Tuesday 31 July 2012

Pause for thought


This will be the last post here until September.
I have to confess a certain relief at the thought that in a few days we'll be leaving behind the corrosive controversies in which we are inescapably involved and heading for a very tranquil piece of rural France. 
In current circumstances contact with the 'institutional' Church (Mgr Ronald Knox's oft-quoted comment - about another jurisdiction from my own - about not looking too closely into 'the engine room' take on added significance each day that passes) seems to require  the ability to step back from its idiocies on a regular basis just to retain a modicum of sanity.
This is a summer holiday, not a time for any serious analysis of the multiple dilemmas which face traditional Anglo-Catholics who belong, despite everything, to Anglicanism's official structures. 
Yet we do - all of us - need a time of serious thought as to the realities of the future, something which the current initiatives signally fail to address - we have to be very careful indeed that in using our opponents' terminology we don't end up accepting the premises of their arguments. 
The 'Better Together' campaign, for example, states that we should accept as a fundamental principle 'respect for the ordination of women as priests and bishops.' Now one may respect, in a spirit of civility and simple good manners, individually and personally those women who have been ordained to Anglican ministry, but respect for the theology and ecclesiology which lies behind the fact of their ordination is another matter. 
"Unity, diversity, freedom and respect" are laudable concepts but, please, first define what we mean by them in the current context, or we may end up having to accept another set of definitions, ones which in themselves undermine and even exclude the very Catholic theology and practice by which we strive to live.
Time to go, I think!

6 comments:

  1. And don't forget that you are not in the full communion of the Catholic Church when it comes to joining the local community for worship.

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  2. n fact, when in our local French community (we've been there a little while now) I always hear mass on Sundays and Days of Obligation but never - ever - receive Holy Communion - for precisely the reason of which you so graciously and anonymously (but quite unnecessarily) seek to remind me. It is, however, necessary to be reminded of the scandal and pain of our disunity.

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  3. 'Now one may respect, in a spirit of civility and simple good manners, individually and personally those women who have been ordained to Anglican ministry, but respect for the theology and ecclesiology which lies behind the fact of their ordination is another matter.'
    Quite a profound statement. There are many things in this world which we must tolerate; that does not mean we approve.
    Enjoy your holiday, Father, & return refreshed to the fray!

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  4. "Better together" -- but together with what? The libs who want to destroy catholic faith and order?

    Here in the US, the few remaining conservative bishops left in TEC launched the "Indianapolis Statement" as a way of countering their denomination's error.

    Their slogan? "Keeping liberals in the Anglican Communion and traditionalists in the Episcopal Church."

    Good luck with that; it'd be sad to see the far stronger catholic movement in the U.K. devolve into such milquetoast uselessness.

    Cheers from Ikerland.

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