The 'continuing Anglican Church' has come of age

The raging controversy in the Church of England over legislation which would permit the purported consecration of women to the Sacred Episcopate has recently introduced an element into C of E debate heretofore rarely mentioned...

The Continuing Church.

Note this passage from the Guildford Report, the official report of the Bishops' Working Party of the Church of England designated to pave the way for the 'consecration' of women to the Episcopate. In paragraph 39 the Report criticises the text of Consecrated Women? published by Forward in Faith, claiming that the legislative proposal of that FIF-UK work might ultimately engender a Continuing Church in England:

'There would be the risk of it [the Third Province] becoming another 'continuing Anglican Church.''

Forward in Faith's Legal Working Party Response to the Guildford Report thus states in reply:

'We do not accept that there would be a risk of a new province becoming another 'continuing Anglican church.' Continuing churches are those which have left the parent church. Since the new province would be created by the Church of England, and would remain part of her, it would not be a continuing church. Conversely, if adequate provision is not made within the Church of England for those who cannot accept the consecration of women, then there is a real risk of 'continuing churches' forming spontaneously.'

An interesting commentary, and prophecy of possible future action, from our dear sisters and brothers in Forward in Faith. With all this unusual talk of the Continuing Church, it seems that Continuing Anglicanism has finally come of age.

Dom Gregory Dix of Nashdom Abbey, and of blessed memory, would no doubt be appalled at the modern state and condition of his beloved Church of England. He would certainly not be opposed to the creation of a Continuing Anglican Church. In fact, he recommended it, and confronted Archbishop William Temple of Canterbury with such a possibility directly. It appears that he is the first Anglican divine to use the term 'Continuing Church.' In the early-to-mid 1940's, in conjunction with the other superiors of Religious Orders in the Church of England, Dom Gregory suggested that a 'Continuing Church' would be formed by Anglo-Catholics in England as a result of the impending creation of the pan-protestant United Church of South India. Dix went so far as to sign the Superiors' open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, along with such famous churchmen as Father Raymond Raynes, CR, a letter which unambiguously asserted the possibility of the creation of an Anglo-Catholic Continuing Church which would sever its ties with Canterbury but would retain its communion with other orthodox (i.e., Catholic) Provinces of the Anglican Communion. Sounds familiar doesn't it? - there is nothing new under the sun!

In 1955, the Church of England determined that the creedal doctrine of the Church of South India was orthodox and that the Orders of the CSI were sacramentally valid; by then the furore over the Indian scheme had died down and nothing of substance ever came of the Continuing Church movement in England... perhaps until now. For the hearty Anglo-Catholics of the 1940's and 1950's, and the 2000's, Apostolic Faith and Order hold precedence even over jurisdictional loyalty or history.

Perhaps being a 'Continuing Anglican' isn't so bad after all.