Pope Benedict XVI’s pastoral visit to Great Britain next month will unfold along a pilgrim’s path metaphorically strewn with landmines. Headline-grabbing new atheists like Richard Dawkins, along with their allies in the international plaintiff’s bar, may try to have the pontiff arrested as an enabler of child abuse. More subtly, but just as falsely, homosexual activists and their allies will portray John Henry Newman, whom the Pope will beatify, as the patron saint of gay liberation. No challenge facing Benedict in Britain, however, will be greater than the challenge of re-framing the Anglican-Catholic ecumenical dialogue, which is on the verge of de facto extinction.
The death of that once-promising dialogue would have been unimaginable 40 years ago. Then, in the aftermath of Vatican II, it seemed possible that Canterbury and Rome might be reconciled, with full ecclesiastical communion restored. That great hope began to run aground in the mid-1980s, when the Church of England faced the question of whether it could call women to holy orders (a practice already under way in other member communities of the worldwide Anglican Communion). As I discovered when researching the biography of Pope John Paul II, a theological Rubicon seems to have been crossed in a 1984-86 exchange of letters among Dr. Robert Runcie, the Anglican primate, Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and the Pope.
John Paul and Willebrands made quite clear to Runcie that the bright hope of ecclesial reconciliation would be severely damaged were the Church of England to engage in a practice that the Catholic Church (and the Orthodox churches) believed was unauthorized by apostolic tradition, and in fact contradicted that tradition. While admirably candid, Dr. Runcie’s attempt to explain why the Church of England believed it could proceed to the ordination of women demonstrated that Anglicanism and Catholicism were living in two distinct universes of discourse, one theological, the other sociological. For Runcie advanced no theological arguments as to why apostolic tradition could be understood to authorize the innovation he and many of his Anglican colleagues proposed; rather, he cited the expanding roles of women in society as the crucial issue. Sociological trends, Runcie’s letter implied, trumped apostolic tradition—which was not, of course, something the Catholic Church could accept.
The same issue recently re-emerged in the Church of England’s debate over the ordination of women as bishops. Dr. Rowan Williams, the current Anglican primate, and his colleague in York, Dr. John Sentamu , proposed a compromise in which the Church of England would ordain women to its episcopate, but parishes unable to accept this innovation would be allowed to invite a male bishop to preside over those rituals for which a bishop’s presence is required. This compromise was rejected by the General Synod of the Church of England, leading the London Telegraph to deplore editorially the loss of the Anglican “ tradition of compromise that has preserved the Church for more than 400 years.”
The Telegraph’s sense of what has “preserved the Church for more than 400 years” is misplaced, I fear. Elements of sanctity, intelligence, and beauty have been nurtured in the Anglican Communion for more than four centuries by the work of the Holy Spirit, who distributes gifts freely, and not only within the confines of the Catholic Church. Thus there have been great Anglican theologians and noble Anglican martyrs in the Anglican Communion, which has also given the world a splendid patrimony of liturgical music and a powerful example of the majesty of the English language as a vehicle of worship. None of this has had much, if anything, to with a “tradition of compromise.”
The sad truth of the matter is that the “tradition of compromise” is what is destroying the Anglican Communion. For that “tradition” has come to mean that the apostolic tradition of the Church—the essential constitution bequeathed to the Church by Christ, which can be discerned in the Scriptures and which was articulated in the creeds—has ceased to have any normative claim within Anglicanism.
Thus an ecclesiological rule-of-thumb: when anything goes, the first thing to go is apostolic tradition.
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.
Comments:
Why would the Catholic Church want to become Anglican?
A corollary to Neuhaus' maxim: when othodoxy is optional, sooner or later it will be proscribed.
The heirs to those Apostles and those who ( could ) venerate her , coming together , to honor her as spiritual Mother of all - could that be the start of an era when The Son would reign as Prince of Peace and merciful love in all hearts !
One honorable tradition to look forward to would be , preparing for her upcoming Birthday on Sept 8th ! Would not such measures be one way to drive off the lust for control , esp. from women and related divisive issues , possibly resulting from idolatrous sexual appetites that have not been brought to repentance !
Take Cardinal Newman. If 'compromise' had not forged a place where an evangelical could explore his faith without being ostracized, he would never have been able to move toward Catholicism. The outcries against his growth were hard enough as it was; in a more polarized world, he would have been abandoned before he could mature.
