When we take a deep breath, we will see that this is simply about Archbishop Peter Robinson who represents a type of churchmanship that differs from some of the doctrines upheld by the Affirmation of Saint Louis. The ACC and other churches coming under the category of Continuing Anglicanism, including the TAC, go by the Affirmation of Saint Louis, including the seven Sacraments.
I have always held Archbishop Robinson in high esteem, though I have never met him. He runs the Old High Churchman blog, and has just written an article about his position on this particular matter in Barking up the Wrong Tree?
It seems to be a fair-minded article, yet he denounced any attempt to narrow the criteria for being truly Anglican in A Broad Orthodoxy. The Archbishop’s two articles raise questions about what is needed to be truly Anglican. In Anglicanism as it existed in England up to the Tractarians, anyone upholding seven Sacraments and seven Ecumenical Councils would have met with disapproval. The doctrinal authority in Anglicanism is the Thirty-Nine Articles in the Book of Common Prayer.
High-church doctrine and liturgical rites come to be tolerated from about the beginning of the twentieth century. Push for anything hard enough in Anglicanism and you’ll get it – as can be seen in our own time! In the Continuum, the Affirmation has been proposed as a standard of orthodoxy. Personally, I have no problem with that, but I can ask the question of whether the Affirmation is truly Anglican. Is this Affirmation a piece of “revisionism”, as much so as Spong’s theses, ordination of women and same-sex marriage?
Well, the Branch Ecclesiology espoused by some of the ACA bishops certainly would not say that Anglicanism sprang from the brow of Cranmer like Athena from the brow of Zeus and the only true Anglicanism is its most Reformed.
According to the Branch theory, Anglicanism had its roots in the undivided Catholic Church and is as much a branch of that true Church as are the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox, isn’t this right? Where would the 39-articles fit in? Or, as Fr. Chadwick muses, are the Catholic bits accretions or renewal?
Anyway, thankfully for those of us in the Ordinariate it does not really matter any more except insofar as we sort our patrimonial treasures to see which ones are worth sharing with the wider Church. Thankfully, the 39-Articles will not be part of any prayer book designed for our use, of that I am certain.
Foolishness to the world 
I haven’t read the 39 Articles for years, and when I joined the TAC in 2005, Archbishop Hepworth didn’t ask me to swear by them as do clerics in the Church of England. Frankly, that would have been a problem of conscience for me. The 39 Articles don’t form any part of the Sarum liturgical books either! 😉
I honestly have no idea what “free” Catholicism actually means. It’s cognitively dissonant and/or deeply dishonest. It seems to me to be nothing more than an excuse not to submit to any authority that sets boundaries that one doesn’t feel like staying within.
I think “free Catholicism” means the content of catholic doxy and praxis embraced because it is appealing and helpful and not because the not-embracing of them is made the subject of sanctions.
And here we come to that perennial – and I think ultimately unresolvable – controversy, as to what we mean by “Catholicism”. Is it possible to be “Catholic” because it seems right or beautiful, or is it only possible to be “Catholic” because one first believes in the Pope or the Church? Some clearly think that it only means what is allowed or authorised by Popes etc. Others think it is something that permits of diverse structural forms and contexts.
To be sure, the former effectively equate Catholicism with Roman or Uniate Catholicism. Just as surely, the latter may embrace the East and Anglicanism and essences within Lutheranism and so on.
I think attempting to reduce a concept like “free Catholicism” to a cognitively dissonant or dishonest position is alternately narrow in understanding and sweeping in attribution.
Appeal to aesthetics is a shallow and unsustainable reason for becoming Catholic or describing oneself as “Catholic”- orthodoxy and orthopraxy are fine in whatever church, but they are empty without any substance that is connected with authority.
Without the Pope, there is no Catholicism. All you have are ethnic/national churches who are free to break apart and form their own little groups. In Catholicism, there may be wildly different opinions, but the Pope is the central authority that keeps us together. We can either be obedient and be in communion, or be disobedient and be excommunicated. The SSPX’s situation demonstrates that no matter how “Catholic” you think you are, in worship or spirituality, if you are disobedient, you will be excommunicated, eventually. (The SSPX is not excommunicated, yet. But unless they submit to Rome, they will be, for certain.)
Your response, Ioannes, effectively reduces “Catholicism” to “obedience to the Pope”. I am well aware that that is how some Roman Catholics understand it as I indicated in my post above, and that it is the consistent view that underlies much apologetical work. Unfortunately, this meaning of Catholicism is thus a particular and contextualised one, and does not exhaust the meanings others have given to it. All you can uncontestably say is “without the Pope, there is no Roman Catholicism’, not more.
