Relating to Rome

Series Introduction

In this series of blog posts, we will survey some of the ecumenical relationships the Anglican Catholic Church enjoys with its sister churches worldwide. What Anglicans think about other ecclesial traditions is frequently asked in our Inquirers’ Class each year and in pastoral correspondence with visitors. The scope of these posts will be standard observations about unity and disunity combined with some of the nuances that on-the-ground pastoral work has afforded me. While it is impossible to exhaustively explore the areas of agreement or disagreement between all the branches of the Church, I intend to offer an honest characterization of things as we tend to experience them in our parish and diocese. I am realistic about the impediments to organic unity. Still, I am also hopeful because the unity of the Spirit is on display among the more prayerful members of a given tradition, and polemical saber-rattlers rarely represent the mainstream.

A Common Past

In this post, we will start with the common question concerning our relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. Historically, the Church in England was established before the concrete notion of Roman Catholicism had formed. As historian John Moorman notes, the formation of the Church in England was the combined work of early Gallic Christians, themselves converted and formed anciently by Antiochene Christianity, as well as missionaries sent to Britain from Rome. That Gallic Rite proved influential in the northern parts of the British Isles, developing the early tendencies of Celtic Christianity. From the southern end of things, the Roman Rite arrived with St. Augustine of Canterbury in the late 6th Century, who discovered a community of practicing Christians on his arrival. Told to leave them be in all matters that were not heretical by Pope Gregory the Great, the two rites coexisted until the latter half of the 7th Century.

While there was sporadic but unsystematic controversy over which Rite was supreme, an issue arose over the dating of Easter, as each Rite employed a different method of dating it, resulting in confusion over when the arch-holiday was to be celebrated. At the Synod of Whitby in 667 A.D., the two traditions disputed the issue, with the Roman Rite leaving in the ascendant position. The local matter came to represent an increasingly expansive victory as relations between the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople deteriorated in the centuries approaching the Great Schism of the 11th Century. After Rome had fallen from its historical position of primacy with the destruction of the city in the 5th Century, the spiritual and cultural center of the catholic world migrated to Constantinople. As Rome was restored to a place of cultural and political influence with the rise of the Holy Roman Empire in the 9th Century, so questions arose of whether it ought to resume its prior place of primacy in the Christian world. Tensions rose between East and West, leading to the Schism of 1054 A.D. and the mutual excommunication of their respective popes.

As the West and East suffered this blow to their ecumenical relations, the West continued to face the question of Rome’s place as the spiritual center of the Church. As had been the case with the pagan Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire suffered from shifting alliances and assent to their centrality from different parts of their empire. Historically, England continued to acknowledge the Pope as the Bishop of Rome, the Metropolitan of Italy, the Primate of Europe, and the Patriarch of the West. No bishopric in the West had as ancient a claim or as great a dignity as the Church in which Ss. Peter and Paul had fulfilled their ministries and met their martyrdoms. It may surprise some Anglicans that our Church still has every reason to honor the Bishop of Rome as, historically, a first among equals.

The troubles between our churches began to come into focus around the time of the Schism. Questions of the authority of the Pope in Rome rankled the other Patriarchs of the historical Sees at Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople. At the heart of the dispute is a theological question still alive and disputed today: the location of Church authority, whether it was in the Bishop of the prime See or in what is called the College of Bishops, the foremost of which being the heads of those ancient capitols of the Church. One can easily see in this era the influence of political power and vast material wealth as the Church was battered by the temptations to become like a worldly kingdom. Often resembling the leaders of the Gentiles rather than the servants of the servants of God, the princes of the Church often colluded with civil authorities to bolster their ecclesial positions, incurring a knotted economy of favors between them that became impossible to disentangle.

The Start of the Strain

Between the 11th and 15th Centuries, the Church in England tended more and more toward a conciliar view of Church authority. This partly owed to the dizzying intertwining of the Roman Church with ascendant political families. Elsewise, it owed to another schism in the Western Church known as the Avignon Papacy, in which it was not clear who the Pope was given competing claims to the title between two elected popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon, France. As with the Great Schism, both popes excommunicated the other, leading to a skeptical crisis over the center of Church authority in the West. The embarrassing crisis bolstered a movement among many dioceses and provinces to reconsider the point of visible unity for the Church, with many more seriously considering that ancient consensus of the College of Bishops in Synod with each other. As the Avignon Schism subsided, Rome’s attempts to reestablish its primacy amplified its relationships with civil rulers, who among themselves were undergoing a realignment of their sense of supremacy over each other. The stage was set for the conflicts that followed.

