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GKC
Guest
I’m of the opinion that the Articles are meaningless, in themselves (not that many are not mere trinitarian Christianity), unless you are subject to the Subscription Act of 1571. In which case they are technically meaningless.
But sure, it takes all sorts of Anglicans. Including those who cut the things from the Prayer Book and use them to kindle the new fire at Easter.
GKC
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Paul_Rimmer
Guest
No. It’s just my opinion.
It is telling, though, that the Articles of Religion have a heavy tone, and appear in every Book of Common Prayer (that I know of). Imagine finding in a Roman Missal (as a Latin-rite Catholic) the list of corporal works of mercy, and ripping out the page because “Catholics don’t need to believe that; the opinion that they do isn’t in the Missal”. I just can’t square denying the Articles and also calling myself Anglican with my conscience. That others can impresses me. Maybe someday I’ll learn what they already know.
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Roman_Catholic_1
Guest
My reasoning for asking was because (unlike your example of Catholicism) I do not believe that Anglicanism has beliefs that one must accept in order to be Anglican. If it is something that the Anglican Church does not feel should be thrust upon Anglicans (accepting the 39 Articles) why do you feel the need to have believers accept it in order for you to consider them Anglicans?
Unless, of course, I am wrong. Which is always a high probability with me.
God bless you
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GKC
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GKC
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No, you’re right. Unless you happen to be an Ordinand of the Church of England.
GKC
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GKC
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Paul_Rimmer
Guest
I never said accepting the 39 articles was necessary (the 39 articles themselves effectively claim that they are not necessary).
I said that the articles had to be carefully considered (and reconciled at least to the point where they may be honored with a place in the Prayer Books). And that’s just an opinion of mine. It’s one of my leanings to try to keep the word “Anglican” from meaning effectively nothing.
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GKC
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Ok. I use the 1928 Book too, no use for the 79 thing, in general. But in it, the Articles are moved to a section for historical documents. Which, as an entity, is what they are.
But Anglicans being Anglicans, some folks get nostalgic for them.
Me, I get nostalgic for the Six Articles.
GKC
po18guy
Well-known member
Under one Bishop, first among equals. It was doctrinally united for over 1,000 years. Do you think that JEsus sent the twelve out with twelve different teachings?
How do the differing truths we have today represent truth? They represent only relativism.
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gurneyhalleck1
Guest
I tend to agree with you although I know GKC doesn’t. In my opinion, the 39 Articles are the heart and soul of what Anglicanism truly is. It’s their, though it’s not confessional or explicitely binding, closest thing to ever explaining what in the heck the Church of England was? Anglicanism was so loosey-goosey, and still is, but the one document you have that puts forth the agreed criterion for Anglican theology. It lays out the mindset, the values, the theology, and polity very nicely. In my opinion, it’s a great piece of evidence that the Anglican Church was very, very protestant. In acknowledging the Articles, one is taking a very evangelical protestant quasi-Calvinist stance as a Christian. These Articles are quite in opposition to the Catholic faith. In choosing to ignore the Articles, the individual is in denial, I believe, about what Anglicanism is. You can throw in rosaries, statues of Mary, benediction, incense, heck holy water and oil and vespers, icons, whatever, but it’s not catholic, it’s protestant. I know many Anglicans who embrace and are honest about that and that’s great. They call themselves “protestants” and like the Articles. They identify with them. If the Articles are so unbinding and optional, then what really IS mandatory about Anglicanism? What is the heart of it if not the Articles? The lex orandi, lex credendi doesn’t fly with me. Looks and procedure aren’t enough. I like the fact the Articles spell it out and show what things really were. The Oxford Movement took Anglicans off on a different walking trail into new forest they hadn’t traversed before. Guys like Newman tried to convince themselves and others that the Anglican Church was a branch the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church along with the other two branches–Orthodoxy and Catholicism. As he went along, he and a few others came to the realization that the Articles and the past they had been running from was not a Catholic or Orthodox one, but a Protestant one. They were, IMO, anachronistically trying to fashion Anglicanism into something it never really was—Catholic. The Latimers, Ridleys, Cranmers, and other iconoclasts, the Black Rubrics, the dissolution of the monastaries, the blood-letting, these are things I think Newman and Pusey and the gang wanted to forget and convince themselves that the Anglican Church was a branch.
