ELEVEN years ago I was a country vicar on the Isle of Wight. I was married with two young children, and was looking forward to a long and happy ministry in the Church of England. Three years later, along with hundreds of other Anglican priests, I resigned and joined the Roman Catholic Church.
I resigned because the General Synod had voted to ordain women as priests. However, those of us who became Catholics did not do so because we were eternally opposed to women’s ordination. We resigned because in her decision to ordain women, we thought the Anglican Church had shot herself not in the foot, but in the head. In other words, if the bishop was the head of the Church, she had shot her bishops.
What I mean is, we had thought the Anglican Church was part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. If she was, then no matter how we felt about women priests per se, we did not feel the Anglicans had the authority to introduce such a radical innovation unilaterally. It was not the idea of change that was disturbing. The Church has always changed. What was disconcerting was the attitude to authority that the innovation heralded.
“Authority” is a dirty word these days, because when we hear it we think of “authoritarianism”. However, for Christians the question of authority is simply the question: “When there are sincere disagreements, where do we turn for the answer?”
The New Testament shows the Apostles struggling with the same problem. When they faced the question of whether or not to admit non-Jewish people to the new faith they came to an answer through the charismatic leadership of Peter balanced by a council of all the Apostles.
From the earliest centuries this same pattern was followed. The authority of the successor of Peter was balanced by the authority of Church councils. Not only was the Bishop of Rome the successor of Peter, but each bishop was understood to be the successor of the Apostles. The bishops were the defenders of the historic faith, and therefore a focus of unity for the people. A mark of the ancient Catholic faith is that the clergy and people enjoy a real sense of unity in diversity. Despite pers- onal disagreements, they unite in loyalty to their own bishop and, together with him, express a united faith with the Bishop of Rome.
The vote to ordain women as priests shattered this historic unifying role of the bishop. To keep the dissenters on board, provision was made for traditionalist parishes to have their own “episcopal oversight”. They could choose either a suffragan bishop from their own diocese, or a “flying bishop” from outside.
The provision for dissenting groups to have their own bishop was generous, but it was also a radical departure from the historic understanding of what a bishop is. The provision of “flying bishops” was meant to be a temporary measure. However, it has remained in place for ten years, and if the experience of the Episcopal Church in the US is anything to go by, the tradition- alist rump may prove to be far more tenacious and long-lived than was first thought.
If anything, the traditionalists seem to be growing in strength. The Rev Robbie Low, a member of the Forward in Faith council, says they are uniting across international borders to present a feisty traditionalist front. Rather than the flying bishops being seen as a temporary compromise, the International Forward in Faith movement wants to formalise the situation with a “third province” which would be an independent Church within the Anglican Communion. Alternative episcopal supervision would help the dissenters to stay Anglican while they continue moving towards corporate unity with Rome.
The provision of pick’n’mix bishops has also established a precedent. Ten years ago the Anglo-Catholics disapproved of women priests and got their own bishops. Now the conservative evangelicals, unhappy with the Anglican Church’s permissive stance on human sexuality, are demanding their own bishops. Two years ago the Rev Charles Raven, a vicar in the Worcester Diocese, began looking for a new bishop because his bishop approves of homosexuality. David Banting, national chairman of the conservative Anglican pressure group Reform, predicted similar opt-out actions breaking out like brush fires across the Anglican Communion.
Evangelical Anglicans in America have already taken united action. Two years ago a rebel group — unhappy with the sexually permissive attitudes of the Episcopalian mainstream — had two priests consecrated as bishops by conservative bishops from Asia and Africa. Like the Anglo-Catholics, this new “Anglican Mission in North America” does not want to break away from the Episcopal Church. Instead it wants to remain as a thorn in the side of the Anglican Church. Furthermore, these evangelicals are not small cells of kooky activists. They have significant numbers, are well organised and very well funded.
If Anglo-Catholics can have their own bishops, why shouldn’t conservative evangelicals? But, if an evangelical can have his own bishop who disapproves of homosexuality, why shouldn’t a homosexual priest who is stuck with a traditionalist bishop also go shopping and find a pro-homosexual bishop? Indeed, why shouldn’t any priest who happens to quarrel with his bishop look around for someone more agreeable?
Is this an Anglican free-for-all or the Anglicans in freefall? Time will tell. Those of us who entered the Catholic Church ten years ago are fully aware of similar tensions within Catholicism. Our boat is also sailing through stormy seas, but while we may be hanging on to the guard rails, at least we are agreed that there is a captain on the bridge.
Dwight Longenecker is the editor of The Path to Rome — Modern Journeys to the Catholic Church.
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