On a recent evening, about 60 people — ex-Episcopalians, curious Catholics and a smattering of earnest Episcopal priests in clerical collars — gathered [in downtown Washington] for an unusual liturgy: It was Evensong and Benediction, sung according to the Book of Divine Worship, an Anglican Use liturgical book still being prepared in Rome.

… One former Episcopalian present confessed to having to choke back tears as the first plainsong strains of “Humbly I Adore Thee,” the Anglican version of a hymn by St. Thomas Aquinas, floated down from the organ in the balcony. A convert to Catholicism, she could not believe she was sitting in a Catholic Church, hearing the words of her Anglican girlhood — and as part of an authorized, Roman Catholic liturgy.
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I wonder what kind of Anglican reality Fr. Bergman understands?

But Father Bergman not only predicts a mass movement toward Rome. He believes Anglican Use may mark the beginning of the end of the Reformation. There will be “a flourishing of this throughout the world,” he says. “Wherever there are Anglicans, there will be people who want to enter Holy Mother Church.” As he told a rapt audience at St. Mary’s, “If we look at histories, heresies run themselves out after about 500 years. I believe we are seeing the last gasp of the Reformation in the mainline Protestant groups.”

And so, I ask Father Bergman, how does he feel about a liturgy using the words of Cranmer, one of the Reformation’s pivotal figures, in the Catholic Church? “A despicable fellow,” he replies.

While I do know, after more than 35 years in the US, that there have really only been a minority of Evangelical Anglicans in TEC; however the worldwide picture of the Anglican Communion shows that it is still very much a Church of the Reformation and this is shown by a distinctly evangelical spirituality outside of the US, particularly in the Global South.

One of the tragedies that I encounter in the US is that Anglicanism is some kind of “Catholic Lite.”  The suggestion above is that if Anglicans became serious then they would admit the doctrines and dogmas of “Holy Mother Church” and thus the Reformation would end as they were re-enfolded into the same.  Not so!  Protestant doctrine is alive and well.  It may be that there are a number of shrinking mainline Protestant denominations, however the Evangelical and Protestant spirituality undergirds the growing non-Roman churches in the US.  They and the US RC Church are still growing.  Overseas the Anglican Churches are growing outside of the so called “West.”

I subscribe to a distinctly Protestant, Evangelical kind of Anglicanism that has much in common with Anglicans overseas and beyond the west.  I actually rejoice in adding Catholic to that spirituality.  However it is NOT the Roman kind and while I admire parts of the RC Church I could never become one as it would oblige me to accept doctrines that I believe to be heretical, non-biblical and contrary to our basic Anglican formularies - 1662 BCP, 39 Articles and the ordinal 1662.

I believe that the claims of Fr. Bergman are in error as to the end of the Reformation.  I do wish the more Romish among my Anglican family God speed if they do wish to become part of this Anglicanorum coetibus initiative.  I would add that I find this initiative of Pope Benedict to be hugely generous and it will be a blessing for some of my Anglo Catholic friends.  It will appeal to a significant but probably small community of Anglo Catholics.  However the Anglican Communion, dare I say Anglican Church worldwide, is distinctly a Reformation and Protestant Church/community.  It has outward aspects that make it appear in some places to be similar to the Roman Catholics.  Many of my Anglo Catholic friends are precisely that - Anglican Catholics and not Roman ones. In substance I do believe that we are firmly Protestant, firmly Reformed.  Given the vitality of the Global South, where I now minister, the Anglican Church worldwide is also increasingly non-Western and certainly does not reflect the historical development of TEC, and absolutely not TEC’s present path into heterodoxy.

Interesting article - and for me provocative - what would Archbishop Cranmer have done?  He would never have gone to the stake to see this happen.  Whenever I visit Oxford I stand in silence at the Cross in the road that was the site of his immolation.  I need to be reminded of the martyrs and architects of our Anglican family.

I hang around in various places where various groups of trad Catholics and Anglo-converts associate, so I get subjected to this sort of burble constantly. Of course it is completely delusional; indeed, they cannot understand why various Anglo-Catholics of their acquaintance don’t go over RIGHT NOW.