I have included this history to establish a more accurate framework for the Reformation era that followed these things. Many assume the Church in England is a product of King Henry VIII wanting a divorce from his wife, Catherine of Aragon. As with the histories of the Celtic Christians, the Great Schism, and the Avignon Papacy, it is often difficult to discern the events apart from the lens of voluminous writing from Rome decidedly interested in upholding its historical claims. As we will discuss in a moment, this continues to perplex ecumenical relations between Roman Catholics and Anglicans over the basic question of valid Holy Orders and Sacraments. To the extent that there are conflicts in our time, they pale in comparison with the ferocity of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. England, in particular, suffered a season of pendulum-swing between staunch Roman Catholic rule and emergent Protestant sentiment. Again, as John Moorman notes, any attempt to view the meaning of this era for either Rome or Canterbury in a window narrower than the early 16th through the late 17th Centuries is prone to misunderstanding. Even so, such misunderstandings remain common and emphatic.

The Anglican / Roman Schism

By the end of the Reformation era, England had suppressed the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome in England to the point of outlawing Roman Catholicism and overt allegiance to the Bishop of Rome within the country (a set of laws that would endure until the early 19th Century). Ecclesially, the Church in England had retained the historical Succession of Bishops who presided over the creation and refining of a Book of Common Prayer to unite English Christians in their worship, retaining substantially the spirit of the Benedictine Rule while also rendering it in a liturgical form of English to serve churches in a language the people understood.

As with the Roman Church, this era was replete with instances of clergy colluding with civil authorities and vice versa so as to establish their authority and claims. In England, with each successive sitting monarch came a new pressure on the Church to conform in some way. It is a testament to God’s faithfulness to the Anglicans that the essentials persevered through a nightmarish series of political upheavals. These essentials—the historical episcopate, commitment to the Councils, realist sacramentalism, liturgical norms in Mass and Office, ascetical formation, and moral theology—continued to be the golden thread connecting Anglican faith and practice to the historical and undivided Church.

From the Anglican side, the legal exile of our Roman brethren allowed us to entertain eccentric notions about our own history. Some of those notions persist today among those who embody a fundamentalist tendency in their relationship with what are called ‘formularies,’ the most notable being the 39 Articles of Religion still included in most Prayer Books. The Articles were an irenic set of theological principles designed to unite a fragmenting national church during an intensely volatile period. They always required elaboration and interpretation. For Anglo-Catholics, this came about through the liturgical norms of Archbishop William Laud, the pastoral theology of Bp. Jeremy Taylor, writings of Richard Hooker, and the Tracts of the Oxford Movement (which we will address in a moment). Among them, we find a powerfully demonstrated and coherent reading of the Articles that retains a living connection with the ancient and undivided Church.

There were, by contrast, Anglican divines who insistently read the Articles and other formularies as points of departure from the Tradition, first with Rome and then with the broader, historical Church. Some influential Anglicans adopted the increasingly divisive beliefs of the Reformers to legitimize not just a jurisdictional separation but also a radical theological separation. To this day, there are Anglicans who insist on foregrounding those areas of our faith and practice that most ardently disagree with Roman Catholics to the point of falling into erroneous views of our shared history and even to the point of becoming outright schismatics. Anglican infighting has been perhaps our greatest besetting sin and continues to plague our relations with other churches and within ourselves.

That problem became more complicated through the globalization of the Church of England through the spread of the British Empire through the end of the 18th Century. What was historically the Western Catholic Church in England became not all that unlike the Roman Catholic Church, in that Anglican dioceses sprang up in every time zone but whose standing was defined by their relation to the Archbishop of Canterbury. For the first time in history, the established Church of England rivaled Rome in terms of global influence. And as with Rome, this expansion fueled a triumphalist spirituality in which some saw the vindication of England’s departure from the Roman Church, inspiring imaginations and leading them to ponder (in the words of William Blake) how “those feet in ancient time walk[ed] upon England's mountains green: and was the holy Lamb of God, on England’s pleasant pastures seen!” One wonders if this confident season of ascendency did not contribute to the reaction from Rome a mere century later.

