Sowing wild oaths

From The House of Bishops' Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests (GS Misc 1076)

34. At ordination and on taking up any office in the Church of England priests and deacons are required under Canon C 14 to swear or affirm that they will “pay true and canonical obedience to the Lord Bishop of C and his successors in all things lawful and honest.” Bishops are similarly required to take an oath of due obedience to the archbishop of the province. Clergy and bishops also take an Oath of Allegiance to the Queen and make the Declaration of Assent.

35. These Oaths and the Declaration are important because they each involve recognition that a person does not exercise ministry in isolation or on their own authority but within a framework of relationship with others and within the tradition of faith as the Church of England has received it. The House acknowledges that the taking of the oath to the diocesan bishop or the oath of due obedience to the archbishop may, in future, raise issues for those who, for theological reasons, remain committed to a male episcopate and priesthood.

36. Nevertheless, the House believes that all ministers of the Church of England will be able, in good conscience, to take the oath. Doing so adds nothing legally to the duty of canonical obedience, which already exists in law. Rather, it is a recognition of the pattern of relationships which underpins the exercise of ministry by those who make and receive the oath. It follows from the guiding principles set out in paragraph 5 above, and the spectrum of Anglican teaching and tradition which they acknowledge, that the giving and receiving of the oath does not entail acting contrary to theological conviction.

The Church of England is a veritable curate’s egg. One might say that the good parts are purely aesthetic, citing the buildings, the choirs, et c. I think that there Is more good in the CofE than that. There is a lot of good pastoral work being done to help those who are in need. One thing, though, that the CofE is simply not good at is being clear either to its members or to its clergy. It is in the lack of clarity that confusion arises, and from confusion, ill-feeling and from ill-feeling the charge of institutional dishonesty.

The Anglican Catholic Church is not perfect either. Many may indeed take issue with the stark clarity of our canons and reject us because of our hard-line on sensitive issues. This does pose problems for us which need to be worked through, but it should not prevent dialogue. It may be said that the reasons for joining the ACC do not outweigh the reasons for finding somewhere else. If so, then at least we have allowed the one searching for a spiritual home to make a clear decision in their search. We are a cuprinol Church: in theory, at least, we try to make it clear what we believe and what we don't.

In all conscience, I cannot trust the government of the CofE (I have good personal reasons for finding the institution untrustworthy), and this section of the latest measure on the purported ordination of women to the episcopate shows me why, and confirms my belief that the Anglican Catholic Church is an alternative to the Church of England that should be considered by any Catholic minded Anglican.

Let us suppose that Elizabeth Saquebout is elected and made Bishop of Fredgington in the Church of England. Upon her assumption of the position what will happen to the canonical oaths made by the clergy to the Lord Bishop of Fredgington and his successors? Well, is Elizabeth his successor? Well, legally yes, and the oath will stand because the CofE has passed a law through parliament to say that Elizabeth is the Bishop of Fredgington. Whether or not the clergy believe that she really is a bishop, their oath to “pay true and canonical obedience to the Lord Bishop of Fredgington and his successors in all things lawful and honest” remains valid. Except…

There is this word “canonical” and it is this word that produces confusion. The clause in this measure states that "Nevertheless, the House believes that all ministers of the Church of England will be able, in good conscience, to take the oath. Doing so adds nothing legally to the duty of canonical obedience, which already exists in law."


To my mind there is an equivocation of the word "canonical" here. "Canonical" in this context can mean according to the Canons of the CofE which are enshrined in law. All priests, then, have a legal duty to obey their bishop in all things lawful and honest, and Elizabeth is legally the Bishop of Fredgington. Certainly, any priest could in conscience make the oath according to the law as it stands. The question remains, however, whether legislating a woman to be bishop is enough to make her position as bishop Canonical in keeping with the Catholic Faith.

As far as the Catholic Faith goes, the Church does not possess that authority for women in the Episcopate. Thus, under the Catholic sense of Canon, there is a different understanding and thus an equivocation for the priest who holds to the Catholic Faith. In the legal sense, i.e. the existence of the Church of England as a legal body, Elizabeth is indeed owed and entitled to the respect due to any other legal bishop, no less, no more. If a priest accepts the equivalence between the Catholic and legal senses of the word "canonical", then he is duty bound to accept her as his bishop and pay her what is due.

However, what if he does not accept the equivalence? Then we are in a bit of a pickle. If a priest accepts the Catholic Faith as once received by the saints, then he separates the two definitions of Canonical. He must pay legal obedience in all things lawful and honest to Elizabeth, but he does not recognise her as a bishop. Let us now ask this question, suppose that Fr Ernest Rankett is a member of Forward in Faith who moves into Elizabeth's diocese. Since she is the Diocesan bishop, she gives her license to Ernest to celebrate Mass in her diocese. However, as a priest, Ernest will be acting as her vicar in his parish. But Ernest surely does not believe that Elizabeth is a priest, so how can he possibly be the vicar to a vacant see? Elizabeth, being a fair-minded person and committed to the CofE, abides by the Code of Practice and ensures that Ernest gets alternative episcopal oversight together with his parish.

All well and good. Elizabeth is not going to demand that Ernest attends a Mass which she leads, and Ernest will ensure that he meets with Elizabeth on all relevant matters pertaining to her legal oversight of the Diocese. Ernest and Elizabeth clearly work together in the spirit of the "framework of relationship with others" even though he doesn't believe that she is a bishop. Yet, the fact remains, he is celebrating his Masses with the sacramental authority of a legal bishop who not a Catholic Bishop. If Ernest claims that he is using the authority of his appointed suffragan, then he is not recognising Elizabeth as his Diocesan which is not legal. It is the Diocesan that issues the license to officiate which is not just canonical in the legal sense, but also in the Catholic sense. If Ernest celebrates Mass with Elizabeth's license, he operates against the Catholic understanding of episcopacy. If he does not celebrate Mass with Elizabeth's license, then he operates the legal understanding of Elizabeth's canonical authority.

Now, I am sure that this has all been worked out legally and that something has been put into place to ensure that Ernest derives his permission and license to celebrate Mass according to Catholic understanding. However it seems to be a rather tortuous and tortured affair. The question really becomes that of a moral duty not of a legal duty. Can the priest look at section 36 of the above measure and be clear that "Nevertheless, the House believes that all ministers of the Church of England will be able, in good conscience, to take the oath. Doing so adds nothing morally to the duty of canonical obedience, which already exists in law"?

There is actually a grave examination of conscience needed here, and quite a number of moral gymnastics. The legal business is sound, but the moral issue is not quite that clear. Can the priest be certain for whom he is a vicar at the altar? Perhaps I am being uncharitable (I hope not) but I do think that the CofE needs to be as clear with those who are of an integrity different from the "clear" decision which it claims to have made.

And I do remind any priests whose consciences are pricking them, there is always an alternative to the CofE.

Choosing our daily bread: Part 2

As I continue to ruminate on the choices that we face in life,  I continue to enjoy my sausage sandwich on brown bread. Aside from the problem of Evil that I thought on in my last post, there is the problem of there being free human choice itself. It's a problem that perplexes many Christians. Can we choose to be saved from our sins? Is Salvation in the same category as the white/brown bread problem with which we started?

First of all, is everyone going to be saved? Our Lord Jesus tells us that there will be many who say to Him "Lord, Lord" who will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. The answer is therefore no, there will be those who are not saved. However, what does it mean to be saved from our sins? St Paul reminds us that the wages of sin is death and St John's Revelation would remind us that this is the second death which eternally separates us from God. If there is no God then there is only death. If there is a God then there is hope of escaping death.

It is clear that that God makes the choice. What would that choice look like? Ah. Now here's the rub because it presupposes that we know how God thinks. Clearly we can't do that. However, God allows us reason about Him because He wishes to communicate with us. So let us try, and put forward an argument which, though imperfect and certainly not worthy of the mind of God, may illuminate things. What is the criteria which will ensure that God will save us?

If He chooses not to save us, what will the reason be? If we have no input into whether we are saved or not, then only God is responsible for our death. He may have good moral reasons for doing so, but it is very hard to see what they are. After all, He chose to create us, and then He chose to reject us. The moral reasons for doing so will have to take into account the fact that we were not responsible and, further, could do nothing to alter the outcome. Our rejection is down to what we are and not what we do. If we are rejected then, as St Paul shows us, we are rejected from Eternal life because of sin. The gospels show us that sin can be forgiven. If we are rejected then it must be because our sin is part of our being and that we possess necessarily the nothingness of Evil. Where did that come from?

Evil must be present in our lives as a result of our ability to choose and the story of Genesis iii shows us that it is by eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil that sin enters the world. Our ability to choose is then infected by the possibility that we are free to choose contrary to the will of God. This infection has Satan as its cause as a result of his free choice. One can assume that angels and archangels have a greater freedom in which they can exercise their choice. To know God means we also need to know what God is not. To know the presence of God means to know the absence of God. It seems reasonable to me that Evil is a necessary privation for Creation.