And of course Bergman is a priest—still. It’s not hard for him to create a little Anglican-looking refuge. The rest of us American laymen, assuming we don’t have a Valiant Cleric to lead us across, get stuck with the mess that is American Catholicism. It seems to me that the Tiber-crossing clerics, at least in the US, very quickly get sucked into the Reformation of their new church, deficient as it is (they think) in reverence and dignity.

I think this piece begs that we honestly answer the question, “why am I an Anglican?” Charles is right in saying that for a priest it is not difficult to create ‘a little Anglican-looking refuge’ within the vastness of Rome, but being Anglican is more about what we believe than what we necessarily do when the People of God gather together. If I am only an Anglican for liturgical reasons then I might as well think again, but if it is because of the richness of this Reformed Catholic manner of believing then the heritage of the Reformation echoes on. Ian Montgomery is quite right about our theological, doctrinal, and ecclesiological foundations.

Perhaps it is because my faith was nurtured in the midst of Protestant Anglicanism that there is very little about the Roman distinctives that do much for me, and some of them are positively at odds with the substance of the Scriptures, or seek to gloss over the distinctive teaching of the Bible. If I were tempted to jump the Anglican ship then it is highly likely that I would head for Orthodoxy and not even venture anywhere near Rome. Neither Geneva nor Augsburg do much for me either!

Anglicanism is going through a difficult time at the moment, some of this is its own doing and some of it is due to circumstances way beyond its control. We also function in a world that is morphing (as Eddie Gibbs puts it) and this demands a fluidity and flexibility that Anglicans find difficult, and in the Episcopal Church we are determined to be fluid, flexible, and creative about the wrong things. I have never regretted being an Anglican for, as my old friend and mentor Jim Packer has put it to me in private conversation, it is the very best way of being Christian.

Well, Richard, that is something of a paradox. Catholicism is supposed to be a package, all-encompassing deal. So if the liturgy is abominable at the local RC church, well, it is different from my (Protestant) Anglican church, and therefore that is how things are supposed to be.

My deeper reasons for staying is that I find that Anglican ways of approaching theology work, and that Roman ways do not. But I could join Rome and become another of the very many silently dissenting Catholics. The reason of that, however, is again a kind of loyalty above all else, and that sort of loyalty keeps me in an ECUSA parish even as the church in the large betrays its own supposed principles. One of the driving forces in the current crisis is particularly dissent over sexuality, both as it figures in morality and before that in the sacraments (and soon, I expect, in the liturgy); but the other is in church order. Where is Rome’s attraction in this for us Protestants? Well, it certainly isn’t in church order, because the problems we are having are exactly formed in a vision of (national) Anglicanism as being as hierarchical as Rome. No, I think it is first in doctrine, and second in the confidence that that doctrine would no longer be argued. But to do that you have to be accepting of inarguability in the large. Some of my Catholic friends (and some Tiber-crossers) would argue that without inarguability any theological deviancy is in fact possible. I do not think that for a Protestant that is a worthwhile argument, because to be inarguable, you have to be right, and there are things in Roman theology that just aren’t right.

What the future of Christianity may be it seems unlikely it will include everyone merging back into Rome.  Not everyone emerged from Rome in the first place. 

What I find most ironic is that this particular discussion comes as a result of opposition to women in Holy Orders and GLBT issues.  Those fleeing those issues seem to think Rome a worthy place to go.  But it is hardly that.  It is a church that has obfuscated the truth about its own vast enabling of pedophila and ephebophila including directives to obstruct civil authorities in their efforts to bring miscreant clergy to justice.  Even as we speak the Roman Church in Ireland is under the microscope for shuffling sexual offenders about and exporting them to the US, Africa and Latin America.  The current Pope is the author of the policy requiring obstruction of civil investigations.

So I have to wonder how people whose knickers are in such a twist about homosexuality manage to whitewash in their consciences the consistent RC condonation of predatory sexual behavior.  Rome, of course simply blames gays, which only adds to their guilt by refusing to acknowledge the real nature of pedo- and ephebophilia.

