In July 2013, the Catholic League reached its hundredth
anniversary. Founded shortly after the beginnings of the Week of Prayer for
Christian Unity in 1908 at Moreton-in-the-Marsh (and New York), as well as the
modern Ecumenical Movement at Edinburgh in 1910, its voice has not always been
welcome. It has stood out against mere amalgamation between ecclesial
institutions; it has been impatient with mere, good inter-church relations; it
has resisted being a pressure group for Catholicity only within and upon the
Anglican world. Each of these purposes is beneficial, but they are never enough
on their own.
Ecumenism is not enough
As history has shown, without something more, each of those
approaches tends to leave us where we are. In England, the merger of the
Congregationalist Federation and the Presbyterian Churches of England in 1972
created the generously ecumenical United Reformed Church; but other
denominations opposed to the union spun off from it, ironically meaning more
institutional disunity than before; and we are still waiting for the Methodist
Church and the Church of England to join it in full communion. Sadly in recent
years, this noble representative of the post-Reformation “Old Dissent”, ejected
from the English Establishment with the triumph of High Anglicanism following
the Restoration Act of Uniformity in 1662, has been the most declining of all
the traditional denominations. In the same period, despite its enduring sense
of common belonging rooted in the establishment and thus the coherence of the
Church of England, the international Anglican Communion has been developing
into three distinct groupings at various degrees of mutual non-communion. This
demonstrates how the institutions of Churches that arose out of Western Latin
Christendom, following the Protestant Reformation movements in the 16th
century, have not been able to summon from within themselves the forces that
compel towards the Church’s Catholic unity - even when they have recovered the
episcopal ministry in the Church’s threefold order, embraced renewal in
liturgical and sacramental life, especially the Eucharist, and wholeheartedly
undertaken close relations and ecumenical collaborations at local, national and
international levels.
Settling for less
The latest report from the World Council of Churches on the
shape of future unity is based on the mutual theological dialogues of the last
50 years, as well as sustained pastoral and evangelistic co-ordination, notably
in the many instances of sharing church buildings, resources and ministers. The
Church: Towards a Common Vision is the result of 30 years of thinking about
the nature and purpose of “the Church and the Churches”, and also about where
Baptism, the Eucharist and the Ministry fit in the Church overall, as well as
in the personal discipleship and Church membership of individual Christians.
Thus it asks how the Church as a whole brings unity and justice to all
humanity, in the service and realisation of the Kingdom of God. It marks a
considerable degree of mutual sympathy and theological convergence through the
Faith & Order Commission (a joint endeavour between the Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches, to which
the Reformed, Evangelical, Pentecostal, Anglican and Orthodox Churches belong).
It is the latest drive for mutual recognition of baptism in each other’s
churches, in the hope of mutual recognition of each other’s churches as
churches. The objective is that each church’s ordained ministry can become
mutually recognised for the purpose of achieving eucharistic fellowship, so
that, in united sacramental life, the churches can bear a common witness to the
societies in which they live that is convincing. For, as the Lord himself prayed,
“may they all be one, so that the world may believe that it was You that sent
Me.” But it somehow seems to be another
instance of that “settling for less” on which we have often commented – good relations, occasional eucharistic and
liturgical sharing, even close collaborations; but yet without visible fullness
of communion in life, faith and body, the Body of Christ.
