I have long thought that ARCIC (the body holding discussions that took place over the last forty years between the Catholic and Anglican Communions) was barking up the wrong tree. Substantial work was done, and a lot of good things said, and even common agreements reached which have, in the final analysis, not really achieved much, sadly.
A colleague, Fr Tony Churchill (no stranger to this debate), remarked to me in the early 1990s that Catholics and Anglicans in the ARCIC debates were trying to answer two different questions. Catholic theologians ask whether a doctrine is true (and therefore should be held by all); Anglicans ask the question whether one could hold this doctrine and still be an Anglican; can this doctrine be held within the breadth of Anglicanism?
I think also that the wrong issues were addressed by ARCIC, or at least addressed in the wrong order. Clearly, matters like the Eucharist, the Church, the Blessed Virgin Mary are crucially important, and have divided Protestantism and Catholicism for five hundred years. However, without examining the underlying principles, any agreement reached on these important subjects will prove to have been built on shifting foundations which could result (and, some would say, have resulted) in major cracks, even collapses, within the structure so carefully built by ARCIC.
The most important issue that should have been examined first is the nature of truth, and how we are to arrive at it. For a Protestant, a Christian himself (or herself) reads the Bible, and, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, and helped by the witness of tradition (for some) and reason, discerns God's truth for himself. Within this system, there has to be a fair degree of toleration of difference, because Protestants had discovered within a couple of years that two earnest Protestants are going to have two different interpretations of pretty fundamental doctrines, and if they aren't going to end up killing each other (which some did), they are going to have to accept that there can be room for honest doubt. This, I would contend, has eventually given birth to doctrinal liberalism, though it would be a mistake to conclude from this that all Protestants are liberals, though Protestantism is particularly prone to liberalism on the one hand (for the nice people) and bigotry on the other ('my privately held opinion is better than your privately held opinion').
To a Catholic mind, our Lord did not come to write a book, but to found a Church through the wisdom of which, guided by the same Holy Spirit, he would continue to guide his Church into all truth. That Church would, inspired by the Holy Spirit, write a book, (the New Testament) but the Church precedes the book and therefore authoritatively interprets it (as the Bible interprets the tradition). It is the Apostles who are to be listened to as one would listen to Christ (Luke 10:16), and the Church holds that they continue to teach through tradition with scripture and through their successors.
Coming to discussions such as at ARCIC, it is hard to know how one can reach agreement if one side considers that truth is very much down to personal choice, even a choice made by a consensus of people in the same communion, and therefore any agreement once made can always be undone and remade, while the other side thinks that once a discernment has been made, it may confidently be believed as being actually true in itself.
In all this, I truly think that the recent discussions within the Anglican Communion have demonstrated that at root it is more Protestant than Catholic. A claim to be able to make something true by taking a vote on it (as on women's orders) is actually characteristically Protestant; a consensus of private judgements and an agreement to make things hot for those who are not prepared to accept the consensus.
I know, now there are howls of protest 'The Anglican Church has always been both Catholic and Reformed'. But the analysis I have tried to present accounts for the baffled reaction from many liberal Catholics in the Anglican Communion who certainly claim to be Catholic but don't want to be 'Romans'; what they mean by 'Catholic' is ceremonious liturgy in the Western tradition. That simply won't do as a definition; it is another of these less central matters which can be talked about after we have discussed the philosophy and theology of revelation and our relationship to revealed truth.
If we believe in a revealed truth which we simply receive, accept and try to understand, then our liturgy will be something we simply receive, accept and try to understand.
To begin with the liturgy is to put the cart before the horse; we should begin with Jesus Christ, the Word of God, God's self-communication, and ask ourselves what the message is that he wishes to communicate, and whether it can be known with certainty, in such a way as is true for all humanity and not merely 'true for me'.
All the rest will follow. 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.'
Related posts:
"To begin with the liturgy is to put the cart before the horse".
Never was a truer word said? I have discussed the subject because the subject came up.