There are many other reasons NOT to reunite with Rome until such time as it is a collaborative mutually sacrificial discussion.  But at present their total moral lapse with respect to predatory clergy is sufficient.

For people still in officially-Anglican churches, opposition to ordination of women is an enabler for this, not especially a driver; homosexuality is of course a presenting issue.

The sexual abuse scandals play a difficult role in this, and again, the situation for clergy and laity is different. I think, Michael, that you are coming close to indulging in a sort of ecclesiological Donatism, in that a church of hypocrites and abusers is still a church. Fealty to orthodoxy, it can be argued, trumps all this. I think it can also be argued that orthodoxy is not enough, and that orthopraxy of a sort is necessary; but this is an essentially Protestant judgement, after all. In this wise my own church is becoming a problem because I do not feel I can unreservedly suggest to someone, “well, why don’t you try an Episcopal parish?” without knowing something of the parish the person might visit. By the same token I do not think that Cardinal Above-The-Law taints every Catholic parish in the country or even in his own archdiocese. An emigrant Anglican parish perhaps feels a certain safety from some of these issue, though I have to say I wonder how well the Anglican subculture can be protected.

Charles Wingate - 01 March 2010 06:28 PM

For people still in officially-Anglican churches, opposition to ordination of women is an enabler for this, not especially a driver; homosexuality is of course a presenting issue.

The sexual abuse scandals play a difficult role in this, and again, the situation for clergy and laity is different. I think, Michael, that you are coming close to indulging in a sort of ecclesiological Donatism, in that a church of hypocrites and abusers is still a church. Fealty to orthodoxy, it can be argued, trumps all this. I think it can also be argued that orthodoxy is not enough, and that orthopraxy of a sort is necessary; but this is an essentially Protestant judgement, after all. In this wise my own church is becoming a problem because I do not feel I can unreservedly suggest to someone, “well, why don’t you try an Episcopal parish?” without knowing something of the parish the person might visit. By the same token I do not think that Cardinal Above-The-Law taints every Catholic parish in the country or even in his own archdiocese. An emigrant Anglican parish perhaps feels a certain safety from some of these issue, though I have to say I wonder how well the Anglican subculture can be protected.

Nowhere did I say the sacraments they preside over are not valid.  Of course both Rome and many within the WWAC have made exactly that determination about sacraments presided over by women and glbt clergy.  Rome of course thinks nothing we do is real.

And there are many wonderful people in the Roman Rite church, including some bishops I am sure.  But the culture of Rome has been to deny responsibility, attack the victim, shuffle offenders and obstruct civil and criminal actions.  The cost to Rome has been hundreds of millions of dollars and may lead to the collapse of the church in Ireland.  Why would sexual purity watchdogs ally with such a culture?  It boggles the mind frankly.

Rome of course thinks nothing we do is real.

Strickly speaking, that is not correct. While you must be confirmed again, an Anglican need not be baptised anew nor be remarried (if already married!).

Michael, I think to some extent we are agreeing too vigorously. Personally I see the denials as a big problem, and while they are not a determining factor for me, they play into the larger Fantasy Church complex which it seems to me that Tiber-crossers—especially clerical Tiber-crossers—indulge themselves in all too readily. Its inverse is the tendency of Catholics (and Orthodox present the same behavior) to ratify everything that happens in their church as good or at least acceptable, which leads to mordantly amusing moments when ex-Anglican clerics have as their first project the establishment of Anglican standards of liturgical behavior, as especially against the prevailing slovenliness of the American church.

If you would like me to state my point more forcefully, however, so be it. ECUSA has the same issue, just over different issues. To put something I’ve said several times into different words: I don’t think the continuity of liturgical orthodoxy is likely to survive the sexuality-driven pressure to modify the liturgy to the program of the radical feminists. Once homosexuality is out of the way as a distraction, and enough of the rigidly orthodox are driven away, the culture of the church will be further moved in the direction of being incapable of pushing back against these women and their supporters, just as it is now largely paralyzed in pushing back against homosexuality. Justice will require acceding to their demands. Oh, lots of rejoinders will be written, just as they have already been written; but they will be paid no attention by the establishment. And when the new liturgies are promulgated, it will only be a matter of time before the “old” 1979 liturgies will be proscribed.

