This site is dedicated to the traditional Anglican expression of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We profess the orthodox Christian Faith enshrined in the three great Creeds and the Seven Ecumenical Councils of the ancient undivided Church. We celebrate the Seven Sacraments of the historic Church. We cherish and continue the Catholic Revival inaugurated by the Tractarian or Oxford Movement. Not tepid centrist Anglicanism.
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Monday, August 17, 2015
ICCA Sermon
With Bishop John Hind of the Church of England at first Evensong of ICCA.
Notes for Sermon at the International Catholic Congress of Anglicans, at Saint Andrew’s Church, Fort Worth, Texas, Thursday 16th July 2015.
Praised, blessed, and adored be Jesus Christ on His Throne of
glory, in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, and in the hearts of His
faithful people: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost. Amen.
In the 1992 United States Vice-Presidential
debate, James Stockdale, Ross Perot’s running mate, introduced himself to the
eager audience in these words: ‘Who am I?
Why am I here?’ Needless to say, there was a rather shocked reaction from
the crowd. Well, at this International Catholic Congress of Anglicans, we know
precisely who we are and exactly why we are here.
We are Anglican Catholics
and lay claim to the Anglican Catholic identity.
Anglo-Catholicism is
entirely about Jesus Christ; it begins with Jesus, proclaims Jesus in mission,
evangelism, and ministry, seeks to make Jesus known, loved, and adored, and
ends with Jesus.
Anglo-Catholicism is not a
wing, party, or sect, but the fullness of the Faith of the Apostles, the
wholeness and completeness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and of His Holy
Church. It is a movement, but more than a movement; it is the Church in movement. This claim is not an
assertion of triumphalism, but a fact of history.
Anglo-Catholicism is, if we
will, ‘mere Catholicism,’ not just mere Christianity. It is kata holon, katholikon, according to the
whole. Catholic is as Catholic does:
genuine Catholicism is about what Saint Paul describes in his Epistle to the
Romans as ‘the obedience of faith.’ Catholicity is obedience to the Holy and
Apostolic Tradition.
Catholicism is not about
‘smells and bells,’ as fine and fancy as those things undoubtedly are.
Authentic Catholicism is about obedience to the Truth as it is in Jesus. It should
not be labelled ‘High Church,’ but - Deep Church.
Anglo-Catholicism is that to
which all Anglicanism has always tended, the fulfilment of the Vision Glorious
that is the Ecclesia Anglicana; it is
Anglicanism fulfilled, and brought to its proper, highest vocation, embodying
as it does the insights of the ancient and patristic Church, the English Reformation,
the Non-Jurors, and the Evangelical and Catholic Revivals.
‘Why drive a Gremlin, when
you can drive a Mercedes-Benz?’ ‘Why eat a packet of crisps, when you can dine
on caviar?’
Anglican Catholics take
their place in the universal communion of the One, Holy, Catholic, and
Apostolic Church:
The Scriptures: interpreted by the consensus of the Undivided
Catholic Church.
The Creeds: and with them the consensus fidelium of the Seven Holy Ecumenical Councils.
The Sacraments: all Seven of them.
The Apostolic Ministry: the preservation, and where
necessary, the restoration of which in Apostolic Succession in the Sacrament of
Holy Orders is paramount.
This is a sensitive point,
but we must always speak the truth in love, and so here we speak the truth in
love and in charity, for the welfare of our beloved friends. The ‘ordination’
of women to any grade of the Apostolic Ministry must be called what it is, a
false doctrine, and more than that – it is a heresy, because it is a violation
of Catholic consent. But let us remember, please note, that the word heresy arises from the Greek word for choice. And we must choose, we must make
a choice, the choice, to accept and
believe the Faith revealed by God in Scripture and Tradition.
The ‘ordination’ of women
must cease, because Holy Orders guarantee the validity of the grace-bearing
Sacraments; they provide the sacramental assurance of grace. The Ministry is
covenanted to us by Our Lord in His Church’s sacramental system. We must
maintain the Divine Revelation of the male Apostolic Ministry.
On the basis of agreement on
this nature of the Ministry, the Anglican Province of America enjoys full
sacramental communion with the Anglican Church in America and the Reformed
Episcopal Church: we invite others to join us in this communion of the fullness
of Catholic Faith and Practice.
Now that we have that out of
the way, let us move to the heart of the matter and of this sermon:
Anglo-Catholic Mission.
Here are ten ideas presented
for our consideration regarding our ongoing mission in and for the Lord Jesus
Christ.
1.
Personal Communion with Jesus: ‘Are you
born again?’ “Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?’ Every Anglican
should be able to say most earnestly that he has a personal relationship with
Jesus Christ. We need to cultivate a personal relationship with Our Lord and
with other people – conversion of
life effects evangelisation.
2.
Personal Holiness. The Holy
Fathers affirm that the greatest means of evangelism is holiness of life.
People at large will be attracted more by the holiness of our lives than by
anything else, for personal holiness has a power to attract, convert, and
transform. We sanctify ourselves so that others may be sanctified.
3.
Bible-Centred
Religion. Jesus
Christ, the Word of God, lives in His written Word. Saint Jerome pronounces, ‘Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of
Christ.’ Let us soak ourselves in the
Holy Scriptures. The Bible should serve as the unique resource for the faithful
Anglican Catholic. Let’s go to Bible Study!
4.
The Sacramental System. We should
seek to receive the Sacraments regularly and frequently, with faith, love, and
repentance, devout use leads to devout living. A true Christian life is one
nourished with the Sacraments. Genuine evangelism is sacramental evangelism.
5.
Orthodox Liturgical Worship. The
liturgy should be celebrated ‘in the beauty of holiness,’ the ars celebrandi, in which the fullness of
the Tradition is expressed and embodied with all the reverence that it
deserves. We should give our best to God.
6.
Active and Involved Christian Formation. To
divorce preaching of the Gospel from the Sacraments is to empty the Sacraments
of their potential power and to reduce the sacramental life to the mechanical.
All Churchmen should therefore take care that those who receive the Sacraments
be afforded the maximum level and quality of formation and catechesis.
7.
Avoidance of Private Judgement. Catholic
Christianity is a revealed Religion. We must submit all private judgement to
the authority of the Tradition of the Undivided Church. We are the children of
the Church, called to live, worship, work, obey, and pray in the heart of the
Church. We are Churchmen, not sectarians.
8.
Faithful Discipleship. We must
live in such a way that we reject the world, the flesh, and the devil, and seek
to live a genuinely Christian life, which is a totally different life from that
proposed by the pagan post-Christian world round us.
9.
Personal Evangelism. Our determination
to welcome other individual persons into the Church and to encourage them to
follow Jesus, as well as our eagerness to teach the Faith, should be essential
components of our Christian witness. Personal relationships translate to
witness.
10. Commitment
to the Anglican Tradition. Rigorous commitment to the classical
Book of Common Prayer and to the patrimony and ethos of orthodox Anglicanism
should define our mission and our efforts. We are Anglican Catholics, Anglicans, and we should inculcate our own
ethos.
Christ saves from sin and for communion in His living Body, the Church. The end and purpose of
mission is the salvation of souls and bodies joined to Jesus’s Body. Our
mission for Jesus is sacramental and ecclesial, to bring people into His
mystical Body.
At the first Congress in
1920, 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’.
For Father 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.’
Bishop Frank Weston of
Zanzibar 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.’
Let us pray in union with
Our Blessed Lady of Walsingham…
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art
thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary,
Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
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