Evil is where God is not and it is therefore true to say that that which is Evil cannot logically be in the presence of God. Thus God's choice is down to what He considers to be salvageable from Evil. His very presence makes the choice. If our Evil can be purged by His presence in our lives then we will remain. If it can't then we will not remain. The decision as to whether we are salvageable must be God's.

Of course, God makes the choice in His present which is Eternity. We are not eternal but temporal. Whatever choices we make are made in Time and are thus eternally present to God despite the fact that our present as insubstantial as a line in multidimensional space. It seems to me, then, that from God's point of view our free choices are actually part of what we are. Our free choices in Time become what we are in God's perception of us and thus give Him adequate reason for accepting or rejecting us from Eternity. We can freely choose Him in our ever changing present and this choice becomes what we are in God's view of us.

The problem that Christians face is that of standing before God on the Day of Judgement and giving an account of ourselves. We naturally perceive it as a temporal event, however it can't be unless we have a richer sense of Time as God has. We have no power to save ourselves by making an eternal choice. We have the power to make choices in our own narrow time and those choices affect us ontologically. We are saved only through God's choice made from eternity when, from our point of view, our lives are complete.

Can it be that the problems of free-will and Salvation are some forms of category error in comparing judgements made in our time with judgements made from Eternity? Our decision in our time do affect our Salvation because they make us who we are in the eternal standpoint where only God can save. Responsibility for our sins is ours because they occur in Time. If we are saved from Eternity then we are saved only through God's effort because in Eternity we are as complete as we can be of ourselves.

We read in St Mark's gospel that "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned" (St Mark xvi.16) and in St Matthew, we read "he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved" (St Matthew xxiv.13) The act of believing is a choice given our value-judgements and a choice that must be followed through to the bitter end. We are not saved at a single point in Time, but we are saved from the inevitability of Time. This is why St James exhorts us to have a lively faith, why St John begs us to repent and keep repenting, and why we are in constant need of forgiveness and the concomitant justification. From an point of view beyond Time we are what we have chosen to be.

Do our choices force God's decision? Do we contravene God's authority? St Paul again reminds us that "Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up;Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." St John tells us that, "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." The words "Charity" and "Love" are identical and we can see that it is an attribute of God's very self not to seek His own and to endure all things. God is His own limitation. If He permits us free will, then it is not our choice that is the cause of His limitation, but His own Divine nature - His fidelity to us as beings possessing knowledge of Him and of not-Him and the concomitant choice.

It seems reasonable to me that our free-choice affects our Salvation, not as a limitation on the power of God, but rather as a fulfillment of what He intends us to be in His Divine self-limitation. I know that many would disagree with me and even put up a proof-text battle. However, if the argument has existed this long then proof-text battles simply don't work. I simply offer my own limited understanding of what I perceive that I must do to be saved, namely: to believe in the Divine person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, His love for me and the reality of His Resurrection from the Dead and its concomitant promises, to believe this to the end, to receive God's grace in the Sacraments, to promulgate Love which is the substance of God, and seek to be of the Body of Christ which is Resurrected through Him. If I'm wrong, then I pray God will convince me otherwise.

Now, white or brown. Do I get a choice today?

Choosing our daily bread: Part 1

"Full sausage on white, please."

The lady behind the counter of the college refectory said, "I'm sorry, my dear, we've only got brown. We're on a health drive here."

So I had full sausage on brown without a moment's consideration. Yum! And another inch on the waist.

Of course, afterwards it got me thinking. Is it quite right that we should remove choice in order to promote healthy eating in our young folk?

I'll leave questions of College Refectory policy to those who know better, but it does pose an interesting and oft-asked question. Is it right to remove choice from a dependent for the dependent's own good?

It would be quite wrong for a parent to leave a pair of scissors near a one year old, or a box of matches within the grasp of a five year old. I'm sure that's some form of neglect and rightly so. The parent can't say, "Oh, it'll teach him to learn to respect scissors," or "Oh, she'll know not to do that next time." Clearly the harm that can be done by scissors and matches is something we'd rather not contemplate; suffice it to say that any damage could very well be permanent.

Of course, with white and brown bread, we have a different question. How are we expected to learn to make the right decision if the decision is not presented to us? How can we learn to make choices in life if we never make them during our formation?

There are lots of big choices that a child has to make growing up - choice of school, choice of subjects, choice of university, choice of career, choice of friends. It's no wonder that parents can, at times, fear the potential ramifications of the wrong choice. So much rests on our ability to choose and the fear comes when we are faced with a choice that we cannot take back.

Sometimes it is the choice that we can't take back that can change our lives for the better. Marriage is a fine example, particularly when one adheres to the indissolubility of marriage. This forces the couple to really check whether they are suited and, if things get difficult, to find ways of negotiating the rough patch and becoming stronger as a result. Marriages that cannot be broken are so much more worthwhile than marriages that can. The monastic life involves burning bridges. If one enters a monastery, takes vows and then decides to leave, then a new life has to be built from scratch. The life left behind will always be there though and the former Religious will have to find a way of coming to terms with that history.

Is it possible to make a wrong choice? Giving matches to your three year old (sorry parents who squirm at that!) is clearly the wrong choice even if the three year old flushes them down the toilet. Is there nothing good that can come from that? Perhaps a sense of relief that your three-year old doesn't know how matches work or is not interested in playing with fire? Would one take that risk though?

Surely a truly wrong choice is that out of which no good can come at all. Most choices will have a down side, even great pain, great humiliation, even death! There are British Christians flying to Iraq to battle ISIS. Are they making the right decision? If one considers the possibility of death as being a bad decision, then yes. If one values the principles by which one lives as having a greater value than one's life, then no. The goodness of a choice depends on what's at stake, and what's at stake depends on what one values.

So, going back to the lack of choice of bread. Why was that choice removed? Well, had the choice been there, a child could have evaluated the situation, "There is a choice between brown bread and white bread. Brown bread is healthier, but I don't like the taste." At this point, the value judgement comes in: "Do I value the immediate gratification over my health?" Then the decision is made. Thus the argument in full is:

1) (Choice) Brown bread or white bread.
2i) (Evaluation) Brown bread is healthier.
2ii) (Evaluation) White bread tastes nicer.
3) (Value judgement) Immediate taste trumps inches on waist.
4) (Conclusion) I'll choose white bread.

However, I doubt that a child would have actually reasoned thus. I think the evaluation for most children would be:

1) (Choice) Brown bread or white bread.
2) (Evaluation) White bread tastes nicer.
3) (Conclusion) I'll choose white bread.

In short, the child does not consider all the alternatives for evaluation. It is not sufficiently educated to make a full evaluation based on the data. If it does not have all the alternatives, should it be allowed to make the choice?

Here is where the Refectory policy of removing choice comes in. If there is only brown bread, then the argument becomes:

1) (Choice) Brown bread.
2) (Conclusion) I'll choose brown bread.

At least, that's the Refectory's hope. Of course, the choice the child faces is then:

1) (Choice) Brown bread or nothing.
2) (Evaluation) White bread tastes nicer.
3) (Conclusion) I'll choose nothing.

Thus the child doesn't eat unhealthily (here) but the Refectory loses money from those children who then buy their full sausage sandwich on white elsewhere next time. A child who, for medical reasons can't eat brown bread but only white, will either choose to risk their health or go hungry. That choice may not be easy in some cases. If a hungry child chooses to risk it and has a severe allergic reaction landing them in hospital, with whom does the responsibility of that choice lie? Technically, it is still the child, but that responsibility is diminished by the lack of alternative choices.

Much of this depends on value judgements or, as the economists and game-theorists term them, pay-off matrices. Game theory is actually quite fun even when it gets technical.

The key here is about education. If we educate our children to understand that health matters and that the occasional full-sausage-on-white is okay provided one eats a healthy diet, then the child can make their own decision. A child allergic to brown bread but still chooses it despite there being the option of white bread only has itself to blame. The option was there, but not chosen. The Refectory cannot really be held responsible, at least not in the same way that it could if it failed to provide the alternative.

It seems quite reasonable that whoever has most choice has most responsibility for the results of that choice. If the results of that choice result in the death of a child, then the one who made the choice is culpable.

We're faced with choice all the time. We can choose to use a solicitor because they have done the best work compared to others. We can choose the to smoke thirty cigarettes a day because it makes us feel relaxed in a job that could kill us due to stress. It is our value-judgements that colour our choices, but do we really have the ability to choose? Do we really have the ability to make value-judgements?

That is the subject of much philosophical debate. Can free-will exist in a deterministic universe? Is the universe truly deterministic?

Do we have a choice to be saved?

From what? Our sins.

Do we need to be saved from our sins? Are we obliged to accept a value-judgement based on a morality imposed by others? This depends if we agree that there are objective moral values. If we agree that the murder of a child who will grow up to cure a disease is morally wrong, then we have evidence for the existence of objective moral values. If we have existence of objective moral values, then we have some evidence (though not incontrovertible) of God.

Of course, for Christians, the existence of God is not in question. However, God, being the first cause of everything, is responsible for the creation of everything. St Thomas Aquinas would say (as well as others) that evil is not a thing, but the absence of a thing, so God did not create Evil. In themselves, things are good because God created them. So can He be called to account for choosing to permit Evil in His creation? One must first ask whether humanity has the right to try God. St Paul reminds us that we are faced with the clay trying to question the potter's motives for making it in the given form.

