The week of prayer for Christian unity has changed its character over the years. It used to be the ecclesiastical version of birdmen leaping off a beach pier contest; summed up as “see how far you can’t actually fly in a batman or birdman suit before crashing into the sea below after your hubristic impractical leap into the unforgiving air”.
But of late, perhaps more prosaically, it has become more the triumph of cosmetic presentation over reality – to be more topical, a sort of ecclesiastical drag show.
Who was it who sat down in a committee room six months ago to plan the Anglican and Catholic ecumenical road show for this January? One can imagine their thought processes.
“I know, let’s ask the Pope to commission pairs of bishops to go out together to do something uncontroversial and above all unaccountable. Something that sidesteps criticism. It would of course present a totally different optic to the real relationship between the churches as defined by Pope Leo XIII, but Pope Francis likes making a mess. He might be up for it?”
The mess was made and in a step that defied courtesy, theology, sensitivity, historicity and decorum, the Anglicans made sure one of their “bishops” was a woman. After all, in the week of prayer for ecumenical unity, if you see a theological wound, why not rub salt in it?
The full programme at the Anglican Centre in Rome covered the usual spectrum of cosmetic and well-meaning generous interaction, while an Anglican choir gave a concert in St Peter’s Basilica.
In case that was not enough to move the dial on the ecumenical scale, the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission arranged for the bishops to attend a “Growing Together” event, a week-long summit of ecumenical discussion and pilgrimage. Each Catholic bishop was paired with a non-Catholic for “an important and symbolic occasion for Anglican-Catholic ties and the advancement of ecumenical dialogue”.
The difficulty is that dialogue was halted some time ago by two particular events.
The first was Apostolicae Curae, in which Pope Leo declared Anglican orders null and void. The effect of this was to make it clear that Mr Welby is a nice and well-meaning Christian layman, and the woman dressed in male clerical episcopal attire who accompanied him was a well-meaning and no doubt highly virtuous lay woman.
The second event being the ordination of women to the Anglican version of the priesthood and episcopate. This had added just one more layer of invalidity to a problematic ecumenical quest. Since Pope Leo’s definitive Bull, the quest for unity between two bodies that had energetically repudiated the essential self-understanding of the other, was always going to be “challenging”.
Was Pope Leo XIII right when his Bull of 1896 declared that, irrespective of the opaque history surrounding continuity or discontinuity of the tactile succession, Anglican orders were invalid after the CoE had pursued a vigorous and unambiguous policy of changing what ordination meant in its liturgy down the centuries?
The answer is that no-one, not even Pope Francis, has the either the authority or the power to call into question its findings. It is authentic Catholic teaching wholly consonant with the theology of the Church, Mass and priesthood down the ages.
This repudiation is replicated by the other side where Anglicans disbelieve in the ontology of Catholic priesthood and the drama and claims of the mass; as do the formularies that define what the CoE is and what it stands for.
Anglican Protestants vocally heckle in discussions: “The sacrifice of Jesus happened once and for all upon the cross … It can’t and should not be ‘repeated’ by a priest”, they insist. For they have not only a different understanding of what does or does not happen to the bread and wine, but hold to an exclusively enlightenment view of time and space, matter and spirit, very different from the Catholic Church.
The optics of the professional ecumenicals, and particularly those that reach fever pitch in the week for prayer for Christian unity, distort not only what the Catholic Church believes about Anglican lay men and women at their “holy tables” but also what the majority of Anglicans themselves believe.
I remember only too vividly the shock I had in my second year at Anglican theological College (aspirationally referred to as seminaries among some) where I was trained for ministry.
I was given the responsibility for teaching musical settings of the Communion service and nearing the end of one liturgy the principal of the college sidled up to me quietly and thanked me asked what was on the schedule for next week.
I replied that we had yet to finish for the Agnus Dei was unlearned.
“No”, he said. “We don’t use the Agnus Dei in this college at any of the liturgies.”
I could’ve asked him why he paid no attention to canon law, but I thought that might be disrespectful, so instead, I just asked: “Why not”?
He leaned over conspiratorially, and in a low voice he added: “There is always a danger that if we use those words in the liturgy, some of the brethren might be misled into thinking there’s a connection between the bread, the wine and Jesus as ‘the Lamb of God’.”
Genuinely taken aback, I replied: “But I thought that was the whole point of the communion service”?
“Not at all”, he insisted. “And we can’t be too careful in prohibiting any association between Jesus and the bread and the wine.”
Searching for a compromise, and aware that canon law required the liturgies the General Synod had authorised, I suggested:
“But David, don’t we have to use the liturgy is the Church gives us? And since you teach Liturgical Studies, perhaps you could use your professional expertise to educate us all in your views of the restrictive function and non-essence of the bread and wine?”
“Nonsense” he replied testily, “this conversation is at an end. The Agnus Dei is banned at this College. It is too misleading. And that is that. This is not something up for discussion.”
As it happens, the proportion of Anglicans who self-identify as evangelical, as this splendid college principal did, have grown considerably in the last 40 years. They constitute a large majority of the Church, (the rest describe themselves mainly as “liberal”, or “middle of the road”).
And it’s not only the Mass and the nature of priesthood that is repudiated. Almost all notions of authority are too (as the conversation suggested). Given profound disagreement on almost everything except baptism, the lives and responsibilities of those who plan weeks of prayer for Christian unity are not easy ones.
Furthermore, the founding documents of the Church of England maintain without equivocation “the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, are blasphemous fables, and dangerous deceits” (Article 31); and “transubstantiation is repugnant” (29).
On the other side, the Catholic Church welcomes Mr Welby et al as worthy pilgrims. It recognises their enthusiasm for Jesus and consequently laments their repudiation of the Catholic Church, its apostolic foundations, its sacraments and authority.
Many Catholics wonder at the enthusiasm of Anglicans for the creed since it is puzzling how they believe the Church is “one”, “holy” or “Catholic”, how it reconciles its insistence on moving with the times with exactly what it means to be “apostolic”.
The only way around this is of course the celebration of niceness.
How is this done? Perhaps simply to be pleasant in mutual repudiation and contradiction. Put the truth which our ancestors were willing to die for on the back burner and replace it with a dedication to being nice.
Or in Mr Welby’s words: “We must find ways of being joyful in our disagreement, generous in our disputes, hospitable in our differences with one another, in character, in appearance, in temperament and in culture.”
As for Pope Francis – well, all you need is love.
“Only that love, which does not appeal to the past in order to remain aloof or to point a finger, only that love which in God’s name puts our brothers and sisters before the ironclad defence of our own religious structures, only that love will unite us,” said the Pontiff. “First our brothers and sisters, then the structures.”
Perhaps this was not the moment for exploring other aspects of the resources the past might provide the Church as St Paul did: “I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you” (1 Cor 11), or celebrate the promise of Jesus to lead the future Church into all truth as a cheerful alternative to “ironclad structure”.
Many commentators on hearing about the joint commissioning of bishops wondered if Francis was subverting Catholic teaching on Anglican orders. They should have known better. Why would a pope consider undermining the authority of one his forbears? What effect after all might that have in his own authority at the hands of his successors?
Nonetheless we are left with a triumph of presentation over truth, appearance over reality, feelings over integrity, aspiration over substance and emotion over fidelity. It must say somewhere in the gnostic manuals of ecumenical dialogue that “it’s nice to be nice.”
