2 October 2015 A.D. Let's Not Allow a Visit from Pope Francis to Overshadow the Plight of North American Anglicans
2 October 2015 A.D. Let's Not Allow a Visit from Pope Francis to Overshadow the Plight of North American Anglicans
Jordan, Robin. “Let's Not Allow a
Visit from Pope Francis to Overshadow the Plight of North American Anglicans.” Anglicans Ablaze. 1 Oct 2015. http://anglicansablaze.blogspot.com/2015/10/lets-not-let-visit-from-pope-francis.html.
Accessed 2 Oct 2015.
One of the reasons that I posted the articles on the
papacy and the Reformation was to draw attention to the differences that
separate Roman Catholics and Protestants. Similar differences separate those
who identify themselves as Anglican but whose theology is largely Roman
Catholic and Anglicans who adhere to the Biblical and Reformation doctrines and
principles of the Anglican formularies, including the two Books of Homilies.
Contrary to what Wikipedia may assert, the theology
of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was not a via media between Lutheranism and
Calvinism. Based upon his mature thinking Cranmer may be ranked among the
sixteenth century Reformed theologians along with Martin Bucer, Henry
Bullinger, John Calvin, Peter Vermigli, and Ulrich Zwingli. While Cranmer
consulted the Augsburg Confession in drafting the Forty-Two Articles, he only
used wording from the Augsburg Confession where Lutheranism and early Reformed
theology agree. It is therefore inaccurate to claim on this basis that Cranmer
subscribed to Lutheran views.
Nor is Historic Anglicanism a via media between
Roman Catholicism and Protestantism—a view first propounded and later rejected
by the Oxford movement leader John Henry Newman. Various Anglo-Catholic writers
would subsequently try to read this view back into the works of earlier
Anglican theologians like John Jewel and Richard Hooker. However, this view
originated with Newman who at the time was trying to reconcile the
Protestantism of Historic Anglicanism with his own increasingly Roman Catholic
beliefs. Newman would eventually abandon the Church of England and become a
Roman Catholic.
The nineteenth century Anglo-Catholic movement as it
would come to be known would seek to change the identity of the Anglican Church
from Protestant to Roman Catholic. While its original purpose was to bring
about the reunification of the Anglican Church with the Roman Catholic Church,
that movement has in more recent times substituted as its goal the reshaping of
the Anglican Church along the lines of the purportedly undivided Church of the
early High Middle Ages before the East-West schism, which it views as the
golden age of Christianity. While some elements in the contemporary
Anglo-Catholic movement lean toward Eastern Orthodoxy, the movement has for a
large part a Roman Catholic flavor.
In the twentieth century in the United States the
Anglo-Catholic movement formed an alliance with the Broad Church movement.
While they were stymied in their attempt to remove the Thirty-Nine Articles
from the American Prayer Book, they were successful in introducing a number of
far-reaching and radical changes in that Prayer Book. These changes would bring
the American Prayer Book closer in its teaching and practices to Roman
Catholicism.
In the twenty-first century in the United States the
Anglo-Catholic movement has formed a new alliance with what is variously
described as the Ancient-Future, Worship Renewal, or Convergence
movement. The result of that alliance to date is the Anglican Church in
North America, Texts for Common Prayer, and To Be a Christian: An
Anglican Catechism. The Biblical and Reformation doctrines and principles
of the Anglican formularies have been thrust side for teaching and practices
barely distinguishable from that of the Roman Catholic Church and to a lesser
degree the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Clergy and congregations in the Anglican Church in
North America that fully accept the authority of the Bible and the Anglican
formularies occupy a very precarious position in that jurisdiction. While their
beliefs and convictions are agreeable to the Holy Scriptures, they do not enjoy
official standing in the jurisdiction.
In the excitement of a
visit from a popular pope, it is not only possible to lose sight of the
differences between Protestants and Roman Catholics but also to forget the
plight of these Anglicans. They need the support of Anglicans who like them are
faithful to the Bible and the Anglican formularies. They also need a separate
province of their own—either as a part of the Anglican Church in North America
but with its own doctrinal foundation, governing documents, bishops, synodical
form of government, Prayer Book, and catechism, or independent of that
jurisdiction. As the pressure for consolidation of the Anglican Church in North
America into a smaller number of geographically-based dioceses grows, their
position will become even more precarious.
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