Was reunification between the Catholic Church and Anglican Communion ever a viable prospect?

[GKMotley]

but also affirm the ordination of women, hold liberal positions on issues such as homosexuality, and read Don Cupitt and his predecessors in the South Bank school of theology.

Or, outside the CoE (at least), don’t.

 

[GKMotley]

And then, Wales.

Welsh Church Act 1914 - Wikipedia

Chesterton’s poem, cited, is a hoot.

 

[PickyPicky]

What does disestablishment mean?

My guess is that it means undertaking a whole bundle of legislation in Parliament and General Synod. I can see Synod might at some time want to do this, but I’m unsure that any politician would want to invest effort and popularity in such a project. I suppose some militant, Facebook-fed anti-religion movement might spur them into action.

Is there a current economic, political, or public relations benefit for being the official Church?

Pluses and minuses I would think. I suppose getting involved in state pageantry gives a glamour boost, and there is a platform in the House of Lords (viz Archbishop Welby’s speech opposing legislation establishing a right for ministers to break the law). But of course it sets the Church up as an aunt sally when it mis-steps or says something too Christian for popular approval.

 

[commenter]

commenter:

What does disestablishment mean?

My guess is that it means undertaking a whole bundle of legislation in Parliament and General Synod. I can see Synod might at some time want to do this, but I’m unsure that any politician would want to invest effort and popularity in such a project. I suppose some militant, Facebook-fed anti-religion movement might spur them into action.

Is there a current economic, political, or public relations benefit for being the official Church?

Pluses and minuses I would think. I suppose getting involved in state pageantry gives a glamour boost, and there is a platform in the House of Lords (viz Archbishop Welby’s speech opposing legislation establishing a right for ministers to break the law). But of course it sets the Church up as an aunt sally when it mis-steps or says something too Christian for popular approval.

Would people use disestablishment as a justification for eliminating subsidies for religious schools, and eliminating prayers in government schools?

 

[BartholomewB]

Would people use disestablishment as a justification for eliminating subsidies for religious schools,

Probably not, because the rules governing church schools apply equally to all churches, established or not, and to all religions, including Judaism and Islam.

 

[PickyPicky]

Would people use disestablishment as a justification for eliminating subsidies for religious schools, and eliminating prayers in government schools?

I don’t think the two things are necessarily closely linked. Removing the requirement for daily religious services would only require amending the 1944 Education Act (I think — I say this very confidently but I could be wrong — later legislation might have included this requirement, I suppose) without the rigmarole of disestablishment. There are lots of targets the anti-religious might fire at, of course.

And we could go the whole Henry VIII and steal the investments of the Church Commissioners.

 

[Bithynian]

The faction who sought (and perhaps still seek) corporate reunion would be the conservative Anglo-Catholics sometimes known as Anglo-Papalists.

I think that might be the case now. But historically there was broad support for reunion across the conservative-progressive divide within Anglo-Catholicism: Abp. Runcie was the archetypal liberal Anglo-Catholic, and in his 1989 visit to Rome, he said:

For the universal church, I renew the plea, could not all Christians come to reconsider the kind of primacy the bishop of Rome (pope) exercised within the early church, a ‘presiding in love’ for the sake of the unity of the churches in the diversity of their mission?

An additional problem is that the term ‘Anglo-Catholic’ can be exceedingly nebulous and it might mean very many different things to many people. For example, although most Anglicans in the UK and US would not actively identify as Anglo-Catholic, these regions have historically been dominated by moderate, latent Anglo-Catholicism in the 20th century, and this is generally taken for granted.

The dominance of Anglo-Catholicism can be seen in minor things such as the use of mitres and copes (which were frequently decried as ‘un-American’ in the late 19th century), and in major praxis such Holy Communion having transitioned from a yearly occasion to being the major weekly service (with a commensurate explosion in sacramental theology). In the 1960s, Martyn Lloyd-Jones was even beckoning Anglican evangelicals to dump the CoE because he saw no future for biblical theology in a church run by ‘ritualists’ and ‘sacramentalists’.

 

[scousekiwi]

None of that is really possible in the 21st century and it seems extremely unlikely for a reunification to occur except gradually with each individual person. As far as just the Anglican Church in the UK goes, there are already more practicing Catholics than practicing Anglicans, so in a sense, the reunification has already happened and it seems that more gross numbers of Catholic isn’t far off in the future.

