On Bishops & Authority

For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. (Matthew 7:29)

I simply cannot understand why compromise is not possible on the question of the Ordination of women to the Episcopacy.

The argument goes, if I have correctly understood it, that if the authority of “male only succession” Bishops is derived from the Measure that would somehow undermine the authority of any woman Diocesan Bishop.

The argument seems to suggest an absolute authority vested in a Diocesan Bishop but, honestly, if that is the view of a Bishop’s authority held by those who take this position then, for heaven’s sake, don’t ordain them to any ministry in the church!

For all authority in the Church is both derived and shared. The most Ultramane RC knows that even the Pope’s authority is derived from Jesus Christ and shared with the Apostles and Bishops of the past, present and future. As the Pope doesn’t run the church single handed, nor should or could any Diocesan Bishop. (In any case, no Bishop in the Church of England has any executive power to speak of). 

His authority is the authority of the good shepherd, the authority of the one who comes amongst us as one who serves and so it is never about power and is never absolute. So from the very beginning the Apostles shared their ministry and gave others authority: Deacons, Elders, prophets, evangelists all shared the task of proclaiming the Good News “with authority”.

And all Christian ministry and authority is a shared venture. No wise Dean of a Cathedral would risk undermining the role of the Precentor, only a very foolish parish priest would not listen to the advice of his or her churchwardens and no Diocesan Bishop would interfere with an appointment made by one of his Archdeacons.

And this “sharing” of authority is intrinsic. The Bishop, Dean, Vicar or whoever does not share his or her authority because of a whim but because that sharing is essential to the very nature of the authority we are discussing. Ecclesiastical authority, because it is derived from Jesus Christ, is never absolutely held by one person.

As the preamble to the Manchester Motion suggests, Area Bishops have their authority by virtue of the Measure which established the Area System in the Diocese. Has anybody ever seriously suggested that the Diocesan’s authority is thereby compromised? 

To be a Bishop is to be engaged in a shared endeavour. Women Bishops will be sharing their work with many other ministers – and not because they are delegating some absolute right to rule but because that is the very nature of the ministry to which they will be called. I do hope that they will share their ministry with some form of “male only succession” Bishops too.

Whatever happened to Anglo-Catholics?

There have always been different sorts of Anglo-Catholic: ritualists, papalists, high churchmen and women; those who loved the Prayer Book and those who “borrowed from Rome”. I’m not going to list them all but on the whole there have been those who have believed that their ultimate goal was simply to remind the Church of England that she is Catholic, and there are those who have only ever dreamed of re-union with Rome. Alongside both there were the high church latitudinarians who shared much with both. Honestly, I guess most of us were a bit of all three. It is not necessarily the case that the first lot are in “SSWSH” (the group who are staying in the Church of England whilst opposing the consecration of women Bishops); or that the second lot are in the “Ordinariate” or the third in Affirming Catholicism (who embrace the possibility of Women bishops) but these three groupings roughly correspond to earlier, more nuanced divisions within the movement.  For our purposes, when I speak of “traditional catholics” I will mean the first two groups.

As something of an aside, it is worth noting that many (especially priests) who might well be described as “Romanisers”, remain in the Church of England keeping a watchful eye on the Ordinariate. The Ordinariate will need to woo these guys carefully over the next few months and years. There are also many who would have been loyal “Prayer Book Catholics” in an earlier generation, who will no more go to Rome than they would become Methodists. It seems to me, as an outsider now, that these folk will have to broke a deal with the Affirming Catholicism camp; somehow!

Until 1992 (or perhaps a little earlier) these people all belonged together. The vote allowing women priests was the watershed which gave rise to the expulsion of the Affirming Catholics from our midst. Since 1992, it has to be said, this group has flourished reasonably well. It is the group that the Archbishop of Canterbury would, I think, most happily identify with. To the extent that “Catholicism” has any sort of future in the Church of England it will be because these people are holding the Catholic torch.  At the same time as the “AffCaths” were being denied a place at Anglo-Catholic Altars, a few hundred papalists took themselves off to Rome. 

