Well, you could knock me down with a feather duster. The Pope is looking into the subject of gay marriage. According to Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Holy Father said to him that “rather than quickly condemn them, let’s just ask the questions as to why that has appealed to certain people”. OK, it’s hardly a new Vatican policy. But language matters. And in the week of the first anniversary of Francis’s appointment as pope, it is worth recognising how far the language has come.
But things are going to change even faster for the Church of England over the next few weeks. With gay marriage becoming a legal reality on 29 March, it is certain that a number of clergy will be looking to get hitched, in direct defiance of the wishes of their bishops who have vaguely warned of disciplinary action if they do. But the truth is that the bishops can actually do very little about it. The following is slightly nerdish stuff, but for the likes of north London vicar Reverend Andrew Cain, now preparing for his nuptials, it is crucial. Writing on my Facebook page last night, the Bishop of Buckingham explained the clergy discipline measure:
“Its Section 7 lays down that matters of doctrine and worship are not justiciable under the measure, but must be tried under the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Measure 1963. Insomniacs may remember that around 10 years ago there was a proposal to have a Clergy Discipline Measure type measure for doctrine and worship cases but it failed. The legal trail leads from here to section 39 of the EJM63. The maximum penalty it lays down for a first offence is a rude letter telling you not to do it again ”“ which hopefully people getting married won’t.”
Of course, the bishops could pretend that clergy getting married is not a matter of doctrine, but this would be a bit of a problem given that they have been going round telling everyone that it is.
“The fiction that is the Anglican Communion will be over and we can go back to being the Church of England, rather than the local arm of the empire at prayer. And thank God for that.”
A breathtakingly candid, cynical admission. We can get back to being the Church of England. The Anglican Communion has nothing to do with God’s providence, evangelical sacrifice and extension, and catholic claims of the Gospel itself. No, it is empire.
“But meaning is not determined by authorial intent.” Not with regard to the Scripture, nor the 39 Articles, nor, by logical extension, even Giles’ own writings. Therefore, Giles is opposed to gay “marriage”. And Giles’ is in favor of empire, especially the Kingdom of God as he would understand it and evangelize for it, the oligarchy of teh gayz.
I wonder Giles appreciates his philosophical position: “But meaning is not determined by authorial intent”?
I pity all authors… and readers as well.
Surprise. Surprise. Why am I not surprised at Giles Fraser’s conclusion?
Thanks for chiming in, Dr. Seitz. I agree with you, but, as usual, I’d go further. A few additional comments therefore.
1. Fraser isn’t just cynical, his position actually amounts to nothing less than nihilism of the Nietschean variety, where in the end, raw, brute power is all that matters. Or in this case, legal power. But that is logical outcome of moral relativism, it inevitably degenerataes in the end into nihilism.
I’m reminded of the brilliant but devastating way that Edward Gibbon, one of the first great openly agnostic intellectuals of the Enlightenment, summed up the varying approaches to religious diversity and syncretism in the ancient Roman Empire. And like a scorpion, the sting is in the tail here.
“To the masses, all religions were equally true. To the philosphers (read: the intellectual elite today) they were all equally false. And to the rulers, they were all equally useful.”
The cynicism or even nihilism of Gobbon in his Histsory of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (published in 1776-1788) is matched by the cynicism of this notoriously “progressive” cleric’s relief over the decline and fall of the Anglican Communion in the post-colonial era. As a theological and moral relativist, this pathetic conclusion was an entirely predictable result of the trajectory Fraser has been on for a long time.
2. However, it’s not just the global Anglican Communion that is breaking up, it’s also the CoE itself that is on the verge of doing so. But I suspect that the breakup of the national church will disturb him little more than the demise of the global communion. The same forces that have torn apart the worldwide family of Anglican provinces are also inexorably tearing the Mother Church apart too. So the comfort Fraser claims to find in being able to go back to being just the CoE won’t last for long.
