Five Fares For A Friday

An Outline of Ascetical Theology According to the English Pastoral Tradition (London: S.P.C.K., 1963), xiv.

Martin Thornton

Preface

At the heart of Anglicanism is the insistence on historical continuity; if our claims are true then our spirituality, that is our total expression of Christian life, as well as our theology, liturgy, and polity, must be retraceable through the medieval and patristic ages to the Bible. I have tried, therefore, to portray the English School as a living tradition, drawing its inspiration and character from all ages, while set within the glorious diversity of Catholic Christendom. Rather than preoccupation with the past, I believe that it is this comprehensive view which can inspire creative insights into the spiritual needs of the twentieth century: a good tree, especially an ancient one, bears new fruit only when attention is paid to its roots.

Not the Pleasantly Social, but the Truth

Anthony Esolen

To search for truth, to guard and study it when it is found, and to champion it when it is under attack, is not the work of etiquette. It is a struggle, a fight. In this fight, we accept – or we used to accept – certain impersonal rules of engagement required by the nature of the enterprise.

You do not steal someone else’s work. You do not misrepresent someone else’s opinions.  You do not allow personal animus to intrude upon your evaluation of someone’s arguments. You do not consciously claim to know more than you do.  You must be careful to sift out the truth from falsehood or from the great mass of irrelevance and noise that often encumbers it.

Your feelings are of no importance. Sure, you may not enjoy working with someone who is rude or obstreperous or vindictive, but as far as the work itself is concerned, personalities are neither here nor there. Even political motives are not pertinent. It is a foul to deflect attention from the work to some motive you attribute to the worker, even when you are correct in your attribution. It does not matter that Smith says a thing because Smith is a communist or a capitalist, a vegetarian or a collector of antlers and deer hides. The only question is whether what he says is true.

Excerpt from The Mission of St. Philip

Saint John Henry Newman

Blessed shall you and I be, my dear Fathers, if we learn to live now in the presence of Saints and Angels, who are to be our everlasting companions hereafter. Blessed are we, if we converse habitually with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,—with the Apostles, Martyrs, and great Fathers of the early Church,—with Sebastian, Laurence, and Cecilia,—with Athanasius, Ambrose, and Augustine, with Philip, whose children we are,—with our guardian angels and our patron saints, careless what men think about us, so that their scorn of us involves no injury to our community, and their misconception of us is no hindrance to their own conversion.

The position is the more serious inasmuch as two things which have in the past safeguarded our unity are significantly ceasing to do so. One of these things is the connection with the State; the other (and far more important) is the Book of Common Prayer.

Catholicity: A Study in the Conflict of Christian Traditions in the West

Being a Report presented to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury

In November 1945 your Grace invited Dom Gregory Dix to convene a group of Anglicans of the 'Catholic' school of thought to examine the causes of the deadlock which occurs in discussion between Catholics and Protestants and to consider whether any synthesis between Catholicism and Protestantism is possible.

In January 1946 the group was constituted with the following members:

• The Revd E. S. Abbott, Dean of King's College, London, and Canon of Lincoln.
• The Revd H. J. Carpenter, Warden of Keble College, Oxford, and Canon Theologian of Leicester.
• The Revd Dr. V. A. Demant, Canon and Chancellor of S. Paul's Cathedral.
• The Revd Dom Gregory Dix, Monk of Nashdom Abbey.
• T. S. Eliot, Esq.
• The Revd Dr. A. M. Farrer, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford.
• The Revd F. W. Green, Canon and Vice-Dean of Norwich Cathedral.
• The Revd Fr A. G. Hebert, of the Society of the Sacred Mission.
• The Rt. Revd E. R. Morgan, Bishop of Southampton.
• The Revd R. C. Mortimer, Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology in the University of Oxford, and Canon of Christ Church.
• The Revd A. M. Ramsey, Van Mildert Professor of Divinity in the University of Durham, and Canon of Durham.
• The Revd A. Reeves, Rector of Liverpool, and Canon Diocesan of Liverpool.
• The Revd C. H. Smyth, Canon of Westminster and Rector of S. Margaret's; Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
• The Revd Dr. L. S. Thornton, of the Community of the Resurrection.

[...]

The position is the more serious inasmuch as two things which have in the past safeguarded our unity are significantly ceasing to do so. One of these things is the connection with the State; the other (and far more important) is the Book of Common Prayer.