The circularity of this rule-of-thumb argument is probably already present in the judgment that Runcie's arguments were 'sociological' instead of theological. This presumes that "apostolic tradition" is the only measure of "all that the Church is and that she believes", as Vatican II defined Tradition. The narrowing caused by that term 'apostolic' is simply an application of the rule of thumb, and cannot be a basis for for concluding that this rule is accurate.
The Diocesan Synod of Cyprus and the Gulf (of which I was then a clergy member) in 1988 simply agreed not to consider the consecration of a woman as bishop. In that context, there are obvious sociological reasons why such a move would be crazy, not only destroying the unity of Anglicans with both Orthodox and Catholic Christians, but also of course making it impossible for a bishop to even meet with Muslim leaders.
But surely the argument about breaking with tradition, or not, only holds water if backed by scripture. My vote against women bishops in the Middle East was not only pragmatic, but followed what I believed to be the clear teaching of St Paul in 1 Timothy 3.
When it comes to the ordination of women to the priesthood, as long as they are under the oversight of a male bishop, I see no such problem.
Why on earth are protestants so concerned about unity with Rome? The 39 articles explicitly reject the pope's authority and present a theology that substantially different to catholicism. Many would say that we are talking about two completely different religions, and that the catholics are the ones who have rejected orthodoxy by their repeated deviations from the teachings of scriptures.
How can you claim loyalty to scripture and dispense with Tradition? Without Tradition there is no Scripture! The Gospels were recorded many years after the death and Resurrection of Christ, from the eyewitness accounts of surviving apostles and disciples. They'd had time, prayer, and community dialogue to reflect on the events of Christ's life--that is, they had Tradition (oral and otherwise) that led to the writing.
Much the same was also true of many of the Old Testament Scriptures. The books we name for several prophets were in all likelihood recorded by their students, not by the prophets themselves. Without Tradition, your Scripture lacks Christ. Period.
Catholic fidelity to the successors of the Apostles, with the successor of Peter (the pope) as the first among equals is ENTIRELY Scriptural. From Acts and the leadership of Peter in regard to Cornelius and the Council of Jerusalem, to Christ's establishing his Church on the Rock of Peter, and on through the early Church Fathers the papacy was clearly the final arbiter. Even Paul recognized the primacy of Peter. One has to be either grossly ignorant or willfully resistant to God's Word to think differently.
"Dr. Rowan Williams, the current Anglican primate, and his colleague in York, Dr. John Sentamu , proposed a compromise in which the Church of England would ordain women to its episcopate, but parishes unable to accept this innovation would be allowed to invite a male bishop to preside over those rituals for which a bishop’s presence is required. This compromise was rejected by the General Synod of the Church of England, leading the London Telegraph to deplore editorially the loss of the Anglican “ tradition of compromise that has preserved the church for more than 400 years.”
In fact, this is incorrect. The legislation as it stands provides precisely this feature, i.e. parishes may invite male bishops etc. What was rejected was a particularly innovative legal formulation of this requirement. But the requirement as you state it above, still stands. Here is the wording from the draft legislation as it currently stands, to prove it:
http://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/uploads/gs1708a-amended.html
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2 (1) The bishop of each diocese shall be under a duty to make and publish a scheme containing arrangements in his or her diocese for the exercise by way of delegation to a male bishop who is a member of the House of Bishops of the diocesan synod of that or another diocese of episcopal ministry which appears to the bishop of the diocese to relate to —
(a) the celebration of the sacraments and other divine service in parishes which request such arrangements in accordance with section 3, or
(b) the provision of pastoral care to the clergy and parishioners in those parishes.
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Although it will not make much sense without the context I reproduce below the amendment that was defeated, which the archbishops were promoting, so you can see that it did not contain what you claim has been deleted.
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514 In clause 2(1) leave out the words "way of delegation to" and after clause 2(1) insert —
"(2) The episcopal ministry referred to in subsections (1), (3) and (5) shall be exercisable by virtue of this section and shall not divest the bishop of the diocese of any of his or her functions."
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Of course the issues of the counter conference in Jerusalem and of homosexual bishops was center stage. It was a discussion completely held on a sociological plane. Theology, Scripture, Tradition, none of these words even showed up in the conversation. mostly there was a perplexity over why these other members of the Anglican communion could not abide the ordination of a homosexual bishop.
i am not surprised that this conversation between rome and canterbury has derailed. Many of the the anglicans i know have simply stopped thinking theologically.