3. For the umpteenth time at T19, I invoke the famous last verse from the Book of Judges. In those days, precisely because there was no king in Israel, every man did what was right in his own eyes (Jud. 21:25). That is not democracy or freedom, that is sheer anarchy. In effect, Giles Fraser isn’t just a moral relativist and therefore a cynic or nihilist. He’s also a moral anarchist. He rejoices that there is no way to discipline wayward clergy in the CoE. He isn’t just opposed to the imposition of real discipline on clergy who will seek to get married once same sex marriages become legal in England in a few weeks. He is opposed in principle to any way to enforce clerical discipline on any matter for any reason, unless it agrees with his pre-concieved ideas or his agenda.
Bottom line: Therefore, we have to get over our traditional Anglican phobia about a central magisterium. Personally, I’m not half as worried about Catholic “tyranny” as I am about Protestant anarchy.
We simply MUST find a way of restoring the classic Doctrine and Discipline that has been lost and forfeited within so much of Anglicanism, especially in the Global North. We HAVE TO put the Doctrine and Discipline back into the Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship of Anglicanism. But given the fierce, stubborn resistance of heretics like Giles Fraser, that will require nothing less than…
you guessed it…
a New Reformation.
Including the disestablishment of the CoE.
David Handy+
Your ‘further’ I would not concur with. There is no evidence the Anglican Communion won’t emerge from this transition period far more clarified. It isn’t breaking up; it is finding its profile. It is sloughing off those national denominations that don’t want to be catholic members of a Communion, now by their own choosing. Before they tried to claim this is the way it always was; now they will be speaking of altering the preamble to the BCP, declaring the AC a fiction, etc. But the vast swath of the AC does not believe it is a fiction and if the ancient See which gave rise to it suffers its own fissures, that won’t make it any less a conciliar Anglicanism. It will reveal who wants this form of life in Christ and who rejects it tout court.
Hi, Dr. Seitz.
Thanks for interacting with me. I don’t want this important thread to devolve into a dialogue between the two of us, but I will respectfully disagree with you, on several counts.
1. By “I’d go further,” what I meant was my ideas about what needs to happen to save Anglicanism go much further than yours, i.e., are far more radical and far-reaching. For example, you remain fixated on saving “the Anglican Communion,” whereas I’ve given up on that futile quest and am committed to trying to salvage Anglicanism, as a unique and precious Protestant-Catholic hybrid.
2. You seem to think that a few of the rogue Global North provinces can be shoughted off and yet the old institutional wineskins of the Anglican Communion can be preserved. I’m afraid the problems go far to deep for that. The potent new wine that is fermenting within global Anglicanism is surely going to burst those old venerable wineskins. And all attempts to save the obsolete, superseded wineskins by patching them up are doomed to failure, and will only lead to disaster, as our Lord himself warned us when it comes to new wine and old, rigid wineskins that have outlived their usefulness. That is, my diagnosis of what ails Anglicanism in our time goes much deeper than yours, calling for far more drastic measures. (Mind you, I’m not cliaming that my idealistic dreams for a New Anglicanism of a frankly post-Christendom sort fit for the 21st century are necessarily feasible or achievable, I’m just asserting that they are desperately needed).
3. As one example of that, take your assumption that Anglicanism is, and can remain after losing its more liberal provinces, a “conciliar” sort of Christianity. I know that many people like to imagine fondly that Anglicanism is a conciliar form of religion, but I regard that as wishful thinking. Or to use Giles Fraser’s biting language, it’s a pleasant “fiction.”
