Christ Church, Plano, Texas (Anglican Church in North America) has released a paper supporting the purported ordination of women to the priesthood and diaconate.
Your blogger has it that this paper was produced to justify to the congregation in question the sponsorship of a woman for purported ordination by the clergy and staff of Christ Church. It would appear the paper was released in advance to ease the way for the proposed endorsement to proceed.
This action serves as an archetypal reminder of what your blogger has asserted before regarding ACNA, to wit:
The new ACNA is a confederation of loosely-knit-and-tied dioceses and para-ecclesial groupings bound together, it would seem, by a common antipathy for TEC and its homosexualist agenda. ACNA is predominantly evangelical protestant of a modern American mega-church 'emerging church' charismatic mould; in many places it is asacramental and aliturgical. A small minority of Traditional Anglicans of our constituency have joined the new ACNA in search of a refuge and safe harbour from the persecution found in TEC. Most of the ACNA does not share the traditional Anglican ethos found in the classical Book of Common Prayer. Many in it do not object to the innovation of women's ordination; yea rather, there are a significant number of clergy and people in ACNA who enthusiastically promote the purported ordination of women. I think it is safe to say that many or most ACNA parishes, although certainly Christian and evangelical, even Calvinist, are not recognisably Anglican. They lack the theological, spiritual, liturgical, pastoral and historical ethos of the Anglican Church as originally received from the Church of England and the Anglican Communion.
Sadly there appears to be no common consensus or foundation in ACNA on which to build the unity of the jurisdiction, no fundamental recourse to the BCP and the Anglican formularies, or to the Great Tradition of the Ecumenical Councils and the Undivided Catholic Church of the First Millennium. To put it directly, ACNA contains within itself the seeds of its own undoing, as it has, consciously or unconsciously, carried with it from TEC the same flawed interpretation of Scripture, or biblical hermeneutic, a modern historical-critical revisionist approach to the Scriptures. The purported ordination of women, lax marriage discipline and homosexualism are all based on the same reading and interpretation of the Bible, as all three undermine the basic anthropological revelation concerning the nature of God, Man and the Church contained in the Word of God written and transmitted by Sacred Tradition. I expect 30 years from now many who left TEC for ACNA will be back right where they started, facing the same crises, for ACNA has imported a heretical reading of the Bible with it into its new organisation. The same erroneous approach to Divine Revelation which led to the rise of the current problems within the Episcopal Church is maintained in the new body that left TEC because of the current problems. I do fervently pray the ACNA will come to terms with this inherent defect. For now, ACNA is, as one dear friend has put it, 'The Episcopal Church of ten minutes ago' - a Church with modern liturgy, modern theology and modern ordination and marriage practices.
9 comments:
An astute analysis of the situation. I think this is spot on--ACNA is no safe refuge for traditional Anglicans, certainly not for Anglican Catholics. It is reassuring that the Anglican Province of America, the Anglican Church in America, the Anglican Catholic Church, et al., have chosen to keep a respectful distance from ACNA. As sad as Anglican events of the last forty to fifty years have been, they have perhaps allowed Anglican Catholics to see things a bit more clearly. If Anglicanism is to survive as Anglicanism, not as just another liberal or conservative Protestant denomination, Catholicism can no longer be just an item on a menu of choices. The "gentleman's agreement" that allowed Catholics to coexist with Protestants within Anglicanism is no longer tenable, if it ever was. Only a commitment to the fulness of Catholic faith, worship, and order can be the fulfillment of Anglicanism in the twenty-first century; that is a point made admirably by this blog.
Fr. Chad,
The paper contains within itself its own refutation - the unambiguous acknowledgment of "male headship." The priesthood and the episcopate are presiding (headship) functions so that ordination to either the priesthood or the episcopate are not possible for women. The diaconate, unlike the priesthood and the episcopate, is a serving function and not a presiding one (even in the BCP this is clear in that - for example - a deacon can lead in prayer as any lay-person can, yet the deacon cannot peform sacraments nor even pronounce the "general absolution" such presiding is reserved for the priesthood and episcopate).
Many Eastern Orthodox will argue, however, that women can and have been, and still are ordained to the diaconate. But even the female diaconate is not the equivalent of the male diaconate. It seems that the deaconess was its own order in (mostly) the Eastern Churches which never really existed (or disappeared rapidly) from the Western tradition. It must be noted however that the Orthodox consensus and "magesterial" (insofar as we have one) teaching on the real ordination of the deaconess is not (usually) accompanied by feminist or other "wordly" ideology.
