Continuing Churches Are Churches: A Reply to Pope Benedict XVI's CDF Clarification and Pope John Paul II's Dominus Jesus

In 1977, a group of devoted and concerned Anglo-Catholic churchmen gathered in Saint Louis, Missouri for what would be become the catalyst of a movement to ecclesiastically reorganise Anglicanism in North America in the wake of the widespread heresy developing in the Anglican Communion. The group was called the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen. The meeting was called the Congress of Saint Louis. Out of the deliberation of that conference, a document was forged which may forever impact the continuing theological development of the Catholic Tradition within the Anglican Church. The Affirmation of Saint Louis was born in the midst of theological and ecclesiastical strife, with the purpose of re-affirming the nature of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ in her Anglican expression. An ecclesiological document of tremendous importance to the history of Anglicanism since the 1970’s, the Affirmation, the founding doctrinal formula of the Continuing Anglican Church, has, according to the knowledge of the author, never been the subject of a serious ecclesiological study. And thus the purpose of this presentation is established. The Affirmation of Saint Louis serves as the primary doctrinal statement of the Continuing Church, and the Continuing Church is the theological and doctrinal heir of the nineteenth-century Oxford Movement, or Catholic Revival, in the modern day. We shall explore in depth the meaning and theology of the Affirmation’s ecclesiological assertions in the light of contemporary Roman Catholic doctrine. The purpose of this presentation is not to debate or bring into question the dogmas and claims related to the Papal Office of the sole Patriarch of the Western Church, the Bishop of Rome, whose rightful role of primacy and leadership in the Church Catholic has yet to be fully appreciated by the Anglican Communion. This paper will serve to highlight the positive ‘family traits’ that exist between the Anglo-Catholic ecclesiology of the Saint Louis Affirmation and the ecclesiology of the Roman Communion, the disputed role of the Papal ministry for our purposes being exempted. Here we shall dwell on agreements, not disagreements. First, an examination of the text itself in is order, as its basic ideas are compared with and contrasted to Roman Catholic ideas - by holding it up to its greatest and most influential relative, the Roman Catholic Dogmatic Constitution on the Church issued at the Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium. We will also introduce teaching from the Roman Catholic Catechism and relevant ecumenical documents. A selective historical review of the origins of the Affirmation’s teachings in Anglicanism’s Catholic Revival of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries will ensue. Finally, we will see how the ecclesiology of the Affirmation of Saint Louis, and the historical doctrine and practice it manifests, affects the relationship of the Continuing Anglo-Catholic Churches, which were organised in the 1970’s in order to resist the rejection of Catholic Faith and Order within segments of the official Anglican Communion of Canterbury, with the Roman Catholic Church in the light of the recent Vatican Declaration, Dominus Iesus. A profound similarity of thought will shine through the teachings we examine. We shall see why it can be rightly postulated that the Anglo-Catholic and Roman Catholic Churches are by far the closest living relatives in the family tree of Western Christendom.

I. The Affirmation of Saint Louis in the light of Lumen Gentium and the Roman Catholic Catechism

We gather as people called by God to be faithful and obedient to Him. As the Royal Priestly People of God, the Church is called to be, in fact, the manifestation of Christ in and to the world. True religion is revealed to man by God. We cannot decide what is truth, but rather (in obedience) ought to receive, accept, cherish, defend and teach what God has given us. The Church is created by God, and is beyond the ultimate control of man. The Church is the Body of Christ at work in the world. She is the society of the baptised called out from the world: In it, but not of it. As Christ’s faithful Bride, she is different from the world and must not be influenced by it’ (The Affirmation of Saint Louis, 1. The Nature of the Church). It is important to note the striking extent to which this fundamental statement concerning the nature of the Church, written by Anglo-Catholics, both reflects and is influenced by the Roman Dogmatic Constitution promulgated at the Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium. A brief review of the basic similarities will demonstrate the remarkably close affinity shared by these two texts. Arguably, the Affirmation produces the highest ecclesiology ever formulated by an Anglican synod or council. It sees the Church as a divine-human synergy, to be carefully distinguished from any merely human society or organisation. The Affirmation declares for the Catholic Church a unique existence and character as a Divine Society, the Family of God created and maintained by God Himself. The basic truths of the divine nature of the Church as inspired and guided into all truth by the Holy Ghost, of the Church as a divine reality separate from human control, and of the fundamental fact of divine revelation given directly to the Church by God are vehemently maintained. Its aggressive tone and somewhat self-defensive position are reasonable, considering it was written in the heat of debate and during the onslaught of heresy within the Anglican world. As we shall see, the Affirmation’s ecclesiological content is guardedly faithful to Holy Scripture, the teaching of the Book of Common Prayer, the tradition of the Catholic Revival, and the teaching of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. The Affirmation’s first section, ‘The Nature of the Church,’ takes a firmly Catholic perspective on the essence and purpose of the Church and utilises very familiar images used throughout Lumen Gentium and other Roman Catholic formularies. One notices instantly that the images as used in the text almost constantly interpenetrate each other and use one another in interpreting each other. In one sense, it is an artificial endeavour to separate the images, as they mutually indwell and inform each other, as we shall see. The images before us are very closely interconnected and are woven together to form an inseparable unity describing the Church. Together, they comprise a beautiful mosaic picturing the Church in her God-given splendour as the extension of Jesus Christ Incarnate and the Gift of His Divine Life.

Section one of the Affirmation first refers to the Church as Ecclesia, ekklesia, the ‘called-out’ of the Lord. The Church is envisioned as God’s covenant people, the New Israel, called-out from the world by God to be His very own unique assembly and reality. The Church is ontologically distinct from the world, set apart and consecrated as God’s own possession. This choosing-out, or election, referred to many times in the Old and New Testaments, figures prominently in Anglican formularies and in Lumen Gentium. ‘Wherefore they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God (election), be called according to God’s purpose by His Spirit working in due season: they through God’s grace obey the calling’ (Article of Religion XVII). ‘All the elect, before time began, the Father ‘foreknew and predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son, that he should be the firstborn among many brethren’ (Romans 8.29). He planned to assemble in the holy Church all those who would believe in Christ. At the end of time the Church will gloriously achieve completion, when... all the just will be gathered together with the Father in the universal Church’ (LG 2). ‘It was in the Son that all men are called to this union with Christ, who is the light of the world, from whom we go forth, through whom we live, and toward whom our whole life strains’ (LG 3). The Church’s nature as a gathered-out and assembled people, endowed by God with a divine blessing and consecration, ennobled to be the mediative instrument of God’s grace in the world, by which the Lord Himself communicates His nature to mankind, is a principal concept in Lumen Gentium and in the Catholic Catechism as well as the Affirmation. The Church’s existence is in a sense anterior to the membership of any particular member joined to Christ’s mystical Body in Baptism - the Church as ecclesia represents the familiar nature of the Church as a covenantal people and a covenanted means of grace. As the Family of God organically united to its Head, the Church is a pre-existing reality into which we are born by supernatural grace, not an organisation into which we gain membership by voting or by being received through collective assent. The Catholic Church as Ecclesia is not a ‘voluntary association of believers.’ Rather, it is God’s very own Tribe, the Christian Race, the redeemed family of a redeemed humanity which we enter by being joined baptismally to our Divine Head, as His members of His own human, glorified, and mystical Body by the infusion and unifying power of the Third Person of the Godhead, the Holy Ghost. The Church is fashioned by God the Father through Jesus Christ the Son in the Holy Spirit to be a living participation in the Holy Trinity as the extension of the Incarnate Life of Christ. The Church is fulfilled in herself, in her own constitutive being, by sacraments, liturgies, rites, and structures, a visible and spiritual covenantal relationship first established by God with His chosen People in the Old Testament. The Catholic Church is the new and true Israel of God, united to God through Israel’s Messiah and personification, Jesus of Nazareth. ‘The word ‘Church’... means a convocation or assembly. It designates the assemblies of the People, usually for a religious purpose. Ekklesia is used frequently in the Greek Old Testament for the assembly of the Chosen People before God, above all for their assembly on Mount Sinai where Israel received the Law and was established by God his holy people. By calling itself ‘Church,’ the first community of Christian believers recognised itself as heir to that assembly. In the Church, God is ‘calling together’ his people from all the ends of the earth’ (CCC 751). ‘‘The Church’ is the People that God gathers in the whole world. She exists in local communities and is made real as a liturgical, above all a Eucharistic, assembly. She draws her life from the word and the Body of Christ and so herself becomes Christ’s Body.’ (CCC 752). ‘All men are called to this union with Christ...’ (LG 3). Thus, the Church has been seen as ‘a people made one with the unity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit’ (LG 4). The Church is ‘called-out’ from the world to be God’s People; she also ‘calls-out’ to all men to make them God’s children and to bring them into the life of divine Sonship.

