(I ask readers’ forbearance
that both John Fenwick’s paper and my response come from an orthodox Anglican
perspective.)
He reveals some very
interesting history from the inside of the Canterbury-Rome unity push in the
70’s:
It was in the heady days of ARCIC 1. The Final
Report had been sent around the Provinces of the Anglican Communion. Most of
the responses were positive. It was expected to be officially endorsed at the
forthcoming Lambeth Conference. The Vatican response was expected imminently.
There was a feeling that something momentous was about to happen.
Prior to my appointment to Lambeth I had been
lecturer in Christian worship at Trinity College, Bristol. Shortly after my
arrival in the Ecumenical Affairs office, Christopher asked me to do some
preliminary thinking about a liturgical project. (As Christopher put it,
there’s no point in having a dog and barking yourself.) The project was what
liturgical form the restoration of communion between the Anglican Communion and
the Roman Catholic Church might take. That was a heady request for a junior
staff member! The most recent unity scheme around was the Covenant for Unity
based on the Ten Propositions. That had proposed a day of liturgical events
including the consecration of bishops. I remember working with that model and
envisaging a service where the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury might jointly
consecrate the first of a new generation of bishops whose Orders would be
recognised by both Churches.
We were that close! Or at least so it seemed to some
of those closely involved.
In retrospect that moment was a high water mark. The
tide has been going out ever since.
The Vatican’s response not
only did not come before the next Lambeth Conference as hoped; it did not come
until 1991. And not only the
timing, but also its content was disappointing. It made it all the more clear that the hoped-for unity
between the Church of England and Rome was not going to happen.
Even more disillusioning
has been the Church of England’s liberal drift since then. That leads Bishop Fenwick to make an
interesting hypothesis:
I want to suggest that the Vatican’s 1991 response
fits a pattern that has characterised ecumenical endeavour in the past half
century – namely that unity initiatives have been halted by the refusal of what
one might call the more conservative partner to act, and that as a result, the
other partner has felt itself free to move further away from the historic
Christian consensus.
I do not claim that what I am going to say has been
rigorously historically tested, nor am I able to do so here, but I think the
possibility of a pattern is worth considering.
And that pattern is simply that there seem to have
been several occasions when the more conservative partner in a dialogue, by
failing to take bold action, allowed the less conservative partner to move
further away from traditional faith and practice.
And he gives other examples
of this occurring, including failed efforts between Old Catholics and Eastern
Orthodox.
This pattern indeed merits
consideration. When jurisdictions
are in the midst of unity efforts, their focus is often on how would
merger/intercommunion affect us. And that is certainly important. But how it would affect the other party
and the whole church, the Body of Christ, should not be overlooked. And Fenwick does not let us ignore that,
often for the disappointed party, a “move further away from traditional faith
and practice” occurs after unity efforts fail.
Of course, in such cases we
do not know what would have happened if unity efforts succeed. For example, in the case of the Church
of England and Roman Catholics, would Rome had been importing more liberalism
to its harm? Would more Protestant-minded Anglicans feel pushed out of the
Church of England? I personally
suspect the failure of ARCIC did more harm that what might have happened if it
succeeded, and Fenwick seems to think that as well. But we do not know.
And, yes, jurisdictions have to consider the stresses and pressures
greater organizational unity may cause.
I sometimes wonder if the Anglican Church in North America, in its well
meaning haste to bring Anglicans together, has not given such issues enough
consideration. If not done right,
organizational unity can beget more disunity.
Nonetheless, Bishop Fenwick
well reminds us that the good of the other party should be considered. (And the bishops of the Reformed
Episcopal Church in the U. S. have done just that in joining and remaining in
ACNA.) We should avoid causing
sister churches to stumble by turning them away without very good reason.
Care should also be taken
in missionary efforts where there are existing Anglican jurisdictions. Accordingly, Fenwick, in his
conclusion, let it be known he still has mixed feelings about the consecration
of orthodox bishops in the U. K. outside of existing jurisdictions.
Whether one agrees or
disagrees with Fenwick’s paper (I agree, at least for the most part.), it
contains most interesting insight not often presented. Read it all.
