A Guide to the Anglican Crisis
The public meltdown of the world's third largest Christian body, the Anglican Communion, has attracted considerable attention, but little understanding. Catholics, if they have noticed the meltdown at all, may think "it's all about sex." Actually, that is only the presenting symptom; the disease is complex and subtle, and it offers both a lesson and an opportunity for the Catholic Church.
Generally, Catholics with only a superficial acquaintance of Anglicanism see similarities in it; the more knowledgeable see differences. But Catholics with the deepest understanding see the greatest possibilities.
In view of the understandable incomprehension of many Catholics, we might begin by asking, "What is Anglicanism?" The short answer is: It is the form of Christianity practiced in those churches stemming from, or having affinity with, the Church of England. This raises the further question, "What is the Church of England?"
The answer requires historical background. Britain was evangelized early, but isolated by contraction of the Roman Empire. In 597, Gregory the Great dispatched a mission headed by Augustine (of Canterbury), and England became an integral and vital part of medieval Christendom. Visitors said the island "groaned beneath the weight of its churches." Devotion to the Virgin earned England the name "Mary's Dowry."
The Reformation in continental Europe began with religious ferment and led to political changes; but in England a political crisis came first, then played itself out in a perfect storm of religious instability. When unrest disturbed Germany, the king of England — that prototypical Renaissance prince and stalwart of Catholic orthodoxy, Henry VIII — refuted Martin Luther in the scholarly Defense of the Seven Sacraments. An appreciative Leo X gave Henry the papal title Defensor Fidei (Defender of the Faith), proudly and jealously retained by all his successors.
But Henry had an overarching problem: no male heir. The only surviving child of his wife — the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella — was a daughter, Mary, and there was no clear precedent for a woman's succession to the throne. In time, Henry persuaded himself that he was punished for the sin of marrying his brother's widow (by papal dispensation).
Henry's single-minded determination to set Catherine aside, acquire another wife, and produce a male successor led him to place a compliant Thomas Cranmer in the primatial see of Canterbury and by degrees to separate his kingdom and its Church from Rome, borrowing the "caesaro-papism" theory of the Byzantine Empire. He was not driven by lust, which is easily satisfied, but by other sins that followed the initial schism, especially greed.
Thomas Cromwell, a bureaucratic hanger-on (and great-great-great uncle of that other trouble-making Cromwell, Oliver), whispered to Henry that the religious houses of England were ripe for "reform" — not to mention a rich source of plunder. This "dissolution of the monasteries" made the schism hard to heal. Cromwell spread the loot widely, creating a large class of people who found it easy to believe the Reformation was God's will — because to confess otherwise implied an obligation to disgorge their new wealth. The real villain in the tragedy is Cromwell, not Henry.
While he lived, Henry sternly upheld all (other) basic Catholic doctrines, and there was real hope the schism would end. But Henry's death in 1547 brought to the throne nine-year-old Edward VI, son of his third wife, Jane Seymour. (Of Henry's six wives, numbers one, three, and five were Catholic, while numbers two, four, and six were Protestant. Only numbers two and five lost their heads.)
The boy king was controlled by corrupt courtiers who allowed reformers free rein in the Church, but their schemes were stymied by Edward's death in 1553 and the succession of his half-sister, Mary, an ardent Catholic. She married Philip II of Spain, opposed the reformers, and reconciled England with the papacy. That seemed to settle things, but Mary herself died in 1558, leaving the throne to her half-sister, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth had no tolerance for radical Puritans who wished to purge England of all Catholic vestiges. She probably favored moderate reform but kept the matter in doubt for diplomatic advantage. Finally, in 1570 Pius V lost patience, excommunicated Elizabeth, and declared her deposed. The religious question now was thoroughly politicized; professing the Catholic faith implied disloyalty to the popular queen. English Catholics fell under suspicion of treason; Protestantism became patriotic.
For decades, the situation of Catholic "recusants" worsened. The 1605 "Gunpowder Plot" made them even more suspect. Legal penalties were spottily enforced, but a constant threat. The list of martyrs lengthened. Religion was a major issue in the civil wars of the 1640s, when Puritans accused the Stuart kings of tolerating "popery."