The Church is also named ‘the Royal Priestly People of God,’ combining three separate images of the Church invoked by Lumen Gentium. In the Office of Instruction in the Book of Common Prayer, we have a rare reference to this image of the Church: ‘[I believe] thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth me, and all the people of God’ (BCP 285). In the Bidding Prayer, the ‘Good Christian People’ are described as ‘Christ’s Holy Catholic Church, the blessed company of all faithful people’ (BCP 47). The liturgy prays for the unity of ‘God’s People’ (BCP 37). ‘And to all thy People give thy heavenly grace...’ (BCP 74). The Eucharistic assembly, the microcosm of the Church universal, is named by the Anglican Eucharistic rite as ‘the mystical Body of [the] Son, the blessed company of all faithful people’ (BCP 83). The Saint Louis Affirmation uses the distinctive images of the Church developed most fully in the Second Vatican Council. The entire second chapter of Lumen Gentium is devoted to the theme, ‘On the People of God,’ and so it is unnecessary to review in specific detail every concept contained therein. Samples from the Dogmatic Constitution, utilised also in the Catechism, should suffice to demonstrate how central and vital a theme the ‘People of God’ is to the proper apprehension of the Church. ‘All men are called to be part of this catholic unity of the People of God which in promoting universal peace presages it. And there belong to or are related to it in various ways, the Catholic faithful, all who believe in Christ, and indeed the whole of mankind, for all men are called by the grace of God to salvation’ (LG 13). ‘One enters into the People of God by faith and Baptism. ‘All men are called to belong to the new People of God’ (LG 13), so that, in Christ, ‘men may form one family and one People of God’’ (CCC 804). ‘Christ the Lord, high priest taken from among men, made the new people ‘a kingdom and priests to God the Father’ (Revelation 1.6; 5.9-10). The baptised, by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated as a spiritual house and a holy priesthood, in order that through all those works which are those of the Christian man they may offer spiritual sacrifices and proclaim the power of him who has called them out of darkness into his marvellous light’ (1 Peter 3.15-20) (LG 9). ‘The Baptised share in the priesthood of Christ, in his prophetic and royal mission. They are ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that they may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called them out of darkness into his marvellous light.’ Baptism gives a share in the common priesthood of all believers’ (CCC 1268). ‘[God] has willed to make [men] into a people who might acknowledge him and serve him in holiness. He therefore chose the Israelite race to be his own people and establish a covenant with it. He gradually instructed this people... All these things, however, happened as a preparation for and figure of that new and perfect covenant which was to be ratified in Christ... he called together a race made up of Jews and Gentiles which would be one, not according to the flesh, but in the Spirit’ (LG 9). ‘The People of God shares in the royal office of Christ. He exercises his kingship by drawing all men to himself through his death and Resurrection. Christ, King and Lord of the universe, made himself the servant of all... For the Christian ‘to reign is to serve [Christ],’ particularly when serving ‘the poor and the suffering, in whom the Church recognises the image of her poor and suffering founder’ (LG 8). The People of God fulfils its royal dignity by a life in keeping with its vocation to serve Christ’ (CCC 786). The Church as the Royal Priestly People of God ‘is’ in a real and living sense, Christ Himself, His own continued Incarnation, participating in an inseparable and ontological way in His own threefold office as the Messiah: Prophet, Priest, and King. The Church, being the very Body of Christ, authoritatively teaches the ‘Faith once delivered unto the saints’ (S. Jude 3), the entire and uncorrupt deposit of the Christian revelation, the message and Person of Jesus Christ Himself, infallibly guided in her prophetic, pedagogic task by the protecting and preserving aid of the Holy Spirit, Who supernaturally leads and guides the Church into all truth (S. John 15, 16). The Church as a priesthood, a priestly race and body integrally united to her Head the Great High Priest (Hebrews 5), offers the acceptable sacrificial worship of her own life, and makes-present in the Eucharistic oblation the Eternal Sacrifice of Christ whose merits are thus applied to the bodies and souls of men, in union with the One Priest and His All-Sufficient and Perfect Offering. The Church as Christ’s priestly instrument restores mankind to his priestly function as the royal priest of creation. The Church’s priestly character is manifest as she shares mystically in One Priesthood of the One Mediator, Advocate and Priest, her Lord and Head. The Church governs herself in penance and self-denial, a sign of Christ’s loving dominion, and spiritually governs in charitable service the entire universe as the representative vicegerent of Christ, the created order’s Creator, King, and Master. The rule of Christ as self-sacrificing love stretches itself through creation by a Catholic family-kingdom. The Church is Jesus Christ, present and extended in space and time, as the King-Priest-Prophet Messiah of Israel and of all men. She exercises Christ’s own offices in His own Name and Person, being His voice and action. As Christ is, so is the Church through which He continues to pray, intercede, work, sanctify, consecrate, hallow, preach, heal, restore, teach, and rule.

The Church is described as the Body of Christ, which is comprised of all the Baptised. The Book of Common Prayer readily develops an understanding of the Church as Body which is centred on the mystery of Baptism. Baptism is the essential sacrament which establishes the communion of the Church as Christ’s Body, being the means by which we are grafted into Christ, made to participate in his regenerating death and resurrection by the power of the Holy Spirit, and joined supernaturally to the Head of the Body. This theological theme is taken up by the Affirmation. ‘The Church is the Body of which Jesus Christ is the Head, and all baptised people are the members’ (BCP 290, Office of Instruction). ‘They that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church’ (Article of Religion XXVII). ‘[Call upon God] that this child may be baptised with Water and the Holy Ghost, and received into Christ’s holy Church, and be made a living member of the same.’ (BCP 274, Ministration of Holy Baptism). ‘May this child receive the fulness of thy grace, and ever remain in the number of thy faithful children’ (279). ‘We receive this child into the congregation of Christ’s flock.’ ‘Seeing now that this child is regenerate, and grafted into the body of Christ’s Church...’ (280). ‘We yield thee hearty thanks that it hath pleased thee to incorporate him into the holy Church... so that finally, with the residue of thy holy Church, he may be an inheritor of thine everlasting kingdom’ (281). The Affirmation of Saint Louis reiterates the necessity and Church-forming nature of Baptism as the Sacrament of New Birth and ecclesial incorporation into Jesus Christ: ‘In particular, we affirm the necessity of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist (where they may be had) - Baptism as incorporating us into Christ (with its completion in Confirmation as the ‘seal of the Holy Spirit’)’ (2. Essentials of Truth and Order - Sacraments). The nature of the Church as the living and mystical communion of all the Baptised united to Christ the Head of the Body receives its most prolific explanation in the text of Lumen Gentium. ‘In the human nature united to himself by the Son of God, by overcoming death through his own death and resurrection, he redeemed man and moulded him into a new creation. By communicating his Spirit, Christ made his brothers, called together from all nations, mystically the components of his own body. In that body the life of Christ is poured into the believers who, through the sacraments, are united in a hidden and real way to Christ who suffered and was glorified. Through Baptism we are formed in the likeness of Christ: ‘For in one Spirit we were all baptised into one body’ (1 Corinthians 12.13). In this sacred rite a oneness with Christ’s death and resurrection is both symbolised and brought about: ‘For we were buried with him by means of Baptism into death,’ and if ‘we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be so in the likeness of his resurrection also’ (Romans 6.4-5)’ (13).

The 1984 Dublin Agreed Statement of Anglicans and Orthodox asserts, ‘The Church is ‘the Body of Christ.’ The head is Christ and his members are those who in faith respond to the gospel and are baptised in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and are united with Christ and with each other through participation in the Eucharist. Through this union they are being conformed to his true humanity, filled with his divinity, and made ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Peter 1.4, qewsis)’ (10). Baptism infuses the very Life of Christ, the Head of the Body, into His members, making them to be organically united to Him in His Person and natures. Totus Christus, Head and Body, are One Divine Life and organism. The mystery of Baptism is union with Christ Himself, by which we are adopted through the Son of God as the children of God. We become, by virtue of the Baptismal gift, ‘sons in the Son,’ adopted sons of God by grace. We become by grace what God is by nature. The Holy Spirit forms Christ’s Body through Baptism (CCC 798). ‘Baptism makes us members of the Body of Christ: ‘Therefore we are members of one another.’ Baptism incorporates us into the Church. From the baptismal font is born the one People of God of the New Covenant, which transcends all the natural or human limits of nations, cultures, races, and sexes:’ For by one Spirit we were all baptised into one body’ (CCC 1267). In a supernatural manner, all persons who validly receive the sacrament of Holy Baptism are grafted and incorporated into Christ Jesus and divinised as the sons of God in Him. ‘In that body [of the Church] the life of Christ is communicated to those who believe, and, who, through the sacraments, are united in a hidden and real way to Christ in his Passion and glorification’ (LG 7). Although all the Baptised may not enjoy full sacramental communion with the Holy Catholic Church in her visible totality, nevertheless, every Baptised person is ordered to the Church and shares in the Church’s organic grace-filled life to a certain extent. There exist various levels of participation in the life of the Body, ranging from full visible communion to merely the ordering to the Church given by virtue of any valid Trinitarian Baptism. But every Baptised Christian, even if baptised by heretics or in schism, has ‘put on Christ’ in the sacramental mystery, and thus owns the Name of Christ and Christian. The reintegration of all the Baptised into one, full, visible, sacramental, organic fellowship is surely the greatest ecumenical mandate set before the Church Catholic, as she is called to herself call all the Baptised into her life-giving communion. We call to mind the prayer of Our Blessed Lord that we may all be one (S. John 17). From the womb of the baptismal font, the Church, our Most Holy Mother, One, Catholic, Apostolic, and Orthodox, births new children of God unto the supernatural eternal life of the Lord Jesus Christ.

