A Continuing Anglican Manifesto

In light of recent news, from the reception of three Church of England bishops into the Roman Communion, to the apparent return of an Anglican priest to our fellowship from the Roman Church, let us begin this New Year of grace and of our salvation 2011 with a meditation on the nature of 'more, not mere Anglicanism'. What is it exactly that Continuing Anglicans really believe, and what has compelled them to remain so immovable in their commitments and beliefs?

Please note that this reflection expresses my personal views on matters ecclesiastical, and that it is not intended to be a comprehensive statement on all things ecclesial, but rather, a specific review addressing some particular issues in orthodox Anglicanism currenty challenged by non-Anglican writers in the blogosphere...

• We believe that of all vocations offered by the Lord to man, the gift of the sacramental hierarchical priesthood is most sacred and precious.
• We believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ has given the Anglican Church, of His mercy and goodness, the one priesthood of His Church, by unbroken Apostolic Succession of Faith and Order.
• We believe the Ecclesia Anglicana possesses the fullness of the Catholic Faith of the ancient undivided Church of the first millennium, and to be, in essence, Western Orthodoxy.
• We love and cherish our Anglican heritage because we affirm it is, in a special way and proven so to be by historical, theological and supernatural evidence, a true Church of the Apostles and Fathers.
• We affirm that Anglicanism, as represented in the Continuing Churches, lives still, a pure form of historical yet renewed catholicism.
• We believe our distinctive branch of the One Church faithfully preserves and employs the divine Scriptures, the ancient and universal Creeds, the seven holy Sacraments and Christ’s male threefold Apostolic Ministry, and utilises of all liturgical rites in Christendom the most sublime in the Book of Common Prayer.
• We believe Anglicanism has no faith or order of her own, only the faith and order of the Undivided Church as shared by all orthodox Christians in the first thousand years of our corporate history.
• We believe that the Anglican Liturgy, our teaching office, and the historic Anglican formularies entirely match the criteria required by the Canon of Saint Vincent of Lerins for orthodoxy: our faith and practice are based on the universal and ancient Tradition of the Church and catholic consent.
• We believe the Anglican Church extends the divine Life of Christ to all men in the beauty of holiness.
• We believe ours is a Church faithful to the Great, Holy and Apostolic Tradition, by which Spirit-guided Tradition the Holy Scriptures are rightly understood and interpreted.
• We believe that the Church is the Body of Christ and the prolongation and extension of the Incarnation, and we trust God has called us as Anglicans to share in bringing salvation to mankind, and to participate in Christ’s action of making men holy.
• We are totally committed to the orthodox dogmas of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, to the depositum fidei which is transmitted and treasured by the genuine Anglican Tradition.
• We believe the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar is Jesus Christ Himself, His objectively-present and abiding Body and Blood under the converted form of bread and wine, given for the remission of sins and eternal life; that the Mass is the sacramental re-presentation of Calvary; that grace is objectively conveyed in the sacraments; that the grace of sacramental absolution is given through the priesthood; and that prayer for the faithful departed is fruitful and powerful.
• We believe that in Anglicanism Our Lord Jesus Christ perpetually exercises the sacramental gifts, mission and authority of His priesthood, through the preaching of the Word of God written and the ministration of the Holy Sacraments.
• We believe the dominical Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion are generally necessary for the salvation of all men; that the five other sacraments are true means of grace; that the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God and contain all things required as necessary for eternal salvation through the faith and grace of Jesus Christ; and that nothing should be required as an Article of the Faith or necessary unto salvation but that which may be proved by the Holy Scriptures.
• We believe Christ continues in His Church, in persona Christi capitis, the priestly office and work of offering the Eucharistic Sacrifice and administering the True Body and Blood of Our Lord to the faithful, baptising and confirming men into His Body, blessing, witnessing marriages, absolving the penitent, anointing the sick, catechising the young and old alike, ministering pastorally to the faithful, and teaching, sanctifying, and governing the people of God in the local parish and in each Diocese and Province.
• We believe we possess full sacramental communion with the One Catholic and Apostolic Church of the ages, and the gift of the orthodox and historic Anglican episcopate, wherein nothing is lacking for the full living of the Faith of the Church.
• We believe the absolute axiom of catholic ecclesiology and theology which dictates that the Clergy rightly and canonically function when in communion with the episcopos, who sits in the Apostles’ chair, succeeding in the Apostolic line and commission, and, as St Ignatius of Antioch states, functioning as the ‘image of God the Father.’
• We agree with St Ignatius, who describes the microcosm or fullness of God’s Church as the local Eucharistic assembly, with the bishop, the father-in-God, celebrating the holy mysteries at the family Table, surrounded by his priests and deacons who assist him, and by the whole people of God, who, in communion with him, join with him in mystically offering the Lord’s Sacrifice: the Church is a Communion of Eucharistic Communions.
• We believe the Church is God’s Family, the household of the faith and the household of God, the Bride of Christ, and the Ark and unique home and sphere of grace and salvation, the dwelling-place of the Holy Ghost Who sanctifies the Church and her members.
• We believe in justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and in the necessary cooperation and correspondence with grace in the believer through the operation of the Holy Ghost for sanctification and salvation.
• We believe that the sole Head of the Universal Church is her Divine Head, the Lord Jesus, and that the Church is totus Christus, Head and members together in One Body.
• We believe that all Bishops are true Successors of the Holy Apostles, possess the Power of the Keys to bind and loose, transmit by the laying-on-of-hands that same ordination conferred by Our Lord on the Apostles, and receive from Our Lord equal spiritual power, as did the Twelve, by His institution and commission.
• We believe the Church is the Divine Society, the divinely-appointed steward of the mysteries of God, bound in unity by the Apostolic Succession of doctrine and ministry.
• We believe the Anglican Church to be a duly-constituted jurisdiction of that Body of which Jesus Christ is the Head and all baptised persons are the members, a graced vineyard of the Lord in which we may labour for the Kingdom of God and the spread of the Gospel of Christ.
• We are the original 'Catholics of the Anglican Rite', in union with Holy Mother Church through her Anglican expression, whereby nothing needful for grace and truth is deficient.
• We believe in the Communion of Saints, the Church Triumphant, Expectant and Militant, and in the due honour and efficacious prayers, virtues and examples of Our Lady Saint Mary, the Mother of God, and of all the whole company of Heaven.

God bless you!