On that basis I can see why some people convert: living with the very many problems of Catholic churches is a price they are willing to pay in order to not have to fight a futile battle to retain orthodox faith. And if a cleric convert? He at least can make his own parish a safe haven, and I imagine his followers trust him to do so.

How much longer will this nonsensical discussion of Tiber-swimmers go on? The issue is one for a few clergy bearing in mind that since 1800 probably less than a thousand Anglican clergy have taken the plunge—and possibly fewer than that if statistical evidence could be found. As far as the laity are concerned, there has never been any obstacle to taking the journey to Rome but precious few have done so. As far as the Covenant is concerned, it will make absolutely no difference at all to the mass of Anglican laity who are unlikely to ever hear of it. Given the aging of Anglican congregations in the “West” most of today’s church attenders will probably be dead before it is realized.

What is far more important is that tens of millions of lay-people, Catholic, Anglican and everything else, have chosen to walk away from the Christian Church. They have not left because of any specific sexual, doctrinal or liturgical issues. They are not bothering. They are unable to reconcile modern theological discourse and the church itself, whether liberal or conservative, with modern values.

That is the issue that needs to be addressed and everything else is subsidiary although not unimportant. Anglicans have tried “evangelism” but for the greater part evangelicals, like others in the church, are trying to respond to modern modes of thought and behaviour with answers grounded in the values, attitudes and ideas of millennia past. This is, in no small part, tied to our intellectualisation of the Scriptures and the Gospel as theology becomes more and more institutionalised, ritualised, professionalised.

Despite the charismatic influences of recent years we have not experienced the revitalization of theology and therefore the modern church by the Holy Spirit outside of conventional frameworks that, numerically, now passed their peak as far as society as a whole is concerned.

Michael Russell - 01 March 2010 07:08 PM

Nowhere did I say the sacraments they preside over are not valid.  Of course both Rome and many within the WWAC have made exactly that determination about sacraments presided over by women and glbt clergy.

Michael,

What is your evidence for “Rome” saying that sacraments presided over by gay clergy are invalid? There have been a few suggestions by some conservative Catholics that the ordination of gays is invalid. This is an extremely troubling, thoroughly heretical argument, but it is certainly not official teaching within the Roman Communion. (Note: this is different from the current official policy in the Roman Communion that men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” ought not to be ordained. This policy, however dubious, is in no way a doctrinal stance and says nothing about the validity of the ordination of such people.)

Rome of course thinks nothing we do is real.

This simply isn’t true.

  But the culture of Rome has been to deny responsibility, attack the victim, shuffle offenders and obstruct civil and criminal actions.  The cost to Rome has been hundreds of millions of dollars and may lead to the collapse of the church in Ireland.  Why would sexual purity watchdogs ally with such a culture?  It boggles the mind frankly.

Well, I don’t consider myself a “sexual purity watchdog,” so I will let the watchdogs speak for themselves! But I am an Anglican who frequently feels drawn to Rome, and one of the reasons is that Rome, unlike the Episcopal Church, seems capable of defending Christian teachings that are out of touch with the dominant views among the contemporary liberal intelligentsia of the West. Even the “obstruction” of the civil authorities that you rightly find troubling is part of a longstanding claim by the Catholic Church to independent authority over against the civil government, as opposed to our own Communion’s heritage of subservience to the powers of Caesar. When this independence of civil government is combined with a culture of clericalism, it has the horrific results you have described. And this is indeed a reason to think twice about swimming the Tiber—it is one of a number of reasons why I have thought far more than twice about the question, and have still not been able to persuade myself to take the leap. But I think you don’t understand the appeal of Rome to conservative Anglicans when you boil everything down to sexual morality. It’s not that we think the Roman Communion is more sexually pure than our own. It is that the Roman Communion can be counted on (at least some of the time!) to defend Christian teaching that is currently unfashionable, and the Episcopal Church clearly cannot. Anglicanism separated from Rome by the initiative of the civil government and under the influence of a theology that gave the monarch control over the Church within his (or her) dominions. And that idolatrous theology continues to warp our Communion.