(i) It would be utterly wrong to ascribe our Anglican unity to the connection with the State: the fact of the Anglican Communion belies this. Yet the Establishment has played a big part in the holding together of diverse elements within a single body. Now, however, the weakening of reliance upon the State, as a source of unity and authority, is apparent from a number of episodes in our recent history. In the early decades of the nineteenth century the expansion of the [52/53] Anglican Church was largely State-directed. In 1841 George Augustus Selwyn, about to be consecrated to be Bishop of New Zealand, had to protest against a statement in his Letters Patent that the Crown gave him 'power to ordain'; and the latitude and longitude of the portion of the Pacific Ocean within his jurisdiction were determined by Act of Parliament (S. C. Carpenter, Church and People, pp. 434-435). But in 1895 we see Archbishop Benson refusing to withdraw the Anglican Bishop and clergy from Madagascar when the territory passed from British to French possession (A. C. Benson, Lift of Edward White Benson, Vol. II, pp. 668-669). And still more significant was the same Archbishop's decision to try the case of Bishop King of Lincoln in his own Metropolitan Court and there to reverse earlier decisions of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The course of events since the rejection of the Revised Prayer Book by the House of Commons in 1928 shows even more clearly that it is not the State-connection which holds the Church together or determines the limits of its teaching and worship.

(ii) The Book of Common Prayer has played an incomparably greater part in the fashioning of our unity. It has moulded our religious outlook and given us a lex orandi wherein our lex credendi has been defined and expressed. It has held the warm allegiance of men of all parties and of none. But in our recent history its failure to remain the bond of unity, which once it was, is freely admitted. On the one side the Catholic movement, once content with the Prayer Book as being patient of a Catholic interpretation, sought a richer liturgical and devotional use, and the practice of supplementing the Prayer Book from other sources became widespread. Both a Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline forty years ago, and a Revised Prayer Book Measure twenty years ago, admitted that the Book is too narrow for the Church's needs. And on the other side there are those who, finding satisfaction in the piety and theology represented by Songs of Praise, are out of sympathy with the Biblical pattern of truth set forth in Morning and Evening Prayer, and feel free to distort the structure of the services at will. That the Prayer Book still teaches our tradition to countless Anglicans cannot be denied. That it is an effective authority for unity in worship and teaching can hardly be claimed. Nor is any revised Prayer Book likely to acquire such an authority unless it arises out of a common theological understanding.

In face of the decline of these two factors which once carried authority and made for unity, the Church of England is hampered in the task of synthesis. Hence the pressure of certain temptations is very great--to resort to short cuts and expedients, to endorse the popular ideas of the moment, and to let an administrative pragmatism [53/54] do duty for theological principle. And meanwhile the Bishops, burdened by vast administrative duties, often seem to be estopped from fulfilling their apostolic function as the guardians and exponents of our theological tradition. Yet this theological tradition remains. Amid all hindrances its vitality survives, and we believe that it contains within itself that power of creative synthesis which the Anglican Communion needs for its task.

Architects of Communion

Guide for Parish Development

The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter

The clergy and faithful of the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter are called to be architects of communion, simultaneously preserving the distinctiveness and integrity of their communities while demonstrating commitment to act in communion with the broader Church. One of the means to demonstrate a commitment to communion is through the careful development of Ordinariate parishes and parochial communities. While the Church is missionary by nature, sent to proclaim the Good News in all the world, the Ordinariate exists to bring those who were nurtured in Anglican and other Protestant traditions into the full communion of the Catholic Church.

Though inherently local in nature, parishes are the most basic and visible structure in the hierarchical constitution of the universal Church. For this reason, the development of parishes is a pressing challenge as they are the primary place where the faithful encounter sanctifying grace in the sacred liturgy and in the celebration of the Church’s sacraments. The parish has at its basis and center the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, from which all education in the Spirit originates and from which flows various works of charity, mutual help, missionary activity, and different forms of Christian witness.

The organization of the Catholic Church known as its hierarchical constitution is understood as first and foremost an expression of the Gospel imperative for the salvation of souls. In dioceses and parishes, the community of disciples gathers to hear the Word of God, to receive nourishment in the Sacraments, to educate its children and new members in the faith, and to respond to the needs of the poor. All this activity is carried out in fidelity to the Lord’s command: Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The establishment, structuring, and administration of parishes is therefore ordered to the salvation of souls; it is ordered to communion with God and the broader Church. More than just a community of believers that benefits the faithful, Jesus established the Church with an apostolic structure and mission as a means and font of his grace.