the Universal as well as local church. And in this field we are looking increasingly compromised and coooky. I want to apply it locally but innovation and new ways of thinking leave me perplexed and uncertain of what is what. I want to remain in the fold but am finding it almost impossible to see an authentic Catholic future (that is where the doctrines match the vestments) for my children and grandchildren. And into that mix I cannot hide a moment of sheer thrill at the prospect of retaining my Anglican patrimony whilst moving into communion with the Holy See.
Bit of a ramble – but in essence my church is moving away from its Catholic roots and understanding and I feel left behind!
That little Oxford bird ended his posting of this very same item with the sentiment ‘Damn them’. Could you please comment on the higher theology which makes this anything other than a disgusting sentiment?
John Pritchard used to be an Archdeacon in Canterbury and at that time seemed to have some sympathy for our position. It is sad to see him now so totally opposed to us. But in the long run, it will be greatly to our advantage if he and his friends get their wicked way. There has been to much fiddling with compromises, all the time undermining the unity of us traditionalists. Now let them go ahead with a one-clause measxure and chuck us out. That will ensure the Ordinariate really takes off in England. It will also mean that many who are outside the ecclesiastical battle will realise just how shabbily we have been treated; maybe even the ecclesiastical committe of Parliament will require that some restitution is made. After all, the Parson’s Freehold is property, and if we are driven out then someone must pay!
Magna est veritas, et praevalabit! +E
Haven’t the PEVs and “Orthodox” Bishops in the C of E been ordaining practising homosexuals for years? There has for years, for example, been the practice of Fr X and Fr Y taking their parishes to Walsingham at the same time, but no one will name it for what is. What the Church really needs now is an epidemic of honesty and charity on all sides.
my little bird and yours do not appear to be one and the same….
With comments like those being made by +Edwin (above) and +Ebbsfleet, are you surprised that the General Synod is reluctant to make decent provision? What is the revision committee supposed to think when these people are going around saying (falsely) that Traditionalists no longer want provision? Apart from being a lie (the vast majority of us do want provision actually) it gives fuel to the fire of the Liberal bigots like Christina Rees who want to purge the church of anyone who disagree with them.
Perhaps these PEVs and others ought also to reflect on the fact that if there had been a little less gauntlet throwing and bitter rhetoric on their part, and a little more charity, perhaps things would be different now. As it is, they have simply pushed people into loathing us all the more. They will receive their full pensions. I hope they have the decency to share them with those, like good Fr Ed, who never will.
Moreover, those who think that there will be any form of transfer of property are, quite frankly, living in fairy land, and to encourage ordinary people to think otherwise is highly misleading and dishonest.
Glad about that. Glad also that you seem to disown the sentiment.
I think the Synod have had ample time to offer something, instead 17 yrs later and we are still waiting. One only need consider all the signs to see that the truth is we will get nothing, it is in knowledge of this lamentable fact that our bishops act as they do. Expecting us to ‘be good chaps’ so that Synod might deign to throw us a morsal of hope is not cricket in my book! As to buildings I do not think it impossible or naive to imagine that a church with FAR too many buildings and not enough cash might do the sensible thing. As to pensions, +Edwin et al richly deserve theirs for years of hard work, if mine is lost as a result of standing up for the Gospel – so be it. I did not here Jesus offer a pension when he called the disciples to follow him.
Father
I admire your optimism on that count. It would be the sensible thing, especially where the priest and congregation, lock, stock and barrel intend to take the plunge.
However, experience to date would suggest that having snatched the rug from under our feet without a whiff of remorse, would they hesitate to attempt to sell the roofs from over our heads? I suspect the debate over ownership of buildings will not be a clean game.
Interesting comment from ‘Anglocatholicus’. All I can say is that there are ‘liberals’ and others who are trying hard in their own small contexts to maximise support for such ‘provision’. Some of the talk on both sides has certainly been poisonous – and I admit my own small guilt in this matter and again apologise to Fr Ed for a silly and intemperate characterisation on ‘Thinking Anglicans’.
no apology needed John. I know you are a ‘true’ liberal and would not dream of removing your speck for fear of my beam!
C S Lewis Essay ‘Priestesses in the Church?’
“…I heard that the Church of England was being advised to declare women capable of Priests’ Order. I am, indeed, informed that such a proposal is very unlikely to be seriously considered by the authorities. To take such a revolutionary step at the present moment, to cut ourselves off from the Christian past and to widen the divisions between ourselves and other Churches by establishing an order of priestesses in our midst, would be an almost wanton degree of imprudence. And the Church of England herself would be torn in shreds…”
“We men may often make very bad priests. That is because we are insufficiently masculine. It is no cure to call in those who are not masculine at all.”