I would certainly agree that even in the 19th or 20th centuries it was never feasible to imagine that people would be happy to be forced into communion with the Catholic Church through decisions taken by prelates and politicians. Indeed, Protestant nonconformity has a long history in England and Wales dating back to the 16th century.

I believe that I am correct in thinking that you are from the United States. It is possible, in that case, that you may not have first-hand experience of a particular kind of Anglo-Catholicism that has a long history in England (and, perhaps, Wales). There has always been a faction within the Church of England which believes that the Church of England is the Catholic Church in England (and, presumably, Wales, which became an independent province in 1920). They claim that after the Reformation, the Catholic Church persisted in the rest of the world as the institution known as the Catholic Church, while in England and Wales, it persisted as the Church of England (and, since 1920, the Church in Wales).

Needless to say, proponents of this view must be capable of doublethink at a high level. If the Anglican Church is the Catholic Church in England and Wales, it is rather difficult to explain the existence of an organisation calling itself “the Catholic Church in England and Wales”. What is even more confusing is that the pope himself clearly believes that the organisation calling itself “the Catholic Church in England and Wales” is the real Catholic Church in England and Wales. Indeed, if the Church of England is the Catholic Church, one must wonder why the Catholic Church went to so much trouble to maintain a presence in England and Wales during and immediately after the Reformation. One must also wonder why the bishops and archbishops of the Church of England were not invited to the Council of Trent and the First and Second Vatican Councils. It has been remarked that, despite the clear contradiction contained in the 37th Article of Religion, this faction of Anglo-Catholicism accepts the jurisdiction of the pope in every matter but one, namely, the ruling by Leo XIII that their holy orders are “absolutely null and utterly void”.

The aim of corporate reunion was therefore not that individual Anglicans should migrate to the Catholic Church, but that the entire Church of England should be restored to communion with the Apostolic See. This would reflect the view that Anglicanism is not a Protestant denomination, but a separated part of the Catholic Church. Needless to say, this is a view with which I disagree entirely.

 

[AlNg]

Given that the Catholic Church does not recognise the validity of our apostolic succession, holy orders, or sacraments (apart from baptism), the idea that the Anglican Communion could become part of the Catholic Church without root and branch reform was always unrealistic.

True. I don’t understand why Catholics go out of their way to insult the Traditional Anglicans by saying that their Eucharist is just plain bread and plain wine. Didn’t Jesus say that “Whenever two or three of you come together in my name , I am there with you” ? If Jesus is there with them while they celebrate the very reverent traditional Anglican liturgy, why would He not support the invoking of the Holy Spirit to change the bread and wine into His body and Blood?

 

[GKMotley]

Not all traditionalist Anglicans are insulted. Most I know merely get on with receiving their validly confected sacraments, confected by their validly ordained clergy.

Opinions, of course, vary widely on that subject.

 

[TK421]

@scousekiwi

If there was ever a formal reunion from the top-down, which seems inconceivable anytime in this century or the next century, there would be an instantaneous split (or multiple splits) with a large portion not being in full communion.

Because Anglicanism was originally in a state of schism before the lose of Holy Orders, it is treated a little different from other branches of protestantism. i.e. there is an Anglican Rite of the Catholic Church that theoretically could spread in the UK and elsewhere, probably in former colony territories.

 

[BartholomewB]

This would reflect the view that Anglicanism is not a Protestant denomination, but a separated part of the Catholic Church.

To my surprise, I heard something similar from the priest who handled my conversion, back in the nineties. Rather than just Catholics and Protestants, he evidently saw a threefold division into Catholics, Protestants, and Anglicans.

 

[bpd_stl]

scousekiwi:

This would reflect the view that Anglicanism is not a Protestant denomination, but a separated part of the Catholic Church.

To my surprise, I heard something similar from the priest who handled my conversion, back in the nineties. Rather than just Catholics and Protestants, he evidently saw a threefold division into Catholics, Protestants, and Anglicans.