Relationships with Rome remained formally impaired until the early 19th Century, when England lifted the laws suppressing Roman Catholicism in the country. With those laws came a period of theological fecundity as theologians and clergy were again freer to openly discuss the present practice of the English Church with the Catholic Tradition of the West. In what came to be known as the Oxford Movement, the English Church experienced a renewal of its spiritual and liturgical theology, which again admitted ornamentation and an expansive Christian imagination. The stability of ‘mere Christianity’ experienced the beauty of ‘more Christianity.’ The dignity of the ancient Church again became outward and visible. Unfortunately, this collided with the attempts of Rome to reestablish itself in England. Despite the demonstrated harmony of English Spirituality with the Faith of the creedal and conciliar Church, despite the preservation of the historical succession of bishops in an unbroken line, despite the continuous administration of the sacraments and the formation of saints, by the end of the century, Rome had declared Anglican Holy Orders, and by extension, Anglican Sacraments, to be ‘completely null and utterly void.’

At the same time, the Roman Catholic Church was discerning its identity as it entered the modern era. At the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), the Roman Church declared as matters of the Faith two doctrines that cemented its impaired relationships with all other Churches. First, the Council declared the Pope to be infallible in his pronouncements made in his capacity as the Pontiff of Rome. Second, the Council declared the Pope to have immediate and universal jurisdiction over all Christian souls. Together, these declarations redoubled Rome’s sense of its own unshakable primacy in the debates of the past, but to the extent that exceeded the more measured claims in her history and in a manner that could not be undone. And even though Rome sought to temper the exclusivism and severity of its claims, they remain significant impediments to ecclesial relationships both with the Anglicans and the Orthodox, who cannot say ‘Amen’ to the historically unfounded and erroneous stance of papalism.

Out of the spirit of Vatican I came the invective against the Anglican Church. As the historian John Jay Hughes has observed in his book on Pope Leo’s papal bull nullifying Anglican sacraments, one can observe in the whole dispute what can only be called a deliberate attempt to cast only the most damning evidence against Anglicans in the worst possible light while omitting answers to those claims and any contrary evidence to temper the judgment. As Hughes surmises, this move was possibly an effort to co-opt the momentum of the Oxford Movement so as to draw scores of Anglicans back into Roman parishes. This makes sense given the broader effort of Rome to establish its infallible and universal supremacy over all Christians in the world. There is no evidence that this happened, and sadly, the opportunity for renewed ecumenical relations was dealt a tremendous blow. To this date, there has been no meaningful movement to reassess the categorical condemnation of Anglican Orders, despite the development of the Oxford Movement’s theological and liturgical conversations that contributed less than a century later to the formation of the Anglican Catholic Church during the cultural crisis of the 1960-70s in the United States.

Anglican Catholics and Roman Catholics

Anglican Catholics continued to benefit from the Oxford Movement’s theological reasoning and exposition of the Church of England’s conduct during the Reformation. We continue to explore with wonder the abundant sources of spiritual wisdom that the Lord has provided His Church through her westward sojourn. The Scriptures and the voices of many saints continue to call us to faithfulness in Christ, and these are neither Roman (at least in the sense we now mean it) nor Anglican. Both this sensibility and the theological tenets of Anglo-Catholicism are succinctly stated in an organizing document called “The Affirmation of St. Louis,” by which a group of traditional, catholic Anglican dioceses entered into impaired ecclesial relations with their sister dioceses in North America over issues of theological novelty and moral liberalism. What became known as the “Continuing Anglican Church” carries on the profession of the three Creeds and seven Councils of the undivided Church, the administration of seven sacraments, the bestowal of the historical line of bishops, and the spiritual traditions by which Christians in all ages have been formed in holiness. Sadly, it has done so adjacent to but separated from the Roman Catholic Church, with whom Anglicans have so much in common.

