The Beginning of the End?

It's been several days since the vote at General Synod, and I suppose I ought to say something.

Well, the news is not good is it? Though I expect WATCH is thoroughly pleased with itself. The worst thing about it is that the British Government threatened to enforce "anti-discrimination" measures against the church if it didn't vote the way that it wanted. In my eyes it is the Erastianism inherent within the Church of England that is responsible for this breach of Catholic order. That the British Government with its legalising of human-animal hybrids, acceptance of the blasphemy of abortion and the attempt to put homosexual relationships on a par with normal matrimony is trying to impose its morals on the church would be laughable if it weren't an abandonment of right moral judgment.

Now it is very necessary to take stock of things, especially from the Anglican Papalist point of view. It appears that the Bishop of Ebbsfleet is planning on leading the exodus to Rome, and it is this action that needs to be looked at carefully. There are two real possibilities:

1) That the Pope will allow the Ebbsfleet Exiles as a single body to form an Anglican Community within the Roman Catholic Church;

2) That the Ebbsfleet Exiles will be required to make individual submissions to Rome.

The second option is not Anglican Papalist which states clearly that Anglican-Roman reunion must be corporate, not individual. Anglicanism has an identity and valid orders which must be recognised by Rome. The pronouncement on the nullity of Anglican Orders by Pope Leo XIII was neither infallible nor well-informed, but Anglicanism needs Rome to stop the continued fragmentation into smaller and smaller divisions amid accusations of "purple fever".

As Fr David Straw remarked:

What you are looking for doesn't exist. Doesn't mean you should stop looking for it. After all...There's God's time and our time. The two are very different...As I have found from experience.

He is quite right. What Anglican Papalists want does not exist - yet! We certainly do not want Rome to fall into the ways of Liberal Protestantism which seems to infect the Church of England.

But, Anglicanism extends futher than the crumbling edifice of the C of E. The Anglican Continuum has the potential to take over the mantle as the centre of proper orthodox Anglicanism. It has the theologians, the orders and the potential to exercise the Anglican character for toleration of different expressions of that theology. Rather than decamp to Rome, I believe that Anglicans forced out by the heresy of sexual homogeneity should first look to unify the Anglican Continuum and start the ARCIC process from there.