Indeed, Catholics were sprinkled throughout the royal family and court. The wives of every king from 1603 to 1688 were Catholics. King Charles II was received into the Catholic Church on his deathbed in 1685; his brother, James II, the last Catholic king, was overthrown in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688.
In the following century of the "Whig ascendancy," Catholicism in England shrank steadily, surviving principally among isolated gentry and their retainers. (One of these, Lord Baltimore, brought Catholicism to 17th-century Maryland.)
The horror felt in England over the French Revolution and persecution of the Church in France softened lingering anti-Catholic sentiment. By 1829, remaining legal disabilities were removed. In 1850, Pius IX restored a Roman hierarchy in England. A concurrent catholicizing tendency in the Church of England, "the Oxford Movement" (first called "Tractarianism," then "Anglo-Catholicism"), fed a stream of conversions to Catholicism, led by John Henry Newman.
By then the acid of rationalism and materialism had begun its work of destruction. Ironically, the greater freedom won by Catholic-minded Anglicans created space for their antagonists, the "Broad Church" or liberalizing tendency The deficiency of authority in Anglicanism made opposition to liberalism difficult from the start and eventually impossible.
On top of it all, "the Whig interpretation of history" (historian Sir Herbert Butterfield coined the term in a 1931 book of that title) was by then the regnant view of the past after more than a century of unchallenged sway. The Whig historians saw history as an inexorable forward march of progress with all historical figures divided into friends and enemies of "progress." Preeminent among them was the brilliant writer Thomas Babington Macaulay, and the great Catholic historian Lord Acton advocated this view himself. To the Whigs (not identical with the political parties of that name), the Catholic Church stood in the front rank of the "enemies of progress." This mindset took even stronger hold in America than Britain.
A significant date is 1867, when the first Lambeth Conference met. The archbishop of Canterbury, as primus inter pares, invited bishops from the British Empire and the United States to meet at his London home, Lambeth Palace, to discuss matters of common concern. The 14th of these roughly decennial conferences is scheduled to meet in 2008. Given the explosive growth of Anglicanism in the "Global South," especially Africa, recent conferences have been far different from that genteel gathering in 1867. (Restive conservatives are planning an additional meeting in Jerusalem this year.)
As Anglo-Catholicism spread, hope was born of "corporate reunion" between Canterbury and Rome. A society called the English Church Union worked explicitly toward that goal. Great expectations hung upon the answer to a question posed to Leo XIII on the validity of Anglican orders; and great disappointment fell over Anglo-Catholics and their Roman Catholic allies when the bull Apostolicae Curae (1896) declared those orders "absolutely null and utterly void."
The archbishops of Canterbury and York responded in the encyclical letter Saepius Officio (1897), addressed to all Catholic bishops in the world — among whom they obviously counted themselves — and disagreeing with the analysis and conclusion of Leo XIII.
Even in the aftermath of the Great War, the glimmer of "corporate reunion" refused to die. The "Conversations at Malines," in Belgium, represented continued attempts by Anglo-Catholics and sympathetic Roman Catholics to find a way forward together, but no progress could be made against the declared views of Rome and the official disinterest of Canterbury. Individual conversions continued, particularly among literary figures such as G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, and Graham Greene.
"Ecumenism," a term covering a variety of attitudes, nevertheless was a constant feature of 20th-century church life. One manifestation was the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Consultation (ARCIC), an outgrowth of Vatican II. Meetings occurred at various times and places and produced the kind of documents that ecclesiastical bureaucrats are (in)famous for, but whatever progress was made in the minds of the participants, it essentially came to naught because of the increasingly amorphous nature of Anglicanism, and finally ended over the women's ordination issue.
Today, churches in 38 independent national and regional provinces make up the Anglican Communion's 80 million members, of which the nominal head is the archbishop of Canterbury. The American province, the Episcopal Church, is the immediate source of many Anglican problems.
The Church of England came with the first English settlers to Virginia in 1607. In several of the 13 colonies it was legally established, but the broken connection with England after independence was a hindrance until an American episcopate was obtained in 1784-5. (This may be taken as the beginning of the Anglican Communion — the first national Anglican church outside Britain and separate from the Church of England.)