Edwin

Michael Russell - 01 March 2010 07:08 PM

Rome of course thinks nothing we do is real

As others have pointed out, Michael’s statement isn’t entirely accurrate. What is true, as far I understand Roman Catholic sacramental theology, is that the only sacraments celebrated in TEC that the Roman Catholic Church recognizes as valid are the two which don’t absolute require a priest: baptism and matrimony. Baptism is vaid if the formula is correct, water is used, and the intention is right. Even baptisms performed by people who aren’t Christians would be seen as valid. (The reason why Mormon baptisms, e.g., aren’t considered valid is that the understanding of the Trinity is heretical and the intention, therefore, incorrect.) The minsiters of matrimony are, in both Anglican and Roman Catholic sacrmental theology, the couple. Given the Roman Catholic requirement that both bride and groom be baptized, there might be some question about the validity of Episcopal marriages where only one of the two is baptized.

Given the Roman Catholic position on the validity of Anglican orders, no other sacramental act that any of us do is real. I am not really a priest and there is no Real Presence. I understand that that is not the view of many Roman Catholics, but that is still the official position of their Church.

“If we look at histories, heresies run themselves out after about 500 years. I believe we are seeing the last gasp of the Reformation in the mainline Protestant groups.”

What a jack@$$ thing to say.  So now that there are “Anglican Ordinariates” we throw respectful language and ecumenism out the window?  If that’s the case, then I am starting my ticking clock with 1870 for papal infallibility.

What is true, as far I understand Roman Catholic sacramental theology, is that the only sacraments celebrated in TEC that the Roman Catholioc Church recognizes as valid are the two which don’t absolute require a priest: baptism and matrimony.

Daniel - I have some friends who are a mixed-background couple looking to get married.  She is a practicing Catholic, he is an agnostic, inactive “Methodist”.  She is very insistent on doing (most) things according to the Roman bureaucratic standards.  I helped them examine the Roman rules as regards matrimony and whether marriages conducted outside of the Roman church are considered valid.  From what I could see, there is absolutely no preference given to Anglican or Episcopal clergy as against any other Protestant clergy.  Unless the Roman bishop gives explicit permission to the couple to have a non-Roman clergyperson perform the wedding service, then a non-Roman wedding is not considered valid in the Roman Church, and a subsequent “validator” service needs to be held in a Roman church by Roman clergy.

The long and short of it is, that I think that the only TEC sacrament recognized in the Roman church is baptism, for the reasons you stated.

James-

You are right that the Roman Catholic Church’s rules are that for a marriage to be recorded in the Roman Catholic’s parish it has to be in a Roman Catholic Church and be conducted according to the Roman Catholic liturgy. Dispensation from place and form are required for any Roman Catholic who wants his/her marriage recorded in the parish. The question is not validity, but marriages are, I would guess, seen as irregular when they aren’t according to the rules.

While serving in a heavily Roman Catholic city, I once called a priest whose parishioner was to be married to one of my parishioners in our parish church. I said that I hoped he would be able to help them with the paperwork for applying for dispensation from place and form. He was amazed that I knew about those dispensations. I said that I would be a fool not to know how the dominant church in the city did business. I don’t think he liked me much, but the couple did get the dispensations and I officiated at the wedding.

Among the oddest use of those rules was the insistence that a married couple in my parish have their marriage blessed in a Roman Catholic Church before Catholic Charities would allow them to adopt a child. The husband had been a Roman Catholic, but had been received into the Episcopal Church years before, and the wife was a cradle Episcopalian. They were not happy with the requirement, but I urged them to go ahead. I was present at the blessing service in the Roman Catholic Church with which we had a covenant relationship.

One of the advantages of the Roman Catholic rules is that it provided priests an easy response to requests for weddings at the country club or someone’s garden. I have done a few of those and they were never happy experiences for me, even if they were for the couple.