What Roman Catholics and Anglicans Don't Know About Each Other
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What Roman Catholics and Anglicans Don't Know About Each Other |
Several times in the year-and-a-half since I left Canterbury for Rome, old and new friends have asked me what life was like on one side of the Tiber or the other. I thought it was time to put some things down on paper in the hope that these observations might be useful both to Roman Catholics trying to understand the baffling nuances of Anglicanism and to Anglo-Catholics wondering if the grass is really greener on the other shore of the Tiber. What follows may be revised and extended as time goes by. In places, I may seem maddeningly inconsistent in what I say Anglo-Catholics do and believe, but I think by the end you will see that both maddening and charming inconsistencies are part and parcel of the A-C ethos and one of the things that have made a very small group attract so much attention within its own communion and beyond.
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As a convert from Anglicanism, I am always surprised by how little Anglo-Catholics and Roman Catholics actually know or understand about one another. Some traditionally-minded Roman Catholics rhapsodize about their hopes that the Pastoral Provision and the Anglican Use will produce waves of like-minded reinforcements. Some Anglo-Catholics wax eloquent in their dream of an autonomous uniate status where they will find a safe juridical refuge without having to take on too many of the doctrinal developments and “continentalisms” that came about after the Great Schism. I think folks on both sides of all these hopes would do well to take a minute to get to know one another better.
About myself, I should say that I have very happy memories of my life as an Anglo-Catholic and believe that tradition led me to where I am today. Anglicanism gave me more gifts than I could count and I do not believe that there are any people in the world who enjoy the practice of their faith more. On the other hand, by the time I left Anglicanism, I was one of those who was attached to the Roman Rite and Roman Catholic theology. The key to my conversion was realizing that the only distinctly Anglican things left about me were happy memories, current friends, and memberships in the various guilds and societies that grounded my spiritual life. Like most Anglican converts I have known, my conversion was an intellectual decision based on my understanding of the nature of the Church. If the Holy See wants to make a way for many of my old friends to come home and bring some of our better heirlooms with them then that is great by me, but I, like thousands of others, found my way home without special inducements and will probably be content where I am.
I am not one of those converts who believes that my church was hijacked by “revisionists.” I believe that even a cursory reading of Anglican history will show that Bishops Pike and Spong come from an intellectual tradition within Anglicanism that is as old and influential as the19th Century catholic revival. We Anglo-Catholics were also revisionists outside the mainstream trying to graft new stock onto the roots of the English Reformation. In the end we had great influence on the externals of Anglican practice, aided by the novels of Walter Scott and Victorian Romanticism, but I am less certain how much influence we had on the deeper reaches of Anglicanism’s reformed, laissez-faire ethos.
Who Are the Anglo-Catholics?
There is tremendous variety in worship and belief in Anglicanism. It is always important for solicitous Roman Catholics to remember that the vast majority of "traditional" and "orthodox" Anglicans are evangelicals, charismatics, and Prayer Book devotees who have deep theological disagreements with Roman Catholic dogma and no interest in crossing the Tiber. Even most Anglo-Catholics have deep doctrinal disagreements with Rome. Progressive or affirming Anglo-Catholics, who numerically represent at least half of the Anglo-Catholic party, often position themselves as an alternative to what they see as Rome's conservatism on doctrinal and social issues.
Traditionalist Anglo-Catholicism is a very small movement. The entire Episcopal Church in the US counts only 2.6 million members with an average Sunday attendance of around 750,000. Within that number, some single digit percentage of Episcopalians identify themselves as Anglo-Catholic, half of whom identify as liturgical modernists and/or social progressives. In fact, many Anglo-Catholics are ex-Roman Catholics who crossed the Channel because they disagreed with Roman Catholic doctrine or wanted to escape the post-Vatican II Church for both liberal and conservative reasons.
The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, the largest traditionalist catholic diocese in the Episcopal Church, counted only 14,000 members in the year 2000, about the size of five average Roman Catholic parishes. Outside of a few areas of concentration in the dioceses of Fort Worth, Quincy, and San Joaquin, Anglo-Catholics are thinly scattered across the Episcopal Church and among many Continuing Churches.