However, we are then faced with the fact that the inscrutability of the Creator's motives may be precisely that which drives His Creation from Him. If the Creator is showing inconsistency then there is a reason (whether justified or not) why someone chooses to abandon God. Let's look at the decision.

1) (Choice) Accept or Reject God.
2i) (Evaluation) I am told that God loves me.
2ii) (Evaluation) I am in pain and God has not relieved that pain.
3) (Value Judgement) My pain is more consistent with reality than that which I am being told.
4) (Decision) Reject God.

Like it or not, that's the argument that convinces many people that either God does not exist or that if He does then He is not worth any attention. Somehow such a person needs to be convinced of the argument:

1) (Choice) Accept or Reject God.
2i) (Evaluation) If God exists then He wanted to create me. He must therefore want me to exist.
2ii) (Evaluation) I want to be loved.
2iii) (Evaluation) I am in pain and God has not relieved that pain.
2iv) (Evaluation) God may have good moral reasons for not relieving that pain.
2v) (Evaluation)  If God does not exist then there is no good reason for me being in pain.
3) (Value judgement) The hope that there is reason for my pain is better than there being no reason.
4) (Decision) Accept God.

Personally, I wouldn't call that argument fully compelling given the nature of some people's suffering. For me I see and hear of truly awful things that I want stopped right now. Even the thought of them is intolerable to me. God seemingly does nothing. However I believe that God can see everything and bring good out of everything, but I will certainly be interested in His reasons for why this has been allowed. If God does not exist then there can never be any point to this misery. I would rather trust God and believe that He wills everyone's good, permitting Evil only insofar as it can produce a good which renders the pain suffered truly worthwhile. Given that the pain in the world is so awful, I will be expecting a great deal of good! I think God, however, can pull that off.

Collecting collects

I hope, with the grace of God perfecting my intentions and bringing my work to a good end, to begin producing short reflections on the Sunday collects throughout the coming liturgical year.


I recognize that this was a project that was once carried out by the contributors to The Continuum Blog - indeed I made a few little contributions myself. If what I write does not appeal then I warmly recommend that you follow the link and read the reflections there.


Please pray for me, that I may accomplish the task I have set myself. I pray that what I do may be edifying for you.




Happy New Liturgical Year!

Trumpets, bells and the end of the year!

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the Sunday next before Advent 2014


What instruments do angels play?

Many people would say that it is the harp. Others would look at paintings from the renaissance and say that they play all kinds of things such as violins, rebecs, lutes, guitars, shawms and sackbuts. Others would notice the herald angels playing trumpets. Biblically, the trumpet is the instrument of the angels, not the harp. Why’s that?

[PAUSE]

Remember that the angels are sent to us as messengers. They have a message of great importance and, to get that message across, they need to get our attention. Nothing grabs you attention more than a trumpet in your ear, particularly if you are a soldier asleep in bed! When a trumpet blows, things happen.

Usually, it is something military. In the Old Testament, the trumpet heralds military manoeuvres to battle, or directions to crowds to draw their attention to what’s going on, to prepare them to witness some action.

In the Revelation to St John, it is the angels blowing trumpets that signal disaster for the Earth as it prepares to be transformed into the New Earth under God’s rule. When we hear a trumpet, then it is quite clear that we should listen. But how often do we hear trumpets in our daily lives?

[PAUSE]

Admittedly, we don’t hear the trumpets that herald the presence of God. Indeed, if we encounter the voice of God, these days, most of us find that He speaks with the still, small voice directly to our souls rather than a voice which is actually audible. If we wish to hear God speak, then we need to choose to hear God speak.

Perhaps it isn’t trumpets that we need to be listening for. Perhaps we’re waiting for the wrong signal.

[PAUSE] In our Mass we have different signals for our actions. Some things, like hymns, get announced. When you hear the phrase, “the Lord be with you,” you know to respond with, “and with thy spirit”. You often hear bells in the Mass which draw your attention to what’s happening. You’ll hear them at the Sanctus, as we prepare for the Consecration, and at the Elevation of the Sacrament. All these bells say, “look! Something’s happening!”

Our seasons too, act as signals to draw our attention. Lent may prepare us for Easter, but Septuagesima Sunday reminds us that we need to prepare to prepare! Yet, does Septuagesima Sunday stand out in our minds as something important?

[PAUSE]

Today is the Sunday next before Advent. It’s a vitally important day. It’s the last Sunday in the Liturgical Year. Next Sunday is Advent Sunday which means that we begin our preparations for the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Each year, we have the opportunity to receive Him anew in our lives and we need to prepare a place for Him. This Sunday is our wake-up call. This Sunday is our trumpet that says, “prepare ye the way of the Lord.” After all those Sundays after Trinity, this Sunday is like that voice crying out in the wilderness. It is easily ignored, but if we listen and heed its message we know that we have to prepare to look at our lives and say “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

This is the Sunday in which we need to stir out of our sleep. How loud does the wake-up call need to be?

Montanism and objectivity

Many liberals in the Church have big problems when justifying their arguments. I often hear statements such as, "You're telling God what to do!" or "How dare you try to limit God!"


The trouble is, this is more or less what the Montanists said. The idea is that Catholic Authority can be bypassed at any time in order to make an action considered unlawful/invalid in the past lawful/valid in the present


Essentially, the arguments in which this phrase would be used take this sort of form.


1) Catholic Authority says X is not permitted.
2) The Holy Spirit cannot be limited by human beings.
3) X is permissible despite Catholic Authority.


The premises may indeed be true; the second certainly is! However, the conclusion simply does not follow unless there are extra assumptions. Let us try and fill in those assumptions.


1) Catholic Authority says X is not permitted.
A) Catholic Authority is human in origin.
2) The Holy Spirit cannot be limited by human beings.
B) X is permitted by the Holy Spirit.
3) X is permissible despite Catholic Authority.


For the argument to become valid, the assumptions must themselves be shown to be true.


I'll take them in reverse order, i.e, B first.


We have an issue X and we wish to know whether it is permitted by the Holy Spirit. How would we find out?


There are lots of spirits about which tell us many things. Let's say that we receive some spiritual guidance that killing politicians is not a sin. If this doesn't seem very palatable, then let's make that politician Hitler or Stalin, someone whose death would have made the difference in the lives of millions.


It may seem like a no-brainer. Many people would not think twice if the opportunity to go back in time to kill Hitler was a real possibility. However, what would the Christian do? Would they just go along with this? Of course not: the Will of God must always be considered. They would need assurance that the message of this spirit was from God. They could just trust the spirit, but how would they know that this was the Holy Spirit? Just because it felt like the right thing to do?


Feelings are not the arbiters of right judgement. If they were then my waistline would increase as I feel that a second chocolate bar is in order. Clearly a revelation from the Divine must be consulted against what we understand already about the Divine. We know that we must test the spirits to see if they be from God. That's not just St John, it's common sense surely! What revelation can there be?


Well, there is Holy Scripture, there is Holy Tradition, there is Reason and there is personal revelation. Is the personal revelation enough? Even for St Paul, personal revelation was only the starting point for his mission. He had to be guided and taught. One cannot go just by a big crash-bang-wallop explosion of revelation without it being consistent with what we know of God Himself. There must be two witnesses to support a claim, ideally three. For Anglicans, these witnesses must be Scripture, Tradition and Reason.


If X is contradicted by Scripture and Tradition, then Reason dictates that it is not established as Christian Doctrine.


Of course, one might reject that idea, which brings us to Assumption A.


Is Catholic Authority human in origin? I.e. did human beings make the rule book?


The "rule book" is Holy Scripture as interpreted through Tradition supported by Reason. Holy Scripture is the supreme authority. If we reject that, then we cease to be authentically Christian. After all, to be Christian means to believe in the Divinity, life, death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Church gathered all the evidence pertaining to these facts into the New Testament. Thus to reject the authority of the New Testament is to rely upon one's own personal revelation apart from the Catholic Church, but this personal authority then becomes self-supporting and impossible to verify objectively that the revelation that one receives is correct.


What about different interpretations of that rule book. Well, this is where the splits between Christians begin to show. The circumstances of our salvation occurred at one point in Time as the Passion of Our Lord played out. These temporal circumstances have an Eternal effect, because they communicate God's love for us. God is Eternal and God is changeless. Thus Christian Doctrine of Grace and Salvation must be changeless. The same rules, same covenant, same Law, same grace, same sacrifice, same source of justification, sanctification and glorification must apply to all Christians at all time and in all places. This is Catholicism. Thus the Catholic Authority is reasonably believed to be not of human origin but of God's direct revelation.


To see, then, Holy Scripture as possessing the same vicissitudes as human philosophy denies its applicability to all Christians in the same way. If some part of Scripture hitherto accepted is now to be rejected then why not another part, or another? We're back to Sorites paradox. Surely, we either accept all Holy Scripture as it always has been read in Tradition by the Catholic Church, or we reject all of it as unreliable and thus make it subjective, and thus subject to the individual understanding.

