Catholic World News News Feature

The Problem with Conversions December 31, 2001

Review by Philip F. Lawler

The Roman Option, William Oddie, HarperCollins, 1997

In November 1992, when the General Synod of the Church of England voted to allow the ordination of women to the priesthood, a large number of Anglicans concluded that they could no longer find a spiritual home in that communion. Many of them, searching for a new home within the universal Church, looked to Rome. As their search progressed, Cardinal Basil Hume--the primate of the Catholic Church in England--encouraged them in the belief that they might find a way to enter into full communion with the Holy See while preserving their Anglican heritage, so that they would be "united, not absorbed" into the Catholic Church. The Vatican encouraged these discussions, and indicated a willingness to consider a new arrangement such as a personal prelature. But as time passed, other English bishops voiced doubts about such a scheme. By the time those bishops gathered for their annual "Low Week" meeting in 1993, they had backed away from plans for a dramatic new move, and so a historic opportunity was lost.

That, in a nutshell, is the argument of William Oddie's book The Roman Option. Oddie, himself a former Anglican pastor, was close to the action throughout the months between the cataclysmic vote in the Anglican General Synod and the anticlimactic decision that emerged from the Low Week meeting. He tells his story with an easy style and a wealth of detail. It is not surprising, then, that Oddie's book has provoked a sensation in England, provoking the bishops' conference to issue an unprecedented rebuttal to his main thesis (see sidebar).

Why did so many Anglicans find it impossible to remain within the Church of England? And why were Catholic bishops worried about receiving them?

NOT A SINGLE ISSUE

The single act which precipitated the Anglican flight toward Rome was the Synod's authorization of women's ordination. But--notwithstanding the arguments of liberal Anglicans and Catholics alike--it would be a mistake to think that their exodus was motivated by nothing more than a rejection of female priests. By breaking away from the constant tradition of the Church, they argued, the Synod had shown that the Church of England was no longer tethered to the apostolic traditions of Christianity. If the Synod could overthrow the constant teachings of the Church on this issue, what doctrine or discipline was safe from future change?

Of course the ordination of women also forced the issue to the fore, since it touched on the sacramental life of the faithful. Ever since its inception, the Church of England has been torn by different theological and pastoral tendencies; the Anglo-Catholic element has battled with the Protestant and Evangelical tendencies. But such difference could be overlooked--or at least pressed into the background--as long as all parties agreed to accept the validity of the sacraments in other Anglican churches. But now the Anglo-Catholics, who could not accept the validity of a woman's ordination, were forced to face the conflict directly.

In keeping with that unique racial genius for informal solutions, the Church of England strove to make it possible for the Anglo-Catholics to remain. A system of "flying bishops" was devised, so that the opponents of women's ordination could in effect isolate themselves from the women priests, under the aegis of one of the bishops who would not himself ordain women. But that was at best a temporary solution. If a bishop remained in communion with his brother bishops in the Church of England, the more adamant dissidents insisted, he was thereby indicating his acceptance of their decision to ordain women. A final rejection of that decision inevitably meant a final break in the communion of the Anglican church.

LEARNING FROM HISTORY

So the disenfranchised Anglo-Catholics--led by their former Bishop of London, Graham Leonard--explored the possibility of entering into communion with Rome. And in Cardinal Basil Hume they found an enthusiastic supporter. Through a series of consultations, the cardinal led them through the process of discerning how best they might maintain the best elements of their own Anglican tradition while becoming full members of the Catholic Church. The goal, Oddie repeats over and over again, was to see the Anglicans "united, not absorbed" in the Catholic family.

Eventually, however, this move ran into resistance from within the Catholic Church. Proponents of ecumenical dialogue worried that if Anglicans began entering the Church en masse--with entire parish communities switching their allegiance to Rome--the hierarchy of the Church of England might take offense. In their enthusiasm for the process of "dialogue," such people overlooked the facts that: 1) the original offense against ecumenical relations had been committed by the Church of England, which voted to ordain women in spite of clear and repeated Roman pleas for caution; and 2) the goal of ecumenical work must be to bring all Christians into union with the universal Church--which was precisely the goal of the "Roman option."

Meanwhile, "progressive" Catholics inveighed against the possible arrival of these new converts, because the Anglo-Catholics, with their traditional understanding of the Catholic Church, might break the momentum toward "progressive" causes. Ironically, some Anglicans viewed the turmoil within the Catholic Church from exactly the opposite perspective. Having weathered the storm of change within the Church of England, they now viewed with alarm the chaos that had overtaken their Catholic neighbors since Vatican II. But ultimately, Oddie concludes, they decided that Rome, unlike Canterbury, would finally resist the onslaught:

However similar the conflicts within Anglicanism and Catholicism may seem to an outsider, for an Anglican to become a Catholic is by no means a matter of moving from one uncertainty to another; it is to leave behind what they perceive as a fundamental and ineradicable incoherence to become part of the bone and tissue of an ecclesial organism, in which an indestructible unity is part of its essential nature. (original emphasis)

From yet another perspective--that of conservative Catholics--the Anglicans now suing for corporate entry were being presumptuous. How could they pretend that they were already a part of the universal Church, when they belonged to the very body which had tortured and imprisoned loyal Catholics? If they were truly convinced that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true Church, why were they hesitating at all? So a "hard line" emerged--which oddly enough, suited the preferences of the more liberal Catholics who had quite different reasons for resisting the Anglican onslaught. Anglo-Catholics should be received into the Church, but only on an individual basis, with no special accommodations for the preservation of their parishes, their liturgy, or their Anglican heritage in general. In the end, that was the solution reached by the Catholic bishops of England.