Unchurching the Church
Meanwhile in England, the retired Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, whose
tactical prophecy has intervened unbidden in the leadership of now two of his
successors, has opined that within one generation the Church of England will
effectively have collapsed as a national institution. Those of us who remember
his own archiepiscopate a generation ago have reason to reflect that the
theological relativisation, in which there is more than one truth and several
integrities; the polarisation and divisiveness that has prevented what
Archbishop John Habgood of York once lovingly called “the Soul of the Nation”
from cohering as a strong and still centre in England’s shared sense of values
and spirituality; and the resulting secularisation of a decreasingly interested
society, can each be laid squarely at his door. The Catholic League, as a
fellowship of long-time friends, keeps some of this memory. Most members have
roots in our Catholic life and pilgrimage together in the remarkable movement
in the Church of England that inspired generations to seek above all - for the
sake of the salvation of the world - the restoration of the Church’s visible
unity reconciled within one, organic Body. It was with an urgent appeal not to
harm the reconciliation of the Anglican Communion with the Catholic Church and
its apostolic ministry that, out of love for their own church, classic
Anglicans, led by the then Bishop of London, Dr Graham Leonard, left at the end
of a rally at Wembley in summer 1992 to go straight to Lambeth Palace. There Dr
Carey told Dr Leonard and the other bishops who accompanied him that, as each
was to retire before long, their influence was passing. The following year,
hundreds of Anglican Catholic priests gathered at St Stephen’s, Gloucester
Road, for a direct debate with Dr Carey, pleading a truly Catholic loyalty to
the Anglican Church they belonged to, but reminding him of the urgency of
Catholic unity and the consequence of not pursuing it: hundreds of
missionary-minded pastoral clergy, he was told, would in conscience consider
themselves ejected (the Shades of 1662) and compelled to resign. His response
was to say - asked the likely number - that a thousand clergy could easily be
replaced by newly ordained women priests. Thus having urged the departure of
hundreds of loyal pastors, Archbishop Carey set a tone for the church of which
he was chief pastor, characterised not by ever greater cohesion through common
participation in the Truth, that
once famed “Anglican comprehensiveness”, but exclusivity, making the Church
less than the Church, and unchurching people from it, alien to the spirit of
the classic Anglicanism so magnificently exemplified in his two great
predecessors, William Temple and Michael Ramsey.
Since those days, over 700 Anglican priests and untold
numbers of lay faithful have looked for the fullness of the Church’s communion
in their apostolic faith through
being received into the Roman Catholic Church, nonetheless still hopeful of the
greater unity of Christ’s people that they had always believed in. Most
recently, well over a thousand people with their priests have become Roman
Catholics in the special provision of the Ordinariate, which offers one way of
bearing witness to the ecumenical vision - held by the Catholic Church since
Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism - that it is somehow not completely itself
unless it makes space for the authentic tradition of others, so that they may
belong as well. Thus a space has been cleared for a manifestation of the
Anglican Tradition alongside the Latin Roman Catholic Tradition. Alongside the
Byzantine and other Eastern traditions, all our Christian traditions of the one
apostolic faith are needed together in concerted harmony, if the “coming Great
Church” is truly to embrace, reconcile and integrate all the people of whom it
makes disciples for Jesus Christ. The Ordinariate is not the whole story of
Anglican Tradition, of course; but it is an attempt on the part of the Catholic
Church to make sense of the indigenous English-speaking religious and
liturgical tradition, and to find the authentic and fruitful points of unity
with it. There are many orthodox Anglicans who in good conscience persist in
their witness to Catholic faith and unity within the Church of England, even in
the midst of great adversity. Their faithfulness to the apostolic faith and
tradition, to which Pope Benedict recalled all English Christians on his
unforgettable visit to these shores, recalls Cardinal Walter Kasper’s appeal,
as President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, for Catholic-minded
Anglicans to start a New Oxford Movement. People’s articulation of adherence to
this historic Anglican tradition makes uneasy listening to their fellow
Anglicans who oppose them, as if it were so objectionable in the contemporary
Anglican Church as to justify calls for their departure, ejection or canonical
inhibition. How those who say they believe in Christian unity, and who follow
the Christ who said, “Let the children come to me; let no one hinder them, for
to such as these belongs the Kingdom of heaven“, can call on people to “leave the Church”, or any church that constitutes it, is beyond
us. The League has constantly stated its support for its members from all
churches who believe the Catholic faith and thereby seek the communion of all
Christians with the Apostolic See of Rome. We ask no one to leave; only, as
Pope Benedict once said, to enter deep into the mystery of the Church where
they are can discover that it is but one.
The Spirit of Communion; the spirit of schism
In all this, what is missing?
The sole principle for which the Catholic League came into existence.
This was not to promote the Catholicity of the Church of England; nor to be an
apologist for the Anglican position; nor to promote interest in and closer
relations with the Orthodox and Catholic Churches; nor to inculcate
particularly Catholic forms of devotion or ways of life; nor even to work for
Church unity as a manifestly good cause in general. These have all formed
important aspects of the Catholic League’s work and witness. But the main
principle is that the ultimate object of unity in the Catholic faith must always
and inescapably be its first step - not the last piece of the jigsaw, but the
only aim from the outset - union, or reunion, or fullness of communion
(whichever you want to call it) in the Catholic faith with the successor of
Peter as Bishop of Rome.