For those who were left in the traditional Anglo-Catholic movement, an organisation calling itself “Forward in Faith” was formed to defend and promote the Catholic cause. It was going to be the one organisation around which all who called themselves Catholic could rally (that is “Catholic” now defined to exclude the AffCaths). Indeed, all who held the traditional faith which denied the possibility of new inventions such as women priests would find a home there. Even evangelicals were wooed and brought into the organisation. But although all were supposed to be welcome into the organisation, the anger, nay fury, of the initial leadership over the ordination of women drove them into a very hard-line position. Almost immediately, it seemed to me, they alienated very many people who should have been the grass roots of the movement. It was reminiscent of 70’s Trade Unionism: the militants were in charge and the moderates were left, on the whole, voiceless.

As for me? Well, I became a Roman Catholic but a year later I came back to the Church of England. I could not find a home anywhere. The only place where I was truly at home in the C of E  was in the Company of Mission Priests. Why? Because this group had within itself guys from all three camps; yes, even AffCaths and certainly papalists. It was home because it was Catholic. And the great thing about  the Roman Catholic Church today is that one can sit alongside Tablet readers (AffCaths) and Catholic Herald readers (papalists) and know that all are Catholics!

The formation of Forward in Faith took place almost immediately after the vote allowing women priests in November 1992.  Very quickly the leadership produced a “Statement on Communion”. They had defined who was in and who was out. Over the next seventeen years F in F became a loathed organisation in the Church of England; not, possibly, down on the ground where good catholics worked hard in their parishes, got on well with neighbours and flourished. But at a national level the organisation was hated. I am sure that is why General Synod gave Traditional Catholics such a hard time in July 2008: they wanted to punish Forward in Faith who were seen as “the enemy”, opposed to all the legitimate developments that the vast majority in the Church of England wanted. So bitter had the fight become that folk were very openly saying that it would be better if we were gone from the Church of England.

Traditional Catholics, it must be stressed, were not, at this stage, opposing legislation allowing women Bishops. All they were asking for was that when the Church of England had women Bishops they might be allowed to be a “church within a church” where no woman Bishop could have jurisdiction. General Synod is overwhelmingly opposed to this option – or to any option, that will allow a Traditional Catholic with integrity to believe that he or she is not totally compromised. We have seen this coming: one day there will be women Bishops in the Church of England and there will no provision within the Church for those who believe that women cannot be ordained. Legally these people may well find themselves under the jurisdiction of one whom they regard as a lay person.  

So what to do? Simply, at least at a psychological level, there have been two possible answers:

• “In order to stay what I am, I must find a way of remaining in the deepest possible Communion with the Church of England despite her dreadful act of schism. I think the vast majority of Anglo-Catholic laity are in this place.

•  “In order to stay what I am, I must find a way of putting a great distance between myself and the now schismatic Church of England”. The leadership of Forward in Faith, on the whole, was in this place.

It is obvious how these two positions correspond to the very old divisions in the movement. And although, as I have said, none of us belonged exclusively to one group rather than another, the tensions between the two tendencies has been more obvious and unbearable in the last decade than ever before. 

Anglicanorum Coetibus, the Apostolic Constitution which allows the erection of “Personal Ordinaries” for Anglicans entering into full Communion with the Catholic Church, was just what the second group was longing for. They could distance themselves from the Church of England and remain the same and be in Communion with the See of Rome. All the fighting was over – they had everything. They could not believe how generous the Holy Father had been! So excited were they at its publication that some quite forgot themselves. We even had an Anglican Bishop speaking on the radio days after the publication of the document saying that he had no trouble with papal infallibility! He obviously could hardly wait! I have observed elsewhere that the months between the publication of the Apostolic Constitution and the departure of that Bishop and others were extraordinarily stressful. It was not fun having a bishop who was obviously going and a congregation who were, mostly, firmly staying put. I have never known a situation where a Bishop was so disliked by a congregation!

It is in the light of all this that we must understand the recent scandal of the liberation of the assets of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament. It is clear that the leadership of that organisation very firmly belong with those who have believed that in order to be loyal to everything they have been they must, somehow, distance themselves from the Church of England. This is crucial: to stay in the Church of England once the “schism” happened would mean being disloyal to everything. By April 2009 (just a few months after the crucial Synod in July 2008) they did not know what the “way out” would be, but they knew that they would have to go somewhere. And so, they changed the Constitution of the Confraternity in such a way that it could easily slip out of the Church of England with them. Whatever we might think of this, it is vital that we understand that the motivation for this move was so that they could remain faithful and the assets of CBS could be used for the work for which they were intended and not be spent by schismatics.

