When the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus was first
announced I had a few reservations.
I was sceptical about the idea of
group reception into the Church.
My experience as a former Anglican
clergyman has convinced me that it is not possible to sugar the pill of
conversion.
It is a process that involves giving up familiar things for
the sake of the truth.
I also wondered if this was an option for
the majority of Anglo-Catholics that I knew.
The High Church wing of
the Church of England has become more Roman in recent years.
Many clergy
have used Catholic liturgies for the whole of their ministry. It would
be ironic if converting to Rome meant adopting Anglican forms of worship
for the first time.
Quite recently, I happened to read some of
the original Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC)
documents. This gave me a new understanding of the ordinariate and a
conviction that it is a profoundly ecumenical gesture.
The explicit
desire of ARCIC – initiated by Archbishop Michael Ramsay and Pope Paul
VI in 1966 – was for visible unity between Catholics and Anglicans. It
was not about remaining in separate bodies while appreciating each
other’s traditions.
This is the mistaken mindset of much that has passed
for ecumenism in recent years.
The desire was to fulfil the
Lord’s command that we should be one. It was to be done without the
Anglican tradition being absorbed.
This seems to be what
Anglicanorum coetibus has achieved. The original aim of ARCIC involved
the whole Church of England rather than a small section of it.
But with
developments in the Anglican Communion over the last few decades this
vision is now unrealistic. As Cardinal Walter Kasper pointed out at the
2008 Lambeth Conference, Anglican self-understanding seems to be more
rooted in the 16th century than the first millennium. This does not mean
that we should cease striving for unity.
But the fulfilment of this
goal will only happen with Christians who have a shared understanding of
faith and morals.
The strand of Anglicanism most compatible with
this vision is the body which grew out of the Oxford movement. Rather
than the disaffected and disgruntled people they are often accused of
being they are an immensely positive group of Christians.
The
communities that developed under the “flying bishops” were dynamic and
missionary. Dignity in worship was matched by good pastoral practice and
effective preaching.
Traditionally, Anglo-Catholics have ministered
among the urban poor. Often they served in areas where nobody else would
go. This is just something of the patrimony that will be discovered
over the months and years ahead. It is not simply a liturgical
patrimony.
Different groups will be either more or less Roman in
practice. But it is a genuine Anglican tradition that can enrich the
Catholic Church.
This new development could also help with our
peculiar religious history. Most English people have a complicated
attitude to Catholicism. On the one hand there is a degree of hostility.
This often stems from ignorance about what Catholics believe. There is
also suspicion of an uncompromising Church authority.
On the other hand
there is a fascination with the Church and a recognition that England
was once a land of saints and martyrs.
The warped genius of Henry VIII
in implementing his plan of secession was to rebrand the Catholic faith
as un-English.
Those who adhered to the old faith were disloyal.
This
attitude has remained deeply embedded in the English psyche.
The
Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham could provide a solution
to this historical wound. There are significant numbers of Christians
who are doctrinally Catholic but culturally Anglican.
Many of these
cultural elements have their roots in the pre-Reformation English
Church.
A mechanism is now available for people to enter into full
communion with Rome while retaining something of this heritage as well
as their group identity.
This is not going to be a soft option. The
conversion required is real and individual. But there is no reason why
an identity rooted in a legitimate English tradition cannot be
maintained.
The real gift of the ordinariate will be the
restoration of communion to those groups that seek it.
Many Anglicans
have hungered for this for years. Such people will be coming home –
restored to the rock from which they were hewn.
An authentically
Catholic existence is not possible without communion with Peter.
This
was the Achilles’ heel of the Oxford Movement and in their hearts most
Anglo-Catholics knew it.
The treasures that were nurtured outside the
Catholic Church can now find their true fulfilment from within. These
gifts will be purified and transformed by grace.
My own journey
into the Catholic Church was a momentous step in my life. It involved a
parting of friends and the abandoning of many things I held dear.
As I
stood in Westminster Cathedral nearly 10 years on – at the ordination of
three former bishops and the beginning of the ordinariate – I was
confronted by my Anglican history.
The cathedral was full of familiar
faces.
Some I had studied with, others had taught me, many were old
friends and parishioners.
It suddenly felt as if the fragments of my
past were being gathered up in that single moment.
As the
ordinariate begins to gather momentum it seems that the Holy Spirit is
at work.
The chief shepherd – with gentleness and love – is gathering in
the sheep.