Rome to Anglicans: time to end your fudge

Religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill of The Times of London had an explosive posting this week on her blog:

Hard words for Anglicans from the head of the Council for Christian Unity in Rome. Cardinal Walter Kasper has told the Catholic Herald that now, with Lambeth approaching, is the time for Anglicans to decide whether they are Catholic or Protestant.

'Ultimately, it is a question of the identity of the Anglican Church. Where does it belong?' he said. 'Does it belong more to the churches of the first millennium -Catholic and Orthodox - or does it belong more to the Protestant churches of the 16th century? At the moment it is somewhere in between, but it must clarify its identity now and that will not be possible without certain difficult decisions.'

The genius of Anglicanism has always been its ability to straddle the divide, but maybe the Cardinal is right and the Communion's present difficulties reflect the impossibility of continuing to do this.

The posting has attracted many comments, including a variety of political and theological perspectives. But let me quote two:

Hasn't this always been obvious to people [who disagree] that the [Anglican] failure to have a coherent theology is a genius, [but] rather [believe it to be] a crippling flaw.

If Anglicanism is Catholic then why are half the Anglican congregations not very Catholic at all, and if it is Protestant then what is Walsingham all about? Anglicanism does need to make up its mind, and maybe that will require that it become the 3 or 4 Churches it really is. It cannot be either Catholic or Protestant while it is trying to be both.

Another helpfully quotes the Cardinal himself:

Cardinal Kasper has already touched on the subject in his 2004 book, “That all may be one- the call to Christian unity today”

“Thus we are confronted with two different approaches: on the one hand, the universally-oriented, episcopal approach of the Anglicans and some Lutheran churches, inspired by ancient church tradition; and, on the other hand, a more local, community-centred, presbyteral approach.

Behind the two approaches lie different interpretations of the precise intention of the Reformation. Did the Reformers intend to renew the then universal Church, maintaining continuity with its fundamental structure, as the Augsburg Confession (1530) suggests? Or was the development of a new type and paradigm of the Church an inevitable and deliberate consequence of their actions? Is there a fundamental consensus or - as many state nowadays - a fundamental difference?

I would be inclined to agree with the Cardinal — like Gledhill and many of the commenters — that the “Anglican fudge” has reached the end, and that the fissures can no longer be papered over.

In England, there’s enough parishioners to split Anglicanism into 3 or 4 Churches, but in the US you couldn’t. However, part of PECUSA wants to be just like its bigger brother ELCA, so perhaps those two could merge. And the evangelical wing might align with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, assuming they get to keep their bishops. Not sure where us Anglo-Catholics are supposed to go — become Anglican Rite Catholics?

Catholics, music and the Pope

All year I've wanted to post something to the effect that while us Anglo-Catholics are emulating many of the best liturgical practices of the Roman Catholic Church, since Vatican II that liturgy has morphed (or even disappeared) from RCC parishes, at least in the US. (I've held off, hoping to have time to do more research, but that time hasn't materialized).

The incongruity -- of Anglo-Catholics being more “Catholic” in their worship than Roman Catholics -- hit me when visiting two of the oldest Christian churches in the Western United States. Over the past year or two, our family has been visiting as many of the 21 California missions as opportunity permits. These missions -- established from 1769 to 1823 -- were established (mainly) to bring Christianity to the natives of California.

On two occasions, we went to church services. At the Carmel Mission (established 1770) we attended morning mass, while at Mission San Antonio de Padua (est. 1771) we just missed services due to out-of-date information on their service times. At Carmel, they had a great choir and a wonderful organ, but the worship (from Today's Missal) was definitely a Rite II-style contemporary hymn approach. We didn't hear the service at Mission San Antonio, but given that they were putting away the amplifiers for the electric guitar, it seems reasonable to presume that it was praise-type music.

Of course, this week Pope Benedict XVI is visiting the East Coast, including celebrating two mega-Masses. In reading Hymnography Unbound, the bloggress noted how the Pontiff and his American bishops are trying to straddle various musical traditions within the American church.

This week, the story was updated by others who had more time to pursue the details. First, on Wednesday the Washington Post wrote about the musical tensions within the American RCC and how this week's masses fit into those tensions. Then on Thursday, GetReligion (Lutheran) bloggress Mollie Ziegler made sense of the Post article by providing context around all the existing tensions in the church.

I don't know that anyone knows how the revival of interest in traditional liturgy (and music) will play out in the RCC or in the American Anglican tradition. After all, the 19th century Oxford Movement was not anticipated before it happened.

However, what is clear is that the Catholic church (with 50 million American adult members) has a lot more room for specialized tastes than do the Anglican/Episcopal churches (with 3+ million). So in terms of sheer numbers, in the US there will always be a larger pool of Catholics interested in Gregorian chant (if not Wesleyan hymns) than there will be Anglicans or even Lutherans or Presbyterians.

What is a church?

The continuing Anglicans of Virginia who formed CANA have won round #1 in their property fight. Certainly continuing Anglicans around North America are celebrating this victory, even if many rounds of appeals remain.

In reading the hometown news articles — in the Washington Post and Washington Times — I was struck by a fundamental question: what is a church? Here are some of the critical quotes from the latter story:

"We are obviously disappointed in yesterday's ruling," said a statement from Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori about the 83-page decision released late Thursday night.

