Schism in the Church of England
The Global South Fellowship of Anglican Churches (GSFA) they
no longer recognize the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury as “first
among equals.” What’s more, they say that in adopting “innovation in the
liturgies of the Church and her pastoral practice” in order to , the Church of England has “departed from the historic
faith passed down from the Apostles” and has thus “disqualified herself” from
leading the Anglican Communion.
In choosing to move closer to the wishes of politicians and
revisionist church leaders in the United Kingdom, the Church of England has
signaled that her desire to stay as is
greater than her desire to remain a “mother” to the worldwide Anglican
Communion. Perhaps the fear of disestablishment and divorce from the state is
greater than the fear of losing “the kids.”
But here’s what’s strange. If you read the headlines or peruse
the news articles or listen to Church of England leaders who have promoted
revisionist teaching, you get the impression it’s those pesky, stubborn African
bishops who have chosen schism rather than “unity.” Everyone else just wants
peace, to walk together in love. It’s the Global South that refuses to just
“agree to disagree” and “maintain the bond of the unity.” It’s unfortunate, sad
really—this schismatic impulse of those who pull away.
But this take is backward.
First of all, the Church of England and the other churches
associated with the Anglican Communion that have adopted revisionist theologies
in line with the sexual revolution make up a tiny proportion of the Anglicans
who worship every Sunday around the world. The vast majority of today’s
Anglicans are represented by the Global South and by theologically orthodox
provinces. It’s not Africa that represents
a small segment of the worldwide church breaking away; it’s the revisionists
who are splintering off from the whole.
Second, bishops and priests in the Anglican Communion take vows
to defend and promote official church teaching as expressed in the Thiry-nine
Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal and the Book of Homilies, and
more recently, the Lambeth Resolution 1.10 in the 1998 Lambeth Conference,
which preserves the traditional teaching of Scripture and the church related to
marriage and sexuality.
What does it mean, then, for bishops to deliberately defy these
teachings upheld by the worldwide Communion or to advocate for positions that
go against what they vowed to teach? Who is schismatic? The bishops and priests
who remain faithful to their vows to promote biblical teaching or those who change
the practice and then expect everyone else to ignore, downplay, or be OK with
such doctrinal deviations? Certainly it’s not the Global South but the bishops
and priests who, against their vows,
introduce errors and heterodoxy and then expect everyone else to accept it and
remain in full communion.
Third, when a group of people is walking together down a path
and several depart from the group and begin to take a different path, how does
it make sense for those walking in a new direction to chastise the main group
for their “divisiveness”? And yet that’s exactly what we see today. All the
language about “walking together” obscures the reality that some have walked
off. It’s as if those who walk away now wag the finger at the
bigger group, saying, “Why don’t you want to walk together anymore?”
Once again, who is the schismatic? Who has changed here? Who has
walked off? Not the vast majority of Anglicans across the world but the
shrinking subset of predominantly white churches who have adapted their policies
in line with the state’s institutionalization of the sexual revolution’s
revision of marriage. It makes no sense to label as “schismatic” the bishops
and churches that remain in line with every Christian in history until just
decades ago.
Coverage of these disputes often seems to lay blame for schism
at the feet of those who uphold Christianity’s historic sexual ethic instead of
those who advocate for a sexual revisionism that would have been unfathomable
to the generations of the Christians who came before us and, even today, shocks
the consciences of the vast majority of Christians outside the West. Only in
Western cultures do we call churches “affirming.” Outside the West, the term is
“apostate.”
Theologian in the late 1990s was prescient:
Here lies
the boundary of a Christian church that knows itself to be bound by the
authority of Scripture. Those who urge the church to change the norm of its
teaching on this matter must know that they are promoting schism.
This is schism brought about by those whose “cheap grace” is
employed as justification for sexual immorality—the sort of situation the
brother of Jesus warned against (),
which means that defending the faith () in
this context is about the church’s moral witness to the sexual ethic handed down
by Jesus and the apostles.
This isn’t about fundamentalist division. It’s about faithfulness in doctrine and fidelity to Christ. Don’t blame faithful Christians who cannot “walk together” with those who walk away from the faith “once for all delivered to the saints.”
Didn't the Church of England have schism built into its core DNA from the beginning?
ReplyDeleteWhat's surprising is that it's taken so long for this to be realised.
@Jack,
DeleteExcept, to be brutally honest, some church denominations are way ahead of the Anglicanism in terms of schisms.
Well done Africa.
ReplyDeleteAnglicanism is an 'innovation in the liturgies of the Church and her pastoral practice', it was built on 'revisionist theologies' and 'walk[ing] away from the faith “once for all delivered to the saints"' in order to deliver something more palatable to the state. Having set such a precedent, that part of the Communion now wishes to innovate in a different direct direction to the others is just par for the course.