In the RC and Episcopal communions the issue of WO is, in my observation, treated as a "social justice" issue (even in the Plano paper) instead of as an exegetical and liturgical issue. THAT is where the problem begins and why the conclusions arrived at are wide of the mark ... At least this is what it looks like to me.
Fr. Gregory
This document should be welcomed by everyone on all sides of the ongoing debate within ACNA and all continuing church bodies. Why? As the Leninists used to say: Heighten the contradictions!
I submit that the “Anglican Ethos” to which so many traditional Anglicans are attached was the product of several cultural artifacts which together constituted a distinctive ecclesial culture. These include:
+ the Book of Common Prayer
+ the Hymnal
+ a certain style of church music adapted from the usage of Oxford and Cambridge
+ traditional church architecture, vesture, appointments, etc. in the English style
But one by one, all of these things have been cast aside by the “church growth” crowd which now dominates the Anglican world in nearly every place. And so far we haven’t said a word about Protestantism, which almost all contemporary Anglicanism very clearly is.
The Plano declaration on priestesses makes very clear that the evangelicals of GAFCON and ACNA have rejected the Apostolic Tradition, the sacramental economy, and the analogy of faith, leaving them with nothing more than positivism. They claim that their doctrine and discipline are based upon Scripture, but absent the above three norming norms, on what basis can that claim be made or defended? In the end, they have nothing other than private opinions which lead them to reject sodomy but accept priestesses, and that is positivism. For the moment, they are united by their desire not to be part of a church that calls sodomy a sacrament, but that is no basis for ecclesial communion, and cracks in the foundation must necessarily appear very shortly.
So, heighten the contradictions! Let the thing be seen clearly for what it is, so that each may know the true shape of the Anglican landscape and find his home therein. Or somewhere.
Meanwhile, Benedict XVI sits in Rome on the Chair of Peter, teaching and praying for the unity of all Christians in the truth of the Word of God.
This comes as no surprise as Father Chad has stated. The ACNA is just lining up the nails in the coffin. Archbishop Duncan has from the beginning pushed women’s ordination and will not stop until he sees it excepted in all the ACNA, also I believe that it is only a matter of time before +Duncan begins pushing for a truly unified ACNA and calls for all the groups within to hand over there authority as separate entities. Even though most of the groups within the ACNA do not allow women ordained to the priesthood many of the allow women to be ordained to the deaconate, that is pondering to me. One leads to the other. Also I do not believed that this has been mentioned that Christ Church Plano TX is a member of the AMIA (Anglican Mission in America) which does not (as a group) support or allow women to be ordained to the priesthood, again though they do allow women to be ordained as deacons; and yet there are a hand full of AMIA churches that have woman priest because the AMIA will allow an already ordained woman to come out of TEC/ECUSA and into the AMIA as a priest, mind boggling.
I am in the REC and do not believe that the REC should be in the ACNA, I believe that the ACNA will not change for the better and will return to the roots of TEC in short time. I pray that the REC and any other true Anglican will see this as the sign to leave and build a truly Traditional Orthodox Anglican Church in America. We need another large Anglican Church here I agree with that. It is time that all these little Anglican groups join together and become one, but not this way, not if we have to sell our souls.
Good comments. I especially like that Fr. Newman mentioned positivism. I'd add to what he wrote - namely that "emotivism" as used by Alasdair MacIntyre in "After Virtue" seems to fit in this situation. In brief that morality is based simply on what each person sees fit to do (personal opinion) in any given case, and the triumph of one moral position over another is not based on reason or something divine and transcendent but on who can speak the loudest.
Dear Gentleman,
The subject addressed here is definitely a worthy one. I speak as a very Orthodox oriented Anglo-Catholic when I say that the problem of Anglicanism is by no means an American phenomenon, but rather it is endemic to all who have sprung from the mandate by the Elizabethan settlement to believe whatever we want, so long as we use the right prayer book and follow the appointed canons. Few would argue that even our articles taken at face value and in plain language, reveal within them a portion of the ancient Orthodox Catholic faith of the British Isles, and at the same time a Lutheran view of salvation, and a Calvinistic perspective regarding predestination accompanied by the real absence of Christ in the elements of the sacraments. Right from the beginning there was a kind of schizophrenia embedded in our founding documents. As we know there were many political pressures at play that contributed to these things, but nevertheless, this is the plain historical fact.
