Fr Kirk, The Anglican Communion and Me

It appears Fr Geoffrey Kirk and I completely agree on the underlying problems in the Anglican Communion, as evidenced by his op-ed piece in this month's New Directions and my own thoughts recorded at the end of the Tanzania Primates' Meeting. In short, the Anglican Communion is now defective at the core because it has ceded the Apostolic Faith to modernity by the innovation of women's ordination and a general refusal to accept the sensus Catholicus.

Here are a few thoughts I penned after the Tanzania meeting...

I am concerned by the attitudes displayed and language used by some of the participants at the Primates’ Meeting, which seem to convey a belief that maintaining the Anglican Communion in its current state or maintaining communion with the See of Canterbury is necessary for communion with our Lord Jesus Christ or with the historic Church. To me, such claims are nothing short of ecclesiolatry, the service of an ecclesiastical institution above that of our Blessed Saviour and His Gospel. Our Lord proclaims 'the gates of hell shall not prevail' against His Church (Saint Matthew 16:18). We take Jesus at His word. The Anglican Communion is a modern creation, only established by historical circumstances in 1784 when Bishop Samuel Seabury of Connecticut was consecrated for ministry in the United States by three bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church. It is only because of the exigencies of Bishop Seabury’s consecration that the Anglican Communion was brought into being. The communion of the Church necessitates a communion of orthodox bishops with one another in the Apostolic Faith; the Holy Catholic Church does not require for her full life either communion with the See of Canterbury or with any other particular historic See. Anglicanism, I am eager to state, is defined by adherence to the Anglican Tradition, not by communion with Canterbury at all costs. Although the Anglican Communion is a worthy institution owned by God and blessed by Him in time past and present for the spread of the Gospel, I submit it exists for the good order, the bene esse, or even the full order, the plene esse, of Anglicanism, but it is not of the esse, the essence, of Anglicanism. Simply put, I believe it is more important to remain in communion with Christ than to remain in communion with Canterbury.

We should state categorically that Mrs Katherine Jefferts Schori is not a bishop and we must deny that she possesses any jurisdiction or exercises any episcopal ministry from which any delegation of authority can occur in the first place. The proposal for a Primatial Vicar in The Episcopal Church obscures a genuine understanding of the theology and ministry of the episcopate, and will most likely not succeed in achieving its goal of uniting a body so profoundly divided on the essential matters of faith, order and moral teaching. It is doubtful that the bishops and congregations of the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA) and the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) will voluntarily return to the oversight and jurisdiction of bishops or organizations within The Episcopal Church. It will probably require much more than a Pastoral Council or a Primatial Vicar to bring about any kind of institutional reconciliation between conservative people and groups and TEC structure.

I am led to believe by the actions of the Primates’ Meeting that the Anglican Communion has now received as authoritative doctrine the purported ordination and consecration of women to the episcopate. This is a very distressing development in the life of the Anglican Communion and it is one that the Anglican Province of America must, in all good conscience, reject as contrary to the historic Catholic and Apostolic Faith. We cannot condone the actions of the Primates’ Meeting or the Anglican Communion in this matter. We will continue to preserve and hand-on the two-thousand year old teaching of Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition regarding the male character of the Sacrament of Holy Orders. We will continue our witness to Prayer Book Catholicism.

Mindful of Christ’s call to us during this holy season of Lent, I believe the only real solution to the ongoing dilemma that now engulfs the Anglican Communion is repentance and amendment of life, a convicted return to the uncompromised Faith and Order of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church and the Anglican formularies. That alone can heal the division and restore the mission of the Anglican Communion.

As for us, we shall remain committed to our brethren in Christ and in full communicatio in sacris with all faithful Anglicans who maintain the Scriptures, Creeds, Sacraments and Apostolic Ministry of the classical Anglican expression.

And here is Fr Kirk's commentary from New Directions:

'For nearly two centuries,' a wit once remarked, 'Westminster politicians have been talking about a solution to the Irish problem. What none of them would ever admit was the nature of the problem. The problem is that there is no solution.'