However, the communion of the Body of Christ, the Church, is fulfilled and created by the communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, the Blessed Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Anglo-Catholicism, through the Affirmation, makes this abundantly clear: ‘The Eucharist is the sacrifice which unites us to the all-sufficient Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross and the Sacrament in which He feeds us with His Body and Blood’ (2. Essentials of Truth and Order). ‘Really partaking of the body of the Lord in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread, we are taken up into communion with him and with one another. ‘Because the bread is one, we though many, are one body, all of us who partake of the one bread (1 Corinthians 10.17). In this way all of us are members of his Body, ‘but severally members of one another’ (Romans 12.5)’ (Lumen Gentium 7). The Eucharist, the divine Action of Jesus Christ Himself in which He, as Head, unites His own mystical Body to Himself in the sacramental anamnesis of His One and Eternal Sacrifice forever pleaded before the Father in heaven, is the means by which the Church is made an organic supernatural reality; in the Eucharist, Christ the Head and His Body the Church are made inextricably One, as Christ unites the faithful in heaven, paradise, and earth to Himself in own perfect self-oblation, gathering the whole Christ, Head and Body, and presenting it self-sacrificially to the Father in the cosmic sweep of the qusis eucaristikon. The Eucharist is Christ, as He enters His own family, through His own sacrificial action, into the Life of the Blessed Trinity: the Eucharist is the very Act of Christ’s own sacrificial self-offering, mediation, intercession, and Incarnation, perpetually present in a sacramental mode on the Church’s Altars until the end of time - ‘To the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.’ The Eucharist serves as both the Sacrament of Christ’s objectively present and substantial Body and Blood under the form of bread and wine and as the Sacrifice which when sacramentally pleaded joins the earthly and ubloody oblation of the Church on earth to the One Sacrifice of Calvary, the Empty Tomb, and the Heavenly Intercession. The Affirmation re-establishes by precedent the Anglican tradition of distinguishing the Dominical Sacraments or ‘sacraments of the Gospel,’ Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, from the other five sacraments, where are sometimes called ‘lesser sacraments’ or ‘ecclesiastical sacraments.’ ‘The Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, the Holy Eucharist, Holy Matrimony, Holy Orders, Penance, and Unction of the Sick, are objective and effective signs of the continued presence and saving activity of Christ our Lord among His people and are His covenanted means for conveying His grace’ (2. Essentials of Truth and Order). These five other sacraments are true sacraments, communicating divine grace by virtue of outward, visible signs, but are different because they are not necessary for the salvation of all in the same way the Greater Two are. This distinction, based on the fact that Our Lord directly provides the form and matter of Baptism and the Eucharist in the Gospels, is shared by the Orthodox Churches of the East, which call Baptism and the Eucharist ‘the pre-eminent divine mysteries’ (Istavridis 108-109). Baptism and Eucharist are acknowledged within Anglicanism to be ‘generally necessary to salvation,’ (BCP 581) that is, necessary to salvation for all who have access to them. As regarding the Church, the doctrine of Eucharistic mutual-indwelling caused by participation in the Body and Blood of Christ (1 Corinthians 10), which makes the Church the Body of Christ, is most beautifully articulated in the Anglican Eucharistic rite, and especially in its Canon of the Mass, ‘we offer ourselves... that may worthily receive the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son Jesus Christ, be filled with thy grace and heavenly benediction, and made one body with him, that he may dwell is us and we in him’ (BCP 80), in its Prayer of Humble Access, ‘grant us so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his Body, and our souls washed through his most precious Blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us’ (82), and in its Thanksgiving after Holy Communion, ‘we most heartily thank thee that thou dost vouchsafe to feed us... with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Saviour... and dost assure us thereby that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful (baptised) people’ (83). ‘As often as the sacrifice of the cross in which Christ our Passover was sacrificed is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried on, and in the sacrament of the Eucharistic bread, the unity of all believers who form one body in Christ is both expressed and brought out’ (LG 3). The Eucharistic Doctrinal Statement of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission forcefully brings home this point, ‘The identity of the Church as the body of Christ is both expressed and effectively proclaimed by its being centred in, and partaking of, his body and blood. When we gather around the same table in this communal meal at the invitation of the same Lord and when we partake of the one loaf, we are one in commitment not only to Christ and to one another, but also to the mission of the Church in the world. The elements are not mere signs: Christ’s body and blood become really present and are really given. But they are really present and really given in order that, receiving them, believers may be united in communion with Christ the Lord’ (ARCIC 3, 4, 5).

The Objective Real Presence of Christ’s Body and Blood, and the Eucharistic anamnesis which makes Christ’s perfect Sacrifice present, function to make the Church into the Body of Christ. The Church is never more the Church than when she is making Eucharist. The Eucharist creates the Church, and the Church makes Eucharist - for the Church, the Body of Christ, and the Eucharist, the Body of Christ, are one and the same Body, inseparable and indivisible. By feeding, under the form of bread and wine, on the very Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, the One Person of the Divine Word and Son of God, in the Eucharist, the baptised are made to participate in the divine nature, and to be literally transformed by grace as they are knit into the divine organism of Christ, His Body the Church. The Eucharist energises, manifests, and actualises the Church. ‘Through the Eucharist, Christ unites all the faithful in one body - the Church. Communion renews, strengthens, and deepens this incorporation into the Church, already achieved by Baptism. In Baptism we have been called to form but one body’ (CCC 1396). ‘The Eucharist is the heart and the summit of the Church’s life, for in it Christ associates his Church and all his members with his sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving offered once for all on the cross to his Father; by this sacrifice he pours out the graces of salvation on his Body which is the Church’ (CCC 1407). As Saint Augustine of Hippo teaches: ‘You are what you eat, for you become the Body of Christ by feeding on the Body of Christ. See, there you are in the Host, there you are in the Chalice’ (Sermon 272). Or in the words of Saint Leo the Great: ‘The partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ does nothing other than make us to be transformed into what which we consume’ (Sermon 16). The Eucharistic Lord Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church as the source of the Eucharist, and Eucharist itself form one profound and Incarnational unity.

The Church is finally characterised as the faithful Bride of Christ. ‘This is a great mystery: I speak of Christ and the Church’ (Ephesians 5.31-32). ‘Matrimony... is an honourable estate... signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church’ (BCP 300). Lumen Gentium states: ‘The Church is described as the spotless spouse of the spotless Lamb whom Christ ‘loved and for whom he delivered himself up that he might sanctify her’ (Ephesians 5.26). ‘Christ loves the Church as his bride, having become the model of a man loving his wife as his body; the Church, indeed, is subject to its head’ (7). Again echoing Lumen Gentium, Anglicans have agreed also with the Orthodox Churches in the use of the ‘Bride of Christ’ image of the Church: ‘The New Testament also speaks of the Church as Christ’s bride, whom he presents to himself ‘without spot or wrinkle or any such thing’ (Ephesians 5.27; 2 Corinthians 11.2). In this connection Scripture looks forward to the consummation of history as ‘the marriage of the Lamb’ when the bride will be prepared to meet her bridegroom in glory’ (AOD 10). As the Catholic Catechism succinctly puts it, ‘The unity of Christ and the Church, head and members of one body, also implies the distinction of the two within a personal relationship. This aspect is... expressed by the image of bridegroom and bride... The Apostle speaks of the whole Church and of each of the faithful, members of the Body, as a bride ‘betrothed’ to Christ the Lord so as to become but one spirit with him. [Christ] has joined [the Church] with himself in an everlasting covenant and never stops caring for her as for his own body’.... ‘Christ and the Church are, in fact, two different persons, yet they are one in the conjugal union... as head, Jesus calls himself the bridegroom, as body, he calls himself ‘bride.’’ (CCC 796, quoting S. Augustine). ‘The Church is the Bride of Christ: he loved her and handed himself over for her. He has purified her by his blood and made her the fruitful mother of all God’s children’ (CCC 808). The biblical image of the Church as the Virgin Bride of Christ resonates throughout the doctrinal statement documents of the Second Vatican Council and is picked up and used forcefully again by the Saint Louis Affirmation. The Mother-Bride image instantly recalls to the Church’s collective memory such descriptions as the Church as the heavenly Jerusalem adorned for her husband, Christ, as a Bride (Revelation 21.2), and the Church as that heavenly Mother of all which is above and free (Galatians 4). This cherished biblical and Catholic appellation given to the Church is asserted by Anglo-Catholics with fresh insight in their efforts to affirm the divine and supernatural nature of the Church as contradistinct to merely human societies. The Holy Church, pure Bride of God and Virgin, infallibly teaches and sanctifies in the beauty of holiness, feeding her children on the whole milk of divine truth.

A proper conclusion to our comparison of the Affirmation of Saint Louis with the teaching of Lumen Gentium and related texts should evaluate the final ecclesiologically-significant statement in the Affirmation, that which regards the Sacred Hierarchy and Sacrament of Holy Orders as essential to the life and nature of the Church. Past ambiguities within Anglicanism concerning whether the Apostolic Ministry and Episcopate are of the plene esse, bene esse or the esse of the Catholic Church have been forever eliminated. ‘The Holy Orders of bishops, priests, and deacons are the perpetuation of Christ’s gift of apostolic ministry to His Church, asserting the necessity of a bishop of apostolic succession (or a priest ordained by such) as the celebrant of the Eucharist - these Orders consisting exclusively of men in accordance with Christ’s Will and institution (as evidenced by the Scriptures), and the universal practice of the Catholic Church. Bishops are Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Shepherds, and Teachers. Their duty (together with other clergy and the laity) is to guard and defend the purity and integrity of the Church’s Faith and Moral Teaching’ (2. Essentials of Truth and Order - Holy Orders, Bishops). This statement, in defending the male character of the apostolic ministry as received by Our Lord and the Apostles, reproduces almost word-for-word the teaching of the Declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Inter Insigniores (1976): ‘The Church holds that it is not admissible to ordain women to the priesthood, for very fundamental reasons. These reasons include: the example recorded in the sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the Church which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God’s plan for his Church.’ ‘The real reason is that, in giving the Church her fundamental constitution, her theological anthropology - thereafter always followed by the Church’s Tradition - Christ established things in this way.’ The Priesthood is male by the will and mind of Christ.