In any case, what we have in Anglicanism today is simply the child of that Schizophrenia. More confusingly even is the fact is that all of the groups can to some degree or other claim an authentic form Anglicanism. Herein lays the problem, we have no clear authoritative exposition of what Anglicanism must be. Should it be the faith of the first five hundred years of Christianity in England, or perhaps the faith of the first millennium in the Isles, or should it be the stripped down version of medieval Roman Church that so many are enamored with; or finally should it be exactly that conglomeration of faiths which we find in the prayer book of 1662 and no more, black rubric included? It seems that the only way to answer that would be to have a council of the communion; however, we have no mechanisms for such a thing.
What I am trying to highlight is the reality that our beloved Anglicanism has built in to it dysfunctionalism, and that very dysfunctionality is visible in ACNA along with the whole communion, not to mention the continuing church movement. The plain fact is that we have at least three churches in one, we have the Orthodox who want to hold to the orders of authority & practice found in the Orthodox church (first millennium Christianity) who dwell in Anglicanism, we also have Roman Catholics who hold to Thomism in doctrine and authority structures (western medieval Christianity) that dwell in Anglicanism, and we have Protestants (western post-medieval Christianity) who pick and choose what they like from a buffet table that dwell in Anglicanism. Can there be a real solution that allows these groups to live together in true communion? Not unless some give up that which we are convinced is the truth.
I am no prophet, but I suspect that 50-100 years from now each of these groups will have taken there own course: Western Orthodox, Rome, and free Evangelicalism. It is highly probable that Anglicanism as it has been known will only be a distant memory with its remnants retained by a few splinter groups, and ACNA may be one the catalyst that spark the movement in that direction.
What say ye?
Reading the statements of intent contemporaneously professed by leaders of the Ekklesia Anglicana at the time of Pius V broke from her, along with the C of E's constitutive formularies, I can only conclude that the aim of Anglicanism is what now might be termed a restoration of theological Orthodoxy. IMHO, the unqualified use of he the neologism, "Western Orthodoxy," would be is overly simplistic, as the Orthodoxy Church of 1570, and today, has certain medieval disciplinary and liturgical accretions that are inconsistent with that of the Ancient Church and the English Reformation. I have in mind the Orthodox requirement of a celibate episcopate, extremely austere fasting regimes, mandatory auricular confession, and certain Marian rhetorical excesses.
* * * * *
But yes, it seems that the ACNA is about to fail. But it should not be surprising that the Church of 10-minutes ago, will only live 10 minutes.
* * * * *
Would that the Prayer-Book Catholics in the St. Louis Continuum, the APA/REC, and ACNA come together to form a central Anglican jurisdiction in the tradition of the Caroline Divines -- that is to a say a small-r reformed British Orthodox Church. Indeed, let us leave the Missals of Victorian Anglo-Catholics to their precious anachronisms (the Mass of Puis V is not used by anyone else), and the Pan-Evangelicals to contemporary Methodist, Lutheran, or Presbyterian innovations.
I know that it is not part of the Anglican tradition, but I like what our friends in the Eastern Branches of the Church have to say regarding the ordination of women. If a bishop lays hands on a woman (to ordain her), she receives nothing and he is no longer a bishop. The bishop in question has excommunicated himself from the Church. Even the Church of Rome takes quick action against any bishop who ordains a women and action is taken against to woman in question. It appears that only in Anglicanism can there be provinces ordaining women and provinces not ordaining women. Could the Continuing Church, for just this one time, issue a joint statement regarding the ordination of women?
Fr. David
I’m with you guys. Anglicanism as a melding of such different roots (Calvinist, Lutheran, etc.) had to fail
And it did after 400 years with the help of WO and Gay Lib. Now the really traditional Anglicans have nowhere
To go, unless they go back to the roots of the Caroline Divines and the ancient fathers of the undivided Church.
I don’t see that happening since the contemporary pundits aren’t much quoting Hooker, Law, Andrewes and Laud.
I myself opted in 1986 for Orthodoxy in the Eastern sense, and found that I was home, nevermore to roam.
The ancient wells have not run dry and I encourage everyone who is on pilgrimage to at least taste the water.
The well might look old and crumbly, but the water is sweet and filling.
Rdr. James
Post a Comment