The 39 Articles are the heart of Anglicanism, I believe. And if they’re not, then it’s an admission, again in my opinion, that Anglicanism is even more fickle and goofy than the rap it already gets because it has a leader (the ABC) who has no power, it has “presiding bishops” who don’t preside but rather rule with an iron fist (mostly through lawsuits), it has provinces that overlap, two camps within it’s ranks that utterly contradict one another, and it even has a statement of faith that is “optional.” In the 1570’s parliament made the Articles a legally-required reality. In the late 1600’s to hold a civil service job one had to adhere to the Articles (the Test Act). And clergy, as GKC points out, in the Church of England have always had to obey and take an oath to the Articles. Heck, even John Wesley of Methodist fame adopted the Articles and to this day they are a part of the official doctrine and belief system in the Methodist churches. So if it was good enough for England for hundreds of years, the Americans thought the Articles important enough to put into the Prayer Book, and Wesley and company thought they were a valid and useful and central statement of faith, why do Anglo-Catholics just think, since they’re not convenient and throw a monkey wrench in their Catholic theories, just chuck them into the lake as worthless?
I think those folks who affirm the 39 Articles are the truest and most honest Anglicans. And they have no business, if they do indeed affirm the Articles, joining the Catholic Church. They’d be seriously inconsistent, bizarre, and going against their consciences. The Anglo-Catholics who have nothing but the prayer book (which in itself is protestant by and large) to grab onto and the Tractarian approach to worship and church polity, those folks make the most likely group to go over the Tiber, IMO…
The 39 Articles are the heart of Anglicanism, I believe. And if they’re not, then it’s an admission, again in my opinion, that Anglicanism is even more fickle and goofy than the rap it already gets because it has a leader (the ABC) who has no power, it has “presiding bishops” who don’t preside but rather rule with an iron fist (mostly through lawsuits), it has provinces that overlap, two camps within it’s ranks that utterly contradict one another, and it even has a statement of faith that is “optional.” In the 1570’s parliament made the Articles a legally-required reality. In the late 1600’s to hold a civil service job one had to adhere to the Articles (the Test Act). And clergy, as GKC points out, in the Church of England have always had to obey and take an oath to the Articles. Heck, even John Wesley of Methodist fame adopted the Articles and to this day they are a part of the official doctrine and belief system in the Methodist churches. So if it was good enough for England for hundreds of years, the Americans thought the Articles important enough to put into the Prayer Book, and Wesley and company thought they were a valid and useful and central statement of faith, why do Anglo-Catholics just think, since they’re not convenient and throw a monkey wrench in their Catholic theories, just chuck them into the lake as worthless?
I think those folks who affirm the 39 Articles are the truest and most honest Anglicans. And they have no business, if they do indeed affirm the Articles, joining the Catholic Church. They’d be seriously inconsistent, bizarre, and going against their consciences. The Anglo-Catholics who have nothing but the prayer book (which in itself is protestant by and large) to grab onto and the Tractarian approach to worship and church polity, those folks make the most likely group to go over the Tiber, IMO…
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GKC
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7_Sorrows
Guest
i wonder what king henry viii would think of anglicanism in today’s world.
considering there is no papal authority and no magisterium in anglicanism, it is no surprise at what has happened.
i grew up in the episcopal church for 18 years, then belonged to no church for 28 years
and was an anglican for a short while before finally converting to the Catholic church in 2008.
growing up, the episcopal church meant a lot to me. i loved it, but always wondered what the difference was. there is a lot of difference and i could never return to the episcopal church. i don’t even have any real desire to attend an anglican use mass although i am glad that they are becoming available. i am content to see myself as Catholic now and even though i agree with a poster who says the Catholic church is not as united as it portrays itself to be (something which has surprised me). i still hope it will be able to hold itself together as we deal with all the issues today that are dividing other churches and religions.