Holy Scripture contains all that is necessary to Salvation. It describes the means of grace by which mankind is first justified, sanctified and glorified. If Holy Scripture become suspect and subjective then salvation and grace become completely subjective too. If Salvation is to apply to every Christian, if Grace is to apply to every Christian, then the law by which we know we have sinned applies to every Christian and the means of distributing that promised Grace must apply also to every Christian.

The Ten commandments are not subjective, they are completely objective. They are meant for everyone regardless of person. Laws that are subjective are not laws. Covenants that are subjective are not covenants. Human beings need to learn what is God and what is not-God and are to seek that which is truly God, and God is not subjective  He is objective. Far from the Holy Spirit being limited by human beings, we have the opposite: human beings being limited by the Holy Spirit!


That's the key error that this sort of argument makes. It isn't Humanity limiting the Holy Spirit, it's the Holy Spirit limiting Humanity. Those of a liberal bent rail against this because they perceive that, because Catholic Authority denies X when X is reasonable, that it is the Holy Spirit that is being prevented from working. They do not see that Catholic Authority denies X precisely because the Holy Spirit denies it. Indeed, it is sheer human pride to say that they have special knowledge of what the Holy Spirit wants beyond what human beings have been taught by Divine Revelation. I is Gnosticism of the Montanist variety.


To say that human beings cannot be objective and thus Holy Scripture cannot be seen as an objective statement of Revelation, Salvation and Covenant, is to reject Catholicism: Catholicism which exists in the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, most Old Catholic and Anglican Catholic understandings of the Faith. It also rejects mathematical statements such as 1+1=2 ("The Holy Spirit is telling me that 1+1=4 today.") as well as scientific statements by which mankind has benefitted.


If a Christian hears another say "I believe in God," then for both of those Christians, an objective statement has been made pertaining to the existence of an Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnibenevolent, Creator who deserves worship Who exists as Trinity in Unity, the Second person of Whom died to save mankind from their sins. That is an objective statement because it is a central tenet of the Christian Faith. But then, isn't that a matter of opinion?

Two take away seven

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the twenty-second Sunday after Trinity.

 

A mathematical question. What’s seven take away two? Of course, you answer with five. But what’s two take away seven?

For some people that’s a problem. If we have two apples then how can we take away seven apples? It really doesn’t make sense, does it? As far as you’re concerned, there’s no way we can take seven apples away from two.

However, suppose you had two hundred pounds in the bank and borrowed seven hundred. Would that be possible? Well, you know what banks are like: they’d say, “yes that’s fine, but you now owe us five hundred pounds.” You will have to pay back five hundred pounds to the bank as soon as you get it. But notice something crucial here. That debt of five hundred pounds only exists as long as both you and the bank allow it to exist.

Suppose you say “there is no debt.” The bank, of course, will disagree and extract it from you by unpleasant means. Suppose the bank says, “there is no debt.” What then?

You could say, “yes, there is!” and still try to pay back the five hundred pounds. You might be out of pocket, but you may be able to sleep at night. However, would you not rather say, “there is no debt” along with the bank? If that happens then the debt just stops. It no longer exists. It becomes as absurd as taking away seven apples from two apples.

[PAUSE]

St Peter comes to Our Lord with a question about counting offences and counting forgiveness. Like most of his culture, and ours, St Peter has been brought up in a culture of the bank of blame. Of course, he has been listening to the Lord and understands that forgiveness is important. The problem is, how many times can we forgive before we stop forgiving?

This question loses its power when we agree not to keep count. We can either live our lives by counting what’s wrong, storing up debts and sins, or we can forget about it and move on. If we believe that someone owes us something, then we believe that debt exists. If we believe that debt exists then our own debt must exist. It’s all or nothing. Either all debt can be forgiven or no debt can be forgiven. It’s all or nothing, not one rule for us and another rule for everyone else. If you can take seven from two, then everyone can take seven from two. No exceptions!

It’s the same with sin. Either any sin against us can be forgiven, or no sin can be forgiven, not even our own.

[PAUSE]

That’s not to say that forgiveness is easy. In fact, true forgiveness can be dreadfully hard particularly when the size of the sin is so great. However, forgiveness must first come from the heart. We have to want to forgive. That way, the process of forgiveness can be started, and God can bring anything that has started to its end. For men, things are impossible. For God all things are possible.

Forgiveness is in the nature of God Himself. We should forgive so that we can be nearer to God and that others can be nearer to God. Forgiveness brings the whole world closer to God and makes it better by making Him more visible in that world. We owe it to ourselves to do that and this is a debt worth repaying!

 

 

Ghosts, Time and Sanctity

Looking in the mirror, it would have been nice to have my own reflection looking back at me. Then again, I would have settled for anything that was still alive and still had a face.(My entry for the two-sentence horror story.)

Halloween has passed. I really don't like what Halloween has become, just as I really don't like what Christmas has become, following the cultural forgetting of Advent and the recent social obligation of commerce and transaction which now makes the season up.


But Halloween...


Halloween should be another remarkable time of year, like Christmas. If you think about it, the timing of Christian festivals occurs at the same time that old pagan festivals occur for the very reason that the Church wanted to supplant pagan festivals. Yet, however wrong the pagan religion was, it does tap into our humanity. We encounter Spring, Summer, Autumn (Fall, for my transatlantic chums) and Winter naturally, and it is this nature that the pagans recognized and built up their festivals.


As the nights draw in, the darkness falls, the trees wither and lose leaves and animalkind prepares for hibernation, the human soul sees the termination of life and reflects on its own mortality. Old friends are remembered, happier times fondly recalled against the backdrop of the darkening skies. Is it any wonder that a sense of the proximity of the world of the living and the land of the dead should develop? The pagans had their harvest festivals subsumed by the Church who used the time to remember all the saints and all the souls. Of course, the Christians did demonise the pagan religion and the practitioners were viewed with much suspicion which led eventually to the witch hunts and witch trials. Hence Halloween received its associations with the occult.


I will admit to being greatly interested in the paranormal or supernatural. I wish to be clear though. This does not mean that I go in for any dangerous practices such as divining or clairvoyance, which are strictly prohibited by my religion for the health of my soul. A good ghost story for me breaks down the concrete structures of the manmade world around me and brings me back to that time when men had some deference to nature and its seasons. The stories of M.R. James point me to the world that, for all my empirical and rational understanding, I could not understand. There is something deeply disturbing about the fact that there is a beautiful world of an organic nature that can confound mankind's understanding.


I listen carefully to people who tell me that they have seen a ghost. Their stories are powerful and a true expression of their encounter with reality. Whether they experience what they have interpreted that they have experienced is another matter. Many ghosts can be explained away by natural and unusual effects such as a coincidental instance of paradolia, or by the effect of subsonic waves, or by the terrifying occurrences of sleep paralysis. What isn't explained away though is the effect that this has on the subject of this occurrence. David Hume declares with some force that extraordinary claims require extraordinary explanations. Of course, he also says that the relationship between causes and effect is suspect. For Hume, a one-off occurrence in front of even one witness could never be true, because it lacks a verifiable explanation. A drunkard who sees a flying pink elephant would never be believed, even if the said beast actually had existed for that brief moment of time with him the only witness. We could never rule it out, but we could, legitimately, rule it highly unlikely. However, probability is not actuality.


A person's ghost story is a story of bafflement. It is a story of standing on the precipice of knowledge looking at the abyss below, peering into the darkness and fearing that, perhaps, we might fall. Of course, one must be careful. St Peter reminds us to be sober and vigilant because our enemy the Devil walketh about like a roaring lion seeking for someone to devour. There are beings out there in the darkness between our understanding and our belief that pull us from God if we let them. We can see a ghost, yes, but if we believe it to be the soul of one of our dear departed, then we must be very careful lest the vision draw us from God's truth and into the clutches of one who would have us despair. Only that which points to the living God can ever be truly edifying. If it points us away, then we must turn our backs on it with a vade me retro!


Much of the horror genre these days is unpleasant in the extreme and hopeless. Modern Horror does seem to want to destroy mankind utterly, and that requires much care. These thoughts come from human minds, and human minds are dark places indeed. However, their darkness cannot be known without light. Something must be light in the human mind for there to be darkness. The benefit of Horror must come from passing between one and the other. The best Horror movies and ghost stories allow us to see the darkness in the human mind within the dark seasons and dark places of untameable Nature and invite us to recall that there must be light in order to see anything at all. They challenge us to step out of our comfortable mindset into the disquiet of our own impotence without ever leaving our armchair.


What, however, does this have to do with the saints? Why all this darkness at Allsaintstide?


It is simple. The saints are human beings just like us. Yet, just as the ghost story gives us a vehicle from passing between light and darkness, their lives have finally passed into the Light of Tabor, the undiluted light of God Himself. No more will they fear, nor be in pain, nor suffer at the hands of others, for they are like God for they see Him as He is! We continue to wrestle with darkness within and without. Our lives can be too comfortable in the twilight and we must remember that twilight precedes night or day. Our lives move in both directions. The saints do not, they have fought their fight and won their race. Yet they do not remember their lives as a good ghost story. They see everything by God's light for what it really is, and are thankful for every second of living.