Its footing recovered, the Episcopal Church grew steadily and took a place at the head of the Protestant churches, in influence if not numbers — the lingering aura of establishment. For two centuries the Episcopal Church was an American institution.
At first, American Episcopalians generally were among those Anglicans who view the Reformation as a welcome and necessary event — usually called "Low Church" or "evangelical," although the terms are not identical — and tend to keep aloof from Catholicism.
However, an indigenous "High Church" party soon appeared. "High Churchmen" stress the continuity of Anglicanism with "the undivided Church" of the first millennium. For them, the Reformation may have been, barely, justifiable, but is certainly regrettable and not to be extended beyond absolute necessity. They usually entertain warm feelings for Catholicism.
High Church views always have been widespread among Anglicans, but came into focus with the Oxford Movement, when a traditional patristic emphasis grew into greater appreciation of contemporary Roman Catholicism. High Churchmen — "Anglo-Catholics" — had retained Catholic doctrines, but now they controversially adopted Catholic practices.
Muted division endures between Anglicans who look fondly on the Catholic past and those who idealize the Reformation, but whatever their differences, evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics are united in strict adherence to the orthodoxy of Creeds and Scripture. However, an Anglican "third way" complicates the picture.
This "third way" began innocently enough, as a conciliatory gesture during the British civil wars of the 17th century. In the 18th century it was called "Latitudinarianism," and in the 19th the "Broad Church." Many saw this as a moderate response to the conflicts of Low Church and High. But as usually happens to movements of compromise and reductionism, it curdled into a progressively more corrosive liberalism.
Meanwhile, the Episcopal Church continued its hopeful course. By 1965, the church numbered 3.6 million communicants. (Gallup reported twice that many claimed the identity.) Gothic cathedrals were built in Washington, San Francisco, and New York. Episcopal churches were landmarks in cities and towns across the country; new parishes blossomed in post-war suburbs.
But the Episcopal Church that confidently strode into the 60s was not the same one that staggered into the 70s. In the social revolutions of those tumultuous decades, the close relation between the Episcopal Church and American culture passed from one in which Episcopalianism gave direction to one in which it accepted direction — and in the process lost a third of its peak 1965 membership. (Continued growth at pre-1965 rates could have meant 10 million or more Episcopalians today, instead of about 2.4 million.)
The Second Vatican Council was perhaps a greater shock to Anglicans than Catholics. Whether or not it recognizes the fact, Anglicanism is parasitic on Catholicism. Without a center of real authority or a magisterium, it subconsciously looks to Rome to supply them. In the wake of the council, Episcopalians, particularly Anglo-Catholics, felt disoriented, although taking almost childish delight in the "special place" that the council documents accorded Anglicanism among separated Christian bodies.
To confuse matters even more, liberals increasingly adopted Catholic trappings, without the accompanying doctrine, so Anglo-Catholics had their clothes, or at least vestments, stolen from them.
In the 70s, liberalism made its "long march through the institutions" of the Episcopal Church. The venerable Book of Common Prayer was replaced by a completely new version in 1979. This was welcomed by those who sought alternatives to Cranmer's Tudor cadences and patristic sensibilities, and by Anglo-Catholics who thought they had gained a liturgy allowing more explicit expression of their tenets. But to post-modern liberals meaning is malleable; mere words can be bent to any purpose, especially theirs. The net effect was to remove a unifying symbol and prepare the ground for more change.
The wound that will not heal was inflicted by the triennial General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1976, which purported to authorize ordination of women to the priesthood. Generally, this was greeted with glee by liberals, who saw a triumph of "experience" and "felt needs" over dogma, with indifference by evangelicals, given their weak concept of priesthood, and with dismay by Anglo-Catholics, who felt a mortal threat to their Catholic self-identity. Both Anglo-Catholics and liberals perceived an implication that largely escaped evangelicals: if women could be priests, there was no reason they could not be bishops.
This momentous change was first presented as a "permissive canon" — and more than 40 diocesan bishops (of about one hundred) initially declined to implement it. But with the progressive agenda, what once is permitted soon is required. The "full inclusion of women" came to be an issue of "justice" and "rights"; no objection was allowed. Now, only three beleaguered American Episcopal dioceses maintain the male-only apostolic ministry.