I hardly need to say that most members of CBS were unaware of what was going on. If they had been I think that they would have strongly disapproved. I am as sure as I can be that most members of CBS on the ground, in the parishes, belong to that group of traditional catholics who will stay in the Church of England until the absolute end.  They now feel that the money that belongs to them - and which they now need more than ever to fight the good fight of preserving the Catholicity of the Church of England – has been stolen. They will see this as a crime of dramatic proportions. Not only have their fellow Anglo-Catholics deserted them at the crucial moment; they have taken the fighting fund too!

Who is right? I have tried to write this in such a way as to imply that it has everything to do with perspective. But, in the end, it still seems quite obvious that those who joined the Ordinariate should have gone and taken nothing with them. It is the Gospel imperative: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff--no bread, no bag, no money in your belts”. But more than this, in their obsession to get out of the Church of England, they completely failed to notice that many (indeed, the vast majority) of their brothers and sisters were not leaving. The money belonged to the Catholic movement as a whole and not to just to the most powerful minority. I have to say; surely Rome is not so poor that it cannot care for these folk?

So, it was wrong to take the money. It was also totally stupid. By taking it they have alienated the very folk who should be following them in the next few years. I suspect that the decision to take the money will be the death of the Ordinariate.That is the real betrayal and that is very sad.

© Peter Bolton

More on the CBS affair

Canon Jerome Lloyd OSJV is  a very wise man. I hope he doesn't mind me quoting him extensively:

"It is all very sad, in their desperation to create something "proper" in a very small space of time and despite the goodwill of so many, they have taken such a fall before they've really begun.

"There are many contributory factors to blame, no doubt, but overall I suspect a lack of heartdepth Charity looms large. Unless one is prepared to "give all" to such a venture it is unlikely to grow. It's no good people thinking they can leave the CofE one Sunday, walk down the road to the RC Church the next Sunday and everything can continue as it did before. That was more or less the lie that was peddled before the Ordinariate began. Now the reality hits home. What was given in one's Gift Aid to St So-n-so last week with its historic legacies etc would obviously not be enough for something like the Ordinariate; if the numbers had been really significant, maybe, but they weren't were they.

"What I find incredible is the notion that people were expecting a house and stipend "from the off". The leadership should never have permitted such expectations. The rhetoric should've been big on sacrifice, the "cost of conscience" (pun intended) should've been explained and presented as a distinct reality aside from the "dreams" of what might be and the countless "possibilities". People should've gone with the expectation of nothing and themselves worked towards addressing that very likely situation, rather than relying rather presumptively on Divine Providence. But the leadership really is to blame, if blame is due. Their focus was big on numbers and hoped the rest would sort itself out. Naive? Certainly."

I would simply add that the sums are so very easy: A congregation of 20 adults all of whom are earning an average wage could just afford one priest's salary if they ALL half-tithe. They would still not be paying for his house or his pension or the training of his successor. Neither would they be paying for the Ordinary or his trips to Rome. A congregation of forty to fifty may achieve all these things but could they then make a contribution to the running costs of the church building that they use? 

The smell of the coffee is so strong its amazing nobody has woken up yet!
 

Liberalism

Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy. 

(Blessed John Henry Newman).

The CBS Affair

A (formerly) Anglican organisation called The Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament has made a donation of £1 million to the Ordinariate.

One might think that that was a generous gesture but I am given to understand that five of the six Trustees of the Confraternity have left the Church of England to join the Ordinariate and are now priests in the Ordinariate.The donation was made after a formal application by the Rt Revd Keith Newton, then Bishop of Richborough, in December last year. (Bishop Newton, now Mgr Newton was, of course, appointed Ordinary of the Ordinariate in the following month).

That the five Trustees were still in office even though they had left the Church of England is because a change had been made to the Constitution  which allowed Roman Catholics to be members. That change was made in April 2010.

As you can imagine, many members of the Confraternity are NOT happy.

For my part, I believe that this is both plain wrong and amazingly stupid.

I understand that the Trustees of the CBS took legal advice and so I am absolutely sure that they believe that they have done nothing wrong. I believe that their motive was to do good.  I am sure that they believed that they were acting wholly in accordance with the Constitution of the Confraternity and that they were doing what they did in order to advance “the catholic faith in the Anglican Tradition.”