ReplyDeleteYes. It is in recognition of this that nonconformist groups have been breaking away from Anglicanism since it first emerged. The Anglican church was strangled at birth. It was both a crucial act of reformation and immediately compromised by marrying the state.
DeleteThe early church had none of this. No robes, no altars, no hierarchy save elders and deacons, no buildings and nothing to lose.
The disturbing thing for me is how closely this "divisiveness" stuff mirrors the guff we're getting in the Catholic Church from the likes of Blase Cupich and Francis's vicar on Earth, Arthur Roche. At least one Anglican clergyman has publicly pronounced the Church of England dead on foot of the latest declaration from Canterbury and he could almost be talking about the Catholic Church. Unless something shakes, just give it ten years.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dMbOdVLuvs&lc=UgykucKw9s5pnHemoXV4AaABAg.9mUnxNYSfzP9mV-P8IjRn2
@Bell,
DeleteThat Rev puts it very succinctly.
I've come to the conclusion that it's the grass roots who are going to have to shake: once-respected institutions all over the place now appear to be rotten beyond belief, with feet of the slipperiest clay, and the chance of the changes needed coming from such institutions' hierarchies is not reckoned to be high.
I read on another website that Bishop Marcus Stock, who succeeded Cardinal Roche as the bishop of Leeds, is on the permissive side where the Latin Mass is concerned. Has His Eminence said anything about that in public,I wonder?
DeleteI'm not familiar with Bishop Stock, so I don't know his stance on the Latin Mass. What I do know is that the Moto Proprio issued by Francis with the intention of suppressing the TLM really has not gone down at all well with the majority of bishops, despite a few high-profile types making a big deal of it. In fairness, I'm bound to admit that this has been for different reasons, not all of which particularly favourable to the TLM in itself. Some are just indifferent to it and wonder what the problem is; live and let live. Some are not particularly attached to it, but have noted that it generally leads to a bump in attendance and vocations, so are annoyed at the interference from Rome. Others just rankle at Roche and his cohorts digging their sticky fingers into diocesan business and yes, some are big-time fans of the TLM. All in all, the MP has not had the effect Francis hoped it would. Many bishops have invoked Canon 87, which allows them to diverge from the Moto Proprio, but Roche has now claimed that 87 doesn't apply in this case. This is causing outrage in the dioceses, and there's an argument that it's a flat-out lie to claim this. At least one bishop -- Paprocki of Springfield Illinois -- has formally re-designated one of the churches in his diocese as "non-parish" to allow the TLM to continue there outside the reach of the MP, and I suspect we will see more of this kind of legalistic "stick-and-move" as time goes on. This issue is causing massive turbulence in the Church and Rome's attitudes are not being charitably received, even by relatively liberal bishops. Meanwhile, out in the body of the Church, only very conservative men are going forward for the seminaries, and the liberals can't keep them out because there is literally nobody else. The question is, how much damage will be done to the Church before these men begin to move up the ranks to save Her?
DeleteMarcus Stock, far from being “on the permissive side where the Latin Mass is concerned”, has just shut down all TLMs in the Diocese of Leeds unless they are taking place in non-parochial buildings. Other, wiser episcopal heads are keeping a low profile on the matter and seeking to wait out the current disaster emerging from the Vatican, rather than jumping to impose the most extreme versions of Traditionis Custodes, the Dubia, and the recent Rescript.
Delete(Full disclosure: I knew Marcus quite well at Oxford. I can’t say I shared his view of his own suitability for high office in the Church.)
In an interesting post, Father Longenecker comments:
Delete"I advise folks to celebrate the Novus Ordo in as traditional way possible. Allow the Traditional Latin Mass to inform the celebration of the Novus Ordo. Ask yourselves what is most important. Is it truly the Latin language and the extraordinary form of the Mass that is so vital or is it that you value reverence, beauty and tradition? These are all possible within a reverent and traditional celebration of the Novus Ordo. So encourage reverence and respect, and most of all encourage a joyful Catholicism that is in love with Jesus and Mary, serving the poor, educating the young and living a vibrant life of faith–even if you aren’t particularly happy with the present regime in Rome."
He has some interesting insights on the differences between American and English Catholics.
In an earlier post, he offered this:
"It cannot be denied that certain elements within the traditionalist movement have exacerbated the divisions in the Catholic Church. When traditionalists continued to despise everything about the Second Vatican Council they were not doing their cause any favors. When they mocked and dismissed not only Pope John XXIII and Paul VI but also John Paul II and Benedict XVI they promoted a sectarian mentality. When they made snide, self righteous attacks not only on the apparent abuses of the Novus Ordo, but also on those priests who celebrate the Novus Ordo reverently and traditionally, they made enemies of their allies....