Among traditional Anglo-Catholics, you will find those who believe in 3, 4, 7, 19, 20, and 21 councils as well as those who believe that no council taught infallibly. It is safe to say that traditional Anglo-Catholics generally believe in via media, 3 to 7 ecumenical councils, and lay government. Most traditional A-Cs get from a little to very queasy at the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, and any form of devotion that is too “sentimental.” Many hold an idea of the real presence that owes as much to Luther as to Trent. A confessional in the back of the church is often considered to be an important symbol, but few consider it necessary to be a regular penitent.
Essayist Florence King spoke well to another aspect of the Anglican mindset when she wrote, “I don’t care about church and state so long as the church and stateliness go hand in hand.” Traditional Roman Catholics hoping for reinforcements need to understand that traditional Anglo-Catholics are conservative compared to other Anglicans, but that is s a very different proposition than the ideological and social agenda held by many traditionalist Roman Catholics. Many, probably most, traditional Anglo-Catholics have no objection to things like women in the diaconate, contraception, remarriage, or suitably discreet same-sex relationships. There are certainly Anglo-Catholics who support the National Organization of Episcopalians for Life and who are vexed by the Robinson consecration, but these are generally not the parishes whose photos make their way around the Catholic blog circuit for their PODness. The folks who agree with Catholic social teaching are more likely to be liturgically low-key modern rite people.
At this point it is probably clear that liturgical altitude is not the same sort of index of theological belief among Anglicans that it is among Roman Catholics. Having two sacristies full of tat is no indication that members of a parish are putting on their trunks to swim the Tiber and head out on to the battlefield of the culture wars. On the contrary, you will find that many of A-Cs think that sort of activism is very NOKD. Politically conservative Roman Catholics should also be aware that Anglo-Catholicism has a strong historic tie to Christian Socialism from the days when priests in the US and UK worked in some of the poorest missions. That relationship is not so strong as it once was--a pity to my mind since social witness was a hallmark of the early movement--but do not be surprised to find that politics runs a broad spectrum among Anglo-Catholics.
Anglo-Catholic Worship and Prospects for the Anglican Use
The Anglo-Catholic liturgical tradition is equally broad. I believe that it is fair to say that I never saw two parishes where Mass was said in the same way. In the US, some use the 1928 Prayer Book, some the 1979, and others the Anglican Service Book. In the UK, you will find the 1662, Common Worship, and varying degrees of interpolation from the 1970 Missal. In both countries you will also find the missal parishes, which use the Anglican, American, or English Missals in their various editions with their various options. As a visual study, catholic leaning Anglicans range from those who concelebrate Mass in modern language versus populum in cassock alb and stole to Anglo-Papalist shrines where the English Missal, silent canon, pre ’55 Holy Week, and folded chasubles in Lent are the norm. In between there is every variant that could be imagined with occasional hat tips to the Orthodox.
Anglo-Catholicism is a tradition where lay people own lots of theological and liturgical books and where parish priests are usually trying to balance one resident liturgist’s preferences against those of another. Battle lines are drawn by when and how you cross yourself at Mass and whether you kneel for the Sanctus or wait for the beginning of the canon. Liturgy is often just short of blood sport and many a toast has been raised to a Roman Use victory over the Sarumites of a parish and vice versa. This lay aspect of Anglo-Catholic liturgical practice often appears bizarre and unseemly to Roman Catholics, but to many Anglicans it is mother’s milk. I have often joked with friends that I became a devotee of the traditional Roman Rite because I am now too old and lazy to make stuff up.
Creating any one liturgical book or uniate fold that could encompass all of these Anglo-Catholicisms is a virtually impossible task. Among the good, devout, and intelligent people you will find across the Anglo-Catholic spectrum, there is scant agreement on which parts of the Anglican patrimony should be cherished and preserved and which parts should be trimmed away. Most would agree on saving the prose quality and a number of the English hymns, but from there it’s an erudite free-for-all where the flowing surplices of the Parson’s Handbook do battle with lacey cottas and Fortescue’s Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described and where the modern rite parish with guitar Mass in the round keeps the spirit of the 1970s alive while across town the new rector has discovered the aesthetic and theological joys to be found across the Bosphorus.
I think that the current AU texts in the Book of Divine Worship are about as reasonable a compromise as could be reached, but their appeal is limited because they must attempt to span a subculture where many a parish glories in the knowledge that it alone in all the world celebrates Eucharist, Mass, or the Holy Communion as it really ought to be done. The liturgical traditions of individual parishes and priests are matters of pride, heated debate, and wickedly funny anecdotes.