The fact of the matter, sad to say, is that the conciliar aspect of Anglicanism at the international level is only superficial and deceptive. For all the traditional “Instruments of Unity” or Communion are merely consultative in nature, or have only moral authority, but no coercive powers. They can neither make nor enforce any binding decisions. And any church “council” worthy of the name has that power. Diocesan and provinical synods do have that power and so they qualify as church councils, but global Anglican bodies do not. And of course, they were designed that way very intentionally, not least because the CoE is a national church, by law established, which poses an insuperable obstacle to the formation of a truly conciliar Anglicanism, with a central magisterium that is collegial and international in character, to which ALL the global provinces, including the CoE, would be duly subject. Hence my reference to Protestant anarchy and Judges 21:25. That also explains my final, undeveloped dictum about the need to disestablish the CoE.
Blow taps for “the Anglican Communion.” It’s kaput, or more precisely, it’s days are numbered and few. But a whole new kind of Anglicanism is going to rise from the ashes, like the mythical Phoenix, by the grace of Christ, the firstborn from the dead. At least that is my fervent wish and hope.
Respectfully,
David Handy+
P.S. Just to further clarify how far apart our positions are, and how much further my aspirations for Anglicanism go, let me add a couple more observations to drive the point home. Besides my three earlier points, consider these two radical assertions.
4. You seem to think that when a few of the most liberal provinces have departed that the remaining bulk of the Communion will not only emerge leaner and healthier (and I’d certainly agree with that), but that thus purified, traditional Anglicanism can go on much as before, with renewed integrity and vitality, undistracted by our current wearisome inner debates. Alas, our problems go much deeper than that.
There is still the fundamental problem that worldwide Anglicanism is theologically and liturgically incoherent, and organizationally too weak to survive the stresses and strains of the 21st century. We desperately need the Anglican equivalent of Vatican II to remedy those severe deficienceis.
A. We desperately need new formularies, or at least significantly updated forms of the Articles (which are far too one-sidedly Protestant for post-1833 Anglicanism), the BCP (to correct the current liturgical chaos worldwide), and even the Quadrilateral (IMHO), as our inherited forms are badly flawed. As our spiritual forebears had the courage to amend the 1559 BCP and the 1611 KJV, so we need similar courage to dare to update both the 1571 Articles and the 1662 BCP.
B. We desperately need a wholly new system of checks and balances at the international, inter-provincial level. We can no longer afford to try to get along without a strong central judicial branch in Anglicanism. One that can over-rule the unbiblical and unsound actions of rogue synods at the diocesan and provinical level, by declaring their actions null and void, i.e., the equivalent of a global Supreme Court for Anglicanism, with the power to issue binding rulings, and impose real discipline globally. Etc.
5. You seem to underestimate how far-reaching are the implications of our new post-Christendom social setting in the Global North. I firmly believe that the Elizabethan Settlement is dead, because that venerable old arrangement took for granted that England was a Christian society, which it clearly is no longer. The whole traditional Anglican system presupposes a Constantinian sort of relationship between Church and State that no longer exists even in England (at least de facto), or at least it assumes a similar relationship between Christianity and the dominant culture. The assumption that Christianity, including Anglicanism, can be spread slowly by osmosis, through people growing up and living in a “Christian” or “Anglican” culture is an obsolete and counter-productive notion, yet it is absolutely foundational to Anglicanism as we have known it heretofore. Which is precisely why Anglicanism has to be re-designed, from the ground floor up, in order to cope with the severe demands placed upon us by the new post-Christian culture now dominant everywhere in the Global North.
6. It’s high time to face the incoherences within Anglicanism and work toward a real synthesis of the Protestant and Catholic elements within Anglicanism, instead of merely allowing them to co-exist side-by-side, as we’ve been doing for far too long. I won’t elaborate on that point, but just refer back to Stephen Sykes’ astute book back from the late 1970s, The Integrity of Anglicanism. Alas, the theological incoherence of Anglicanism has only gotten worse since then, not better.
Bottom line: We must go further than seeking to salvage the obsolete old wineskins of the Anglican Communion and have the courage to attempt a real solution to our deepest root problems in Anglicanism. What is needed isn’t merely the renewal of the Communion, but the Reformation of Anglicanism.
David Handy+