The Affirmation agrees with Pope John Paul II’s 1994 Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis: ‘Priestly ordination, which hands on the office entrusted by Christ to his Apostles of teaching, sanctifying, and governing the faithful, has in the Catholic Church from the beginning always been reserved to men alone.’ ‘I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women.’ Hence the teaching - ‘Only a baptised man validly receives sacred ordination.’ ‘The Lord Jesus chose men to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. The Church recognises herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord Himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible’ (CCC 1577). ‘The Church confers the sacrament of Holy Orders only on baptised men, whose suitability for the exercise of the ministry has been fully recognised’ (CCC 1598). In fidelity to the teaching of the Catholic Church of the ages, orthodox Anglo-Catholics affirm the threefold apostolic ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons to be of Christ’s own will and institution, and male in character, because Our Lord and the priestly Apostles whom he chose and ordained were all male. The Sacrament of Holy Orders is a ‘gift of Christ’ to His Church - and must therefore not be in any way altered or changed - for it is established forever according to the mind of Christ revealed in Scripture and Tradition: ‘Thou art a Priest forever after the Order of Melchizedek’ (Psalm 110). And, in consequence, because the mystery of the Eucharist, as the sign and cause of the Church’s unity and supernatural communion in Christ, was entrusted to the Apostles and their successors the Bishops, the instruction of Saint Ignatius of Antioch holds good as an essential dimension of the communion-life of the Church: ‘Let that be accounted a valid Eucharist which is celebrated by the Bishop or by one delegated by him.’ (Letter to the Smyrneans 8). For Catholic Anglicans as well as Roman Catholics, only bishops and priests of the Apostolic Succession may validly offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice. The third chapter of Lumen Gentium is devoted to the same doctrinal truths proposed in the Affirmation. ‘Jesus Christ established his holy Church, having sent forth the apostles as he himself had been sent from the Father, and he willed that their successors, namely the bishops, should be shepherds in his Church even to the consummation of the world’ (LG 18). This specific verity is itself echoed in the Anglican liturgy: ‘O Holy Jesus, who hast purchased to thyself an universal Church, and hast promised to be with the Ministers of Apostolic Succession to the end of the world...’ (BCP 572). Lumen Gentium first treats of Bishops (episkwpoi), teaching as it does an uninterrupted Apostolic Succession from the original Apostles to the Bishops of the present-age Church: ‘Bishops with their helpers, the priests and deacons, have taken up the service of the community, presiding in the place of God over the flock whose shepherds they are, as teachers for doctrine, priests for sacred worship, and ministers for governing. The apostles’ office is permanent, and is to be exercised without interruption by the sacred order of bishops... bishops by divine institution have succeeded to the place of the apostles, as shepherds of the Church’ (20). Through the Bishops, as modern-day Apostles, Christ Himself continues to preach the Word of God and administer the sacraments of redemption. The apostles were given a special grace of the Holy Spirit, imparted by the laying-on-of-hands and which is transmitted to this day in the Church by sacramental episcopal consecration. The Episcopate is the fullness of the Sacrament of Holy Orders, possessing the plenitude of the Apostolic Ministry and its powers. With episcopal consecration comes the powers of the Apostles in teaching, sanctifying, and governing the Church (LG 20). ‘A bishop, marked with the fulness of the sacrament of orders is the steward of the grace of the supreme priesthood, especially in the Eucharist, which he offers or causes to be offered and by which the Church continually lives and grows. Every legitimate celebration of the Eucharist is regulated by the bishop, to whom is committed the office of offering the worship of Christian religion to the divine majesty...’ (LG 26). Bishops preach the Word of God and the Catholic Tradition which are especially entrusted to them, regulate the distribution of all the sacraments, administer confirmation, orders, and penitential discipline, teach the faith, and are to form a good example to the flock. The bishop is the real and direct pastor of his people in the local church, with full authority in the pastoral office (27). Lumen Gentium goes on to explain that Our Lord caused the Apostles, and thus, Bishops, to share in and partake of His own consecration and mission from the Father, and has established a threefold ministry: ‘The divinely established ecclesiastical ministry is exercised on different levels by those who from antiquity have been called bishops, priests, and deacons’ (28). (The author invites a comparison of this statement with the Preface to the Anglican Ordinal of 1550 - an almost identical statement as to the origin and design of Orders.)

Priests (presbuteroi), who do not have the fulness of Holy Orders and are dependent on bishops for the exercise of their ministry, are united with the bishops in ‘sacerdotal dignity.’ They are consecrated to preach the Gospel, shepherd the faithful, and celebrate divine worship as true priests of the New Testament. In persona Christi, they exercise their sacred functions of proclaiming the Word and offering the Mass. As priests of Jesus Christ, they unite the prayers of all the faithful with their Head and apply the all-sufficient and complete Sacrifice of Christ to the faithful in the celebration of the Eucharist (28). The priests, as the instruments, aides, and co-operators of the Episcopal order, form one priesthood in communion with their bishop. They make the bishop present in their ministries and extend the bishop’s pastoral office in their ministrations. The sacraments priests administer and the office they exercise belong properly to the work of the bishop, whose representatives they are (28). Finally, Deacons are sacramentally ordained to the ministry of service (diakonia) to the bishop and his presbyteral college, not to the priesthood itself. They are ordained for various ministries, sacramental and pastoral, according to the assignment of the bishop, to whom they are intimately connected by ordination (28). Bishops, priests, and deacons constitute Christ’s own apostolic ministry, and have done so from New Testament times. Compare this teaching with that of the Book of Common Prayer and an unmistakable similarity emerges. ‘What orders of ministers are there in the Church? Bishops, Priests, and Deacons; which Orders have been in the Church from the earliest times. What is the office of a Bishop? The office of a Bishop is, to be a chief pastor in the Church; to confer Holy Orders; and to administer Confirmation. What is the office of a Priest? The office of a Priest is, to minister to the people committed to his care; to preach the Word of God; to baptise; to celebrate the Holy Communion; and to pronounce Absolution and Blessing in God’s Name. What is the office of a Deacon? The office of a Deacon is, to assist the Priest in Divine Service, and in his other ministrations, under the direction of the Bishop.’ (BCP Office of Instruction, 294). The interrogations asked of candidates to Holy Orders are also worth perusal, as they reflect the very same ideas conveyed in the Dogmatic Constitution. For Deacons, pages 532-533, for Priests, pages 541-543, and for Bishops, pages 554-555 in the Prayer Book. The core meaning and functions of the three sacred orders are outlined in these passages in vivid detail. The Saint Louis Affirmation is faithful to the BCP as well as to Anglican, and therefore, the Catholic doctrinal and liturgical tradition regarding the ministry since the Reformation and before. Finally, a selective peek at the Catholic Catechism will again prove the tremendous similarity in teaching. ‘Holy Orders is the sacrament through which the mission entrusted by Christ to his apostles continues to be exercised in the Church until the end of time: thus it is the sacrament of apostolic ministry. It includes three degrees: episcopate, presbyterate, and diaconate.’ (CCC 1536). ‘Since the beginning, the ordained ministry has been conferred and exercised in three degrees: that of bishops, that of presbyters, and that of deacons. The ministries conferred by ordination are irreplaceable for the organic structure of the Church: without the bishop, presbyters, and deacons, one cannot speak of the Church (Saint Ignatius, Trallians 3.1)’ (CCC 1593). ‘By the imposition of hands and through the words of the consecration, the grace of the Holy Spirit is given, and a sacred character is given in such wise that bishops... take the place of Christ himself, teacher, shepherd, and priest, and act as Christ’s representative... Bishops have been constituted true and authentic teachers of the faith, and have been made pontiffs and pastors’ (CCC 1558). ‘Only validly ordained priests can preside at the Eucharist and consecrate the bread and wine so that they become the Body and Blood of the Lord’ (CCC 1411). ‘Since the sacrament... is the sacrament of the apostolic ministry, it is for the bishops as the successors of the apostles to hand on the ‘gift of the Spirit,’ the ‘apostolic line.’ Validly ordained bishops, those who are in the line of apostolic succession, validly confer the three degrees of the sacrament...’ (CCC 1576). This catechetical content is identical to the historic Anglican doctrine of the ministry as clearly enunciated in the liturgy and formularies of Anglicanism. Anglo-Catholicism brings into clear focus the centrality of this truth.

The Saint Louis Affirmation, as evaluated in the light of the Dogmatic Constitution, possesses an undeniably Catholic character. If the writers and organisers of the Affirmation did not seek to reproduce in toto the theological ideas and teachings of the Second Vatican Council, they at least resorted to those texts of Vatican II which are historically consistent, both in use and theology, with Anglo-Catholic ecclesiology as explicated in the last two centuries. They leaned on Vatican II very heavily indeed. It is the task of the historian, not the theologian, to determine whether or not the framers of the Saint Louis Affirmation actually placed Lumen Gentium and other Roman Catholic documents before themselves when drafting their unambiguously Catholic formulary. The theological task, made very simple by the content of the Affirmation itself, is to critique and examine the theology of the Affirmation in the light of contemporaneous and applicable documents from the sister Church of the Anglicans, Rome. Clearly, the Affirmation is heavily influenced by Lumen Gentium, to such a degree that it could be fairly argued that, the role of the Papacy being excluded from its content, the Affirmation can be called the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church in condensed form - a radical and history-making step in the development of Catholic Anglican ecclesiology. Another aspect of the Affirmation to be left unexplored for another project is the question of whether or not the Affirmation is in fact consistent with earlier Reformation or seventeenth-eighteenth century Anglicanism or is, in truth, an abrupt break with earlier pre-Tractarian Anglican theological tradition. As it stands, the Affirmation represents an unparalleled agreement between Anglicans and Roman Catholics on the nature of the Church, Sacraments, and Ministry, arguably superior even to that of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission. Surely dogmatic unity between the Churches would be hastened were the whole Anglican Communion willing to embrace this crystallised statement of Catholic doctrine and practice. Vatican II’s impact on the Anglo-Catholic movement, it is hoped to be have now been shown, is undeniably beyond any doubt. The Second Vatican Council has forever reshaped and redesigned the theological expression and language of the Anglo-Catholic theological tradition.

