The catholic movement recently celebrated the consecration of Fr Luke Irvine-Capel as the fourth Bishop of Richborough. This means that each of our three Provincial Episcopal Visitors (PEVs), all appointed within the last three years, has a further 15 to 20 years of active ministry to offer in their catholic witness in the Church of England. You could quite reasonably think that, on the basis of these appointments, mutual flourishing is alive and well, so why not move on and talk about something else?
Yet I write this the day before Women and the Church (WATCH) holds its conference ‘Not Equal Yet’ and feel compelled to explain our position. In preparation for that conference, Georgia Ashwell, one of WATCH’s trustees, has written a piece, which is available on the WATCH website. It is titled ‘The Theology of Taint and other misogyny in the Church of England’. You might think that matters cannot get any worse after a title like that, but the article’s first sentence mentions the Tate brothers and the second violence against women.
If this is the taster for the conference, I wonder what WATCH’s supporters can say and do on the day to take their arguments any further forward. Merely to call for an end to the 2014 settlement, and the expulsion of all of us from the Church of England as supporters of that settlement, would seem positively timid.
I thought that it would be worthwhile trying to say something about what we stand for, while in no way seeking to undermine any other tradition in the Church of England, nor calling for anyone’s expulsion from this or any other church.
We are all challenged by the words of Our Lord recorded in St John’s Gospel in the Farewell Discourse following the Last Supper – “That they may be one”. The call for unity across our various churches will inevitably produce different responses and even different understandings as to its meaning. There is some inevitability to that. In a sense, it explains why such dominical words needed to be said in the first place.
Whatever our response, we need to take Jesus’s injunction seriously. And it hardly needs me to remind readers that ecumenical initiatives, particularly those following Vatican II, have taken the call for unity very seriously indeed. This includes the Church of England, whose Five Guiding Principles recognise the integrity of the ecclesiology we embody.
For our own part, and I have no issue in recognising that other approaches exist, we place a high value on apostolic tradition and the practices of the great churches of the West and of the East. Our position is based on a deep respect for, and an understanding of, the sacramental foundations of those churches, and even more fundamentally a recognition that such practices stem from what we confess to be the divinely inspired Universal Church.
For others to have a different perspective on these issues is part and parcel of life, but simply to dismiss two millennia of Christian witness just because some of its aspects do not sit comfortably with contemporary Western society raises serious questions as to the nature of the Church and its history. What is our understanding of the Church’s history in the period before the mid-twentieth century? What role has the Holy Spirit played throughout that history? Are only developments of the last handful of decades viewed as worthwhile?
It is only by grappling with such questions and by thinking through the role to be played by the Church of England in the wider Church that we can begin to appreciate the basis for our Christian beliefs and what our profession of faith in one holy catholic and apostolic Church requires of us.
The Church of England’s various traditions retain a vitality that can nurture and deepen discipleship in a way which other churches can sometimes only envy. However, an element of humility is required. The Church of England is but one small corner of God’s Church.
In Vincent of Lerins’s words: “All possible care must be taken that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all.” That is what catholicism means, that is the route to unity, and that is our guard against the tyranny of personality driven beliefs.
The Evangelist goes on to record in the Discourse: “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”