In response, opponents of this innovation convened the "Congress of St. Louis" in 1977. Out of this came the Evangelical and Catholic Mission, a coalition attracting more Anglo-Catholics than evangelicals. The ECM became the Episcopal Synod of America in 1989, when, inevitably, a woman was made bishop (then called "the final crisis"; sadly, more crises were in store). After the Church of England itself surrendered to the zeitgeist and allowed women priests in 1992, the ESA joined with the world-wide "Forward in Faith" movement of Catholic-minded Anglicans.
If some Episcopalians threatened to stay, another outcome of the Congress of St. Louis was the "Continuing Church" movement, beginning with the "Anglican Catholic Church," and thereafter undergoing more divisions, reunions, anathemas, and concordats than can be confidently listed or possibly untangled. These groups vary widely in degrees of legitimacy, credibility, viability, and integrity. The irony of the Continuing Churches is that, by leaving the official Anglican Communion, self-described Catholics adopted a basic Protestant tactic of divide-and-depart.
Among the creedally orthodox remaining in the Episcopal Church, no common organizational or strategic position could be reached. Different ad hoc groups appeared and disappeared with each advance of the liberal onslaught. Tragically, the majority of the laity avoided the issues so long as their parishes were not directly affected. When "the troubles" reached them, it was too late to resist.
Indeed, the troubles continued. Women's ordination was a stalking horse for the whole agenda of the sexual revolution, emphatically including gay rights. Matters came to a head in 2003, when the diocese of New Hampshire selected a "partnered" gay man as bishop. Many previous events had been declared the last straw, but this may have been the real thing.
Evangelicals, formerly milling about in seeming confusion, suddenly coalesced in opposition to the all-but-complete liberal takeover. "Global South" Anglicans, beset by Islam on their home ground, decided they must intervene. Seemingly-vindicated Anglo-Catholics made common cause with alarmed evangelicals. But the institutional heights of the Episcopal Church already were occupied by liberals, who had waged a long, essentially political campaign with the sole goal of power.
This, then, is the current Anglican "situation": an Episcopal Church bureaucracy controlled by quasi-apostates; laity held as virtual ecclesiastical prisoners; the orthodox fumbling uncertainly toward an effective response; a world-wide Anglican Communion overwhelmingly comprising orthodox in the "Global South," but financed by etiolated Western liberals; a welter of "Continuing Church" bodies ranging from serious to risible; an increase in individual conversions (including several bishops) to Catholicism and the Orthodox churches; and many heart-stricken Christians longing for the unity of the Church — the whole Church, one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic.
But how does this concern Catholics? What is its relevance to them? Near the beginning, I said that Anglicanism offered both a lesson and an opportunity for the universal Church. The lesson is in the past, a cautionary tale of what happens when "inclusion" and "comprehension" are valued over simple truth. The opportunity lies in the future.
The short-term probably will see a continued liberal grip on the withering official Anglican Communion. Evangelicals will bulk in various groupings within and without, tolerated or oppressed at the liberals' whim. Most Americans among them will be affiliated with "Global South" Anglican provinces. There will be unseemly property litigation. That leaves the Anglo-Catholics, the most astute of whom know that the real problem is not in New Hampshire, nor the solution in Nigeria.
Despite their heavy setbacks, Anglo-Catholics doggedly pursue "corporate reunion." After 1976, a group representing mainly the American Church Union placed their plea at Rome. Soon, a new pope, John Paul II, turned his attention to these petitioners.
His answer was the "Pastoral Provision" (1980), by which Episcopal priests can be ordained as Catholic priests under certain circumstances even if they are married. Nearly one hundred Catholic priests have resulted from this. (In Britain, a separate procedure has brought several hundred former Anglican priests into the Catholic priesthood — some by conditional ordination.) The Pastoral Provision (the implementation of which has Archbishop John Myers of Newark as its papal delegate) also facilitates formation of common-identity "Anglican Use" Catholic parishes where the bishop approves.
