An elegy for a lost Anglicanism.
One of the things that we should consider, as a church, is the various experiences and errors that we have fallen into. As Israel gives us examples of what to do during the Exodus, and also what not to do, the previous generations of believers have fallen into errors and follies, and there is no need for us to reinvent this wheel.
But this requires that one holds one’s nose and consider what happens not merely in one’s own stream of the church, but in the whole body of believers. For the besetting errors of the reformed are either legalism or an antinomial licence. We are much more likely to be legalists and scholars, and our hearts tend to run cold. We lack symbolism and perhaps passion. We do not lack analysis. This means that we were vulnerable to the scholarly attacks from higher criticism during the Victorian times, but the current appeal to emotions leaves us alone: it offends our sense of logic.
Among my Roman friends, the sin is instead legalism. Roman logic is as cold as the logic of Geneva. But there is a passion, a beauty within the more Catholic forms of worship. In the Anglican church both arms — the Puritans, with their emphasis on the gospel, social works (agitating for both freeing slaves and reforming child labour laws) had a modus vivendi with the more Catholic who considered that the work of worship and the practice of this led to right thinking. The combination bought a certain earthiness to the disputations of theologians: as (until the last century) all Dons at Oxford and Cambridge had to take holy orders and be unmarried, many theologians found themselves (as Calvin did) not stuck in an ivory tower but in the fields talking with ploughmen.
Dealing truly with the daily mess of human life bought a certain ability to be truthful about what we know, but humble about what we don’t know. This at times is lacking within the Curia (and I am not bagging the Romans here, for the curia exists in the committees of many if not all churches), where there is a delusion that we understand it all.
We don’t.
But when the committees of the Curia bring in error, then it has to be confronted.
Whereas in recent months many families have demonstrated courageously against civil laws that, everywhere, are undermining the natural, Christian family, it is simply scandalous to see these same laws surreptitiously supported by churchmen who wish to align Catholic doctrine and morality with the morals of a de-Christianized society, instead of seeking to convert souls. A pastoral approach that scoffs at the explicit teaching of Christ on the indissolubility of marriage is not merciful but insulting to God, who grants His grace sufficiently to everyone; and it is cruel toward the souls who, when placed in difficult situations, receive the grace that they need in order to live a Christian life and even to grow in virtue, to the point of heroism.
Mundabor is referring to a planned bishopric conference on the family — allowing a de facto acknowledgment of couples living without the bonds of matrimony but clearly within a sexual relationship. As if being male or female does not matter, and the vows we take do not matter, and what we do with our bodies do not matter.
I’m aware of these issues: the Reformed do allow divorce under very limited circumstances and with a principle that the innocent party is free, for the unbeliever who left is to be excommunicated and accounted as dead, in the hope that such shunning will bring her or him to their senses and to repentance.
And when this was liberalized the stability of marriage imploded within the church. It became something for mutual pleasure only, and when one “fell out of love” it was considered fungible. And such teachings have been a disaster within the Protestant and Pentecostal church. They have led to a loss of any witness, to ongoing scandals as Pastors and Pastrixes have affairs.
So the risk is that the Pope will say this is OK. And my advice is — learn from the Western Protestants. Making things easier has led to a cold faith, and having no challenges leads to a falling away. Learn particularly from the Anglicans, who allow not only the heterosexuals to fornicate, with marriage occurring frequently after the mortgage and the second child, if all, but are now allowing actively antichristian theologians within their midst, from Druids to ill-advised interfaith dialogue with Muslims.
While the church dies and the faithful go elsewhere. And, although I come from an English Presbyterian background, this saddens me, for I remember what the Anglican Church used to be, and the greatness of their theologians and poets from Baxter, Donne and Milton to John Stott and C.S. Lewis. I am glad that there is a root of faith remaining.
But I fear that for my Catholic friends that no one will learn from the errors of the recent generations, and fall into the same error, leading to many falling away from the faith.
