Posts tagged General Synod
Not a Last Resort
Feb 19th
Fr. Chadwick has already commented on Damian Thompson’s current editorial in The Catholic Herald vis-à-vis the potentially humble beginnings of the future English personal ordinariate. But another bit of Thompson’s piece stood out to me as it reiterates a point that we have made several times before on The Anglo-Catholic.
The General Synod will not outline its legislation for women bishops until its July meeting. So far as I can work out, there is a slim chance that the Synod may give traditionalists limited oversight by bishops who do not ordain women. This would be no more than a fig leaf, and it is probably not going to be offered anyway, so how can Forward in Faith, the main Anglo-Catholic body, justify delaying its official response to Anglicanorum coetibus until the Synod is over? The Apostolic Constitution, remember, was drawn up following requests from traditionalist Anglican bishops for pastoral oversight; it was not intended as a last resort.
I get the distinct impression that there are not a small number of folks in FiF UK who are yet hoping for some statutory accommodation to protect faithful Anglo-Catholic parishes from the oversight of future women bishops, and for whom Anglicanorum Coetibus represents only a fallback position. Fr. Geoffrey Kirk put it this way at the 2009 National Assembly of Forward in Faith UK (and I quote his words as being illustrative of a certain attitude that almost certainly isn’t his own):
I would be a rich man if I had a twenty pound note for every time in the last five years a member of Forward in Faith has asked me the leading question: “We know what the plan is,” they would say, “to secure within the Church of England a viable, ecclesiologically-coherent future for traditional Anglican Catholics. But if that’s Plan A, what’s Plan B?” Well, now you know!
But I would commend to our brethren in FiF UK these words of the Bishop of Richborough at that same assembly:
We should not view this possibility as a last resort if everything goes wrong. I suppose I want to disagree again with Fr. Kirk about the Plan A and the Plan B. I think this probably is Plan A. We should not consider this imaginative offer of full communion with the Holy See simply because we’ve got nowhere else to go. Such an attitude will not endear us to the Conference of Bishops of England and Wales or the wider Catholic community. Cardinal Levada made it very clear in his press statement that those who request such a personal ordinariate — and it will have to be asked for — must share the Catholic Faith as it’s expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and also accept the ministry of the Bishop of Rome as something Christ willed for His Church. These are important things to consider and should not be taken lightly.
I am forced to agree with Mr. Thompson. Even were the General Synod to offer some provision for limited episcopal oversight for faithful Anglicans, it would indeed be a fig leaf — or rather an illusion. How exactly would this work anyway? Would traditional Anglo-Catholics see themselves as being in communion with some of the Church’s bishops and not others? Would they be out of communion with a bishop today and tomorrow restore communion with the particular see when the incumbent happened to be male? …but perhaps not if he were consecrated by a woman bishop? How many female episcopal consecrators will be deemed invalidate the sacrament of Holy Orders? One? …two? …or must all three be lady bishops? What happens when the Archbishop of Canterbury is a woman? What then? And honestly, even on the outside chance that Synod provides more than a code of practice, how long would it be before the Church of England reneged on that?
This must be a decision of conscience rather than convenience. And it is not going to be easy. Many of us in the Traditional Anglican Communion have already had to make the same sorts of sacrifices that you will likely have to make. It was tough, but we managed… and now we’re the better for it. We know you all can do it too, and we’re praying for you!
General Synod Declines to Recognize ACNA
Feb 10th
The General Synod of the Church of England passed the following resolution on Wednesday by a vote of 309 to 69:
That this Synod, aware of the distress cause by recent divisions within the Anglican churches of the United States of America and Canada,”(a) recognise and affirm the desire of those who have formed the Anglican Church in North America to remain within the Anglican family;
(b) acknowledge that this aspiration, in respect both of relations with the Church of England and membership of the Anglican Communion, raises issues which the relevant authorities of each need to explore further; and
(c) invite the Archbishops to report further to the Synod in 2011.”.
On a “private member’s motion,” the General Synod of the Church of England was asked by a lay representative from the Diocese of Chichester, Lorna Ashley, to “express the desire that the Church of England be in communion with the Anglican Church in North America” (ACNA). The ACNA web site is running a news story entitled “General Synod Affirms Anglican Church in North America” and David Virtue is calling this a “slap in the face at Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori and an affirmation of the ministry and ecclesiastical of ACNA Archbishop Robert Duncan,” but far short of recognizing ACNA as a new province of the Anglican Communion, the General Synod merely deigned to acknowledge that the aspirations of this upstart group of “conservatives” may be sincere. What a breakthrough!
Ecclesiastical Sundries
Feb 9th
- The Superior General of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (FSSPX / SSPX), Bishop Bernard Fellay, says that an agreement with the Vatican is not possible in “human terms.” As usual, it’s difficult to know what this means. Does Bishop Fellay hold out hope that God will finally “put things in order”? Only time will tell, but we should continue to pray for the reconciliation of the SSPX with the Catholic Church. The fostering of traditionalist societies that offer the sacraments according to the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite is part of the Holy Father’s larger plan for the renewal of the Church — a plan that most definitely includes the reconciliation of traditionalist Anglicans!
“And now, it is asked, will a result be achieved in the discussions with Rome, will we soon have an agreement? Frankly, sincerely, speaking in human terms, we do not see such an agreement in view. What does an agreement mean? On what are we in agreement? On the fact that only through the Church we find the means of salvation? …
“This does not mean abandoning truth in order to find a middle way, absolutely not; yes, in human terms, we will not reach an agreement, the way we see things, [the talks] do not serve any purpose, in human terms. Yet, when we speak of the Church, we do not speak in human terms, we speak of a supernatural reality to which Our Lord promised that it would not fail, against which the gates of hell would not prevail. And, therefore, even if we face a difficult and contradictory reality, we know that events are in God’s hands, He who has the means to put things in order. It would be proper to recall that to talk and to debate is necessary, but it is not enough: when one talks about saving souls, when one considers how God rescued the Church from other crises it faced through the centuries, we see that holiness is that with which He renews and heals the Church. Without grace, and remaining solely at the level of men, all is lost from the beginning. All of us, as Catholics, must, therefore, act, advancing in grace, in the love of God, in charity.”