II: The ecclesiology of late nineteenth and early-to-mid twentieth century Anglo-Catholicism

Having evaluated the remarkable theological agreement shared by the Affirmation of Saint Louis and the teaching of the Roman Church as expressed in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church and the Roman Catholic Catechism, let us proceed to review the historical theological position of Anglicanism’s Catholic Revival, which led to the formulation of the Affirmation. It is the contention of the author that the Affirmation of Saint Louis teleologically fulfils the long-awaited and final stage of the development of a precise, unambiguous Catholic ecclesiology for Anglicanism. The ambiguities and confusion caused by the Elizabethan Settlement of the sixteenth century are finally clarified and reversed by the explicit Catholic doctrinal stance taken by the Affirmation. This development, however, certainly did not occur in a vacuum. The Saint Louis Affirmation is itself the culmination of a theological tradition and a unbroken succession of doctrinal teaching stretching back to the English Reformation, and which was intensified and accelerated in a most profound way through the course of the Catholic Revival from the end of the nineteenth century through the mid twentieth century. One can see very easily through a cursory review of the basic doctrinal teachings of some of the more prominent representatives of the Catholic Revival, that the Affirmation of Saint Louis is no novel document, and contains no ecclesiology original to itself. The nineteenth century British Prime Minister William Gladstone could write in 1842, ‘Great Catholic principles distinguish our Church [of England] from many other Protestant bodies: such, for instance, as the doctrine of grace in Baptism, of the real sacramental Presence in the Eucharist, of absolution, of universal or Catholic consent, of the Apostolical foundation of the Episcopate, and of its being the source of lawful Church power and of a valid ministry’ (Rowell 7). An Anglican John Henry Newman, the principal architect of the Tracts for the Times and the most influential mind of the Oxford Movement, explains that the whole purpose of the Catholic Revival, and of the famous Tracts in particular (for which the Movement is often given the name Tractarian), is simply ‘to stir up our brethren to consider the state of the Church, and especially to the practical belief and preaching of the Apostolical Succession’ (Rowell 55). The initial purpose of the Catholic Movement is to restore to the living memory and practice of the Church of England and her daughter Churches her own ancient and Catholic roots, her apostolic lineage, and her unbroken continuity with the Church of the Apostles, which she perpetuates through the Apostolic Succession of her episcopate, priesthood, and diaconate. The Tracts concern ‘the practical revival of doctrines, which although held by the great divines of our Church, at present have become obsolete with the majority of her members’ (Rowell 55). Newman and his colleagues in the Movement do not claim in any way to introduce new doctrine or novel ideas into the English Church - their goal is to revivify and renew the tradition and practice of an Apostolic Church, a Church whose authority, grace-filled sacraments, and teachings derive, though obscured through the course of history, directly from the Apostles themselves. The Catholic Revival is, according to its progenitors, not the creation of a new system of doctrine and belief; it is the restoration of the original Faith and concomitant practices of an Apostolically-commissioned Divine Society. The Church of England is not an Eratsian, state-controlled institution or an organ of the state. Rather, it is, essentially, a part of the Body of Christ, founded on the Apostles and Fathers of the Primitive Church. It is the Catholic Church of the English-speaking race. Thus, the clergy of the English Church should not rest on the authority of the state, their own personal gifts, or on their own convictions, but rather on that essential quality which sets apart the priest from the layman: ‘our Apostolical Descent.’ Here is the beginning and the end, the whole purpose, of the Oxford Movement - to reassert the true Catholic Apostolic nature of the Anglican Church and her ministry as given by God, not man. Newman describes the Orders and Sacraments of the Church as the ‘keys and spells’ by which men are brought into the presence of God’s saints. The Church functions as the Great Sacrament of Christ, in her life, ministry, and worship. (Rowell 8). Newman envisions the Church as the school for saints, edified by the sacraments, ministry, and creeds of the one Church; an early Newman perceives the Anglican Church’s appeal to the antiquity of the first four centuries of the undivided Church as of the essence of Anglicanism - for him, the via media, the defining theological path of Anglicanism, consists in the English Church’s steadfast loyalty to the ancient Tradition of the earliest Church, as opposed to the rigid systematising of Rome and individualistic and atomising tendencies of protestantism. For Newman, the via media is, simply, appeal to the mantra, the well-repeated war-cry of the Anglican settlement, ‘the ancient and Undivided Church.’ ‘Ancient Consent, is, practically, the only, or the main kind, of Tradition which now remains to us’ (Rowell 62). The Anglican Newman readily identifies the Anglican via media with the Church of Antiquity, which alone, he originally believes, possessed the fullness of Catholic consent, conciliarity, and truth.

The poetic heart of the Movement, the great John Keble, son and heir of the old High Church tradition within the English Church, who heralded the beginning of the Movement in 1833 with his famous Assize Sermon against National Apostasy, identifies the Kingdom of God with Christ’s Church, a visible, organic, sacramental communion of grace: ‘The kingdom is a real visible company, united within itself by rules and ordinances, and varying in the ranks and degrees of its members; spiritual indeed and heavenly in its origin, and in the powers which quicken and move it, but having an outward frame and operations just as open to men’s notice as any society in this world.’ (Tavard 148). Keble is clear on the exact meaning of the reality of Church of Christ and where it fully subsists, as he proclaims, ‘Christ’s Holy Catholic Church is a real outward visible body, having supernatural grace continually communicated through it by succession from the Apostles, in whose place the bishops are’ (Rowell 8). Nowhere could a more succinct and profound definition of the Church be found in the history of ecclesiology. Keble effectively binds together all the essential characteristics of the Church in her sacramental or outward and visible quality. It almost goes without saying that for the Oxford Movement fathers, the divine Life of Christ is intimately connected to and instrumentally transmitted by the Church’s sacraments, orders, and ministry, for the Church is nothing less but the very Body of Christ, the extension of the Incarnation. Such a strongly-worded sentiment is unequivocally echoed by the Saint Louis Affirmation. According to the great Tractarian father and theological leader of the Oxford Movement, Dr Edward Bouverie Pusey, ‘the English Church preserves the entire faith, such as Our Lord left it with the Apostles, to evangelise the world. She believes all which the undivided Church believed, as of faith.’ ‘We could not imagine ourselves to have lived a day out of the communion of the Church of St. Augustine [of Canterbury].’ ‘[This Church] has been the home of our faith, our affections, our understanding, now to grey hairs. Like God’s Word, so that undivided Church of God satisfies our whole selves. There are no clouds there. In its faith, we have been ever at rest.’ Pusey, like the rest of the Anglo-Catholic tradition, firmly believes that Catholicism is the Faith of the ancient and undivided Church of the first millennium, the Church of the Fathers. As such, the Anglican Church is the heir of the Church of the Apostles and Fathers. This theme of the antiquity, and thus, Catholicism, of the Anglican Church, will resonate with passion and clarity throughout the Catholic Revival. ‘But if the whole Church, including the Greek and Anglican communions, were to define... any points to be de fide, I should hold all further enquiries to be at an end. I should submit to it and hold it as being, by such universal consent of the whole Church, proved to be part of the Apostles’ faith’ (Tavard 181-182). In the fulness of time, this doctrinal standard for Church authority, related by Dr Pusey, will be unambiguously affirmed by the Affirmation of Saint Louis: ‘Tradition: The received Tradition of the Church and its preachings as set forth by ‘the ancient catholic bishops and doctors,’ and especially as defined by the Seven Ecumenical Councils of the undivided Church, to the exclusion of all error, ancient and modern.’ (2. Essentials of Truth and Order). Anglo-Catholicism’s doctrinal standard eventually leads it to claim itself ‘more Catholic than Rome.’