It was this witness that made the League the first body in
England to promote observance of the Church Unity Octave, when it was seen as a
dangerous Romish ruse. Now it is observed in every part of Christendom as the
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. It was this witness that brought Fr Paul
Couturier to England to see those in the Church of England, led by our
co-founder Fr Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton, who lived a Catholic life and ministry
in it. Couturier and Fynes-Clinton both saw the urgent missionary and pastoral
need for the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches somehow to achieve at last
the corporate reunion that had eluded various attempts at reconciliation in the
past. It was the same witness that influenced the Tractarian and Anglo-Catholic
movements so thoroughly that Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher - no High Churchman -
could say that the Church he led had no faith of its own but only that of the
Catholic Church, before in due course becoming the first Anglican leader to be
able to visit Rome and see the Pope. It was witness to the same truth that
enabled Archbishop Michael Ramsey to be the first to make an official visit to
the Pope and establish the Anglican Centre in Rome, in order to speed the
reunion of the two Churches. It was this witness that ensured that the
representative fielded by the Anglican episcopate as its chief observer at the
Second Vatican Council was a convinced Anglo-Papalist, the great Franciscan
scholar and Bishop of Ripon, Dr John Moorman. It was this witness that helped
to win over the Catholic movement in the Church of England to embrace the
renewal of the Catholic continuous tradition, as it reached out to other
Christians and a rapidly changing world in the aftermath of Vatican II. It was
this witness that made us all think, when Blessed Pope John Paul visited in
1982, that unity was merely “one more step” away. It was this witness that has
continued to fire the 50-year-old Anglican-Roman Catholic International
Commission on its dialogue towards our re-convergence in the one faith we have
in fact shared from our origins before our separateness.
Sadly, in the last few years, there have been those who mar this vision. A tiny but vocal
section of the Ordinariate has denounced the Anglicanism which formed it and
its own Catholic vocation, calling for the Catholic Church – and the League –
to abandon its determination to achieve institutional communion - demanded by
the Lord - between the two communities that are the Catholic Church and the
churches of the Anglican Communion as “futile”. Turning the back on fellow
Christians because of doubting their good faith, however, or making the
Catholic Church exclusive of others, or unchurching those who are fellow
members of the one Church through sharing the sacrament of Baptism, is not
faithful to Catholic teaching; nor is it being faithful to the Petrine ministry
of Pope Francis with a care for all the churches - still less his great
predecessor Pope Benedict. Furthermore, by the same token, certain
Anglican-Catholic voices, regardless of their deep concerns over the reshaping
of the nature and purpose of the Church and its ordained ministry within their
own Anglican Communion, have been arguing for the perpetuated separation of the
Anglican Church over against Roman Catholicism – specifically separation from
the person and office of the Holy Father - as preferable to Catholic unity,
despite their beliefs in the Universal Church and the primacy of the Bishop of
Rome in relation to it. It has been ironic to hear some Anglo-Catholics, who
otherwise sense a close affinity with the Roman Catholic Church, espouse
markedly anti-Catholic sentiments. It is part of the same temptation to
unchurch the other. It serves no useful purpose in promoting the Catholic faith
or the Catholic spiritual life, or in serving the ministry of reconciliation,
of which St Paul speaks, that is laid upon all those who desire union with God
in Christ. Moreover, we have encountered a small constituency of Anglicans who
are not participating in their own Church’s mainstream ecumenism in England,
and yet who want something different from Anglicanism’s mainstream engagement
with the Catholic Church through ARCIC. They reject the offer made by Pope
Benedict (which had, after all, been made in response to Anglican requests over
many years) to take part in a project – the Personal Ordinariates – that could
serve to unite significant elements of the Anglican religious tradition with
the Catholic Church on a basis that genuinely respects its integrity. Instead
they call for a Catholic-Anglican unity that excludes “former Anglicans”, a
unity of their own, on their own terms; not the Church’s, whether Catholic or
Anglican, but something different. Seemingly all of us in our different Church
bodies are tempted to something that is exclusive; something that views reunion
as the prevailing of one viewpoint or interest ahead of another; something that
prefers guarded ecumenical relations in separation; something that recoils from
the call to repentance of the pain-inflicting spirit of division, a spirit that
truly has nothing to do with the principles of faith that each rightly holds
dear, that keep us apart and yet we seek to resolve. Our dialogue towards
reconciliation cannot honour principles that we use as reasons to perpetuate
division.