So, if the sheets on the bed opposite you start twitching tonight and, slowly, inexorably with many a rustle and a flick, rise forming themselves into a creature draped in sheet from head to foot before advancing on you flailing blindly with what passes for hands, remember that frightening though this be, it is the perception of the gulf between humanity and God that has become just that little bit smaller. Then turn on the Light.

Not so breakaway after all.

From the Provincial Website

The College of Bishops of the Original Province met October 16th and 17th in Shelton, Connecticut, where they took important steps toward the reunification of Continuing Anglican jurisdictions. In addition to voting to receive former ACC Bishop Thomas Kleppinger back into the Church, a report on Validation of Orders was approved, paving the way towards closer relations with the Anglican Church in America (ACA) and Anglican Province in America (APA). Reception of a new diocese in the Republic of South Africa was conditionally approved and representatives were appointed to respond to a request for dialog from a large group of Anglicans in Burundi. For more information on this and related matters, see the upcoming issue of The Trinitarian.

It looks as if there are some very encouraging signs within Continuing Anglicanism and I am very pleased with this development as it should make my relationships with my brothers in different jurisdictions easier. I have a great number of friends from all over the Anglican spectrum. I am in communion with some but regrettably not others. They are still friends and Christian brothers though.


There is a fervent desire among Continuing Anglicans to make common cause. This may be, in part, due to our tiny sizes, but also due to the fact that we have so much in common. The ACC is already communio in sacris with UECNA and APCK. UECNA is very much a BCP, 39 articles brand of Anglicanism,  but we Anglican Catholics are happy to accept our relationship as sister churches. We may not agree about the confessional status of the Articles, but we recognize each others' Anglicanism and common ancestry, and the mission to promulgate the Christian Gospel to all people as once delivered to the saints. Archbishop Robinson is as Anglican as you can get and in the best way too, especially with his Northern English Accent.


In the U.K. Anglican Catholicism is hated in the mainstream churches. There are some in the Established Church who will take every opportunity to distance themselves from us, declare us invalid, improper, label us, perhaps even slander us. To them, we are the "mad church" that says that women can't be priests. We have been shouted at and dismissed in equal measure. The view of such people is that we are a straw man which they can knock down with ease. They will not talk with us or dialogue with us, despite the fact that, within the Established Church, there are entire congregations who believe what we believe. Is this any surprise? We continue to believe now what the Church of England itself once believed and now does not.


Continuing Anglicanism is at an exciting time. We are pulling together and hope that we may find more in common with each other. We may not walk in the same lane, but we can walk together. Admittedly, we'd like to be able to do that with the Church of England too. We don't hate it at all. They may see us as breakaways but, in fact, we are the folk whom they have left behind. We have merely tried to be honest and to seek the truth honestly. There are still things that we are working out, and we look to the Undivided Catholic Church for the answers. The Church of England has its own interpretation with which we cannot in conscience agree. Their belief is, in our understanding, simply not Catholic. That does not mean that they are not a Christian Church. It does mean that, in our belief, they are inconsistent and that the truth could be considered to be clouded by the complexity which they have introduced.


So what do we do?


It is very important for the Anglican Catholic Church to write no-one off. We don't do that in this Diocese. We have our canons and constitution by which to live and at the heart of everything is the love of Christ which writes no-one off. We should look for ways in which we can offer a warm handshake, invite folk for a cup of tea, find a common sense of humour, pray for each others' growth in Christ.


I have so many friends in the CofE. Perhaps some of my words have stung a little, or perhaps they just dismiss my criticisms as one of my rants. I don't seek to hurt old friends, nor to belittle their belief. I rather ask the CofE to give us the room to thrive and be respected. If they are intent on ensuring that different integrities within their government can flourish, are they going to enable those different integrities to flourish? Will they not give the ACC some room to exist and seek the truth apart from the establishment to which they must answer and we need not? I do think that the ACC asks some good questions of the Established Church which have not yet been answered, and they must understand the depth of belief that we had in order to form in the first place.


In turn, we in the ACC should think carefully about the message we send out and show that our missives, statements and announcements are thought through well. We're not an angry church, so let us not rant and rave. We're not a bitter church, so let us show that we're for everyone and have some degree of humanity not born from intellectual argument and theological discourse. We're not a breakaway church, so let us not distance ourselves from people but only distance ourselves from doctrine we believe to be errant. We're not an established Church, so let us not try to force a political agenda on people. In fact, let us see our lack of establishment as a freeing of our religion from secular constraint as well as allowing people the freedom to make the choice themselves in the secular arena of our society.


Brethren, let us love one another and do so properly.

Waves of Sin, Waves of Merit

Watching the rain drops fall into a puddle is delightful when the rain is light enough for individual drops to disturb the surface sending out those concentric ripples across the water. Every drop affects the whole surface, though dissipation stops us from seeing the full effect.


It takes me back to a time when I studied water waves. There are some wonderful equations that explain the behaviour of water. My favourite has to be the Camassa-Holm system which I studied a while back. These equations model water waves in a shallow pond and we can see their predictions on the surface of the Earth. In comparison with the size of the Earth, the oceans are comparatively shallow which means that the Camassa-Holm system provides a good model for sudden impacts.


It was, with great sadness, that the same mathematics showed up in the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. The water waves, travelled inexorably, as predicted by the mathematical model, and thousands of people met their deaths. As a mathematician, it was all very well and good for me to predict the movement of the water, but there was nothing I could have done about it. One event (namely a collision of two tectonic plates) travelled across the ocean to wreak havoc and destroy people. For me, as a mathematician, I have never felt so helpless or so pointless.


One of the current theories for the state of physical reality (though this is actually quite old and I suspect some changes have happened since I last looked into it) is that the universe is actually a series of complicated ripples spreading on a vast drum-skin. In this theory, all matter and energy are essentially different modes of vibration. The Big Bang is simply the result of two such drum-skins banging together, according to Professor Turoc a decade or so ago.


If this is true, and it's not exactly provable and for that reason falling out of fashion, it seams that one ripple in the universe can spread dramatically.


I do believe in free-will very strongly, though I'm not sufficiently learned to understand precisely how I believe it. I believe that, however limited my abilities are, that I have a significant responsibility for my own actions that is only attributable to me and not external to me. That may be more expressible in terms of "free-won't" rather than free-will, since it is presently thought that we consciously choose not to do something rather than choose to do it,  but the effect is pretty much the same. Physics does not rule this out at all. Certainly our understanding of the universe is less deterministic than it used to be. Given that physics can only describe what is material, there is certainly a limit on what it can know about our abilities, and our free-will. You can't really use physics to answer all moral questions, otherwise PETA and the RSPCA will be most concerned about the welfare of Schroedinger's cat!


It does mean that my actions create ripples through the universe. How far they travel, I don't know - I'm not sure I can mathematically calculate the dissipative quantities of a non-mathematical concept. Nonetheless, what I do matters.


I know that God is responsible for the entirety of the universe. He is the reason for its existence as well as the reason for its continued existence. He it is that sets the ripples in motion, though for Him, all instants of time are in His present. And all ripples are good. They fulfill his purposes whether or not we impede them by our intention or not. Our sins spread through the universe, as do our merits. Of course, our merits we cannot attribute to ourselves but solely due to the goodness of God. Our sins we are responsible for through our own intention. We can choose to impede the goodness of God through our intentions and thus sin. We can choose to facilitate the goodness of God through our intentions. Whether we actually can impede or facilitate the goodness of God is another matter. I suspect that the answer is that we cannot, and I would cite (as always) Romans viii.28 for this.


As a Catholic, I believe that the merits of the saints affect my life and salvation. That is because these saintly folk have chosen not to impede the goodness of God. It is through God's grace that I am saved, unworthy though I may be for the sins that I have committed. The ripples that the saints have set in motion spread across my life as they spread across the universe, and I can use those merits to inspire and form my own intention because they have their origin solely in God Himself. The ripples of my sins affect those around me and, indeed, the Creation around me, but they only have their source in me since I am not God. If I follow saintly merits, I will find God, since as the ripples spread out from God, they return to God who is Alpha and Omega - the beginning and the end. If I follow the ripples that come from sin, I will only find death since sin does not come from God, and certainly will not end in God.


When the rain falls harder, the surface of the puddle becomes a mass of ripples all passing through each other, causing much disturbance on the surface. Things become complex and less recognizable. The system becomes more chaotic and less determined. Our lives themselves are pulled one way and another by the demands made on our wills. We fear choice because it may mean that we will be swept along on a course that cannot be fully determined. The waves of the merits of the saints can influence our course and, given their source and their end, can put us back on a better route which may not be any less choppy. God has given us saints so that we can become saints ourselves. What waves will we choose to send out?

Playing the Tabor lightly

Sermon preached at Our Ladyof Walsingham and St Francis on the Sunday in the Octave of All Saints

You may not know that the Anglican Catholic Church accepts the Seventh Oecumenical Council.