Hence, the Catholic Movement has finally and irreversibly aligned itself with the theological vision of the Eastern Orthodox Churches in the matter of what constitutes the supreme tribunal of authority in the Catholic Church. The supreme authority in the Church, for the continuing Anglo-Catholic, is the Ecumenical Council, and, specifically, the Seven Holy Councils held when the Church was fully united dogmatically, hierarchically and sacramentally - Nicea I (325), Constantinople I (381), Ephesus (431), Chalcedon (451), Constantinople II (553), Constantinople III (680), and Nicea II (787). These councils uniquely represent the whole mind of the whole Catholic Church when the Catholic Church was visibly one. The Seven Councils manifest the Catholic Antiquity, Universality, and Consent required by the Canon of Saint Vincent of Lerins - that which is believed ‘everywhere, always, and by all.’ Anglo-Catholicism officially embraces the Trinitarian, Christological, iconological, and canonical orthodoxies of the universal Church of the ages. Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est. As Pusey writes, ‘The Anglican divines appeal to the authority of the Universal Church as long as it was one’ (Tavard 153). This is the Faith of the ancient and undivided Church of the first millennium, the Church of the unanimous consent of the ancient Fathers and of the undisputed councils. What emerges from the teaching of the founders of the Catholic Revival, enshrined in the Affirmation, is fundamentally a via media which in many respects continues the via media of earlier Anglican centuries, with more clarity and self-confidence. Rejecting, on one hand, the protestant mythic notion of sola scriptura, a self-interpreting Bible devoid of tradition and church as authoritative guides to the true handing-on of revelation, and on the other, the ultramontane doctrines of papal infallibility and the absolute and supreme universal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, Anglo-Catholicism promulgates a middle-way mediation of truth, an authority of antiquity and catholic consent, the mainstream and universal tradition of the undivided Church of the Fathers, as its very own. Neither papal nor protestant, the Anglican via media becomes ‘Holy Tradition, apostolic and orthodox, as ecclesial authority’ in the fullest meaning of the phrase. One controversial manner of describing this Tractarian appeal to the undivided Church would be: ‘where Rome and Orthodoxy agree together, there Anglicanism squares with them.’ Anglo-Catholicism’s closest relative, doctrinally speaking, as opposed to historically, would therefore be the Chalcedonian Churches of the eastern patriarchates. Anglicanism, thus self-understood, discovers herself to be the western counterpart to the Eastern Orthodox, or, to be indulgent, the Orthodox Church of the West, or ‘Western Orthodoxy.’ The position renders Anglicanism the sole Patristic Church of the West. Such confidence in the Anglican Catholic position led Pusey to quip, ‘The Church of England has been placed as the single guardian of the Catholic truth in the West’ (Tavard 159). Triumphalistic as it may sound, the Catholic Revival engineers stalwartly believed Anglicanism to be the unique Church, defender and transmitter of ancient and Apostolic Tradition, in the West, opposed to the theological innovations of Rome and the theological subtractions and omissions of extreme protestantism. Her doctrinal authority is the same as that of the Apostolic Church from the beginning. Consistent with his Anglican theological formation, Pusey strongly asserts that the branches of the one Catholic Church, although divided hierarchically and administratively, still possesses the sacramental and spiritual unity of the Body of Christ: the so-called ‘branch theory’ - ‘Well then may we believe that the several Churches, owning the same Lord, united to Him by the same sacraments, confessing the same faith, however their prayers may be hindered, are still one in His sight.’ (Tavard 182). The classic formulation of the branch theory, which first made its appearance in the early seventeenth century, and refined by the Non-Juring High Churchmen of the eighteenth century, will unleash its full theological force in the Catholic Revival. Succinctly put, Anglo-Catholicism innovated no new notion, but inherited and elaborated the immediate post-reformation English concept that the Catholic Church is divided on earth into three great branches: British, Roman, and Eastern. The famous Bishop Lancelot Andrewes of the seventeenth century will pray in his Preces Privatae for the three branches of Christ’s Church : ‘Western, Eastern, and British.’ More specifically, only those true Apostolically-rooted Churches which possess Apostolic Succession through episcopal consecration are considered to be true Catholic and Apostolic Churches, and these Churches are later exclusively grouped by the Oxford Movement fathers into the Latin, Eastern, and Anglican communions. Later on, the Old Catholics would be added to the list after the First Vatican Council in 1870.

Father John Mason Neale, founder of the religious order called the Society of Saint Margaret and the most important liturgical scholar of the Revival, sees the Anglican Church as opposed to protestantism: ‘What protestants, as protestants, protest against, that the Church of England holds... and what protestants, as protestants, hold, that the Church of England protests against. Take it which way you like, negatively or positively; and the fact is the same. Our Church has no claim to the epithet protestant. The Church of England never was, is not now, and, I trust to God, never shall be, protestant’ (Tavard 179, 183). In 1915, Henry Swete, a well-respected theologian of the Revival, characterises the Church this way: ‘The title ‘catholic’ must be vindicated for all churches that retain the great sacraments, the doctrine of the catholic creeds, and the succession of the historic episcopate: and it must be denied to bodies which, however great their spiritual efficiency, do not fulfil these necessary conditions of genuine catholicity’ (Swete 41). The founder of the famous ‘liberal catholic’ school which sought to introduce the whole of human science and knowledge into the realm of catholic orthodoxy, Bishop Charles Gore of Oxford, a giant of the second generation of Anglo-Catholics, edited in 1889 a now-classic work, Lux Mundi, which sought to evaluate and re-affirm catholic claims in the light of modern times, and create a synthesis between faith and science. In that work, Gore professes his loyalty to the Catholic tradition of Anglicanism: ‘We have written this volume not as ‘guessers of truth’ but as servants of the Catholic creed and Church, aiming only at interpreting the faith we have received’ (17). From Lux Mundi’s vantagepoint, we can see a consistency in the teaching of Bishop Gore on the nature of the Church. ‘I mean by Catholicism the establishment of a visible society as the one divinely-instituted home of the great salvation, held together not only by the inward Spirit but also by certain manifest and external institutions’ (Tavard 187). Gore, like his theological forbears, perceives the nature of the Church in reference to her historicity and sacramental nature. ‘We believe that Christ instituted a visible Church, and intended the apostolic succession of the Ministry to form at least one necessary link of connection in it; we accept the Catholic creeds and the declared mind of the Church as governing their beliefs; and we believe in the sacraments as celebrated by the ministry of apostolic authority in its different grades, as the covenanted channels or instruments of grace’ (Tavard 188). The Saint Louis Affirmation almost quotes the last phrase of this statement in referring to the sacraments as ‘covenanted means of grace.’ Gore explores the concept of the Church as the Sacrament of the Great Sacrament, Christ Himself. He sees the Church as having both an outward and visible and inward and spiritual nature. The Catholic Church must be visible, Gore teaches, because the Incarnation which it continues and extends was visible. The Church and Incarnation are inextricably one mystery: ‘The idea of the visible Church, the idea of the sacraments, the idea of ministerial succession, cohere as indissoluble elements in one idea and one institution. And this idea and institution cohere in turn with the Incarnation. So the visible Church is the embodiment of Christ - the extension of the Incarnation’ (Tavard 190). Gore’s Catholicism, bringing access to all truth, is wholly Incarnational.

Bishop Charles C. Grafton, one of the luminaries of the Catholic movement in America, defends a view of the Catholic Church which emphasises its institutional and sacramental character. Catholic Christianity is defined as ‘the episcopal government of the Church, the three sacred orders of the ministry, the preserved apostolic succession through Episcopal ordination, the Christian priesthood and the real presence and Eucharistic sacrifice’ (Grafton 144). Bishop Grafton sees the Church as a visible and sacramental society, fully functional and full of authority even in spite of the various divisions or branches which comprise the one Catholic Church. ‘[The Catholic Church] is not a dead but an authoritative and living voice. She is ever proclaiming, in the midst of the world’s tumultuous babel of contending utterances, the faith once for all delivered to the saints’ (Grafton 145-146). In 1920, the first of a series of six Anglo-Catholic Congresses was held in England with the purpose of reinvigorating the Catholic Movement intellectually and spiritually. For the first time, Anglo-Catholic scholars and theologians gathered en masse to demonstrate the presence, influence, and achievements of the Revival. At that most important of meetings, Father N. P. Williams powerfully described the position of Anglo-Catholics concerning the nature of the Church’s belief and authority. He invokes ‘the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of the Seven Ecumenical Councils,’ and then proceeds to quote the saintly Non-Juring Bishop Thomas Ken as a representative voice: ‘I die in the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith, as professed by the whole Church before the division of East and West.’ He says, ‘the chief of the Oxford movement’s preliminary tasks on the intellectual side is that of convincing all members of the Anglican communion that ‘primitive Christendom’ cannot mean anything other that ‘undivided, pre-1054 Christendom.’ It has been the special work of the Oxford Movement to elucidate this appeal to antiquity... ‘We believe in the Catholic faith as contained in the Scriptures and expounded by the primitive, that is, the undivided Church of the first Christian millennium’ (ACC I, 68, 70). For Williams, this is the meaning of the Church in its fullest sense, the Great Church of the ages: ‘The doctrine of the Great Church includes first of all, the main fabric of Trinitarian and Christological dogma, including, of course, the beliefs of Our Lord’s virginal Birth, bodily Resurrection, and Ascension into Heaven; the presuppositions of Christian soteriology known as the doctrines of the Fall and Original Sin; belief in Christ’s atoning Death as objectively bringing within our reach that salvation which we could never have earned for ourselves; the doctrines of the Sacraments as the means of grace, of the Real Presence and the Eucharistic sacrifice; of the grace of Orders and the necessity of the Episcopal succession from the Apostles; of the Church’s absolving power in Penance; of Confirmation and Unction; of the Communion of Saints; and of last things, Heaven and Hell, and the intermediate state, and the Last Judgement. There is surely enough information here to satisfy even the most passionate cravings for dogmatic authority; the map is surely definite enough for even the most timorous sailor to steer by’ (ACC I, 67). The 1920 Lambeth Conference’s ‘Appeal to all Christian People’ drew this very technical description of the true membership of the true Church as a response from Dr Darwell Stone and Father F. W. Puller, SSJE, two highly-venerated Anglo-Catholic scholars. Notice how closely it resembles, with the exception of reference to the Papal office, the teaching of Pope Pius XII’s Mystici Corporis (1943): ‘The Church militant is a society consisting of all those who believe in Christ and have been validly baptised, and are in fellowship with one or other of those organised groups of Christians which possess a legitimately appointed ministry deriving its authority through an unbroken series of successive ordinations from the Apostles, and profess the truth once for all delivered to the saints’ (Stone and Puller 25). In 1921, the official Anglican representatives who created a document of Suggested Terms of Intercommunion with the Orthodox Churches developed a direct profession of faith, declaring the nature of the Church: ‘We accept the Faith of Christ as it is taught us by the Holy Scriptures, and as it has been handed down to us in the Creed of the Catholic Church, and as it is expounded in the dogmatic decisions of the Oecumenical Councils as accepted by the Undivided Church’ (Istavridis 97). Anglicanism shares with Orthodoxy a high regard for Ecumenical authority.