The decision "plainly deprives the Episcopal Church and the Diocese, as well as all hierarchical churches, of their historic constitutional rights to structure their polity free from governmental interference," she said, "and thus violates the First Amendment and cannot be enforced."

...

Henry Burt, diocesan spokesman, suggested the ruling imperils religious freedom.

"At issue is the government"s ability to intrude into the freedom of the Episcopal Church and other churches to organize and govern themselves according to their faith and doctrine," he said.

In a letter to members of the diocese posted on www.thediocese.net, Virginia Bishop Peter Lee said the 11 churches are still "wrongfully occupying Episcopal Church property" but that "this was not a final decision and the court did not award any property or assets."

Doug Smith, executive director for the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy in Richmond, called the judge's decision "chilling," adding leaders of other mainline denominations represented by his center are "gravely concerned."

"It seems that government is attempting to take over governance of the Episcopal Church," he said. "This preliminary ruling puts every hierarchical denomination on notice that a group of persons who no longer wish to be part of the particular denomination can now split off, form a new group, self-declare they are a branch of the original group and assert rights under law regardless of the denomination's own rules."

Of course, some of this is pure nonsense. The government is not “intruding” — it was, after all, TEC that asked the government to get involved in enforcing a property rights dispute. I’m a firm believer of freedom of religion, but the government retains a clear role in enforcing certain secular rules (such as who owns what property and who owns who what money).

But fundamentally, the TEC apologists make a claim that might be true in England, but not here. A state church is the norm in much of Europe, but a major motivation for the initial settlement of New England was religious freedom.

Also, the leadership of PECUSA is elected and not appointed — suggesting a bottom-up, American view of governance. If churches are voluntary associations of individuals, how does TEC assert a right to tell individual branches what to do — particularly since those branches provided the resources to create their branches?

Finally, the national church doesn’t legal title to the resources — the PECUSA model until recently was a confederation of bishoprics. In dioceses where the bishop holds the title to land, the legal options for the seceders are more difficult, but for much (most) of Protestant America, the individual parish is what a “church” is.

The Issues behind Issues

The real story behind the death of Issues Etc. has come out, and it’s not pretty.

As I expected, the famous LCMS blogger Mollie Z. Hemingway (of GetReligion.org) knew what was going on, and she published the answers in the Wall Street Journal’s Friday “Houses of Worship” column. (Also available at the Religion News Blog). I didn’t know Mollie was a former LCMS communications leader, which makes it even more clear why she was able to find where all the bodies were buried.

To make a long story short, the LCMS has been getting ready to split for a decade or more. The traditionalists (known as "confessional Lutherans”, i.e. ones who believe what Luther believed) long had the upper hand, but since 2001 the denomination has been led by the church growth (pop culture) faction. Rev. Todd Wilken and his Issues Etc. show was strongly identified with the former (which is why I recommended it), so now it’s toast.

Perhaps this will hasten the inevitable split of the LCMS, or at least rally some of the faithful to reassert control of the LCMS leadership. I imagine that many LCMS types (like conservative PECUSA types) will be scared to leave the institutions behind, but — as with us Anglicans — it’s long since clear that the world-views cannot be reconciled.

Updated Thursday April 3: The best sites for tracking this story seem to be:

• Augsburg 1530
  
• Bring Back Issues Etc.
  
• Save the LCMS
  
• Kyrie Eleison
  

So give three cheers

Although best known as the composing half of 19th century Britain’s dominant light opera partnership, Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan began his career as a church organist, and composed a series of hymn tunes in the 1860s and 1870s, the best known being St. Gertrude (“Onward Christian Soliders.”).

Hymnal 1940 lists Sir Arthur as the composer or arranger of 12 of its 600 hymns (double-counting the tune Hanford); if I had TEH (1906), I would expect to find even more. Three of the 12 are Easter hymns, including this week’s Easter processional, St. Kevin (Hymn 94, 2nd tune).

While the music for Hymn 94 is 19th century operetta, the words of this hymn can be traced back (via translation) to an 8th century text by St. John of Damascus:

Come, ye faithful, raise the strain of triumphant gladness;
God has brought his Israel into joy from sadness
Loose from Pharaoh’s bitter yoke Jacob’s sons and daughters;
Led them with unmoistened foot through the Red Sea waters.

Even if not an ancient hymn, this medieval sentiment is certainly one of the oldest extant hymns in the church today.

But, of course, in the TEC the need to “modernize” and “improve” the theology of worship continues unabated. At his blog The Continuum, Fr. Robert Hart this week offers an alternate Easter setting for St. Kevin, one more suited to contemporary TEC theology. Here are the first two of four verses:

Episcopalians, hide those eggs!
Display that branch a-greenin'
But remember, as you do,
The season's truer meaning!
No, I don't mean Jesus Christ,
Or even resurrection,
But what we preach to take His place:
Environmental protection!

Jews and Christians are at fault
For all the world's pollution,
By their foolish rejection of
The Caananite solution!
Fertility goddesses, and the Baals,
And Love Children of the '60s,
Were right instead -- but don't despair...
We've got your new B.C.P.s!

It seems hard to imagine that any sentiment so narrowly focused on contemporary issues — whether satirized or merely self-satirizing — would survive for use by Christians 13 centuries from now.