Patristic Orthodoxy Renewed
Allegations of meretricious gaudiness and groundless liturgical innovation, together with Romish sacramentalism and exotic excess in Marian devotion have long been the stock in trade of Anglo-Catholicism’s critics. Yet such claims merely create a caricature that bears little relation to the self-understanding of the movement itself, or to the erudition of its principal proponents.
In reality, Anglo-Catholicism has always been about the true catholicity that the Elizabethan Settlement itself sought to recover and establish, going back to Cranmer, Jewel, and Hooker. This is a patristic catholicism thoroughly grounded in scripture. As such, it has understood itself to capture the vision later expressed, perhaps rather optimistically by Yves Congar as a Roman Catholic that, “there is not a single point of belief that the Church holds by tradition alone, without any reference to Scripture; just as there is not a single dogma that is derived from Scripture alone, without being explained by tradition” (The Meaning of Tradition, p. 39-40).
It is therefore very fitting that this parish in its coming 2024 Conference (to be held from November 14–15) will explore the riches of our uniquely Anglican vision as Anglo-Catholics.
Our tradition upholds key elements of the patristic orthodoxy renewed in the Reformation, while also maintaining ancient catholic forms and customs in liturgy and ordained ministry. This tradition is not defined by some imagined return to a mythical unity in belief and order before the epochal divisions of later church history. Nonetheless, the words of the Chicago Quadrilateral. First adopted by the bishops of the Episcopal Church in 1886 and later by Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion as a whole, do point to the proper universality in belief of the vision we seek to uphold. This is one in which “the principles of unity exemplified by the undivided Catholic Church during the first ages of its existence” are, “principles we believe to be the substantial deposit of Christian Faith and Order committed by Christ and his Apostles to the Church unto the end of the world”.
Conference speakers will include:
The Rt. Rev. Dr. R. William Franklin, Assistant Bishop in the Diocese of Long Island, Adjunct Professor in Anglican Studies at the Union Theological Seminary and former Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School, Yale
Dr. Torrance Kirby, Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Graduate Programme Director
School of Religious Studies, McGill University, Montreal.
The Revd. Dr Walter Hannam, Adjunct Professor at St Augustine’s Seminary and Rector of St Bartholomew’s Church in Toronto
The Revd. Fr. Gavin Dunbar, President of the Prayer Book Society USA and Rector of St John’s Church, Savannah GA
Dr. Roberta Bayer, Associate Professor Patrick Henry College, VA
Dr. Ryan Danker, Director of the John Wesley Institute
Dr. Drew Nathaniel Keane, Lecturer at Georgia Southern University and Managing Editor of The Anglican Way
and more….(including a speaker from the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Boston. To register for the conference, please click the link below.
The Rev. Canon Alistair Macdonald-Radcliff
Rector