A succinct affirmation of the catholic nature of the entire Anglican Church and her teaching occurs in a speech presented at the 1923 Anglo-Catholic Congress by Bishop Frank Weston of Zanzibar, a renown early-twentieth century missionary. He professes: ‘We now stand for the Catholic Faith common to East and West. We stand or fall with Christ’s Church, catholic and apostolic. And we wait patiently till the Holy Father and the Orthodox Patriarchs recognise us as of their own stock. We are not a party: we are those in the Anglican Communion who refuse to be limited by party rules and party creeds. Our appeal is to the Catholic Creed, to Catholic worship and Catholic practice’ (ACC 96). Bishop Weston’s ecclesiological masterpiece, The Fulness of Christ, describes the Church as Christ Himself, the divine society reflecting unity-in-diversity united together by the Apostolic ministry of the episcopate. The Eucharist is set-forth as the sacrificial oblation of love which unites the Church of Christ in divine charity: ‘The Mass becomes the necessary centre of worship, for it celebrates the central fact of at-one-ment, and communion with our Lord and one another is the pledge of that unity which our Lord died that we might enjoy’ (Maynard-Smith 53). In 1929, the quintessential Anglo-Catholic position is reiterated in an Open Letter written by the Federation of Catholic Priests, a Catholic society in the Church of England, addressed to the Bishop of London. ‘We believe that the Church of these Provinces [Canterbury and York] is a true part of that Church which received the Holy Ghost on the Day of Pentecost. If the Church is really one, what we assert to be true of our own part of the Church must a fortiori be true of those two greater parts in the East and the West.’ (Hughes 94). This assertion in echoed later in history by no less a figure than the Archbishop of Canterbury himself, His Grace Geoffrey Fisher, ‘We have no doctrine of our own - we only possess the Catholic doctrine of the Catholic Church enshrined in the Catholic Creeds, and those creeds we hold without addition or diminuition. We stand firm on that rock.’ (Hughes 50). The Continuing Anglo-Catholic Churches unequivocally claim that the Church of Christ is ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic’ and also, that such is the character of orthodox Anglicanism. For Anglo-Catholics, what does the doctrine of the Church really mean? Father E. Keble Talbot, sometime Superior of the Community of the Resurrection, eloquently answers this question on the occasion of the centenary of the Oxford Movement in 1933: ‘The Church is central to the Christian Faith and religion. The English Church is a true part of that supernatural society which derives from Christ and his Apostles. Here is the soul of Catholicism - a corporate experience controlled by the insight which divines the whole light, life and love of God incarnate once for all in Christ, offered continuously to the world and entering the life of man through the fellowship of the Spirit’ (OMCC 152). The vision of the Catholic Anglicanism is a pure Christianity of the Incarnation, a Christ-centred, Incarnate, Catholic Church expressed in the mystery of the Eucharist, translated through the work of theology, applied in pastoral ministry, lived-out in prayer, reaching-out in missionary labour, and ever extending itself as it seeks union with those Catholics who also perceive this corporate reality in the tradition of the Eastern and Western Churches.

We conclude our journey through the thought of major representatives of the Anglo-Catholic theological way with His Grace Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey, who in 1936 wrote the seminal English Catholic doctrinal text of the twentieth century, The Gospel and the Catholic Church. This study of the Church, its doctrine, unity, and structure refers the ecclesial reality to the Gospel of the crucified and risen Lord. Examining the New Testament, Ramsey arrives at a holistic biblical ecclesiology. ‘Christianity is never solitary...to believe in Christ is to believe in One whose Body is a part of Himself and whose people are His own humanity, and to be joined to Christ is to be joined to Christ-in-His-Body’ (Ramsey 37-38). Divine life is found ‘through membership in the Body’ (Ramsey 38). The unity of the One Body is rooted in the unity of God; the outward order of the Church expresses that unity. Bishops act as the organs of the Church’s unity and continuity - the Church is ‘an organism of Sacraments, Episcopacy, Scriptures and Creeds’ in which each separate element must be seen as belonging to the others (Ramsey 57). This idea repeats the classic Anglican ecumenical gesture called the Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1888, which names the Scriptures, the three Creeds, the two Dominical Sacraments, and the Apostolic Episcopate as the four essential ingredients of the Catholic Church. The Archbishop stresses the role of the Eucharist, Episcopate, Liturgy, and Creeds in fixing the Church in heart of the Gospel, the death and resurrection of the Son of God. ‘As he receives the Catholic sacrament and recites the Catholic creed, the Christian is learning that no single movement nor partial experience within Christendom can claim his final obedience, and that a local Church can claim his loyalty only by leading him beyond itself to that universal family which it represents. Hence the Catholic order is not a hierarchical tyranny, but the means of deliverance into the Gospel of God and the timeless Church’ (Ramsey 135). ‘This historic structure bears witness to this [one historical family founded by Christ], and Baptism, Eucharist, Creeds, Episcopate, Scripture are the ‘signs of the spiritual constitution,’ things not Anglican, nor Roman, nor Greek, but things belonging to the one people of God’ (Ramsey 213). The Church’s mystical being is unified and continued in the Apostolic Ministry, which manifests the universal Church locally. ‘Every ordination and every Eucharist is the act of Christ in His one Body, and the Episcopate expresses this fact in outward order. The Eucharist celebrated in any place is the act of the one family as represented in that place; and the validity of the ministry and of the rite is bound up with its meaning as the act of the universal Church’ (Ramsey 223). This is Anglo-Catholic theology at its very best.

III: The Churches of the Saint Louis Affirmation and Dominus Iesus

Now let us briefly examine the theological and ecclesiological consequences of the Affirmation of Saint Louis and the long-standing tradition it completes in relation to the recent Vatican Declaration Dominus Iesus. If the foregoing description of the Church as related and believed by Anglo-Catholics is accurate and historically sound, then Anglo-Catholic Churches, which are orthodox in faith and doctrine, holding fast to the dogmatic decrees of the Seven Ecumenical Councils of ancient undivided Church, which rightly celebrate the Eucharistic Sacrifice and profess right faith in the objective Real Presence of Our Lord’s Body and Blood in the Blessed Sacrament, and which faithfully preserve and transmit the apostolic succession in the threefold apostolic ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons, would fall under the category of those genuine, or ‘true particular’ Churches which are henceforth described in the Vatican Declaration: ‘The Churches which, while not existing in perfect communion with the [Roman] Catholic Church, remain united to her by means of the closest bonds, that is, by apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist, are true particular Churches. Therefore, the Church of Christ is present and operative also in these Churches, even though they lack full communion with the [Roman] Catholic Church’ (Dominus Iesus 17). Anglican Churches possess, this author affirms vigourously, in continuous line with the unbroken teaching of the English Church since the Reformation, both Apostolic Succession and the Blessed Sacrament. Therefore Anglo-Catholicism would not come under the statement of Dominus Iesus regarding non-Catholic ecclesial bodies: ‘The ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery are not true Churches in the proper sense’ (17). Anglo-Catholic Churches are ‘true particular Churches,’ not ‘ecclesial communities.’ All Anglicanism has, of course, known the truth of its own ontological state for many centuries, and has always believed itself to have never ceased to have either the Apostolic Succession, which was carefully preserved over and over again through the English Reformation (particularly in the consecration of Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker in 1559 with the clear intention of the Edwardine Ordinal of 1550), or a valid Holy Eucharist, which depends for its validity upon celebration by an Apostolically-consecrated bishop or an episcopally-ordained priest: ‘We make provision with the greatest reverence for the consecration of the Holy Eucharist and commit it only to properly ordained Priests and to no other ministers of the Church’ (Saepius Officio XI, Archbishops of Canterbury and York). Continuing Anglican Churches which affirm the Saint Louis Affirmation as a doctrinal starting-point ought to fall within the perimeters of a description kindly offered by Lumen Gentium. ‘The [Roman] Church recognises that in many ways she is linked with those, who, being baptised, are honoured with the name of Christian, though they do not... preserve unity of communion with the Successor of Peter. For there are many who honour Sacred Scripture, taking it as a norm of belief and a pattern of life, and who show a sincere zeal. They loving believe in God the Father Almighty and in Christ, the Son of God and Saviour. They are consecrated by Baptism, in which they are united with Christ. They also recognise and accept other sacraments within their own Churches... Many of them rejoice in the episcopate, celebrate the Holy Eucharist and cultivate devotion toward the Virgin Mother of God’ (15, emphasis added). Surely orthodox Anglo-Catholicism comes within the pale of this description. In summary, it may be said quite forcefully that the Affirmation of Saint Louis, in its ecclesiological aspect, breaks radically new ground in the ecumenical milieu shared mutually by the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglo-Catholic Churches. Never before has the Catholic Anglican tradition ever issued such an unambiguously declaration of its own doctrinal and theological Catholicity. The Saint Louis Affirmation could very well introduce a new and dramatically more successful ecumenical dialogue between Anglican Catholics and their Roman brethren. Anglican Churches that embrace the Affirmation are, by far, in the Western Church tradition, the undoubtedly closest living relatives to the Roman Communion. Both Churches agree on such essential catholic truths as the divine origin and nature of the Church, the Seven Sacraments, the male character of the Apostolic Ministry, the necessity for Apostolic Succession, the sacramental nature of the Christian ministerial priesthood, and the indefectibility of the ancient Church’s teaching office. Anglican Catholics and Roman Catholics are very close indeed, too close not to make the effort to understand and ultimately attempt to reconcile with one another. The Affirmation of Saint Louis presents a unique opportunity within the ecumenical mandate for genuine rapprochement.