Add to this: Catholics, Orthodox & Anglican

This was how Anglicanism was presented to me when I inquired about it way back: not Protestant but a distinct branch of apostolic Christianity along with Catholicism & Orthodoxy. It was one of the reasons I converted to Anglicanism back in the 90’s since because I couldn’t stomach becoming a “Papist:” I was simultaneously fascinated & revolted by Catholicism…but as a disillusioned evangelical Protestant, I just couldn’t bring myself to “make the leap.”

I eventually did make the leap, though.

 

[Genesis315]

According to Cardinal Kasper when he was in charge of ecumenism, their choice to ordain women to the episcopate destroyed any realistic possibility of actual unity:

It is our hope that a theological dialogue between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church will continue, but this development affects directly the goal and alters the level of what we pursue in dialogue. The 1966 Common Declaration signed by Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey called for a dialogue that would “lead to that unity in truth, for which Christ prayed”, and spoke of “a restoration of complete communion of faith and sacramental life”. It now seems that full visible communion as the aim of our dialogue has receded further, and that our dialogue will have less ultimate goals and therefore will be altered in its character. While such a dialogue could still lead to good results, it would not be sustained by the dynamism which arises from the realistic possibility of the unity Christ asks of us, or the shared partaking of the one Lord’s table, for which we so earnestly long.

The whole thing is a good read on the issues with Anglicanism departing further from the apostolic faith, rather than getting closer to it, and the divisions caused amongst themselves by it.

Message of Cardinal Kasper to Lambeth Conference

 

[Bithynian]

Rather than just Catholics and Protestants, he evidently saw a threefold division into Catholics, Protestants, and Anglicans.

An example of this shift in theology is that the Episcopal Church was historically named ‘The Protestant Episcopal Church’, until their Synod in 1979 removed ‘Protestant’.

Much of this occurred due to a particular theological trend towards defining Anglicanism as a purported via media (‘middle way’) between Rome and Geneva: neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant, but ‘Catholic’ and ‘Reformed’. Many Anglo-Catholics came to embrace this identity, but it was (and still is) subject to rigorous critique by Anglican evangelicals who argue that if Anglicanism is a via media, then it’s a middle way between Wittenberg and Geneva, and that ‘authentic’ and ‘historical’ (whatever these terms might mean in any given context) Anglicanism is unambiguously Protestant in character (39 Articles, Oxford Martyrs, etc.).

There’s a strong element of truth to this. I was reading Tennyson’s In Memoriam A.H.H. a few weeks ago; it was his magnum opus and very descriptive of Anglican thinking in the Victoria era (Tennyson’s father was an Anglican priest). In the third line, he writes ‘[Son of God whom we] by faith, and faith alone, embrace’. Can’t get more Protestant than that!

 

[Maximian]

I reckon that’s a pretty good summary. The High Churchmen in the tradition of the Oxford Movement might have won the day (complete with Transubstantiation, invocation of saints and possibly the Marian Dogmata, if they had been as unscrupulous as the pro-women’s ordination faction in packing the parchial church councils and thence the General Synod.

 

[BartholomewB]

This was how Anglicanism was presented to me when I inquired about it way back: not Protestant but a distinct branch of apostolic Christianity along with Catholicism & Orthodoxy.

Much of this occurred due to a particular theological trend towards defining Anglicanism as a purported via media (‘middle way’) between Rome and Geneva:

I never followed up on a remark that was only tangential to our conversation at that moment. The priest had asked me whether I had been baptized and, if so, in what church. My reply was something like, “Yes, baptized as a Protestant in the Anglican church.” Years later, here at CAF, I read something that triggerered that recollection, and I tried to follow it up here, but to no avail. No one seemed to have any idea what I meant.

 

[Xarto]

Interesting that you say being married is almost a prerequisite for becoming a bishop in Anglicanism when the opposite is true for the Orthodox.

 

[Xarto]

The Diocese of Sydney has already jettisoned the ‘Anglican’ label and most of its patrimony: many parishes have lay people (even unbaptized) presiding over the Eucharist, which can sometimes comprise Coke and pizza

That just blows my mind and scares me at the same time. There is so much talk here (Ireland) of lay people taking over more roles if we lose our priests. I wonder how far down the rabbit hole will we fall.

 

[GKMotley]

I am patient. And irenic.

Mostly.