Now that sounds a lot like priest-speak, but it's actually very important. The Seventh Oecumenical Council states that images of the saints and of Our Lord may be venerated. This does NOT mean that we worship pictures and statues as some may think of us. That would break the Second Commandment.

The point is that when we venerate an image, we are recognising the person depicted and respond accordingly, much as we would respond emotionally to a photograph or picture of our parents and other family photos.

If we see an image of Our Lord, then we think of Him and we worship Him. If it is an image of Our Lady, then we recognise the Queen Mother of Heaven and we pay due respect. If it is the image of a saint, then we see a human being pointing to God. We show them respect and look where they're pointing.

Most images we see in Church come in the for of ikons. The pictures are written by people who undergo spiritual discipline in order to faithfully show the likeness of the citizens of Heaven. Each saint is painted in a particular way. It looks as if light is breaking out of their skin. This is called the light of Tabor, the same light that shone from the face of Moses when he came down to the Israelites from Mount Tabor. Citizens of Heaven shine with this light, for this is the light of God.

Sainthood, as you know, is bound up with holiness- being set apart by God for His purposes, especially shining His light in the world. We are all called to be saints; we are predestined for sanctification, but this does not mean that this is a foregone conclusion.

You may have noticed that, when you look in the mirror, your face doesn't shine with Divine Light. We're not exactly obvious when it comes to shining God's light in the World. It is there though, so how do we see it?

"Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God."

Seeing God is a matter of looking inwardly into ourselves and realising the ways in which we are not pure in heart. This is a lifetime's work - you can't do it in a day. Yet it is the way in which our eyes are opened to the saints around us. Not just the obvious ones like St Francis or Our Lady, but in everyday folk, the people around us.

All are capable of being saints.
All are capable of shining with Divine light.
All can receive purification if we pray for it and allow God's grace to enter our lives to cast out all impurity in our thinking, words, deeds and even our being.

We should venerate our saints by bowing down to the God with whose light they shine like stars for all Eternity. When will we see this light in the mirror?

St Benedict's Priory Salisbury 2014: Keeping the Flag Flying

Sadly, just a short trip this year, but well worth it. This was my first visit as a priestly oblate, but all was in order. I only saw two of the monks this year and it was clear that the community is still doing things even if they are unable to accept new postulants. The prior was attending a conference at Mirfield and Dom Bruce attending a function at the House of Lords.

This left Dom Francis and Dom Kenneth to hold the fort. They have built their new chapel complex in the same vein as the chapel when they moved in. Dom Francis celebrated his golden jubilee in March having professed fifty years ago in Nashdom Abbey. His is a life lived by the Rule and clearly he has thrived from it.

We were joined by a small contingent from St Alban's Romford who are also holding the fort being the only Forward in Faith Parish in their deanery in Chelmsford. This is a situation which I have known well from my experiences in the CofE. Whilst the hierarchy of the Established Church say that all theological positions in the priesthood of women debate should be allowed to flourish, they do not say that they should be enabled to flourish. That is a much different matter.

My own experiences were that, when a Forward in Faith Parish fell into interregnum, the PCC were "encouraged" to drop the resolutions because the bishop had a "wonderful new priest" for them who would only come if the resolutions were dropped. I have even heard tell that some dissenters to the Ordination of Women vote in 1992 were prevented from voting so that the measure could pass. There is a lot of politics in the Established Church and much which has come in from the culture, not from the Divine!

So there we were, Dom Francis the last Nashdom monk, Fr Hingley and his companions in the last Catholic Church in that deanery and myself in the tiny Anglican Catholic Diocese of the United Kingdom.

We share much in common - a rejection of Anglican Calvinism, a love of Benediction and Solemn Evensong and that sense of humour that only Anglo-Catholics possess. Of course, I'm in a different part of the Catholic Church from them and it remains to be seen whether we will be able to accommodate more in our little Anglican Catholic Church which can guarantee Catholic Orders and Apostolic Succession, unlike the CofE.

Of course, we can all be taken over by a sense of nostalgia and dream of the happy days of Fr Patten and his enormous biretta, of the sound of plainchant over the Burnham evenings, of Dom Gregory Dix giving the bishop's grand-daughter a shilling for locking the bishop in her Wendy-house. Of course, it's the now that we have to worry about. For us Anglo-Catholics, it's a case of witness.

We're often criticised for our flamboyance and fretting about the length of lace on albs. People wonder why we bother to wear saturnos and cinctures and maniples and piping. They don't understand that we do so because of the unique colour of our Christianity. Yes, of course it's possible to celebrate Mass with a chipped tin mug for a chalice, but if we have the means to make things a beautiful as possible, then we should.

Flag-flying is important. We priests wear our collars to demonstrate the visibility of the Church in society. We may not always be the best exponents of the Church, but the Church is still there. Catholicism is a highly objective and sensual expression of the Christian Faith. We believe wholeheartedly in the presence of Our Lord with us and we are proud to show it. We are also able to laugh with others (usually at ourselves) and enjoy the sights, sounds and colours which remind us of Emmanuel.

Of course, the world finds us a bit ridiculous, but we laugh and say, "fools for Christ" and pootle on waving our banners and flags, presently in declining numbers and hostile environs. Nonetheless, when the last Anglo-Catholic is laid to rest, the occasion will be a bang, not a whimper!

Flipping the Faith

I'll be having a somewhat short retreat to Salisbury this week. Events have overtaken me this year and rather than spending a working week with the Benedictine Community, a day and two halves will have to suffice. From what I observe in the world, it's been a year of contrasts and tensions. This seems to be playing itself out in the Roman Church quite obviously over the issues in the family.

I must be going through a bit of a Kantian phase (or even Hegelian -though I rather hope not!), rather than keeping true to my scholastic preferences. What is interesting me at the moment is the fact that the dichotomies with which we're presented in life seem to point at something more fascinating.

I've mused upon the reward-punishment problem earlier. Rewards and punishment seem to be the two sides to one coin, but it seems that the coin is of less value than one would normally give it, rather, attributing value to such a coin could very well lead to promulgating a purely materialistic worldview.

This could very well bring us back to another two sided coin of matter versus spirit. This dualism is an age old problem in the Church, falling down on one side or the other forces us into one or other of the heresies that can tear one away from the Church.

The model we must always look to is Christ Himself. In this sense, Christ is the coin of greatest prices for he has the two sides, God and Man, which are distinct but completely inseparable. He is King and Servant, showing us that status is really nothing in the eyes of God. We can see how Christ satirises the whole notion of "higher" and "lower" when he tells us that the first will be last and the last first. He is Priest and Victim showing us that our very lives are sacrifices which are only sanctified by God through our offering ourselves to Him at His prompting for sanctification which can only ever be painful. He is Dead and Alive showing that Life is not just something that flickers into being and then gutters out, but rather our life exists beyond the extremes of birth and death.

It's amazing how we always want to come down on one-side or other. That's how we make our decisions in life, by flipping a coin. Sometimes, however, we fail to see the value of the coin that we're flipping.

Anglicanism and Theseus' Ship

"The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, in so much that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same." — from Theseus by Plutarch ,

Identity is something that we hold very dear, and yet it is something with which we struggle. As the example of Theseus' Ship goes (or, if you prefer, the problem of Trigger's Broom) how can we account for our identity over time. Do we have an identity over time? Seeing that all the cells in our body have been replaced several times from our birth, how can we be sure that we are in fact the same person as we are when we were born?

Aristotelian metaphysics may help if we understand our substance and accidents but, of course, Aristotle's philosophy is not "in vogue" today nor does it solve the problem completely. St Augustine would point the very fragility of who we are, sandwiched between the past which no longer exists and the future which does not yet exist. He did not have recourse to the possibility of viewing the world in four dimensions and thus see our existence as beings in space-time. Whatever our point of view, the Christian must look to the fact that in God "we live and move and have our being". All that we are and all who we are is determined by God alone.

Now, I've been involved in a bit of a discussion with Mr Christopher Little, a newly-made Deacon in the AMiA. Deacon Little is a champion of Classical Anglicanism who is very clearly concerned with the Reformed nature of Anglicansim. He and I do disagree on the nature of what it means to be Anglican: while I argue that "Anglican" is a meaningful adjective from before the Reformation, he would argue that in order to be truly Anglican, it is necessary to embrace the Articles from a Reformed viewpoint. His description of me would be that I am not an Anglican but an English Catholic.

I don't object to being described as an English Catholic, but I do feel that I have some claim to the adjective "Anglican". My orders, for example, were bestowed by Bishop Damien Mead last year. He in turn was consecrated by Bishop Rommie Starks in 2008, and one of Bishop Starks' consecrators (back in 2000) was then Bishop, later ACC Archbishop, Br John-Charles Vockler who was consecrated bishop in 1959 during the days of the orthodoxy of the Anglican Communion and received into the Anglican Catholic Church in 1994. Br John-Charles was Bishop of Polynesia, but also served a time as an assistant bishop in the Church of England. Thus, the Anglican Communion cannot claim that the ACC Diocese of the United Kingdom is without direct links to the Established Church when it was actually orthodox. My point is that I believe that the ACC has at least one point of continuity with the Anglican Church through its bishops, at least until the Church of England ceased to be orthodox and introduced doubt into the validty of the Sacraments that they now claim to distribute.