considering there is no papal authority and no magisterium in anglicanism, it is no surprise at what has happened.
i grew up in the episcopal church for 18 years, then belonged to no church for 28 years
and was an anglican for a short while before finally converting to the Catholic church in 2008.
growing up, the episcopal church meant a lot to me. i loved it, but always wondered what the difference was. there is a lot of difference and i could never return to the episcopal church. i don’t even have any real desire to attend an anglican use mass although i am glad that they are becoming available. i am content to see myself as Catholic now and even though i agree with a poster who says the Catholic church is not as united as it portrays itself to be (something which has surprised me). i still hope it will be able to hold itself together as we deal with all the issues today that are dividing other churches and religions.
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Roman_Catholic_1
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I got’cha. I misunderstood your original post that I responded to. You’re opinion is that an Anglican can reject any and all of the 39 Articles so long as they take their rejection seriously. Correct?
God bless
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Contarini
Guest
This is an argument with a certain force (the presence of the Roman Communion nearly everywhere does mean, at the very least, that its pretensions to Catholicity should be taken seriously and not rejected without very good reason), but don’t make too much of it. After all, the presence of your Communion throughout the world is a fact only of the last 500 years and is clearly tied to European colonial expansion.
First of all, whether the Orthodox can call a “universal Council” is a matter of debate and definition. The Orthodox have had councils which have solved doctrinal issues. Their modesty in choosing not to call these “Ecumenical Councils” is not, as far as I can see, a point against them. I can’t see that their councils have been any less “universal” in any meaningful sense than the equivalent post-Schism Catholic councils.
Furthermore, if George Florovsky is right and Councils are essentially charismatic events rather than essential constitutional features of the Church (as the late medieval Western Conciliarists saw them), then the issue isn’t as huge as you think.
That’s an understandable mistake, since they are very conservative in most respects, and since they themselves often claim never to have changed at all. From my perspective, this claim is clearly false and the fact that they make it is one of my major concerns with them. But in fact they have developed–just less dramatically than Western Christianity. I see that conservatism as a good thing, not as “stagnation.”
The Orthodox tend not to use the language of “development” (Catholics didn’t use it till after the Reformation either–the Council of Trent makes claims about the identity of 16th-century Catholicism with the teachings of the Fathers which are just as strong, and even more untenable, than those commonly made by the Orthodox), and as I said that’s a flaw in their apologetics. But it’s really a question of semantics–I think they could better make their case by arguing that their developments have been legitimate (the clarification and articulation of the essence/energies distinction is the main one), while ours (“we” being Western Christians generally) have not been.
Leaving Protestants out of it, it seems generally accepted by many “ressourcement” Catholic theologians (including the Pope to some extent) that on the whole the Eastern Church’s way of looking at soteriological questions is better. That means that many of the developments in Western Christianity were somewhat distorted, because they proceeded from an overly legalistic starting point. Contemporary Catholic theology tends to put post-Schism Catholic developments (like indulgences) into an essentially Eastern framework (theosis rather than merit). I think this is great, and the Catholic willingness to do so is one of the reasons I hesitate to give up on Western Christianity altogether and become Orthodox. But I wish triumphalist online apologists would take this into account when they make claims about the Orthodox being “stagnant” or “frozen in time.”
Edwin
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Contarini
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It’s certainly a fascinating curiosity, but hardly more than that. Newman himself clearly was not satisfied with this interpretation!
I don’t quite know what you mean by “taking them seriously.” I can certainly claim to take them seriously–that is, when you ask me what the Anglican position on something is, the Articles are going to be one of the major resources I’ll draw on. So I guess I’m a real Anglican by your definition, although I certainly don’t always agree with them. I was not asked to subscribe to them when I became Anglican, and in fact when I once asked my priest how his view of the Eucharist was compatible with the Articles (since he seemed to be teaching transubstantiation), he said, “IV Lateran has more authority than the Articles.” Again, arguably he took them seriously–he just thought that the consensus of the pre-Reformation Church was more authoritative. (Note: this is the most Anglo-Catholic priest I’ve ever had, and he is no longer an Episcopalian.)
Edwin
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