IV: A concluding commentary on the issue of Anglican Orders

The entire question of the sacramental validity of Anglican Orders, it is respectfully suggested, should now finally be reappraised by the Roman Catholic Church. In his 1896 Apostolic Letter Apostolicae Curae, Pope Leo XIII strangely avoids a review and explanation of that essential portion of the Anglican Ordinal of 1550, which establishes the unmistakable sacramental intention of the Anglican Church in continuing the apostolic succession and the three historic orders of the Church, the episcopate, priesthood, and diaconate, called the Preface to the Ordinal. ‘It is evident unto all men, diligently reading holy scripture, and ancient authors, that from the Apostles’ time, there hath been these orders of ministers in Christ’s Church, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, which Offices were evermore had in such reverent estimation, than no man by his own private authority, might presume to execute any of them, except he were first called, tried, examined, and known, to have such qualities, as are requisite for the same. And also by public prayer, with imposition of hands, approved, and admitted thereunto. And therefore to the intent these orders should be continued, and reverently used, and esteemed in this Church of England, it is requisite, that no man (not being at this present Bishop, Priest, nor Deacon) shall execute any of them, except he be called, tried, examined, and admitted, according to the form hereafter following.’ Apostolicae curae purports a defective intention in the Edwardine Ordinal of 1550 because, it is claimed, the Ordinal does not intend to make bishops, priests, and deacons in the Catholic sense, that is, in the historic sense of the universal Church from the Apostles’ time. As the Preface clearly demonstrates, nothing could be further from the truth. The ‘native spirit’ of the Anglican Ordinal, condemned by Leo XIII, is that of a rite which deliberately seeks to continue the unbroken threefold hierarchy of the ancient Catholic Church aptly described in the letters of Saint Ignatius of Antioch. The Edwardine Ordinal of 1550 offers three separate and distinct rites to be used for the ordination of the three major orders of the apostolic ministry: ‘the form and manner of ordering deacons,’ ‘the form of ordering priests’ (translated in the 1560 Latin version as sacerdos, the English ‘presbyter’ never being used in the original), and ‘the form of consecrating of an archbishop or bishop.’ These three rites contain the essential matter and form required by Pope Pius XII in his 1947 Sacramentum Ordinis for valid ordination, the laying-on-of-hands and prayer for the grace of the specific order. What was understood in the sixteenth century as the traditional sacramental form of the medieval pontificals for the episcopate and priesthood becomes the form of the Anglican Ordinal: Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, ‘Receive the Holy Ghost.’ Because of the irrefutable proofs offered by both historical fact and ecclesiastical practice, Father E. M. De Augustinis, SJ rightly established, for the Roman commission investigating Anglican Orders in 1895, the truth that Anglican Orders have been valid beyond the breach from Rome in 1534 and beyond the promulgation of the Anglican Ordinal in 1550: ‘It has been demonstrated, therefore, that the ministers of Anglican ordinations in ordaining bishops and priests intend to do what the Church does; for this reason their intention is sufficient for the validity of the act. We conclude: Anglican ordinations are valid because they have been carried out by a suitable minister, with a valid rite and with the intention of doing what the Church does’ (Orders 148). However, for the sake of argument, we can assure the reader that an unquestionable correction of the purported defects of form and intention occurred in the production of the Restoration Ordinal of 1662, when the three orders of the apostolic ministry, which had been certainly distinguished in the earlier Ordinal, were distinguished even more clearly in the rites of ordination in order to correct the false teaching of English presbyterian puritans who, when using the 1550 Ordinal, wrongly followed Saint Jerome’s faulty assertion regarding the parity of the orders of bishop and priest. An almost universal recovery of the historic Catholic understanding of the Sacrament of Orders in the Anglican Communion and the on-going participation of Old Catholic consecrators in the consecration of Anglican bishops (from 1932 in England and from 1946 in the United States) have drastically transformed the situation evaluated and judged by Pope Leo XIII at the end of the nineteenth century.

Practically every bishop and priest in the entire Anglican Communion can now trace his ordination directly to a bishop properly consecrated, not only by Anglican prelates, but by Old Catholic consecrators as well. In fact, because the entire Anglican Communion has been permeated with a catholic understanding of the sacrament of Orders as a result of the Catholic Movement, the ordination of women controversy in some Anglican jurisdictions notwithstanding, there now exists a general intention ‘to do what the Church does’ as defined by Rome. This verity is revealed in the 1981 Agreed Statement of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission. Old Catholic Orders, undoubtedly recognised as valid by the Roman Church, are the orders of every Anglican jurisdiction, given with the proper matter, form, minister, and intention needed for every valid ordination. The valid Eucharist and valid apostolic succession required by Dominus Iesus for the characterisation of a body of Christians as ‘Church’ are thus, the author believes, undeniably present and living within the communion of those Churches which derive from the Anglican Episcopal succession. Historic Anglican Churches are true Churches, not simply ‘ecclesial bodies,’ with a valid episcopate, priesthood, and diaconate, with a valid Eucharist and absolution, and consequently, a valid connection to the Life of Jesus Christ conveyed through the means of grace ex opere operato, the Sacraments. The state of things just described would place orthodox Anglicanism, according to the standards of Dominus Iesus, on par with the Eastern Orthodox and Old Catholic Churches, which have themselves recognised the validity of Anglican Orders. (The Constantinopolitan Ecumenical Patriarchate provisionally, by economia, recognised Anglican Orders in 1922; the Archiepiscopate of Utrecht recognised them absolutely in 1925). These Churches have realised that the Anglican Eucharist, Orders, and other Sacraments convey the divine grace covenantally promised by Christ in the Church’s sacramental life.

Of the various solutions for the problem of Anglican Orders as concerning the Roman Church, Father George H. Tavard suggests as the first and perhaps best option the presumption for validity of Anglican Orders. Such a decision on the part of the Latin Church would certainly place orthodox Anglicans within its perimeters of ‘Church’ and not ‘ecclesial body’ or ‘sect.’ ‘The [Roman] Catholic hierarchy could decide that there is, today, if not in the past, a presumption of validity in favour of Anglican orders. Arguments in support of a presumption of validity may be drawn from several areas: the general predominance of ‘high church’ over ‘low church’ conceptions of the sacraments; the present evidence that Anglican bishops intend to do what the Church does in ordination; the participation of Old Catholic bishops in Anglican ordinations; the growth of a theology of priesthood that is shared by [Roman] Catholics and Anglicans alike, as illustrated by the Final Report [of ARCIC].... and the recognition of Anglican orders by Orthodox Churches by virtue of the ‘principle of economy.’ It could allow the [Roman] Catholic magisterium to declare that, given the contemporary evidence in favour of the presumption of validity, Anglican orders are now recognised, or regarded as valid’ (Tavard - Orders 137). We have mercifully come a very long way from the pronouncements of Pope and English Archbishops alike given at the end of the nineteenth century: ‘Anglican Orders are absolutely null and utter void’ (Leo XIII). ‘Thus in overthrowing our Orders, [Leo] overthrows his own and pronounces sentence on his own Church’ (Frederick Temple). Or have we? Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, in his Commentary on the apostolic letter of Pope John Paul II Ad Tuendam Fidem (1998), reaffirms the Vatican claim that Anglican Orders are invalid: ‘With regard to those truths connected to revelation by historical necessity and which are to be held definitively, but are not able to be declared as divinely revealed, the following examples can be given... the declaration of Pope Leo XIII in the apostolic letter Apostolicae Curae on the invalidity of Anglican ordinations’ (Ratzinger 11). This development, from the author’s perspective, is most unfortunate and most unhelpful, being another tragically unhappy barrier placed in the way of genuine ecumenical openness and equality which ought to obtain between Anglo-Catholics and the Church of Rome. The outside observer may find it odd that a reaffirmation of the condemnation of the validity of Anglican ordinations would be deemed necessary by the Vatican at this stage of history - not to mention the fact that the Anglican Orders controversy, to the vast majority of Catholics throughout the world, is at best an obscure and seemingly inconsequential subject. The fact of the reassertion, positively speaking, serves to highlight the influence still wielded by the comparatively small branch of the Church known as Anglicanism. In spite of this unnecessary regression on the path to real Catholic unity, it is hoped that an irenic exploration of the subject of Anglican Orders will not be squelched, but will be allowed to continue, in the theological activity of the Roman Communion. The issue, from every possible point of view, is obviously not dead, as the reassertion of Apostolicae Curae makes clear. The Commentary reveals that a not insignificant number of Roman Catholic theologians are re-evaluating the subject and arriving at conclusions found unpalatable by the Vatican hierarchy. The consensus fidelium may be moving Roman Catholics to a practical recognition of the grace that objectively flows from Jesus Christ through the traditional Anglican sacramental system. In a new age of ecumenical openness and in the spirit of charity, the time has come for a comprehensive review of Anglican Orders within the Roman Church, taking into account the incredibly important developments and changes within Anglicanism during the past century. May it come soon, so that one day all Western Catholics, Anglican, Old, and Roman, may again be united at One Altar, celebrating the Lord’s One Sacrifice and together sharing in the One Body and Blood of the One Saviour. Amen.