With God, all things are possible, but I do not believe that thee are thousands of Anglo-Catholics wanting to hop on the Barque of Peter if only they could bring their traditions with them. Though there are certainly exceptions, my experience has been that Anglicans who feel drawn to Rome are not that interested in Anglican worship and those who are interested in Anglican worship are not in theological agreement with Rome. Of Anglicans who are in theological agreement with the Roman Catholic Church and seriously considering conversion, I would guess that there are as many or more who are waiting for the motu proprio on the traditional Mass as there are those who are waiting for an Anglican uniate rite.
Is Anglo-Catholicism Really Just About Aesthetics? No, it isn’t. Are there Anglo-Catholics who are overly fond of the aesthetic sugar? Of course there are, but I believe that they have cousins in Renaissance Rome and 18 th Century Vienna. The aesthetic sense of Anglo-Catholicism was certainly aided by the atmosphere of the Victorian era and the role prominent artists and architects played in the movement, but there is more to it than that. For early Anglo-Catholics, liturgy was often an important form of witness and resistance whereby the externals of worship became a theological rebuke to the Protestant theology of the majority. Anglo-Catholics believed that Anglicans had maintained valid orders and sacraments and that the sacraments should be performed with the dignity befitting their reality rather than the simpler forms that accompanied a memorialist understanding. An altar cross, candles, and vestments were powerful signs of the sacramental faith that a parish held. Early Anglo-Catholic priests defied English court orders and went to jail for using vestments. In a side altar at the Church of the Advent in Boston you can still see a simple gilt cross that so offended the Bishop of Massachusetts that he refused to return until it was removed. The externals of the liturgy became an important part of Anglo-Catholic identity and a way for a parish to clearly stake out its theological ground. In places, this remains so up to the present day. A visit to Sunday Eucharist at a middle-of-the-road Episcopal parish may tell the observer very little about what that community believes but a similar visit to one of the great Anglo-Catholic shrine parishes leaves no doubt that these are people who believe that in this place heaven tangibly breaks through to earth.
Why Anglo-Catholics Stay Put
Anglo-Catholics stay where they are for the theological reasons touched on earlier as well as various practical and cultural reasons that include attachment to parishes built by their ancestors, the odd person’s lingering penchant for the perceived social respectability of being an Episcopalian, an aversion to Roman Catholic aesthetics, or simply from the knowledge that Anglo-Catholics can have their liturgical cake and a Protestant congregation’s freedom too in the unsettled times we live in.
As long as an Episcopal parish sends its annual check to diocesan headquarters and lets the bishop visit once a year or so, few ECUSA or continuing bishops care which liturgical books you have on the altar or even whether you’re offering the occasional Latin Mass. If you are an Episcopal priest, you are getting a quite decent living with little interference from higher up. If you are an active layperson, you are in a tradition that has well-established ways to use your gifts. In general, you can do pretty much as you please provided it is done discreetly and in good taste. Unless you have come to believe the Roman Catholic Church’s claims about itself, life in the average Anglo-Catholic parish remains reasonably pleasant even with all of the hysteria swirling in the headlines.
I think this seeming lack of alarm at the present state of the Episcopal Church can be another of the hardest realities for Roman Catholics to grasp about Anglo-Catholics. Alarmist bloggers are not representative of most of the people in the pews. When asked about the crisis of the week, the thinking of most A-Cs would probably go something like this:
Why should we leave over a woman primate, the Windsor Report or [fill in the blank]? We didn’t leave over the first woman bishop, choice, women priests, contraception, the Open Pulpit Canon, or the Gorham decision. Why should we go now? Sure a few folks made the lemming run over all of those things, but history shows we’ve done just fine. We’ve always been an embattled minority and we’ve hung in there bearing witness to the vision of a restored catholicism in the Anglican Communion and we’ll keep going. We may be pushed out of ECUSA into the Continuum or we may have to call in foreign prelates for a while, but that’s exactly what the English A-Cs had to do a century ago and they held tough and weathered the storm and we will too. Anglican is who we are and Anglican is what we’ll stay.
Reinforcing this general tendency to stay put are all of the beliefs that many Anglo-Catholics have about Roman Catholics. Anyone thinking of going to Rome will be given graphic stories of pantsuit nuns preaching liberation theology, liturgical dancing, bad plaster statues, and how you will always be an outsider treated with suspicion. The waffling A-C will also be reminded of some less sensational things that are hard for many of us: lay pope is not a viable career path in Rome as it is in Canterbury; chances are slim that you will be in a place where you will hear daily Evening Prayer again; and that you may never again find the same bonhomie you have had in the small, plucky world of Anglo-Catholicism.
