Revising Anglican Catholicsm

One of the charges that many Anglo-Protestants lay at the feet of Anglo-Catholics is the charge of Revisionism. Essentially, what they seem to be saying (and I'm willing to be corrected in this) is that Anglo-Catholics are trying to present an ecclesiastical picture different from the established historical facts about what Anglicanism is. By and large, Anglo-Catholics are accused of trying to "air-brush" the Reformation out of Anglican thought.

I will admit that I have tried to pay absolutely no attention to "Reformation Sunday" which, in my Ordo, is simply not a thing. It is apparently five hundred years since a Saxon Religious nailed paper to the doors of a Saxon cathedral: I have found no desire to commemorate the fact. In fact, even mentioning it infuriates me as, in order to do so, I have had to pay it some attention. Given that this Augustinian Monk then went on to perform some serious acts of revisionism on Holy Scripture and thus propagate some seriously misinterpretable doctrine which has damaged Holy Church, I find the affair unworthy of celebration.

Oh-oh! Looks like I'm one of these Anglo-Catholic revisionists.

Perhaps I am. I really don't know, nor do I really care. What I do agree is that the Catholic Church needed a reformation and that great things came out of that as a result. But schism has resulted based upon different interpretations of the same things and that has made Protestantism difficult to engage with given its adherence to the five solae.

Like the thirty-nine articles, I see no need to pay the five solae any attention. Where they are right, they will be found in the Catholic Religion. Where they are wrong, they are to be denied. In fact, I would rather pass over them because different Christians cannot agree to what they mean. Indeed, Roman Catholics have seen that they can agree to interpretations of the same five solae. It's a war over semantics.

As an Anglican Catholic (rather than an Anglo-Catholic) I have categorically said that I am not an Anglican. In my eyes, (and I may be wrong about this) an Anglo-Catholic would usually regard themselves as being an Anglican. Anglicans regard themselves as being inheritors of the Catholic Faith through the Book of Common Prayer. I can't agree with that, but I do agree with Anglican principles of always going back to the Primitive Church. While Anglicans put a special emphasis on the doctrine of St Augustine, I struggle to agree that he is worthy of this emphasis and rather set him on the same level as the other Church Fathers, many of whom do not have the same consensus with the blessed Carthaginian.

I think that Anglican Catholicism is indeed revisionist, but in the best way. We always have to undergo a conversatio mores. The Christian life must be filled with repentance, of which revision plays a vital role. We cannot remain on any course that takes us away from the Divine Light. However, any revision that we make must be based solidly on the Catholic Doctrine of the Early Church.

Clearly there is a certain wiggle-room based on belief. The Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church claim to have the same basis in the Primitive Church and yet they believe different things: there are doctrines which are peculiar to each church and denied by the other. This presents us with four positions:

a) neither of them are right in their peculiar beliefs;
b) precisely one of them is right in their peculiar belief;
c) the peculiar beliefs are not matters of Salvation and may be held by any Christian without jeopardising that Salvation;
d) the peculiar beliefs are matters of Salvation but are different and legitimate interpretations of the same theological fact.

Whatever of these is true, we can say with some degree of confidence that where they do agree on doctrine, that is the theological truth. It requires sifting and weighing-up and more tussles with semantics. It means that the Anglican Catholic position of sticking to that period of "agreement" - i.e. the Primitive Church, Seven Oecumenical Councils and the Church Fathers of the First Millennium - is a credible, stable and holy direction towards the Truth. It is to this that we always must turn in our lives of repentance. While Holy Scripture and Tradition are indeed immutable through the immutability of God, it is our duty in the Church to look for the sensus fidelium. This is why the Vincentian Canon makes such a good definition of what it is to be Catholic.

There are concessions to History and Anglican Catholic has to make. First, we do recognise that we have a Patriarch, namely that of the West. This means that we cannot deny the Romanism that is in our blood. This is why Anglican Catholicism really does have to wrestle with St Augustine which it has inherited through our walk with Rome. It is why many of us wear birettas (and Canterbury caps) rather than the kalimavkion, and why bishops wear the Western mitre rather than the Eastern. This walk with Rome means that we have inherited the filioque but our return to the Primitive Church makes us uncomfortable with it - in my case, deeply so.

Second, we do have to recognise that the Reformation happened and that we inherit interpretations of the faith from it. The Book of Common Prayer is the most obvious example. Yet, this book, too has been revised again and again to meet different doctrinal standards which have arisen due to the influx of Protestantism into Anglicanism. This is why, as Anglican Catholics, we accept the Book of Common Prayer before the majority of Protestant interpretations entered. We go to the 1549 BCP with the 1550 Ordinal and measure that against the Primitive Church, not the other way around. Our lex credendi  must be based in the Church so that the lex orandi can be expressed accurately. Given that the 1549 BCP was the Nation's prayer book for at least three years, we cannot say that it did not do the job it was designed for, namely to be a book of common prayer.

Third, we do have to recognise the fact that while we are not ourselves Anglo-Catholics, we owe much of our scholarship from them. Many members of the CofE like Jonathan Clatworthy disparage their work and see their influence on the Anglican Church as invention based upon Romantic principles. However, what he, and people like him, often pass over is that until it walked off into heresy, the Church of England and the Lambeth Communion worldwide, had orders inherited from the Apostles in the same way that the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox have, and that the Anglican Catholic Church together with her sisters (UECNA, APCK, APA, ACA, DHC) have preserved these orders carefully. In that sense, the Catholic Faith has been constant in its transmission through valid Apostolic order. We do have to admit that a significant number of individuals (mainly those of a Protestant leaning) have denied this. The witness of the BCP declares otherwise, as does its constant usage.

The point is this: if we are true to the faith of Primitive Church and seek the Triune God honestly and wholeheartedly through the witness of this Church in the Scriptures and the Tradition that it has received, then any revisions we need to make in Ecclesiastical Polity will always bring us back to that faith. We will know this because we will not have sought to change the sacraments and thus expel the grace of God that they dispense: the unchanged sacraments themselves will be our witness to our continuity with the Primitive Church.