When the Vatican announced its new canonical structure that will allow Anglicans to enter en masse into the Holy Catholic Church, clerical ecumenists on both sides of the fence scrambled to make sense of Pope Benedict XVI’s monumental gesture on their own terms. Ecumenical dialogue partners Vincent Nichols, the Catholic archbishop of Westminster, and Rowan Williams, the Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, the de facto leader of worldwide Anglicanism, in a joint press release, described the impending publication of the apostolic constitution that would formalize the new structure as “further recognition of the substantial overlap in faith, doctrine and spirituality between the Catholic Church and the Anglican tradition.”
It is true that there is significant overlap in many areas ”” the Anglican Communion, after all, split off from the Catholic Church in the 1500s but retained a greater sense of Catholicity than the other Protestant sects that developed out of the Reformation on the Continent. But the practical effect of the Pope’s apostolic constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus (“Groups of Anglicans,” released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on Nov. 9, complete with complementary norms), has been to crystallize the significant differences between modern Anglicanism and Holy Mother Church.
This article in light of recent Synodial and Diocesan movements might be subtitled “The Death of the Via Media?”
As mentioned, there is significant overlap in many areas between
the AC and RCC. However, the author’s use of “chasm” is also
quite on the mark. The shift is absolutely tectonic.
Maybe a recognition that the via media was a lie in itself.
I for one will mourn the death of ‘via media’ as I understand it. A middle way between catholic and protestant ‘styles’ of worship as opposed to theological waffle as it has been understood lately. I long for a church that holds within itself an elevated and reverent liturgy as well as a free-flowing and extemporaneous worship and outreach… I’ve appreciated the fact that Anglicanism has held these within itself…
Via Media to me meant sacramental, apostolic and Biblically reformed, and in dialogue with both Catholics and Protestants. Because revisionism attacks both the sacraments and Bible as classically understood, it has turned any via media into a chasm. And what kind of path is a chasm and where will it take us anyway? The sad thing is that that chasm has divided classical TEC evangelicals from classical TEC highchurchers because both must go in opposite directions to find refuge.