Under tight restrictions, the Anglican Use has borne little fruit and is hardly known beyond those immediately involved. But where it has been tried, it enjoys remarkable success. In San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas-Fort Worth, Anglican Use parishes are thriving. Other congregations are forming. Sometimes suspected of not being "real Catholics," these faithful are as much real Catholics as Melkites, Byzantines, or Maronites.
Clearly, only some Anglicans are ready to swim the Tiber now — a faithful remnant of Anglo-Catholics who recognize their old home. They know they can come individually, but hope to come together to make a way and prepare a place for others. (Anglican converts to Catholicism tend to be faithful, observant Catholics, while Catholic converts to Anglicanism frequently support the progressive agenda, leading some wags to suggest an "exchange of prisoners.")
The Anglican Use and Pastoral Provision together offer a remarkable opportunity for the Catholic Church. Before the troubles, the Episcopal Church exerted a strong pull on evangelical Protestants seeking to enter "the historic Church," a trend documented by Robert Webber in Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail (1985). Now, those evangelicals might be brought beyond the outpost of Canterbury, all the way home to Rome if the Catholic Church seizes the opportunity.
Heretofore, sensitivity to official Anglicanism may have checked expansion of the Pastoral Provision. But the times grow desperate, and it is hardly "sheep stealing" to rescue abandoned sheep expelled from the fold by their own shepherds.
The Pastoral Provision and the Anglican Use could create a means for untold numbers of English-speaking Protestants and others to find a way into the Catholic Church. If serious, faithful Catholics take time to learn the full story, they will see the possibilities.
Both history books and newspapers must be read cautiously, and movies ignored. But it requires only a modicum of sympathetic imagination to perceive that the Catholic embers remaining alive in Anglicanism — even if now barely a spark — can be brought to a flame again and merged with the fire of the Catholic Church.
Catholics may be excused for asking, with some impatience, "Why don't they just convert?" The answer is that many Anglicans already regard themselves as Catholics, with a vocation to remain where they are. The Anglican writer Evelyn Underhill once explained to a Catholic friend,
[I] solidly believe in the Catholic status of the Anglican Church, as to orders and sacraments, little as I appreciate many of the things done among us . . . [O]ur Lord has put me here, keeps on giving me more and more jobs to do for souls here, and has never given me orders to move. In fact, when I have been inclined to think of this, something has always stopped me: and if I did it, it would be purely an act of spiritual self-interest and self-will. I know what the push of God is like and should obey it if it came . . . I know I might get other orders at any moment, but so far that is not so.
That was in 1931. Such a stance is less tenable in light of subsequent events.
Yes, there are misunderstandings to dispel and opportunities to explore. But if the "special place" of Anglicanism discerned by the council fathers is to have any meaning, that exploration must go forward.
Jesus, quoting Isaiah, said, "A bruised reed shall he not break, and a smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory" (Matthew 12:20). If ever there was a "broken reed" or a "smoldering wick," surely that is the Anglican Church as it appears today.
Tolle, lege . . .
Aidan Nichols, O.P, is perhaps the best contemporary Catholic interpreter of Anglicanism. His The Panther and the Hind: A Theological History of Anglicanism (1992) is a sound and accessible book for Catholics seeking a reliable guide.
New interpretations of English Reformation history have challenged the hegemony of the Whig historians and argue that successive reformations were forced on an unwilling people by a determined government. A good example is J.J. Scarisbrick's The Reformation and the English People (1984). Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars (1992) is more detailed.
On the vexed question of Anglican orders, George Tavard, in A Review of Anglican Orders: The Problem and the Solution (1990), takes a gently irenic approach, but is somewhat overtaken by events. An older work by the same author, The Quest for Catholicity: A Study in Anglicanism (1963), dates from days of higher hopes.
For a robust Catholic take, see Hilaire Belloc's Europe and the Faith, How the Reformation Happened, and Characters of the Reformation.
Anglicans of strong constitution might attempt Edward Norman's scathing Anglican Difficulties (2004).
With Internet resources, care must be taken to separate gold from dross, but the websites of the Pastoral Provision (pastoralprovision.org), the Anglican Use (anglicanuse.org), and Forward in Faith (forwardinfaith.com) are good places to start.
Stephen Page Smith has been a long-time observer of, and occasionally a participant in, Anglican ecclesiastical affairs. He writes from Virginia.
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