There are two red herrings here: liturgy as seen from a "Tridentinist" or traditionalist point of view (get rid of the Paul VI rite, put everything back to 1957 and the busloads of people will flood back into the churches) – and – the important thing to keep is the institutional structure of the Church of England and go on with the old Anglo-Papalist line of aping Rome (except Apostolicae Curae).
I agree that we need the notion of objective truth and Catholic ecclesiology. However, as I was thirty years ago as a youngster in London, I wouldn't have been attracted to Catholicism by apologetics but by being enchanted by the liturgy. I consider liturgy as being primordial, not only for its apologetic appeal (speaking to the whole man and not just the rational intellect) but both a locus theologicus and place of Christ's incarnation.
But you are right, some people uninterested in liturgy can be attracted to the Faith by good apologetics and good marketing. "In my Father's house, there are many mansions".
Thank you for you comments. Indeed, liturgy without theology and spirituality will be a dangerous thing – little more than "dressing up" and "having fun"! Ugh!
Fr Finnegan is absolutely correct on the intellectual level: the classical philosophical problem of the criterion as it applies theologically to the determination of the Regula Fidei is ultimately what it's all about in the confrontation (nowadays, amicable discussion?) between Protestants and Catholics.
On the other hand, on the affective level Fr. Chadwick has a point: it's the liturgy which is the determinative experiential factor (both initial in the ordo cognoscendi and the ultimate in the ordo vivendi).
In my humble opinion (and, as in all my posts, I speak for no one but myself): it's liturgical practice that first introduces us to the lived reality of the Church Catholic – lex orandi, lex credendi – and then, for select souls well versed in the Logica Nova and the Logica Vetus, we can move on to deeper, speculative discussions.
P.S. and off topic: I do hope I'm not becoming addicted to this blog after first meeting it a little while ago, being addicted to snuff is bad enough.
A little off-topic, but I'm wondering if you are wanting be be off snuff (as it gives you unburnt nicotine). If you do, I can say from having stopped smoking that Zyban is excellent, and I hear there is something new now that is very effective, which you can get from your doctor. It's up to you – I'm not moralising (!).
Fr Anthony, like St. Teresa of Avila I'll continue snuffing till I reach my heavenly reward – and if my mortal remains be found intact, except for a corrupt nose as in her case, upon exhumation, so be it.
Just how do you manage to insert smileys in your posts?
For smilies, type a ";-)" without the quotes. The software makes the smiley automatically. The other version for the full smile is to use ":-)" also without the quotes.
"For a Protestant, a Christian himself (or herself) reads the Bible, and, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, and helped by the witness of tradition (for some) and reason, discerns God’s truth for himself"
Theoretically this is true. In reality, however, it isn't.
An Evangelical who concludes, by applying this method that Our Lord's Body and Blood is really present in the Eucharistic species, or that the successor of Peter is the Head of the Church, will receive short shrift from his fellow-Evangelicals.
Why? Because they have a tradition which definitively rules out any such interpretation of the Bible.
Which leads back to ….
I think that's what I meant by 'tradition' for a Protestant. They haven't integrated it in any formal way, but it certainly exists in their context. Consider their battles between Arminianism and Calvinism.
Yes. Tradition is present, tho' the theory denies this, which produces an intellectual schizophrenia, all the more problematic for not being openly acknowledged.
But Catholics suffer from something like a mirror image of this phenomenon. Accepting the Church as Christ's foundation "and her teachings as his own" depends on a continuous discernment that this is true by the individual. Should that discernment falter ….
But in the RCC the discernment is not by the individual, but by the Magisterium. The individual is Catholic because he accepts that the HS promised by the Lord and informing the community of believers and guiding it in Truth since Pentecost has exclusive expression through the Magisterium. If the individual's discernment falters and leads to a denial of this, the individual is no longer Catholic but Protestant or whatever.
tradition, and not Tradition
It's not just the "liberal Catholics" in the Anglican Communion who don't want to be Roman, but in my experience it is certain traditionalists of a Catholic bent in the Anglican Communion who also don't want to accept Roman authority! Without naming names, suffice it to say that I have witnessed first-hand the incongruity of ceremonial Anglo-Catholics with also something of a conservative moral theology and ecclesiology, but who assiduously avoided coming under the Holy See's ultimate oversight, prizing, I suppose, their "independence" – true spiritual heirs of the French Revolution, no doubt, even if unwittingly so.