But you really need to think about terms a little more closely and what it is you mean by them. “Orthodoxy” and “orthopraxis” are not viewed identically by Romans or the Orthodox(!), which is why I deliberately did not use these words but rather the general roots from ‘doxa’ (doxy) and ‘praxis’. What people believe and practise is the content of what might be described as ‘Catholicism’. Clearly, if the only or at least most significant difference between Uniates and – for the want of a better term – ‘schismatic’ Easterns is their formal affiliation with the Pope and their acceptance of his authority, then there is quite a deal of content of belief and practice Uniates and Easterns have in common over and above particular ‘Roman’ doctrines. This ‘common content’ forms part of or is of the essence of what characterises Catholicism in the broad. (It’s location within Roman Catholicism merely reinforces this view.) Though the Eastern Orthodox do not routinely refer to themselves as “Catholics” they fully regard themselves as holding and preserving the “Catholic” faith.
What things might be said to characterise Catholicism? Sacramentality, sacerdotalism, the vocabulary of Mystery, symbolical and tradition-conscious ritualism, and so on, just to name a few things that spring to mind. Are such things confined to the Roman Catholic church?
Moreover, if “orthodoxy” and “orthopraxis” are “fine in whatever church”, they can hardly be in the next breath dismissed as “empty”, as you have done. It just makes no sense whatsoever.
Finally, I did not quite say or imply that mere aesthetics was all that justified the use of the word “Catholic” or identifying oneself as one; I was trying to highlight the contrast between being drawn to this thing called Catholicism because of love and adopting it because of a calculated response to a condemnation or punishment (temporal or eternal) for not adopting it. But since we are considering it, I do not myself think that aesthetical considerations are at all inappropriate or even inadequate a motivation for religious and spiritual affiliation: aesthetics is the wordless language of the soul. We enter, through the world of the senses, deeper realms where logic cannot always go. God is – if we accept Anselm’s definition – beyond comprehension or expression. But, if we believe that we are divinely created, then all of one’s being contains elements by which we can intuitively connect. We fall in love with the beautiful and God is the ultimate Aesthetic, we are led to believe. Why should not religious churches and communities make the same appeal?
No, I think it is entirely meaningful to speak of and conceive of Catholicism as a tendency of the human spirit in the spiritual and religious journey, and not as a narrowly juridically defined commodity.
But while
Stephen K.
Catholicism means “Universal” right? What I gathered from that is that the Catholic Church is not: 1. An ethnic entity, like the Jews or Hindus. 2. Not a national entity, like the Polish National Catholic Church or Church of England. Just keeping this in mind.
1. You wrote: “Clearly, if the only or at least most significant difference between Uniates and – for the want of a better term – ‘schismatic’ Easterns is their formal affiliation with the Pope and their acceptance of his authority, then there is quite a deal of content of belief and practice Uniates and Easterns have in common over and above particular ‘Roman’ doctrines.”
I think this is the reason why the greatest hurdle in the dialogue towards unity between the Orthodox and Catholic Church is the role of the Pope in the next 1,000 years and the issue of Papal Primacy. This is where I’m coming from when I say “Without a Pope, there’s no Catholicism.” Which to me also means, if the Papacy and Papal Authority is the price to pay for unity with the Orthodox, then it’s just that the Orthodox want the Catholics to be Orthodox. I say that the Orthodox have to be Catholic, because I believe that in Heaven, Catholics from long time ago celebrate the Mass with the Pope heading the Church on Earth. If a person is not Catholic on Earth, and ends up in Heaven, they will be Catholic in Heaven. There can be no division, ergo conflict, in Heaven, only perfect unity. I do not at all imagine Mark of Ephesus getting along with Aquinas in Heaven, so one of those people must be wrong, the other right.
So we also can’t say that the “Orthodox are also Catholic -now-” for whatever reason other than the desire to say “Catholic” but with a small “c” it gets frustrating, because external parties, such as the Muslims would say “Oh, the Roman Catholics can’t call themselves ‘Catholics’ exclusively, look at all these Orthodox people calling themselves ‘catholics’!” and then we look at Anglicans: Peter Kreeft asked “Are they Catholic? Protestant? Both? or Neither?” So it just gets muddled when people wish to call themselves whatever, at the expense of any clarity. Let me say, this confusing state of affairs isn’t particularly attractive to people who just want to worship and believe and do things properly without having to get into the nitty-gritty like we are. We enjoy this, those people do not.
In speaking about orthodoxy and orthopraxy, and them being fine- right worship and right practice IS fine. I looked at an Anglo-Catholic mass, and I saw nothing wrong with it, at least externally. The don’t seem to spout off wildly heterodox sermons or prayers. Even a non-Christian can be reverent and do the right things- but according to what, and more importantly – according to whom?