But they are wrong.  They are wrong because many members of the Confraternity – I would guess the vast majority who remain in the Church of England – will doubt that this money is being spent on a project which is within “the Anglican Tradition”. They are wrong because they have not considered how this will appear: Whatever their motives, this will look like they raided Church of England funds before leaving. One million pounds, I understand, represents half the total assets of the Confraternity. I would very much like to know what proportion of the membership of CBS is now in the Ordinariate. I would be very surprised if it were anything like a half. They are wrong too because, as I understand it, they failed to consult the membership.

And it is very stupid because this could cause such an enormous scandal before the Ordinariate has even got off the ground. Right or wrong, the press will have a field day with this and the Catholic Church will be hugely embarrassed. That embarrassment is not worth one million pounds.

I cannot believe that the Roman Catholic authorities would knowingly allow these men to remain members – let alone Trustees - of the CBS. How could they, having accepted priestly Orders in the Roman Church, believe that the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ are made truly present on Anglican Altars? To put it very simply, how can a Roman Catholic member of CBS attend Benediction given at an Anglican Ward meeting? If that RC member is the Superior General the difficulties are multiplied. Will he have to bring the Blessed Sacrament with him?

I have held back from publishing this post until I was sure that allegations were "facts". Todays publication in the Times and on Ruth Gledhill's Blog of various documents has assured me that we are in the realm of fact.

Here is a fact: this is plain wrong! The authorities of the Catholic Church must now put every pressure on the Ordinariate to return the money and on Catholic priests to resign their membership of CBS.

Amendment:

I am given to understand that the change to the Constitution referred to above was made in April 2009.

Lift in the City

Trinity

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.  John 15:9

When the Sacred Scriptures point to the oneness of God they are, perhaps, pointing to something that human beings long for for themselves. We long for that simplicity whereby heart and mind and action are one and not divided. The most unlikable thing about us is our capacity for duplicity! The Scriptures point to a lack of duplicity in God.

But another way in which we long for unity as human beings is our natural desire to be part of a bigger whole: the family, a community or (dare I say it?) church! Even belonging to the Bridge Club points to this deep desire within us! I suggest that even the most independent soul finds herself most fulfilled as a human being when she is herself within a group. The show-off needs an audience and the independent thinker needs the intellectual community to rebel against.

I suppose marriage is the most basic example of human community. A good marriage is about two people finding fulfilment with each other and through each other; each one becomes more him or herself precisely because of the other. A bad marriage – to point out the obvious – is where one (or both) prevent the other from becoming fully themselves. We all know the subtle and not so subtle ways in which that can happen.  We have also all witnessed wonderful marriages where both flourish as independent human beings through a deep love that grows and flourishes too. And we know, of course, that such marriages are never just inward looking: they are not just about two people. A good marriage, whether blessed with children or not, is always inclusive: it welcomes other people within the home and embraces them; it builds up and sustains the community of which the couple are a part. This is most obvious when there are children but even the childless couple, sustained by each other’s love, can contribute enormously to the wider family and community of which they are a part.

And let’s not be coy about this. The “outward and visible sign” of marriage is the sexual union in which the two people find joy, pleasure and fulfilment in each other and at the same time are open to the possibility of another (a child) becoming part of the union. (The Church’s teaching on sexual ethics is all based on this high ideal – but then why base ethics on low ideals?) In this way sex and Holy Communion are the same sorts of thing: they are both sacraments of God’s love which not only “symbolise” but also affect that which is symbolised and, in both Sacraments, the ‘other’ is physically and emotionally most intimately present. It is also worth stressing that the opposite is true: without joyful sex the relationship becomes more difficult to sustain; without Holy Communion our relationship with God becomes more difficult too. Yes, in that scandalously Catholic way, I must speak of the reception of Holy Communion as being ravished by God. (Only in this way can the vocation to celibacy have any meaning or make sense at all).

And so, if we are to begin to get a glimpse of what we mean when we talk of the Trinity, we must explore the Biblical image of the Sacred Meal. And where else to begin but with Rublev's Trinity:

 

Rublev’s Icon depicts that beautiful story told in Genesis chapter 18. Three men appear to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre.  It is worth quoting verses 2-5: “(Abraham) looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. He said, ‘My Lord, if I have found favour with you, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. Let me bring a little bread that you may refresh yourselves and after that you may pass on – since you have come to your servant.’ So they said, ‘Do as you have said.’