What the Prospective Convert from Anglicanism Should Consider
When friends who are still Anglican ask me about crossing the Tiber, I tell them to come if they have fallen in love with the church but not to come to Rome merely as a refuge from the storms of Anglicanism. Conversion should be a running to, not a running from. Nor will I say that the grass is always impossibly verdant on this side of the Tiber. Many an Anglican has converted only to revert because he or she found life in Rome less congenial than was expected.
Are there things I miss about Anglicanism? Certainly! Anglicans of most theological stripes worship with sobriety, dignity and care. I am amazed that even low and broad church Anglicans who do not believe in the real presence celebrate the sacraments with a degree of reverence that I rarely see in the Catholic Church. 450 years of worship in English has left Anglicanism with a great gift for crafting liturgical prose and a rich treasury of sacred music. I still stumble over the words of the 1970 Missal and the Liturgy of the Hours. I miss the friendliness, sense of community, and well-stocked bar that you find in most Anglo-Catholic parishes. (Stories of the “Frozen Chosen” are greatly exaggerated.) Most of all I miss the regular public celebration of the Office, which is, to my mind, Anglicanism’s distinct glory.
If you have come to believe what the Roman Catholic Church says about herself, come! Our Lord sent out his disciples without scrip, bread, or money and said that even he himself did not have a place to lay his head. If you believe that Rome is where the fullness of the Catholic faith is to be found, you may need to be willing to leave behind old friends, Anglican Chant, real albs, and excerpts from this week’s New York Review of Books tucked into Sunday sermons.
A-Cs also should be prepared for the fact that few Roman Catholics have ever heard of Anglo-Catholicism, priests included. People in your new parish will be glad you’ve come, but Anglo-Catholics, Adventists, and American Baptists are all pretty much the same to most cradle Roman Catholics. At first I was quite put off by the general obliviousness. I felt that I had agonized over this momentous decision to sign up with a church that looks so good on paper and, so often, so bad in practice, and no one appreciated my great and noble sacrifice. Poor, poor me! (The lesson in humility alone has probably been worth the trip.)
At times after your conversion, you will find yourself feeling like the Israelites in the desert remembering the melons of Egypt and at other times you may well feel like Ruth, a resident alien in a strange land. At some point you will attend a mass with a homily, music, or liturgical idiom so terrible that you will wish you could be Samson in the temple of Dagon because you are so furious that these people don’t seem to appreciate what they’ve been given. You stand every chance of being theologically patronized by an RCIA instructor who couldn’t put Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas in order on a timeline and who doesn’t seem to be aware that there were some other pretty cool councils before Vatican II. Before your first year is out, you will meet at least one neocon who believes that the whole of the faith is contained in his own highly selective reading of the encyclicals of John Paul II. Chances are the pastor in your new parish has 2,000 souls to care for instead of the 200 you are used to and won’t have the same time to look after your every need. You may at last succeed in bringing a friend from your former parish to church with you then spend your time before Mass praying fervently that there won’t be any St. Louis Jesuit numbers among today’s hymns. If you are of a traditionalist bent, you will rejoice in the Institute of Christ the King and the Congregation of Solesmes, but may never feel at ease with that sort of traditionalist who gets misty-eyed thinking of the days of Camelot when Sunday meant a nice Low Mass.
I miss many good things about the world recorded in Fr. Stephenson’s memoir, Merrily on High, but it is a small world that grows more historically distant each day. Since being received, I have hung my hat with the Novus Ordo, nicely done, with few complaints. My conversion was theological and I’m finding what I came looking for as well as having a fair number of pleasant surprises. I have been to confession more times in a year than I did in 20 as an Anglo-Catholic. The reality of the universality of the Church still fills me with wonder as I try to get my mind around being in communion with more than one billion people. My parish and its priests are exemplary. I have received grace up on grace.
Paris was worth a Mass. Peace of mind is worth even the occasional folk Mass.
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Further reading from various viewpoints:
Field Guide to Anglican Churchmanship
American Anglicanism in a Nutshell
Why I Am Remaining an Anglican
Anglo-Catholicism: An Explanation and Appreciation
Our Lady of the Atonement, San Antonio
Forward in Faith North America
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