Just because there’s a long line of traditional practice doesn’t mean it’s automatically correct, because even then there were abuses that needed to be addressed and corrected. (A lot in the Roman Catholic Church would argue this as an excuse for non-traditional liturgy and language.) But tradition tends to be dependable because of its relatively few reliance on innovation from recent time. And then there’s the authority behind it. For some, Scripture is sufficient to indicate how one should worship or go about practicing the faith, but then we can see how bare-bones those communities are, at least from what I have experienced in the U.S., a lot of personal interpretation, so a lot of reliance on the interpreter’s opinion on worship and practice.
2. You wrote: “What things might be said to characterise Catholicism? Sacramentality, sacerdotalism, the vocabulary of Mystery, symbolical and tradition-conscious ritualism, and so on, just to name a few things that spring to mind. Are such things confined to the Roman Catholic church?
Like I said, sure, you can have priests in the Orthodox churches. Valid Sacraments, symbolism and tradition, etc. Yes, these can exist outside the Catholic Church. They are valid. But from the Roman point of view, they are -illegal-. (Or, rather “illicit”) Yes, a couple can have children -outside- marriage. The child is alive and healthy and deserving of love and compassion and has a right to be alive, but the child is still the product of an illicit union between man and woman. Some married couples have a licit relationship, but have not produced children. But that doesn’t make their relationship invalid, does it?
So to use a closer analogy to what we’re talking about, if a priest is excommunicated, he cannot legally (or licitly) celebrate any sacrament (except in danger of death), and he also loses these faculties or authority to validly celebrate the sacraments that need them. What this means is that if a priest is excommunicated, the only sacraments he celebrates validly are Baptism and the Eucharist (Holy Mass); they would be valid but illicit (illegal). If he is a bishop who is excommunicated, he would still validly ordain (other priests), but to do so would be gravely sinful. Finally, in danger of death, an excommunicated priest can validly (and licitly) absolve sins (Canon Law #976), confirm (#883), and anoint the sick (#1003).
The Sacraments, through which God is present, are -valid- by the nature of what they are, and independent of a the minister’s sin (Wasn’t this the issue with Donatism?) But they can be possibly illegally administered because of the lack of any authority behind them. The priest, when he is ordained, is permanently configured to Jesus Christ. Thus he participates in the one ministry of Christ through the functions of sanctification (through the Sacraments), teaching, and governance. A priest (or bishop) because he has been permanently ordained, never loses the function or power of sanctification. However, the Church can regulate this power for the common good, and she does so by giving additional permission called a faculty or authority to a priest to validly celebrate certain sacraments.
So let’s go back to the original topic: The case of Anglicans, whose orders are invalid, from the Roman point of view, can have the right practices, and right way of worship, but the Sacraments are also invalid, because those Anglican clergy aren’t clergy at all! Why? Because the whole thing can be traced back into the establishment of the Church of England and rejection of legitimate authority, and other things addressed in Pope Leo XIII’s “Apostolicae Curae” in 1896. This is the definitive declaration of Anglican ordinations to be “absolutely null and utterly void”. Leo XIII declared that the rites expressed an intention to create a priesthood different from the sacrificing priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church and to reduce ordination to a mere ecclesiastical institution, an appointment or blessing, instead of a sacramental conferral of actual grace by the action itself.
So if “Catholicism” is not limited by obedience to the Pope, then certainly any group can call themselves “Catholic”, even the “Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.” (The tragedy is, if the Roman Catholic Church does acknowledge the CPCA as validly “Catholic”, then the Church would have those loyal clergy and laity thrown under the bus after they have been arrested, tortured and put to death by the atheists.)
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Stephen, you are describing a landscape to some one who is colour-blind.
Color is overrated and distracting. Grayscale is more dependable.
Sorry, I was speaking from a design perspective.
Designers start from black and white for their compositions. It is easier to get the elements of a composition into proper, effective arrangement when they are in black and white because at the fundamental level, all colors, all the interplay of lights and shadows, are represented sufficiently by black and white, and the values between, the grayscale, only make sense in the proper, larger context of either black, or white. If your composition doesn’t know what part is black or what part is white, anything that follows make no sense no matter what color of the visible spectrum of what intensity you slap on the composition.
Colors aren’t necessary. They’re just there to establish a mood. They don’t say anything about how light behaves or how three-dimensional objects are shaped the same way grayscale and black and white does. Colors are subordinate to grayscale, and grayscale is subordinate to black and white.
But they certainly impress people because colors are sensory stimuli.
So I take pride in being called “Color-blind”. It just means I’m not distracted by the pretty colors. (Unless you mean I’m color-blind, in the sense that I see colors incorrectly.); If this is true, then it only makes sense to keep things to a grayscale and black and white.