Blogday 2020: Communication, Communion and Common Prayer

As usual, today I reflect on this little blogling which has now attained the age of fifteen. 2020 has not been a kind year to many of us, and it's rather been like a teenager spending his free hours walled up in his bedroom. An interesting biological fact is that puberty kills off a lot of connections in the brain which enable communication skills. This is why communicable eleven year olds turn into  monosyllabic teenagers.

This has not been a good year for communication. First, as is evidenced by the American Election in the US and Brexit in the UK, people are becoming ideologically divided, and this has ramifications on how we communicate with each other. Some communication is already being stifled in order to cease causing offence to others or inadvertently stray into "hate speech" - a term which still lacks a coherent objective definition. There is a risk that those who are offended by another's words may call on "hate speech" legislation. This is already taking place. We are also seeing increasing violence as people of different ideologies are beginning to clash, especially at political demonstrations.

Secondly, the restrictions in movement and COVID have pushed more communication online where anonymity creates a veil behind which "trolls" thrive. By "troll", I mean one who has the full intent to offend or upset. Here I think of the dreadful comments made about the Duchess of Sussex following her miscarriage. Rather than comfort a woman in mourning, words were used to harm.

A troll is not the same as someone with an intent to challenge another's worldview. If we publicly express an opinion then we must be prepared to allow others to challenge it fundamentally and even robustly.

We are indeed free to say what we wish to say, but all rights have responsibilities as the other side of the same coin. If we tell a joke then our intent should be to make people laugh and not to injure. Yet, many a true word is spoken in jest, and satire has a value in waking us from complacency to a hidden reality to our condition. We have to be careful what the object of our lampooning is. We also have to be careful to see any offence that we take for what it is. At all stages of humour, as I said earlier this year, there must be the unconditional love that thinks the best of another's motives until evidence presents itself to demonstrate their ill-intent. This is based on the fundamental principle of law of "innocent until proven guilty".

Mr Biden seeks to unify an America broken by ideological conflict. He will only do this if he has a principle that both sides of the ideological barrier can accept. Just appealing to "truth, justice and the American Way" is no longer possible if people are now questioning whose truth, whose justice and which American Way.

The Continuing Anglican world might also be similarly divided. Remember, not every Anglican Church can properly call itself "Continuing Anglican" unless it has been born from the Congress of St Louis for that is the moment of the term's definition. For example, the Orthodox Anglican Church doesn't really call itself "Continuing Anglican", even though it does continue what the Lambeth Communion has ceased to practise, because its origins predate St Louis. I will therefore be concentrating on the jurisdictions I know within the Continuing Anglican movement and assume that other extra-Lambeth Anglican Christians supply their own mutatis mutandis.

By the early 1980s divisions occurred within the emerging Continuing Church which resulted in three different jurisdictions and there were further divisions in the 1990s. Yet, by 2017, these jurisdictions are working towards a greater organic unity. It will still take time. That's okay. Good things take time to do well.

At the heart, there is a unifying principle in the Book of Common Prayer, and it is this that holds it together. Continuing Anglicans live out the "Common" part of the Book of Common Prayer and this means we have a good degree of affinity. 

Of course there are details that produce some diversity. Which BCP do we use? For the American Churches, this is easy. The book that was in use before ECUSA started going doctrinally wobbly was the 1928 BCP and did the job, replacing some of the elements that the 1789 BCP omitted, like the Athanasian Creed. Yet, for the movement to grow there needs to be an appreciation of local history, culture and custom. In the UK, we don't have the same history as the US and, as a result, the equivalent Prayer Book is the 1662 BCP which has a rather truncated canon of the Mass. That truncation is not enough in itself to invalidate the Mass but it is enough to produce confusion about the central aspect of Communion, namely the Real and Objective Presence of Christ in the Mass and therefore cause doubt and unease among Anglican Catholics who see as full communion as possible with Christ as central to the life of the Church. It leaves out too much to express adequately what the Catholic Church believes.

 For Protestants who prefer some ambiguity about the objectivity of the Holy Presence, this is fine, but for Anglo-Catholics who believe in the transformation of the Host and Wine in some form of transubstantiation, it is not, despite the design of the Prayer Book to hold different "wings" together. In trying to do away with Papal edict with the deliberate removal of references to the Real Presence and the insertion of the Black Rubric, the Reformers threw out the baby with the bath water. Of course, the fact that the Anglican Catholic Church seeks to replace that which the Reformers omitted is seen by some as Revisionism despite the fact that the Reformers were probably just as Revisionist of the Catholic Faith in the first place. If Anglo-Catholics are revisionist then they are merely revising reforming revisions. (There's a blog title I missed! Rabbits!)