"I wish the pope and his allies had not seen fit to quash this particular alternative, but that he would have encouraged traditionalists–the vast number who are good, devout faithful Catholics. I wish he had seen fit as a good pastor to critique the sometimes sectarian aspects while recognizing the strengths of the traditionalist movement and encouraging it to expand in joyful unity with the whole church.
But the deed is done and now we should ask what is next.
I have no doubt that some traditionalists will tootle off to an Eastern Rite Catholic congregation of some sort.
Others will be disobedient and continue to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass or we may see a resurgence of the Society of St Pius X or the emergence of a new schism. Not good."
Isn't that what ~Saint~ (sorry, getting ahead of myself there) Pope Benedict XVI wanted to foster: mutual enrichment between the two "forms" of the Roman Rite? The materials and rubrics are there (albeit often latent and widely ignored or overridden) in the Novus Ordo for a celebration which embraces much that was/is of most value to those who seek reverent worship not completely discordant with Tradition.The Calendar of the NO – specifically, the Temporale rather than the Sanctorale – is though an utter disaster, and it’s not clear how it can usefully be “enriched” from the Vetus Ordo without completely undermining it. That said, the Ordinariate Rite makes a stab at it. It contains, inevitably, a number of internal contradictions – some circles just can’t be squared – but (if not squashed by the Bergoglio–Roche Axis of Evil, which is a worrying possibility) it just may be able to serve as a pointer towards the general shape that a liturgical reconciliation might take.
DeleteThe Calendar of the NO – specifically, the Temporale rather than the Sanctorale – is though an utter disaster, and it’s not clear how it can usefully be “enriched” from the Vetus Ordo without completely undermining it. That said, the Ordinariate Rite makes a stab at it. It contains, inevitably, a number of internal contradictions – some circles just can’t be squared – but (if not squashed by the Bergoglio–Roche Axis of Evil, which is a worrying possibility) it just may be able to serve as a pointer towards the general shape that a liturgical reconciliation might take.
Apologies for the duplicate text in my last comment.
DeleteI've never met a traditionalist who "despised everything about the second Vatican council." This is a straw man deliberately deployed to smear them. There may be a few who won't recognise the Novus Ordo, but most have no issue with it. I'm attached to the TLM, but more because the priests involved with the church where I attend -- an FSSP church -- are much more methodical and uncompromising in their delivery of the Faith. I also attend an NO service without any complaints, and you will find that most traditionalists are the same.
DeleteWhich makes one wonder why Rome is so gung-ho on the suppression of the rite. I'm sorry, Jack, but we're not getting a straight deal from Rome, and THAT'S what's dividing the Church, not whether the mass is in Latin or the vernacular. When we're told the NO is the "unique" form of the Roman rite, that's rubbish. If it was, they'd be equally repressive of the Dominican rite, the Ambrosian rite, the Zairean rite. The occasional practice in England of the Sarum rite would bring down Rome's wrath, but none of them do. Now, why do you suppose that is?
Lurking behind all this outwardly thoughtful, beard-stroking weighing of pros and cons is a question that nobody wants to ask out loud, namely Who is going to be the next pope?
ReplyDeleteOf course, there is at least one very good reason for not asking it, and that is that nobody can possibly know the answer.
Actually, Ray, you've stuck a probe right into a very sore nerve in Rome on that one. Francis has definitely tried to pack the vote by promoting what many would regard as Rousseau priests to the conclave, with the idea of guaranteeing an Bergoglio succession. He has even gone so far as to float the idea of appointing a co-adjutor bishop of Rome. For clarity, a co-adjutor is a bishop who is appointed as an auxiliary to a sitting bishop, but co-adjutors are different from ordinary auxiliaries because they carry an automatic right of succession when the senior man dies or retires. That would be an outrageous stitch-up, and even Francis knew he could not get away with it, but it demonstrates that there is a worry in Rome that lurking somewhere in the supposedly quiescent conclave there's a secret trad who's been keeping his light under a bushel as he quietly moved up the totem, and who will only reveal his true face when it's too late to stop him, much as Bergoglio himself did. This is not a mathematical possibility, it's something they really are afraid of.
DeleteThe general assumption seems to be that the next conclave, when it comes, will start off with what amounts to a parallel pair of primary elections, with one group of cardinals selecting their prospective “Francis II” and another group their prospective “Benedict XVII”. One name that is often mentioned as the Francis candidate is Cardinal Zuppi, the archbishop of Bologna. However, he seems to be pretty easygoing where the Latin Mass is concerned. He has even celebrated it himself from time to time. It was in the papers a few months ago.
Deletehttps://catholicherald.co.uk/cardinal-zuppi-can-no-special-signs-really-be-read-into-tlm-pilgrimage-participation/
http://magister.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2023/03/06/uneasy-africa-no-to-the-blessing-of-same-sex-couples-yes-to-intolerance-among-the-tribes/
ReplyDelete