Much the same is true about the Anglican Communion. No one, it seems, has the courage to admit what must be obvious to all: that the problem with world-wide Anglicanism is not with the conduct of individual provinces but with the polity of the whole. Like the Home Office in the parlance of Dr John Reid, it is 'not fit for purpose'.

Not only does the doctrine of Provincial Autonomy make divergence in ethos and doctrine virtually inevitable, but the resulting weakness of common structures (the so-called Instruments of Unity) makes disciplining errant provinces severely difficult. And when that province is TEC, the predominant source of funding for the Communion's central secretariat, it is impossible.


Whether or not the Secretary General saw the irony of ending the recent meeting of Primates in Frank Weston's cathedral in Zanzibar, readers of New Directions will probably take the point: the doctrinal disintegration of Anglicanism is no adventitious phenomenon. It has been unfolding for the best part of a century. The Communique of the meeting in Dar es Salaam, for all its vaunted 'unanimity' cannot hope to turn the tide of history.

What the Communique has done, couched as it is in the language of the revisionists themselves, is merely to draw another line in the sand. The Primates have requested, through the presiding bishop, that the House of Bishops of TEC make an unequivocal common covenant that they will not authorize any rite of blessing for same-sex unions in their dioceses or through General Convention, and confirm that a candidate for episcopal orders living in a same-sex union shall not receive the necessary consent, unless some new consensus on these matters emerges across the communion.


The deadline for the answer is 30 September 2007. 'If the reassurances requested of the House of Bishops cannot in good conscience be given, the relationship between The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion as a whole remains damaged at best, and this has consequences for the full participation of the Church in the life of the Communion.'

No one could reasonably suppose that such undertakings will be given, or that the failure to give them will result in any specific action by any of the 'Instruments of Unity'. But that is hardly the point. The heart of the statement is not in the requests, but in the terms in which they are made: unless some new consensus on these matters emerges across the communion. With that proviso the game is up for the traditionalists.


For the grounds upon which traditionalists oppose gay bishops and same-sex unions is not that they go against previous Anglican practice, but that they contravene the plain teaching of Scripture, which applies in all times and cultures, and which neither individual provinces nor the Communion as a whole is competent to change.

By signing the Communique traditionalist bishops have conceded the very point they were striving to uphold. Having initially refused to sit at the same table as Katherine Schori, and shunned her at the Lord's Table, they have signed a document which endorses her position and effectively outlaws their own - and elected her to their Standing Committee! To this observer it looks uncommonly like suicide.


But lest you think this judgement harsh, consider the implications of the Communique for the future of Anglican moral theology.

Until now it has been assumed that penitence involves not only contrition but amendment of life. Not so with The Episcopal Church and the Zanzibar Communique. There a half-hearted expression of blanket regret (how many times has your confessor told you to be explicit?) and a future possible undertaking not to do the same again (why the reluctance to renounce wrong-doing in the first place?) is taken as enough. No mention, you will notice, of Gene Robinson.

We must sadly conclude that in Zanzibar the traditionalist primates were skilfully out-manoeuvred. They conceded the very principles for which they stand; and did so in exchange for assurances which they will probably not get, and which, should they be forthcoming, will be half-hearted and of little effect. All this came about not because those primates are weak or foolish, but because the Communion itself, of which they are an intrinsic part, is structured on principles of democracy and mutual accountability.

It was clear from its ringing endorsement of the politicking which resulted in the ordination of women in some provinces, that the 'Windsor process' cannot, by its very nature, comprehend an appeal to the unchanging word of God as witnessed by Catholic tradition. The words of Pope John Paul II: 'declaramus Ecclesiam facultatem nullatenus habere ordinationem sacerdotalem mulieribus conferendi' [we declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women] have no resonance whatever in the official structures of the Anglican Communion, which can only proceed by accommodation and consensus. And Katherine Jefferts Schori, now a member of the Primates' Standing Committee, is the very incarnation of those procedures.