- The Kirk is miffed at the Holy Father’s address to the Scottish Bishops. In his address, the Holy Father referred to “the great rupture with Scotland’s Catholic past that occurred four hundred and fifty years ago” and linked Scotland’s history of sectarianism to the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation. Some Scottish Presbyterians are eager to celebrate the 450th anniversary of the Reformation. Donald Gorrie, the former Liberal MSP and a Kirk elder for forty years, said:
I think this (the Pope’s remarks) contributes to the difficulties. One of the difficulties in persuading either the Church of Scotland or the government to celebrate the Reformation as it deserves is that it will be seen as being sectarian and triumphalist and anti-Catholic. In fact, it is a good opportunity to celebrate the Reformation by ecumenical type services to show how far we’ve come.
Och, it’s unbelievable that anyone would think that the Protestant Reformation was sectarian and anti-Catholic!
- This year will see the replacement of the heads of several key offices in the Roman Curia. John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter feeds the rumor mill. Cardinal Pell continues to top the chart, being oft-mentioned for the Congregation for Bishops.
- The New Liturgical Movement asks whether or not too much is being made by traditionalists of Latin as a sacred language. While Latin most definitely deserves pride of place in both forms of the Roman Rite, the vernacular is here to stay. Roman Catholics would do well to look to our Anglican “use” for ideas on how to employ a language “understanded of the people” — though not really a “vernacular” it is true. And liturgical language is important, but the ars celebrandi is perhaps even more so. We can help out there too!
- On a “private member’s motion,” the General Synod of the Church of England is being asked by a lay representative from the Diocese of Chichester to “express the desire that the Church of England be in communion with the Anglican Church in North America” (ACNA). There are reports that the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, is in England hoping to influence the Synod. The motion will be debated on Wednesday.
No Alternative Oversight for Faithful Anglicans
Feb 7th
Update: Here is the audio. Evidently, the statement leaked by Ms. Gledhill was delivered on Monday word-for-word.
Ruth Gledhill has leaked the statement the Bishop of Manchester is set to deliver to the Church of England’s General Synod on Monday concerning women in the episcopate. In a nutshell, the Revision Committee’s recommendation will be that no statutory alternative oversight be provided for congregations unable to accept women bishops. At best, it seems that any accommodation would be totally at the discretion of the diocesan bishop.
There are some in FiF UK that insist that, before they go over to Rome, this process must be allowed to play out, that perhaps there is yet a future for faithful Anglo-Catholics in the Established Church. Personally, I fail to see how the decisions of the Church of England General Synod enter into the question at all: either Anglicanorum Coetibus is a movement of the Holy Ghost or it is not. Either we ought to be in communion with the Successor of St. Peter or not. But were one to take a less spiritual, more pragmatic approach to things, honestly, does ANYONE really think this is going to end with Catholic Anglicans being able to remain in the Church of England in good conscience?
10. Where have we got to? It was only at our tenth meeting on 26 November that the Revision Committee completed the first phase of its work, namely considering whether to substitute a significantly different approach for the one reflected in the initial draft of the Measure. What we had done in our earlier meetings was to adopt a ‘traffic light’ system of red and amber.
11. Having heard representations in favour of creating additional dioceses the Committee decided before the summer to give the idea the red light. But proposals for a recognised society, some sort of transfer or vesting, or for adopting the simplest possible legislative approach all got initial amber lights, that is to say, we agreed to consider them further.
12. We then did some serious work on these models, particularly to tease out the pros and cons of the society model and to understand exactly what it might mean in terms of who exercised what jurisdiction and on whose authority. After much discussion we came to the point of decision on 8 October. The Revision Committee voted by a clear majority to reject the society option but, by a similarly clear majority to go for the transfer or vesting route. This meant that, in relation to petitioning parishes, certain functions – though the Committee had not agreed which – would be exercised by bishops by virtue of the Measure rather than by way of delegation from the diocesan bishop.
13. We were then confronted with a dilemma over what if anything to say about such a significant decision. We had confirmed at the outset of this exercise that we would not offer a running commentary on progress. Nevertheless, we have no sanctions to enforce confidentiality. With 19 members we are a big Group and in addition there are usually several other Synod members present at our discussions. We were also conscious that people would be attending subsequent meetings and would need to know the changed context in which they were presenting their proposals.
14. So, it was clear that news of what we had decided would get out, not necessarily accurately. After discussion there was agreement across the Revision Committee that the least bad option was to put out a short factual press release.
15. Even with the benefit of hindsight I’m not sure that we could have done differently. But it did, in the event, create difficulty for us and necessitate a further statement when, on 13 November, further work resulted in all the specific proposals for the vesting of particular functions being defeated. The Revision Committee was simply unable to identify a basis for specifying particular functions for vesting which could command sufficient support both from those in favour of the ordination of women as bishops and those unable to support that development.
16. This meant that after more than six months work we had rejected all the options which would have involved conferring some measure of jurisdiction on someone other than the diocesan bishop. The legislation that the Revision Committee sends back to the Synod will, therefore, be on the basis that any arrangements that are made for parishes with conscientious difficulties about women’s ordination will be by way of delegation from the diocesan bishops. That much is already clear.
Read the entire statement below.