One wonders if the pluralism intrinsic to the American political project, combined with the sense of destiny and exceptionalism assumed of American life, combined with an unprecedented democratic ability to broadcast opinions, have all contributed to a skewed sense of possibility for our ecumenical relations with Rome. As Ross Douthat has observed, America has always felt the tension between historical catholic traditions and the more eccentric revivalist forms of religion. What seems to matter most in America’s constitutional regard for religion is that no one becomes ‘the establishment.’ While this commitment solves all sorts of problems, it also seems to guarantee competition between churches.

Further, to the extent we believe our way of interacting with each other represents an optimal mode of ecumenical discourse, and to the extent that drives our self-representation through broadcast tools like social media and market-driven informational programming, we might be reinforcing for ourselves and others the impression that our competitive spirit is something to which all ought to aspire. Last, to the extent that controversy drives clicks and views, much more is to be gained by platforming divisiveness over sobriety of thought. Polemics continue to draw larger crowds than constructive ecumenical dogmatics. Perhaps as traditional Christianity becomes a remnant population, the diminished temptation to the delusion of cultural conquest, and with it the closing of churches and comfortable enclaves, will be good for us. Perhaps, as what Douthat calls the ‘sustainable decadence’ of the West gives way to a more populous and influential Global South, some of these entrenched modes of relating to one another may give way, too. One wonders what we will be saying in fifty years.

Today, we sadly continue to have impaired formal relationships with Rome. Anglican Catholics affirm the validity of Roman Catholic Orders and Sacraments. Still, Roman Catholics continue to deny the validity of our Orders and Sacraments. So, while we would have no problem with a parishioner visiting and communing at a Roman Catholic parish, Roman Catholics are not permitted to do so at our parishes. In the 1980s, Rome announced “the pastoral provision,” a repeat of their gesture to Anglo-Catholics from a century earlier to fold into the Roman Catholic Church through the creation of ‘ordinariates’ that permit the continued use of Anglican forms of worship and even the allowance for clergy to remain married while serving as priests (contrary to the general Roman discipline of clerical celibacy). And while some Anglicans answered that call, many did not because they saw the offer for what it was: a tacit assent to Rome’s claim about the invalidity of Anglicanism, despite its concession to allow the use of the Anglican Missal and Prayer Book. The vexed relationship between our churches is a source of great sorrow because we have so much in common and so much that could be easily shared with the other.

Always Room for Hope

Admittedly, there are efforts to maintain an ecumenical dialogue with Rome. Since the 1960s, theologians in both Churches have convened to discuss matters of mutual interest and points of unity in the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (or ARCIC). Pastorally, there are many mutual efforts between Roman Catholics and Anglicans regarding education, medicine, evangelism, human rights, and care for the poor. Many Anglicans and Roman Catholics retain a cordial relationship of discussion and mutual edification at the parish level. One can even detect the influence of Anglican sensibilities concerning the reading of Scripture paired with daily prayer, which are really just catholic sensibilities apart from all the ideology. Rarely a month goes by when I do not joyfully hear of organizations like Ascension Presents and Word on Fire, with great pastors like Fr. Mike Schmitz and Bp. Robert Barron leading Roman Catholics into deeper interaction with the Scriptures and a Rule of Prayer. Our Roman brethren are living into the wisdom of the spirituality of the Book of Common Prayer, which is a cause to rejoice as it gives us something new to share. Sadly, though, there is always that felt sense of separation. The edict against Anglicanism remains, and until it is lifted, the partition will persist.

I began by suggesting that the most prayerful Christians in either Church will always find ways to rise above the errors of history; I continue to experience this as the case. I have benefitted from my time in deeply prayerful monastic communities and have been a pastor to Roman Catholics in their seasons of need. I strongly believe that the divisions between our Churches are tenuous because our Lord’s prayer is “that they would be one.” The more we abide in Christ and enjoin ourselves to His prayer, the more we are free to see the vast fields of commonality and how much they overwhelm the margins of separation. The Father will answer the prayer of His Son in the Spirit. May we always be ready to respond to the ways we may be called to participate in that answered prayer with our Roman brethren, with whom we share Baptism and thus the Spirit’s unitive life.