Fortunately, in the face of this, in our hundredth year, the
members of the Catholic League, Anglicans and Catholics together, rooted in old
friendships and the communion of shared origins of which Pope Paul VI once
spoke, are united in witness to the only principle that matters: communion of
all churches and all Christians in the single binding truth of the Catholic and
apostolic faith with - from beginning to end - the successor of Peter. For this
truth is the force from the Holy Spirit within the Body of Christ that compels
the Church to complete unity and that bestows on it everything that is
indispensable and necessary for it to be the Catholic Church in and for this
land and its people.
The 106th Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
2014 brings with it the 106th year of united
Anglican-Catholic prayer for Christian unity, corporate reunion, institutional
communion. The path is not the sweeping avenue we once hoped for, but leads
through a narrow gate. We should have expected nothing less; and go to and
through it all we must, because we believe, like Mary, that what the Lord has
prayed for is a promise that He will fulfil. Thus we in the Catholic League,
with its Apostolate of Prayer, re-commit ourselves to this true “Common
Vision” of the Church, of full, visible and organic communion. Our annual
leaflet of prayer for unity, based on the work of Fr Paul Couturier, an apostle
and pioneer of unity that Fr Fynes-Clinton brought over to England to further
the cause of Catholic-Anglican reunion, can be downloaded from our website,
www.unitas.org.uk . At the forefront of our minds in the Week of Prayer is the
apparent sheer impossibility of the task of achieving Catholic-Anglican unity
in such an utterly changed situation. We will be thinking, “How can what we are
praying for come about?” We will also be thinking of Pope Francis who is
determined to make common cause with Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury, a
man of profound spirituality, an Evangelical influenced by Catholic piety and
devotion to the Eucharist, who wants to share with the Catholic Church a common
approach to the problems of society - in England and around the world - where
there is injustice and no peace. Surely all Christians are united in the face
of the intense sufferings endured by the Church in the Middle East, parts of
Africa, India and the far east. Given the exceptional persecution of the People
of God by those of other religions and secularists alike, we will also be
recalling that the Lord prayed for us to be one, “so that the world may believe”.
More than Christian solidarity, the need for the Church’s organic and visible
unity – the institutional communion between all the Churches of Christ – has
never been more urgent. Those charged by you, the members, with responsibility
for the League urge all our members to take this particular Week of Prayer to
heart, in the confidence that, whatever appearances there are in this world and
between our respective churches, nonetheless unity is a thing to be prayed for
because it will inevitably happen, for no other reason than that the Lord has
determined it. It is He who has said it will come. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
We know that it is not enough to say, “Of course, we are one
in spirit”, or “We are of one mind”. The hymn boasts, “We are not divided; All
one Body we; one in faith and doctrine, one in charity”. Nevertheless, we know
that its untruth makes us ashamed and causes scandal before the world. How can
we make truth-tellers of ourselves and bring about the institutional communion
that has eluded us for centuries, that is far more than the mere merger of
organisations, and that integrates our many Christianities in the one Body of
Christ that is His Church? The League’s answer is always first to pray, and
second to bear unswerving witness to the belief that there can be no unity that
does not involve our reconciliation together in communion with the Bishop of
Rome as successor of Peter - the depths of the Church’s one faith that comes to
us from the apostles.
Centenary Publications
In 2014 you will receive several long delayed editions of
our journal, The Messenger. One issue will look at reconciliation and
the healing of memories, what Pope Francis has recently termed our ecumenism of
blood. Another will complement our major contribution to understanding Anglicanorum
Coetibus and will seek to assess the significance of the various
Ordinariates in the three years since their establishment and their relation to
the Church’s cause of Catholic-Anglican unity. A third will collect the
splendid addresses and lectures that attended our July 2013 celebrations to
mark the Centenary of the League’s history and service to principled Catholic
corporate reunion, an almost solitary witness for much of its lifetime. A
fourth will enable us to share with you the beautiful devotions led by
Archdeacon Luke Miller in March 2013 at Walsingham, drawing on the spirituality
of the Roman Catholic St Thérèse of Lisieux and the Anglican Fr
George Congreve SSJE, and his Stations of the Cross.
Later in 2014 we hope to see the publication of the League’s
100-year history by the distinguished papal historian, Dr Michael Walsh. The
year will further be marked by an invitation from the Third International
Receptive Ecumenism Conference to address it on the League’s witness to what ecumenists
now call “institutional communion”. We can be grateful to God that our
century-long insistence on the integrity of the whole Church as seen together -
not the piecemeal amalgamations or temporary acts of personal eucharistic
sharing that have attempted and not achieved the solution to our divisions - is
what draws once more the hearts and minds who long for that for which Christ
prayed.
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