 The Anglican Catholic Church Constitution allows for local latitude in the use of the Prayer Book: the 1928 US Prayer Book is in (very) good keeping with the original BCP of 1549 from which the others sprang. Thus, with the 1549 as the basis and all understanding of the liturgy being read through the doctrine of the Primitive Church (i.e. through the doctrine of the Oecumenical Councils) the Continuing Anglican movement has a potential for global community which can work if people are willing to accept those principles.

I have made no secret of the fact that, in my private prayer, I use the Monastic Breviary  It is deliberately designed so that it translates the old Latin Breviary with the Psalms and collects from the BCP and uses Antiphons in conformity with the epistles and gospels from the BCP. Thus, I am saying the same words with the same intentions as everyone else using the Prayer Book, albeit in a different order. Anyone Prayer Book user who picks up my Breviary will see this conformity immediately and know that, as a Benedictine Oblate, I can follow the Benedictine Offices and yet remain faithful to the spirit of the Prayer Book which, itself, is born of the Catholic Faith in England and desirous to remove the excesses of Roman politics on liturgy and doctrine. The same is true with the missals which the Anglican Catholic Church authorises to be used in conformity with the BCP

This is the genius of both the Prayer Book and the Canonical intention of the Anglican Catholic Church. I am allowed a diversity of practice and yet remain faithful to the spirit of the Catholic Church in England before the Reformation and Post Reformation and the spirit which unifies other Anglican Christians.

I would also like to give some comfort to those who worry about my lack of use of the Prayer Book. If, as and when I am required to say public Offices in a parish church, then I have no qualms about using the BCP for Mattins and Evensong. As a chorister who has sung in many a cathedral, I have a deep appreciation for the Prayer Book Offices. I also recognise that not everyone is Benedictine and thus I must minister to them in the "secular" Offices which are as laid down in the BCP. Were I to be part of a Benedictine community, then I would use the Breviary in that community.

Whether we like it or not, the Prayer Book is part of Continuing Anglican history - indeed part of the history of the Church of England. Whether it is a defining aspect of Anglicanism is debatable: I maintain that there is Anglicanism before the BCP and that the BCP is a product - a good product - of that Anglicanism and thus an expression not a definition of Anglicanism. It proceeds from Anglicanism.

I would also like to give comfort to those Catholics who worry about my love of the BCP. As I have said above, the Anglican Catholic Church reads the BCP through the Catholic Faith. There are many deficiencies in the intention of the Reformers to omit perfectly Catholic and Faithful practices and doctrine. The Sarum Office is the basis of much of the Prayer Book, but is fuller and more in line with the Catholic Faith. The Sarum Office requires the daily recitation of the Quicunque Vult which, in an age of rejecting tradition, can only be a good thing.

As an expression of Anglicanism, both Catholic and Protestant can assent to the spirit of the BCP and use it as they see fit, either by its direct usage or by texts that conform or which have grown up in conjunction with its spirit. If we can all agree that it is a godly book, then we have a unifying principle by which we have some community.

I would say that there is something else, something deeper within Anglicanism that unites Continuing Anglican communities. The Anglican Catholic Church is as Orthodox as Constantinople and as Catholic as Rome. What is perhaps different about us is that we have a higher regard for the laity and need to continue to have that higher regard. This comes from our Anglicanism side. Many of the architects of the ACC were laymen, including the canonist Fr Stahl (God rest him) who was only ordained after his work on our canons. Having been to the Provincial Synod and meeting some of those who were at the Congress made me appreciate that we are not a Church who seeks to make the laity obedient sheep but rather engages with them actively at all levels. We need to let that continue by developing a well-educated laity which doesn't see the need to be ordained in order to get involved in building parishes and preaching the Christian Faith and thus include women fundamentally in the work of the Church rather than just seeing them as nuns, wives and mothers. I have seen personally the activity of many intrepid, strong, intelligent and intimidating women at the Provincial Synod who have been instrumental in building parishes and developing spiritual ministries.

The Continuing Anglican way has this written into itself more than, perhaps, the Lambeth Communion which broke away from us. It is why I wrote my book Whom seek ye? at my bishop's behest in order to encourage the laity not only to be educated but to continue to educate themselves in full commitment to the Anglican Catholic cause. 

As I end this dreadful 2020, I find myself very hopeful about Continuing Anglicanism and the possibility of its growth but then I am always the optimist. We now have mechanisms in place to grow and serve even from our state of smallness. I look forward to what the future brings for us, though the work is going to be very tough. I continue in prayer for this vision,  for God's will to be done and for the unifying presence of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the community.