I'm not using this to convince Deacon Little of my Anglicanism - I doubt that I can given that his idea and my idea of what it means to be Anglican are so diverse - but rather more to demonstrate that our traditions have commonly spun out of that period called the Reformation. My Archbishop, Mark Haverland, has been seen at various inter-Anglican events, most notably at the investiture of Archbishop Foley Beach as primate of ACNA. I cannot comment nor wish to do so about what my Archbishop was doing there save that I am convinced that he was there in the spirit of Christian Charity and with a desire to express the well-wishing and prayers of the Anglican Catholic Church whom he serves as Metropolitan.

However, if I were there, for what reason would it be?

His Grace has indeed written about the fragmented nature of the Anglican identity and has stated quite clearly that he believes that it is necessary for us to adopt the identity of Anglo-Catholicism as what it means to be properly Anglican. Given that the later Anglo-Catholics were Romanisers whose seeking re-union with the Roman Church has produced the Ordinariate, our rejection of the Papal claims must mean that we have to look to the original identity of Anglo-Catholicism as Anglicanism reviewed through Patristic eyes. The Anglican Catholic Church is a Truth-seeking Church and in order to seek the truth faithfully, it must start somewhere. One cannot begin an inquiry without stating the basis of that inquiry. The Continuing Anglican movement is forty years old, the AMiA even younger, but we come with baggage amid the fog of confusion which we have inherited. We are still in early days: while there is much of which we can be, there is much that is still in a state of flux.

If I were primate, and most assuredly I am not and think it statistically impossible that I would ever be so, then I would attend an ACNA investiture out of respect for the common ground out of which the ACNA and the ACC have sprung and to which we claim continuity. I would attend because, though there are many issues over which we disagree both practically and theologically (even seriously so), because I would see in ACNA a serious and heartfelt attempt to seek the same truth which I would be seeking. We might be walking apart, but we might be walking apart in the same direction which can only lead to unification in Christ Jesus. As I say, that is what I would do. However, I am a newly minted priest and not privy to issues involving the polity of my Church. It is not my place to draw any conclusions on matters which don't concern me. I trust His Grace and his leadership, and pray that he may continue to lead us faithfully in the way of Our Lord to Whom I am most sure he is committed.

Deacon Little would claim that his understanding of Anglicanism is also Patristic. I believe him to be sincere about this and would humbly suggest that he has more in common with Anglican Catholics that he might like to think. After all, Protestant is not the opposite of Catholic and I am sure that he would agree that he is much a part of the One Holy Catholic Church as he confesses with me in the Nicene Creed. I am sure that he would reject with me the heresies of the revisionists in ECUSA and the CofE on largely the same grounds, that we look for the same faith from the Source, and have an appreciation for the ritual of the Prayer-book. Again, he and I would differ on the use and authority of the Book of Common Prayer but one can see the tenacity of American Anglicans as they fight for their Anglican identity against a body whose wholesale rejection of the 1928 BCP in favour of a revisionist 1979 BCP. This latter revisionist, heretical attitude of the ECUSA has led to the existence of ACC, ACNA and AMiA as well as other noble Anglican bodies. We have much in common.

As Theseus' Ship shows us, the continuation of identity is a thorny affair. Each continuing Anglican body has had to make a decision in order to know what to continue. We Anglican Catholics believe we have chosen the path as laid out by the Church before the East-West split and that is where we look. This leads us into conflicts and painful decisions yet we seek to walk in the truth and in the tradition that we have recived. Until the smoke clears, we must persevere with the choices that we have made by conscience and in loyalty to the ideals and principles that we have received. These are still early days - a mere 50th part of the lifetime of the Church so far and only God knows what will be.Until then, as Plato says, be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle!

Greasy poles and other humiliations

Sermon preached at Our Lady of Walsingham and St Francis on the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity.


Why on earth would anyone want to climb a greasy pole? There are, apparently, greasy pole climbing competitions around the world, probably in the same places as cheese rolling and dwile flonking. It seems an easy enough concept to understand, try to get to the top of a pole that’s been greased: the one who gets nearest to the top wins! We use the image of the greasy pole to describe the way that some people strive for promotion, power or influence. Look at the boy in the packing room planning his way to becoming CEO of the company. See how he plots every move that he intends to make, and figures out every hurdle he has to jump.

What does he hope to gain?

[PAUSE]

Our Lord would have seen nothing wrong in seeking leadership in society or in a company. Things need to be in good order: after all, God created order from chaos! He bids us render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s, that is, to observe the order of society and the government, but also to render unto God that which is God’s. We know that everything is God’s and of His own Creation do we give Him and that includes ourselves. We obey governments because that’s what God wants us to do.

Christians are to see leadership as a duty and service, not as a privilege and right. Christians are not to see leadership as an opportunity to enforce their own wills upon others.

[PAUSE] Our Lord scolds the scribes and Pharisees for using arbitrary laws to enforce their own power and their own prestige. They command things because they can, not because it’s good. The only reason why they will not allow healing on the Sabbath day is because they command it. When Our Lord confronts them with the sheer emptiness of their commandment, they cannot answer Him. All that awaits the scribes and Pharisees is a humiliating slide down the greasy pole.

[PAUSE]

Humiliation brings everyone down to the same level, or up to the same level. Humiliation really means being brought to ground level, or indeed up to ground level! God has created each of us to play a part in His creation and this means being grounded in that very Creation. We exist because of Him and for His good pleasure. Any rank or value we put upon things is arbitrary and will pass away when we die. This is because the values that we have belong to us and are not necessarily from God. If we truly seek God’s values, then we must seek the truth about Creation. We might seek to make things holy for ourselves, separating them from others by our own values, but God truly makes things Holy by separating them out for Himself. We are all called to be saints, all called to be holy, but our holiness depends only on God and not on our rank in this life.

[PAUSE]

Our Lord reminds us that we will be seen for what we really are. If we think we’re anything more than a child of God, then we’re going to be severely disappointed!

Are Anglican Catholics really Anglican?

Edit 13th October 2014: It has come to my attention that there are blogs out there who seem to be reading into this post more than is intended. They state that I imply what they actually infer. They seem to think that I am in some way representative of my Province, despite my disclaimer categorically stating that I am not. They state that I am making statements about the Protestant nature of Anglicanism when the "heresies" I refer to I have deliberately left for the reader to understand. If people wish to read into my posts that which isn't there, then that is their business and I am not going to enter into any debate about it, especially if they are going to be rude, triumphalist and deliberately polemical.

I’ve just been reading this which asks the question about whether the GAFCON churches, the ACNA, and the AMiA are really Anglican. It shows that the Archbishop of Canterbury seems to think that a defining attribute of Anglicanism must reside in being in communion with his office. Of course, the ACNA would disagree with this, as would the continuing Anglican churches. It all sounds just a little bit Papal, doesn’t it? One can only be a Roman Catholic if one is in Communion with the Holy Father. Can one’s identity as a Christian be truly bound up in deference to one man? It has to! It must! That man being Our Lord Jesus Christ – none other! After all. St Paul says:

“And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men? For while one saith, I am of Paul; and another, I am of Apollos; are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any thing, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.” (I Cor iii.1-7)

Questions of our identity are ultimately useless if we treasure our adjectives more than our nouns. My friend Ed Pacht always says that he is a Christian first, a Catholic second and an Anglican third. Of course, one could debate whether one can be a Christian without being a Catholic, but such debates, while seeking clarity and confidence, end up separating people, most often unnecessarily.

What, then, do our adjectives do? We’re taught at school that “nouns are ‘naming’ words”, “verbs are ‘doing’ words” and “adjectives are ‘describing’ words” Adjectives modify our language and are largely based on the colour that our experience discriminates the genus from the species. A skilled translator knows that not only does one have to translate the noun correctly, but also the adjective. Consider the French for “lost property” – “l’objets trouvés”. One is probably justified in translating “objets” as “property”, though to go from a simple item to a piece of property demonstrates perhaps the human propensity to attribute ownership to things. What one loses, another finds – it’s the same idea but seen from different angles.

What does the adjective “Catholic” do to the noun “Christian”? Well, this is the tricky one because of the shifting nature of language. If one truly follows Christ, then one has to regard His doctrine and His establishment as having the supreme importance and one’s personal view of Christianity must surely be bound up therein. This doctrine cannot change in the light of time or space neither can the sacraments as vehicles of Grace change because every person, past, present and future is of equal worth in the eyes of God – all need His grace, all need His Word. This is the original sense of Catholic; it is inextricably bound up with the visibility of the Church. To be a Catholic means to be seen to be part of the Church as it was, is and will be.

It is fitting, then, that we should always look to the original meanings of words if we are meant to be sharing those words with those who have come before us in order to have communion with those who come after us. Catholic should not them mean “Roman Catholic”, after all, the Orthodox are just as Catholic, but without the Holy Father as a monarch. That is also how we Anglican Catholics see ourselves.

