Our Ecclesial Vocation

This is the text of a letter I wrote to Bishop Philip North of Burnley in April 2016. In the light of recent events, I commend it to the Catholic movement in the Church of England as thought must now be given as to the way ahead.

Thank you for your series of articles in New Directions (December 2015, January and February 2016) on Catholic Evangelism, and for the inspiring sessions you have provided for us in the Diocese of Blackburn since your arrival last year.  Many people, including those beyond our constituency, have cause to appreciate your contribution to the mission and witness of the Church as you have spoken with genuine insight to the ecclesial and cultural situation which faces us.

In speaking of the recovery of a ‘distinctively Catholic evangelism’ in the third of your ND pieces, you say that we return to the heart and to the purpose of the Oxford Movement and the subsequent Catholic movement in the Church of England; in the sense that our forbears, rather than trying to ‘catholicise’ the Church of England, sought to recall the whole Church of England to an awareness of its inherent (Catholic) nature.  I remember writing a letter which was published in the Church Times before 1992 in reply to a correspondent who had said that he was sick of  “‘Anglo-Catholics’ trying to make the Church of England ‘Catholic’”.  My response was along the lines of saying that we were not trying to do this, precisely because the Church was Catholic already; and that we were simply trying to raise a more general awareness of what was, in fact, already the case.  This had always been part of my raison d’être since my ordination as deacon in 1985 and even before that.  I agree with you that the carving out of a Catholic niche for ourselves within the Church of England, which is effectively what we have done over the past twenty years, is reductive and represents a significant diminishment of our ecclesial vocation.

It remained possible to witness to a conviction about the essential catholicity of the Church of England after 1992-4, even though the Church of England’s claim to such had been severely compromised by the presbyteral ordination of women; it was possible because of the principle and process of ‘reception’, which introduced an at least notional degree of equivocation as to the Church of England’s self-understanding.  The present situation, however, now that the process of reception has ended, is rather different.  The Church of England, whilst honouring conscientious views as to the (im)propriety of its unilateral decision on the episcopal ordination of women, has now stated unequivocally that it has adopted a position which is at odds with the overwhelming consensus of Catholic Christendom. 

This means that, for me, it is no longer appropriate to articulate our purpose as being to bring members of the Church of England to an awareness of its Catholic identity as an ecclesial community; and this is for the simple reason that our corporate, collective identity has changed.  It is untenable to think that the Church of England can proceed to the admission of women to the episcopate and leave its essence unaffected or, indeed, intact.  I have never accepted the argument, which I associate with Affirming Catholicism, that the Church of England is, and will always be, Catholic solely by virtue of its being the Church of England; it seems clear to me that the Church of England has changed into something which it was arguably not only a few years ago.

Whilst it is undoubtedly true that we Catholics have a distinctive contribution to make to the life of the whole Church of England, and that we are a constitutive part of the whole whose convictions fall within an acknowledged spectrum of what is legitimate to be held, I would argue that we have now been reduced to inhabiting a niche.  Whilst, of course, there is the potential to give witness to the historic faith and order of the Church and thereby to wield influence and to change some minds, there is no prospect of undoing what has been done.  Further, our inhabiting of this niche is largely dependent upon the goodwill of those who do not share our convictions, since we have even been required to concede the very jurisdiction which we had originally said was an irreducible minimum requirement for us.

The Church of England is different in essence from what we have understood it to be in the past; and thus it has become impossible for me at least to understand my vocation within it in the way I understood it in the past and to which you refer in your ND piece.  We have reached the stage, I think, where serious thought is needed, on the broadest possible canvas, as to how we articulate our place and purpose afresh.