There are signs that proper Anglo-Catholics – the Forward in Faith crowd, not the Vichyite Affirming “Catholics” – realise that the game is up. In the February issue of the newsletter of the Diocese of Ebbsfleet, David Smart, vice chairman of its lay council, predicts a parting of ways. The big question, he says, is whether Anglo-Catholics part as friends.
The newsletter doesn’t, alas, tell us what progress the Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Andrew Burnham, has made with plans to lead some of his people into full communion with Rome. My guess is that he still doesn’t know how things will play out. A lot depends on the identity of the next Archbishop of Westminster.
I’m not sure about the prospects of a “move” to Rome. However, the ruthless and uncompromising nature of the movement for women bishops in the CoE speaks volumes – Romans 14 calls for a much higher standard.
🙄
The “prospects” may be unclear, but the commitment to such a move on the part of the FIF/UK leadership is certain to anyone who is acquainted with them (as I am). The question on which there is disagreement among them, even on the episcopal level, concerns timing. On the one hand, given that last July’s General Synod vote on women bishops failed by a wide margin to provide even minimally-acceptable guarantees for the maintenance of the “orthodox integrity” (as they term themselves) in the Church of England (and given also that the whole scheme of “alternative episcopal oversight” provided for opponents of WO in 1993 will be terminated with the advent of women “bishops”), some think that now is the time to man the lifeboats and to begin to cross that Italian river; on the other hand, some think that as a matter of principle those of the “orthodox integrity” ought to carry on the struggle to try to secure adequate provisions for themselves until it is clear that “the field is lost.”
Since (as it seems) once the initial proposal to draft legislation for women “bishops” is approved at the February 2009 session of the General Synod, the “revision committee” that will be set up to draft that legislation will have a wide remit to include expansions, modifications, restrictions, “guarantees” and/or “schemes” — in a phrase, anything or nothing — in the legislation, and then that draft bill will have to be approved by the General Synod, then sent down to each diocesan synod for consideration, then returned to the General Synod for further debate, possible modification and final passage — and then go to the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament for consideration (this is a committee drawn from both the House of Lords and the House of Commons whose sole task is to declare legislation passed by the General Synod “expedient” or “not expedient” before passing it on to both Houses of Parliament for debate and passage [or defeat]; it is not simply a “rubber stamp,” since it was the likelihood that the committee would have declared the “Women’s Ordination (Priesthood) Act” of 1992 inexpedient, and so ensure its defeat in Parliament, that prompted the General Synod to formulate and enact the 1993 “Act of Synod” that set up the whole “alternative episcopal oversight/flying bishops” scheme that has kept the FIF/UK constituency in the Church of England to the present day), then be passed by both Houses of Parliament (probably pro-forma, but likely to take 6 to 8 months), then receive the Royal Assent (pro-forma) and then be “promulged” at the next regularly scheduled General Synod session before it takes effect legally — given all this, others think that they have an obligation to carry on the struggle until the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament formally declares the proposed legislation to be “expedient,” and they reckon that this stage will hardly be reachable before ca. February 2013.
Such is the disagreement among them. At the practical level there is another concern, which is the feeling that if any significant number of lay Anglo-Catholics will follow the bishops and clergy who are advocating for “the Roman Option,” the adrenaline has freely to flow, the debate has to be ratcheted up and it had to appear plainly to be the case, as well as actually to be the case, that the advent of women ‘bishops” will render any traditional Anglo-Catholic ecclesiological stance untenable in the Church of England, and that a retreat to a kind of “Anglo-Catholic congregationalism” will have the effect merely of prolonging their death agony, not of evading it.
That the “flaminification” of the Church of England will be the same sort of “herald” for English Anglo-Catholic that the death rattle is for moribund individuals can easily be verified by glancing at the history of WO in the Church of Sweden, TE”C” or the other Scandinavian State Churches — but my English friends will have to experience it themselves to realize its truth.
I hope and pray that the “Roman Option” that Dr. Tighe speaks about comes to pass.
Let me say, without reservation, that Anglo-Catholics will have a much more profound effect on world Christianity IN the Catholic church, rather than OUTSIDE of it…by starting up a new denomination (or parallel jurisdiction, as is happening here in the US).
Very slowly, the Benedictine revolution is spreading in the Catholic Church and wiping away the failed liberalism that has permeated since before Vatican 2. An infusion of Anglo-Catholics, committed to historic Christianity and the Pope, would only help cement this revolution and push it further and faster.