The original meaning of Anglican was simply as an adjective notably used in the 13^th century to mean “English” Of course, many Anglicans now disagree with that definition because it has come to acquire Reformation connotations. That is why Anglicanism is often seen to be defined by adherence to the 39 articles or to Protestant confessional formularies.

If that is what Anglicanism has come to mean, then the Anglican Catholic Church is not really Anglican.

Even then, I suspect there are many in the ACC who would disagree with me, such as the reverend Father Robert Hart. The way I see the Anglican Catholic Church is not a concerted attempt to forget the Reformation but to look further back beyond it, rather than as a defining mark of Anglicanism. Others find this a betrayal of the Reformation. Given that there are a lot of Protestant heresies that came out of that turbulent time, the ACC is rather justified in trying to continue Anglicanism across that era as well as the 20^th Century. If a rejection of Protestant doctrine means that an Anglican Catholic is not Anglican then the answer should be that they never were Anglican, but rather that they have always been Anglican Catholic.

I would not describe the Anglican Catholic Church as being Anglican. I would describe it as being Anglican Catholic. I do not see the two adjectives which describe my Christianity as being separable, but unified in their intention. True Catholicism is rooted in the visibility of the Church as the distributor of God’s grace and proclaimer of His word. We Anglican Catholics strive to be visible in our Catholicism and do so in a characteristically English way. This does not mean dressing up in fancy robes, though our vestments are part of our expression. Our true visibility MUST be bound up with how we live our lives with other people.

Each Anglican Catholic faces the challenge of proclaiming the Gospel by living it. This means performing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy that have always been practised by the Church albeit with that English flavour. This is why accusations of not being Anglican don’t actually bother me so much these days. I am not Anglican if it means being in communion with Archbishop Welby and his succession. That communion is not Catholic and I am, so I can’t be in communion with them: we used to understand things the same way, but that understanding is different now. Anglican Catholics understand the original meanings; the Anglican Communion has changed those meanings.

Not being Catholic compromises one’s visibility as a Christian, but then the actions of the Westborough Baptist Church compromises their visibility more. Our Lord says, “by their fruits shall ye know them.” If one’s actions are driving people from the Church, then the fruit of one’s labours is nearer to the wild grape than the cultivated grape. It is by our actions that the world outside the Church interacts with us. Our actions as Christians manifest our identity to an unbelieving world. This is why Christopher Hitchens’ book “God is not Great” really does hit home. People’s view of God is coloured by how we are seen to worship Him.

To live a Christian life is more Catholic than proclaiming that one is Catholic. We can attempt to proclaim with banners and Facebook pages and blogs (mea culpa) that one is Catholic, but these are just so secondary to the task. Self-publicity is far from being the Church’s first priority. The light that we should shine before all men is the light that comes from Christ. It is the light of Tabor, the tongues of fire that God places upon the head of the Confirmed that is meant to shine in our lives. If we want people to see the Church, then they need to see that light – not the light of gaudy advertising! Our actions should speak for themselves and then only speak the Word of God. Only then will we have Christianity in our substance rather than in our appearance.

Are Anglican Catholics actually Anglican? Not in my understanding of a post-Reformation definition. It is of no consequence: we should make sure we are Christians first!

Beauty, Happiness, Mathematics and God

I was struck by a bit of a vision today. By this, I don’t mean that I was thrown to the floor by bright lights, angelic choirs and the glory of the Beatific Vision – I’m not meant for that yet, otherwise it would have happened.

As I sat in the college chapel, my mind conjured up the image of a plane of glass in the chapel floor which raised itself up at an angle. I thought that within the glass was a picture of a cloud as one might find painted onto glass in a stained glass window. As I looked more closely, I could see that it was a galaxy, moving and swirling like a drop of milk in black tea. Of course, this is in perfect keeping with the origin of the word galaxy. It occurred to me that I was being given a window into another dimension, a vision of another multiplicity of worlds beyond the shallow horizons of my own little mind.

I do love looking at astronomical photographs. I still cannot take in that what I’m looking at is not just millions of miles away, but millions of miles in size and millions of years old. The scales are mind-boggling, and yet perhaps we forget that there are a million square millimetres in a square metre. The telescope is capable of giving us windows into the infinite, resolving angles ten-thousandths of a degree wide. Here is William Blake’s infinity in the palm of our hands.

Being a (largely failed) mathematician, my mind is always looking for the structures inherent in Creation. That’s probably high-minded of me and I do confess that praying Psalm 131 is not an easy task. Is it high minded of me to try and comprehend what’s going on? I’m hoping that it isn’t in the proviso that I understand that I will never completely understand what is going on until I have seen God face to face. Even then…

I often wonder what my students find beautiful. For teenage boys, it seems that beauty is an ill-defined affair and perhaps that’s because they lack the language for saying why something Is beautiful. They have not yet refined and honed the senses or the descriptors that will inspire them the most, but they are surely capable of appreciating beauty. In my teens, I remember being struck by the beauty of the solitary church bell and by Italian Renaissance Organ intonations. They certainly transported me beyond my own little world. Yet, I cannot be sure that my school mates had ever had that experience, and I dared not ask them. If they did, then perhaps this beauty was something that was so personal to them that even in the telling it would ruin it for them. Sometimes language destroys a dream rather than brings it into existence.

Beauty has always been something difficult to define, perhaps rightly so if the adage “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is correct. What is certainly clear is that beauty resonates within the individual like that solitary church bell. I fail to see how it is possible for someone to register beauty without reacting to it on more than just the rational level. The resounding of that bell of beauty allows the senses of our mind to be transported to places beyond our physical senses. There is a sort of happiness here, even when one finds beauty in a sad film like Atonement. There is a happiness in one’s emotion, as if one is feeling pleasure in actually feeling something other than the background level of emotion.

Sometimes language destroys a dream. I don’t find that with mathematics, though. Mathematics doesn’t destroy dreams in my experience, largely because mathematics deals with the necessarily abstract. I’ve challenged some of my students to tell me what algebra is, but find the repeated phrase “it’s maths with letters in it” coming back to bite me. When one realises that algebra is looking at the processes of arithmetic without taking things for granted, one can see some truly wonderful structures coming into play. Algebras allow us to ask the great “what ifs” of arithmetic. What if two times three is not the same as three times two? What would happen to subtraction if we weren’t allowed to have negative numbers? What happens if I allow negative numbers to have square roots?

Algebra answers these questions by producing new algebras, rings, groups, semigroups, division rings, and quandles. Thanks to Descartes, these lead into geometry and topology in which shapes bend and warp, blow up, project and expand in so many ways, even into higher dimensions in which situations make more sense. We understand more about our universe by looking at space and time together. This gives us four dimensions, though we are hard pressed to visualise anything that might be going on in 4D. Tesseracts and hyperspheres are the province of the fiction of Robert Heinlein and his ilk, but that just shows how mathematics yields dreams rather than destroys them.

I know that mathematics passes most people by. I can sympathise as it has passed me by too. There is another old adage, “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” Mathematically, I fall into the latter category.  I’m not fishing for sympathy here: while I’d like to have progressed further into academic mathematics, I was simply not clever enough to do so. There is no shame in that, and perhaps it does help me appreciate that mathematics is a hard mistress to woo. I have some affinity, then, with those who struggle with the rough terrain that comes before one enters the darksome mathematical jungle. I can lead the curious to the edge of the wild but, if they can go, they must go without me.

Fractions frighten people, and negative numbers really do upset those whose experience of the world is knowing how many beans make five. How many of us know how many beans make minus five? Of course, what may well be going is in effect a category mistake, after all, negative numbers are not numbers that can count how many physical objects there are. They can count how much money someone owes, or what the temperature of liquid nitrogen is – you need a reference point for that, a zero level. However the realisation that, under the same basic rules of arithmetic that everyone knows that minus one times minus one MUST yield positive one is a moment when one can appreciate that mathematics has a strange beauty that doesn’t really intersect this world in ways we would think.

Yet mathematics goes further and gives us a glimpse of the Divine. Those of us who cannot understand how God can exist without physical space or time would do well to know that numbers do just that also. We can determine statements of truth and falsehood about numbers just like we can with physical objects, and so their existence is assured. However, they have no space, nor time. They do not exist in an area of the brain, but are objective in their presence. Numbers really do point the way to God.

Of course, there are those who would read strange numerological significances in Holy Scripture but take them too far. Seven signifies perfection, forty the nature of penitence, three the completion of the loving family. These numerological fancies are just illustrations, just stories to colour our understanding of the world around us. Those who try to force arcane meaning or significance onto numbers are missing the point. This includes physicists who try to impose ridiculous limits on mathematics by meaningless notions like adding up all the positive whole numbers and getting a negative twelfth. Forcing that kind of physical limitation on that which is not physical is as destructive as language is to the dream.

As I look at my students, my worry is that they will seek contentment in the material world. There is nothing wrong with God’s Creation as I said in Sunday’s Sermon, but to look at the world and see everything in terms of clumps of matter and worth and commodity and fashion misses the true beauty that exists in what is really there. Can they see beauty in a muddy puddle or a plastic bag blowing in the wind? If they can, then perhaps our walk together has been fruitful for all of us.