Christian Unity and Anglo-Catholicsm
We have been richly blessed in the parish to have had in recent weeks a succession of visitors able to speak to fundamental aspects of our faith. We heard first from the Revd. Dr. George Westhaver, the Principal of Pusey House in Oxford, and then from Dr. Lauren Whitnah, the Dean and President of Nashotah House here in the United States.
Then last Sunday, we heard from Dr. Christopher Wells, the former Editor of The Living Church who now heads the Anglican Communion Office’s work advancing ecumenical relations and the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity, Faith and Order. He drew particular attention to the Chicago Quadrilateral. This statement was adopted by the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church in 1886 and later by Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Communion as a whole.
It powerfully reminds us that, “Christian unity . . . can be restored only by the return of all Christian communions to the principles of unity exemplified by the undivided Catholic Church during the first ages of its existence; which 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, and therefore incapable of compromise or surrender by those who have been ordained to be its stewards and trustees for the common and equal benefit of all…”
Moreover, “As inherent parts of this sacred deposit, and therefore as essential to the restoration of unity… we account the following, to wit:
1. The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament as the revealed Word of God.
2. The Nicene Creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian Faith.
3. The two Sacraments,—Baptism and the Supper of the Lord,—ministered with unfailing use of Christ’s words of institution and of the elements ordained by Him.
4. The Historic Episcopate, locally adapted ….to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of His Church….” (The full text is set out in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, pp. 876-77)
Immediately after the First World War, an Encyclical Letter was issued by the Lambeth Conference of 1920 which casts yet more light upon the Anglican project by declaring that:
“It is not by reducing the different groups of Christians to uniformity, but by rightly using their diversity, that the Church can become all things to all [people}….” Nonetheless, the Letter declares that the “fulness of Christian life, truth, and witness can only be realised if they are united in the fellowship of one visible society whose members are bound together by the ties of a common faith, common sacraments, and a common ministry.” And the letter closes by stating that, “It is towards this ideal of a united and truly Catholic Church that we must all set our minds.”
All of this makes it deeply fitting that our 2024 Conference on the 14th and 15th of November will be devoted to precisely the question of What it means to be Catholic! The speakers are set to include:
Professor Torrance Kirby of Montreal University
The Revd. Dr Walter Hannam, Adjunct Professor at St Augustine’s Seminary and Rector of St Bartholomew’s Church in Toronto
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.
The Rev. Canon Alistair Macdonald-Radcliff
Rector