I hope the Eucharistic reference hit you between the eyes:  Abraham offered to wash the feet of the three men and he offered them bread. This is a beautiful story about hospitality and good neighbourliness and how community is created. It is about Abraham’s generosity and it reminds us of the way we all hope to live: generous and welcoming to the stranger. And the banquet was even more generous than Abraham had first suggested: he killed a calf and took curds and milk. This was some hospitality! But this is also a story about the presence of God. As the meal progresses it is clear that in the company of the three strangers, Abraham is somehow in the presence of “The Lord”.  It is simplistic to identify each Person of the Godhead with one of the figures in the picture, rather we are invited to see through the picture of hospitality and joyful sharing nothing less than the place where God is met. We are invited to ask who is host and who is guest at this meal. So too, we are forcefully reminded of the story of Jesus and the two disciples on the Emmaus Road after Jesus Resurrection and how Jesus was only recognised in his characteristic activity of the breaking of the bread, in the sharing. (Luke 24: 13-35).

For the two disciples who joined Jesus on the Emmaus Road would have been familiar with this action. It almost defined Jesus. Breaking bread, you might say, is what he did best or, rather, what Jesus does best is what the breaking of the bread symbolises. Jesus shares himself in love. All those meals: the wedding at Cana; the meal where he was told off for eating with tax collectors and sinners; the meal where Jesus allowed his feet to be anointed by the tears of a sinful woman; at the feeding of the five thousand and at the Last Supper itself, these are all stories about Jesus offering hospitality and drawing people into a relationship of love. This is who Jesus is: he is the one who shares himself; the one who gives himself away. At these meals Jesus creates that which we long for, we who are longing for community and love: he creates his church; the gathering of the beloved, his New Israel.

And this is us: we are that woman, those wedding guests, those tax collectors, the hungry five thousand who have gathered to hear every word that comes from the mouth of God. It is us to whom Jesus gives himself as he says “This is me given for you, my life poured out for you”. Jesus embraces us and enfolds in his love as he shares this fellowship meal with us.

But, we discover, this relationship we are drawn into is not merely a fraternal relationship with Jesus our friend and comrade. Jesus draws us into something much deeper than that. He draws us into his relationship with the Father. It is no accident that the profound meditation offered by St John on the relationship with Jesus and his Father come in those chapters immediately before and following the washing of the feet and the sharing of the bread. It is in this context that his says those words to Philip, ‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father’. To have seen this intimate sharing, this total self-giving is to have seen right into the inner dynamic of the Godhead itself. To our great surprise we discover that the One indivisible God is himself a relationship of love. Jesus invites us into the intimacy of this love as he dares us to call God, “Our Father”.

When we encounter Jesus, we observe his filial love for his Father; we witness his total trust, his loving surrender. We see that he makes his life (as well as his death) a total gift, he who comes to do “not his own will but the will of the one ho sent me”.  ‘Show us the Father’ asks Philip: “Here he is”, replies Jesus, “he is the one who I trust myself to wholly and utterly, the one to whom I give myself without reserve”. And why can Jesus do this? Surely because he knows that the love which his Father has for him is utterly dependable and can never be damaged or destroyed. Even in death, Jesus knows that this love abides. And for us, of course, the Resurrection is the vindication of Jesus trust in this great love.

Jesus died for the one he called Father, to be faithful to the love that they had for one another.  This love was the undergirding principle of his whole life. It was the meaning of his life.  This is the one to whom Jesus owes loyalty above all else and to have failed that love would have been to have compromised his very essence. What was it to be Jesus? It was to be loved by the Father; to know that there was nothing else worth living or dying for. What was it to be Jesus? It was to share the Father’s love for his creation and to be the pouring out of love which would bring creation back into a right relationship with God. To be Jesus was to be a life lived for the Father and a life poured out in love for humankind.

So over the first couple of Christian centuries the Church reflected on these things. In answer to the question, ‘What is it to be God,’ the Church replies: To be God is to be One, without division or parts, without multiplicity or rivals. To be God is to be Father: a constant pouring out of love. And in that pouring out of love, Father begets Son: God-toward-us. And there is no way God can be God without being Father , that is without begetting Son.  And between them there is an eternal flow of love, a love which overflows and which pours out all over Creation and brings it into being: that Spirit which fills us and converts us into love. And it is that love which Jesus invites us to share as with trembling lips we call out: “Our Father”.

 

© Peter Bolton