Continuing Laughter

A few years back, the Anglican Catholic Church had a stall at the Christian Resources Exhibition in Epsom. Much of it was a very positive experience as we met some interesting people and saw the clever things they were doing for the sake of the Gospel. Unfortunately, it was very expensive for a little Diocese, but it was well worth doing. It was fun and good-humoured, except...

There are two instances where such good humour wasn't in evidence. One was a stall by another church group whose remit was to restore orthodoxy to the CofE. They sat in their stall with faces like thunder and, to be honest, they didn't seem to be engaging with people. I guess that the Thirty-nine Articles will do that to you if you eat them for breakfast, dinner and tea.

The other was a persistent female minister who wanted to argue with us constantly about doctrine which she disagreed with vehemently and refused to listen to our explanations. She would make a beeline for us with volleys of diatribes all designed to tell us how awful we are.

Admittedly, we are a "loathsome" church according to some in the CofE. That's understandable: the existence of the ACC is due to a fundamental disagreement as to what Catholic Faith teaches. The Continuing Anglican Church was born of fire and fury. We were angry at the betrayal of what the Church had always believed and taught by those who wanted Doctrine to move with the times. There are still good reasons for us to be angry. This is usually when the CofE claims to speak for all Christians or undermines the faith of those who follow tradition or when they have been completely dismissive of us and actively obstructive. These days, we find that we can work around the obstacles that the CofE episcopacy puts in our way, largely because we have good friends in the CofE priesthood who are willing to ignore the snobbery of their bishops. 

The fact is that we are small but stable in our doctrine and stable in our leadership. And, contrary to the opinions propagated by those who hate us, we do have a sense of humour.

Once, knowing my Bishop's love of classic Disney, I photoshopped a "Mickey Mouse" biretta to his head. Of course I sent it to him. We do laugh at ourselves, of course. It would be hard not to. Sometimes, we seem like the ecclesiastical equivalent of Dad's Army. We all have our eccentricities and quirks. Some of us would be more at home across the Bosporus and thus find themselves regaled with stage whispers of, "don't mention the filioque!" Others of us pale at the sight of a Canterbury Cap, so of course I "threaten" to petition the Bishop to make them obligatory.

We need a sense of humour given some of the flak we get. There's a website out there which might seem to offend us, but we find it funny largely because of the sheer bald untruths it contains! It might as well be a Spitting Image sketch. I take it as quite a compliment to be lampooned so roundly. Perhaps it wasn't meant to offend at all, but rather give us an affectionate "roast".

Humour is vital in this day and age. As our modern civilization is taking a bit of a big hit at the moment, things seem dark. We need to laugh again - not in the sneering, unpleasantness of character assassination that seems to make up most of modern humour and against which St Benedict rails in the rule. We need rather to laugh at ourselves in love, noting our propensity for hypocrisy and hubris, and knowing that humour brings us back to earth with the same sort of bump as falling off a swing after trying to be Superman.

Of course, the seriousness of the present COVID-19 is obvious. People are dying, and that just isn’t funny for their relatives. The Economy will take a hit and many institutions are being tested to the limit. And yet, we are not insignificant little beings that rise and die in a day. All flesh may be grass and all the glory of Man but the flower of grass which withereth and falleth away, but the Word of the Lord endureth forever. And we bear His image. We are not insignificant or why else would God die for us? We are not completely Evil, or why else should we be saved? Our will is not completely corrupt or else why would the Lord take upon Himself a human will?

And that’s grounds for laughter.

We laugh because, despite the agonies and miseries that we bear, we are loved and that love would rather see us suffer pain in order to feel love truly than to disappear into insignificance. We laugh because of the incongruity of our desire and what we really need. We laugh because what seems to be utterly ridiculous to an unbelieving, cold, indifferent Universe is true – God exists, God loves, and God saves.

This is what Continuing Anglicanism fights for furiously. We believe what the Church has always believed and we look at those who have changed the rules, not with derision, but with the same anger that one has for a dearly beloved brother who would rather risk his life in a death-trap of a car than stay with something reliable and true. We don’t do hatred and, if we do then we lose our Christianity. The trouble is, being frightfully English, we don’t do anger very well unless someone puts the tea in the cup before the milk. I suspect our American brethren are the same, only not with tea: Americans can’t make tea!

We may walk apart from the CofE. We may be enraged at what she has become. We may rub our foreheads at the latest misguided gimmick she uses to pull in the crowds. We must, however, look for ways at least to laugh together at the Devil and his vain attempts to win the battle he has already lost and never had a chance of winning, while simultaneously realising that we are still very vulnerable to his temptations. In times of trouble, we just have to force ourselves to gaze at God through the glass darkly and live, laugh and love.

For the record, we had a metal darkly once, but it rusted