As I have noted before, with things like this, we see that the Church of England is not even in communion with itself. One wonders, then, what the point of the Anglican Communion is as a whole. It seems, with any Catholic understanding whatsoever, that there is none.
“vichyite” Affirming Catholicism? What is he talking about?
John, I took it to be painting Affirming Catholicism adherents as people claiming to be loyal to the Catholic Tradition but actually working to undermine it.
A clear term to the historically informed, JW. What about the Vichy accomodationist regime working with Germany to undermine French existence is difficult to grasp in the vichyite affirming catholic movement? The height of cultural enslavement as opposed to resistance and maintenance of the real identity of France and Catholic. Shall examples be multiplied?
#6&7;. That is exactly what I thought he meant. Dude has got a serious chip on his shoulder.
Another example of Godwin’s Law, alas. But I can better understand the rage of my opponents if they seriously think me and my friends are like Hitler.
No, the similitude is with his collaborators among those whom he had conquered.
JW, you are being obtuse on purpose I trust. Godwin’s law deals with the conquering regime, but vichy-ites would be those allied with the regime as in the vichy government. I believe the related term in a more northernly direction is quisling.
However, I do suggest we establish wilson’s law which should be related to the speed at which connections not made by the original author are deliberately misinterpreted by a reader to advance a vichy-ite or quisling agenda. And they hold that some things cannot happen at greater than light speed! ;>)
This
http://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com/2009/01/num-quid-boni-mancuniae_16.html
will explain more fully what “Vichy” (and “Quislings”) means in this context.
Irregardless, ‘vichy-ite’ is silly, immature name calling and below us as Christians to engage with it.
Not at all. Vichy-ite is often an apt, adjectival description of the behavior of certain people who collaborate with and assist the opponent in the achievement of the opponent’s goals, with the motive of producing at least some peace and a modicum of less discomfort for the collaborator — something that some “conservative” Anglicans do.
I note also that John Wilkins recognized the aptness of that descriptor when he quickly produced the classic invocation of Godwin’s Law that resulted in Quirk’s Exception: “intentional invocation of Godwin’s Law is ineffectual.”
To wit: [blockquote]It is considered poor form to raise such a comparison arbitrarily with the motive of ending the thread. There is a widely recognized codicil that any such ulterior-motive invocation of Godwin’s law will be unsuccessful (this is sometimes referred to as “Quirk’s Exception”).[6][/blockquote]
Revealing.
.Give it up, John. Godwin’s Law has been declared unconstitutional by a unanimous ruling of the SCOTUS (Supreme Court Of Titusonenine’s Usual Suspects).
Still its worth reminding that the only reason people probably read him is because he says that sort of ridiculous thing. Then we are presumably supposed to discuss how its like vichy-ite France or the like. Who are the real Catholics? Reminds me of the story of Claire Boothe Luce and the Pope.
My only dog in this hunt is wanting to be in a church that retains the A-C faction, so the sniping here is wasted on me. People claim the “Catholic” brand name, and it matters not to me; the AffCath people are sailing under false colors, and whether Vichy has anything to do with it, they are more Aff than Cath– at least, with the Cath that comes from Rome.
RE: “Still its worth reminding that the only reason people probably read him is because he says that sort of ridiculous thing.”
I read him for his insights on Roman Catholicism, in particular in the UK.
[quote]Vichy-ite is often an apt, adjectival description of the behavior of certain people who collaborate with and assist the opponent in the achievement of the opponent’s goals, with the motive of producing at least some peace and a modicum of less discomfort for the collaborator—something that some “conservative” Anglicans do.[/quote]
And that’s where I part company. I dont think anyone on ‘the other side’ is an enemy; I think they’re wrong. There’s a big difference between the two designations. TEC is treating conseratives as ‘enemies’ and the Conservatives are doing likewise. It’s simply not Christian, and it needs to stop. And language like ‘vichy-ite’ just compounts the sin.
RE: “I dont think anyone on ‘the other side’ is an enemy . . . ”
Nice of you to mention that — but what it has to do with my comment I don’t know.
RE: “And language like ‘vichy-ite’ just compounts the sin.”
Language like vichy-ite compounds no sin at all, nor is it a sin to acknowledge that there are opponents in the conflicts that roil the Anglican Communion.
I don’t think that Athanasius and those who, with him, upheld Nicene orthodoxy would have regarded Arius, Constantius, Macedonius and that crew as “wrong, but not enemies,” but rather as heretics and enemies of the Truth; and in the proponents of SS and revisionist “Christianity” we certainly see folk who depart more profoundly from dogmatic Christianity than the Arians.