Pondering Polemics

There are times when I am glad not to be a gifted theologian. As soon as someone finds themselves thus branded, they also find themselves branded with a label and if this label is not popular, then the Polemicists come out and try to force that theologian into their way of thinking.

Being identified with the Papalist camp, I have my share of people trying to convince me that Rome is heretical and that I should not despise my Anglican identity, while others tell me that I am being chauvinist or homophobic or Mariolatrous or just plain nasty.

I perceive that the same Polemicists have descended upon the Continuum Blog in no small number. Unfortunately for me, they are Papal Polemicists and their bent seems to be to try and convince, nay forcibly convince, the learned members there that they are wrong. It seems that the Synod of Whitby is meeting again with even more snipery!

I disagree with the folk on the Continuum, but I have every respect and interest in what they are doing in presenting just how coherent Anglicanism really is. I don't regard the 39 Articles as defining Anglicanism, as far I understand them at the moment, though I do look through them to try and make sense of them in the same way as Blessed Father Newman did. I am still learning - it's not easy when you're doing this as an amateur. However, I do not see it as my job to tell people that they are wrong. I see it as my job to bear witness to the Truth as has been revealed to me by Our God through Holy Mother Church. Unless I've got the law courts completely wrong, witnesses don't get out of the witness box, grab the defendant by the throat and force their testimony down it.

To support what I'm saying here, I'd like to make an extended quote from the Sixth Discourse of Dorotheus of Gaza:

There are times when we not only condemn but also despise people; for it is one thing to condemn and quite another to despise. Contempt adds to condemnation the desire to set someone at nought - as if the neighbour were a bad smell which has got to be rid of as something disgusting, and this is worse than rash judgment and exceedingly destructive.

Those who want to be saved scrutinise not the shortcomings (as below) of their neighbour but always their own and they set about eliminating them. Such as the man who saw his brother doing wrong and groaned, "woe is me: him today - me tomorrow!" You see his caution? You see the preparedness of his mind? How he swiftly foresaw how to avoid judging his brother.? When he said "me tomorrow" he aroused his fear of sinning, and by this he increased his caution about avoiding those sins which he was likely to commit, and so he escaped judging his neighbour: and he did not stop at this, but put himself below his brother, saying, "He has repented for his sin but I do not always repent. I am never first to ask for forgiveness and I am never completely converted." Do you see the Divine Light in his soul? Not only was he able to escape making judgment but he humbled himself as well. And we miserable fellows judge rashly, we hate indiscriminately and set people at nought whether we see something, or hear something, or even only suspect something. And what is worse, we do not stop at harming ourselves, but we go and gossip and say, "Here, listen to what has just happened!" We harm our neighbour and put sin into his heart also.

How can we put up with this behaviour unless it is because we have no true love? If we have have true love, with sympathy and patient labour, we will not go about scrutinising our neighbour's shortcomings. As it is said, "Love covers up a multitude of sins." If we have true love, that very love should screen anything of this kind, as did the saints when they saw the shortcomings of others. Were they blind? Not at all. But they simply would not let their eyes dwell on sins. Who hated sin more than the Saints? But they did not hate the sinners or condemn them, nor turn away from them, but they suffered with them, admonished them, comforted them, gave them remedies as sickly members, and did all they could to heal them.

Let us acquire tenderness towards our neighbour so that we may guard ourselves from speaking evil of our neighbour, and from judging and despising them. Let us help one another, for we are indeed members of one another.

When I hear that phrase "One True Church" I worry about the context in which it is being used. If that word "True" is not supported by some commitment to love, then I wonder whether it really is true. Human beings are not entirely rational and there are things of the soul which defy the rational thought of others and the self to make coherent sense of. I am still trying to understand how to be an Anglican Papalist. By that I don't mean a Romaniser, but rather how to bring the integrity of Anglicanism - and boy does it have integrity - into union with the Holy See. The Holy See is the One True Church. I firmly believe that, but I also believe that the Orthodox Church of the East is the One True Church and that the Anglican Church is the One True Church, because, as Dorotheus reminds us, each Christian is a member of every other Christian.

If we are going to debate the nature of what it means to be Church, then we need to do so in recognition of this basic, yet transcendent property of the Church. For an Anglican Papalist to despise his Anglican heritage is to cease to be an Anglican, and to become a Romaniser. Fr Hope Patten in rebuilding the Shrine at Walsingham sought to reclaim some of the Anglican Heritage thrown out at the reformation. He was not out to Romanise. Indeed, this archetypal Anglican Papalist despised Latin and used the Book of Common Prayer with a Roman twist. Other Anglican Papalists make use of the Anglican Missal, and Anglican Breviary which seek to reclaim the liturgical richness of the pre-Reformation without jettisoning the BCP.

As I say, the BCP is an Anglican product, but does not, in my mind, define what Anglicanism is, though I do not despise its use, nor those who use it. Indeed, I rather pine for the days when I used to sing Choral Evensong in the Church Choir, before being kicked out for having the wrong voice.

To the disgust of many a Prayer-book Catholic, I proudly wear my biretta at Morning Prayer. The horns make it very easy for me to doff at the Holy Name. The thing is, until they got back into the practice of wearing mitres, Anglican Bishops wore mortar-boards. I daresay many a prayer-book Catholic has nothing against a mortar-board. However, a mortar-board is just a modified biretta which has been joined to the zucchetto, hence the distinctive shape. How much of Anglicanism is the same, I wonder?

We Anglicans need to come together under the Kingship of Christ. We need to recognise our need in one another so that we can present ourselves whole and humble to each other so that we can embrace each other. Having heard Metropolitan Jonah's speech at the inauguration of ACNA, if he is right then there are lots of welcoming arms outstretched for us. We need to be humble enough to allow ourselves to be embrace and even dare to embrace others. In doing so, our embrace of Christ will be tighter and more passionate.