No, the Ordinariate is exciting precisely because it seems to be filtering out these pseudo-Catholics by their own actions (or inaction). What a masterstroke Anglicanorum Coetibus has been!!
Are Eastern Orthodox pseudo-Catholics, with their valid sacraments, episcopate and none of the ecclesial innovation of the Vatican II disaster? Perhaps the resistance of these so-called "ceremonial Anglo-Catholics" is because the notion of rejecting their own orders and sacramental life is unacceptable, when they know that they are Catholics, like their Orthodox brethren albeit, temporarily out of communion with the Roman Pontiff.
Amen, Fr. Marziani.
Amen, David Gould.
AS has been repeatedly stated by all good authorities, one simply cannot equate the situation of the Eastern Orthodox with those of Anglican derivation.
Yes, the Eastern Orthodox constitute true churches in their own right (and rite!), with valid orders undisputed by anyone. They are in need of the Petrine Office to fully constitute their relationships with the Universal Church in its comprehensiveness, but no one would or should dare to call them "pseudo-Catholics", or in any way place them in the same category of ecclesial communities of Western/Latin origin that separated from Rome.
All of this is not to say that Anglican Orders -
COMPUTER GLITCH, COMPLETING MY THOUGHT!!
that Anglican Orders, at least those with demonstrated influx from Old Catholic ordinational streams, are necessarily invalid. My own orders, deriving from the Episcopal Diocese of Quincy, are likely quite valid indeed, if irregular. But I'm not going to insist on the same if the discernment of the Holy See is that in order to be safely considered truly ordained some remediation is in order. Archbishop Hepworth himself has said as much, and I'll go with the boss on that one!
So, no, the pseudo-Catholics in the Anglican experience unwilling to prayerfully consider the Apostolic Constitution, rejecting out of hand its possibilities basically because their own power base may be eroded, are indeed and in fact ineligible for the designation "Catholic", at least in the LARGE "C" sense.
Oh, and Vatican II was hardly a disaster; unless one wants to fault the overwhelming majority of Roman bishops at the time, along with two popes, as "disasters". Implementation is another matter . . . let's hope better things are in store in that regard as concerns Anglicanorum Coetibus.
Fr/ Marziani I believe that the form and intent of the Church of England's ordination was to maintain the episcopate and priesthood of the Catholic Church. That the Church of England no zealously maintained the Apostolic Succession over centuries attests to this.
I accept the invalidity of post-ordination of women invalidity because the liberal Anglican Communion thereafter were in heresy and schism from orthodox Anglicanism.
I also accept Father that the Vatican II fathers in the main did not envisage the modern Roman Church as we see it as being the outcome of Vatican II.
Nonetheless this Council which the Roman Church believes to have equal status to any of the pre-schism Councils of the Undivided Church was the catalyst for reform that was akin to the Protestant Reformation.
Think of the anomalies that need to be addressed in the reform of the reform:
1. Women eucharistic ministers and readers in contravention of the tradition of the Eastern and Western Catholic churches – including the Church of England.
2. The abandonment of the transcendent in liturgy with the vox pop mass, banal pop songs celebrating community not adoration of the Triune God,
3. The end of any meaningful notion of fasting and abstinence and communion fasting.
4. The purging of saints days from the calendar, the rejection of almost all Octaves, and an end to most observances of devotional Catholic norms like Benediction.
5. The wholesale loss of priestly and religious vocations, 6. The loss of the notion of what vocation is to both the priesthood and religious life – with obvious exceptions. From priests who dress like laymen and nuns dressed like middle aged spinsters, generally you can't tell a Roman cleric on the street from any secular laymen.
Now these may well all be excesses but they have become the cultural norm of the Roman Church in this country and I question how such relativism will ever be undone.