ZEAL FOR SOULS

Oddie makes a powerful argument that English bishops fumbled the chance to bring thousands of new members into the Catholic fold. Yes, there has been a steady flow of Anglicans into the Catholic Church. But the numbers involved are comparatively small--certainly nothing like the hundreds of thousands that had been anticipated during the heady days of Cardinal Hume's first conversations with the Anglo-Catholic leaders. And apart from the sheer number of conversions, the establishment of some Anglican entity in full communion with Rome--"united, not absorbed"--would have provided a dramatic new impetus toward Christian unity. (Oddie also argues that the remaining elements of the Church of England would natural alliances with other mainstream Protestant churches; he does not make it clear why such a result would be desirable.)

The story is not yet finished. The prospects for a corporate reunion of at least of large portion of the Anglican communion with the Church of Rome fell after the English bishops' meeting, but they rose again later that year, when Boston's Cardinal Law traveled to Rome with the Episcopal Bishop Clarence Pope of Fort Worth, Texas. The goal of their mission was to establish a personal prelature within the Catholic Church, in which Anglo-Catholic parishes everywhere could be united under the jurisdiction of a single bishop--presumably Bishop Pope himself. The plan gained support at the Vatican, and again hopes soared. But again the same barriers were raised: the fears of liberal Catholics, the worries over ecumenical "dialogue," the resentments of other priests. Clarence Pope announced his conversion to Catholicism--and then just six months later, thoroughly disillusioned, returned to the Episcopalian Church. The treatment he had received at the hands of his American Catholic neighbors, as Oddie describes it, is unutterably sad.

A friend, a former Episcopalian, has concluded that when Catholic leaders "see that there were thousands of people who want to enter the Church, they say, 'This is a problem!'" If St. Peter had let similar fears deter him from speaking to the crowd in Jerusalem on Pentecost, how many members would the Catholic Church have today?

[AUTHOR ID] Philip F. Lawler is the editor of Catholic World Report.

[SIDEBAR]

THE BISHOPS' COMPLAINTS

The formal publication date of The Roman Option was November 11, 1997. On November 13, the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales issued a three-page statement in response to the book, charging that William Oddie had given an "inaccurate" account of their deliberations.

The main thrust of the statement was that the Catholic bishops had not backed away from any imaginative new approach to the Anglican question, because no such approach had ever been seriously considered. From the outset, the statement insisted, the Anglicans had been told: "The aim both for them and for the Catholic Church... must be their eventual total integration into the full life of the Catholic Church."

There were no difference of opinion among the Catholic bishops on this point, the November 13 statement claimed; "In fact, there was unanimity among the bishops that this was the correct direction to take." And that united front endures: "The Bishops' Conference remains unanimously convinced that its actions have been appropriate."

William Oddie shot back with his own press statement. He saw the bishops' rebuke as "an official condemnation of my book," and added: "I know of no other case in modern times in which so severe a sanction has been imposed by the bishops against a Catholic writer in this country."

Oddie contended that the several of the bishops' arguments had missed their mark entirely; in one case, he pointed out, the bishops' statement took issue with a quotation which came not from his book but from a review which had appeared in the Daily Telegraph. Where the bishops' statements denied his claims, Oddie stood by them. "My book was carefully researched over a period of four years," he pointed out, and his account of crucial meetings had been "based on first-hand accounts given to me at the time."

Addressing the key contested issue, Oddie argued that it was implausible to suggest that the Catholic bishops had always been unanimous in their response to the Anglicans' approach. Perhaps out of delicacy, he did not resurrect the words of Bishop Crispin Hollis of Portsmouth, who had said that Cardinal Hume "has gone mad" in his desire to accommodate the incoming Anglicans. Nor did he recount (as he did in his book) Bishop Hollis' summary of the events: "Basil tends to go over the top, rather; we had to claw him back from the precipice." Instead, Oddie quoted a statement from Cardinal Hume himself, early in the process, which certainly seemed to indicate a desire for a more comprehensive solution:

This could be a big moment of grace; it could be the conversion of England for which we have prayed all these years. I am terrified now we are going to turn around and say we do not want these newcomers. We have prayed for Christian unity and now it could be happening: a realignment of English Christianity so as to bring us closer together, in two blocs instead of lots of blocs.

Could the outcome of the Low Week meeting possibly be counted as a "realignment of English Christianity," or "the conversion of England?" It could not, Oddie concluded.

Less than a week later, the Bishops' Conference issued a terse new statement, denying that the earlier broadside had been a "condemnation" of the book. Oddie had every right to present his views, the bishops reasoned, and so did they. The statement concluded: "There will be no further comment."

Oddie is not satisfied. Still smarting from what he quite understandably regards as a public attack on his credibility, he has asked for a retraction of the bishops' original statement.