I don’t think the Catholic Church could make such an overture to orthodox Lutherans for the simple fact that orthodox Lutheranism has distinctive doctrinal differences with Rome. Anglo-Catholics (the folks the current Vatican decision regards) are doctrinally indistinct from Roman Catholics. They venerate the Virgin Mary, believe in transbstantiation, use the longer OT canon, and in England some even worship using the Novus Ordo of the Roman Rite. The big stumbling block has been not doctrinal but disciplinary — what to do with the married clergy? That issue appears to have been resolved.

The current Anglican groups that are seeking corporate reunion with Rome have affirmed the Catechism of the Catholic Church and have specifically affirmed the dogma of Papal Infallibility.

This is all possible for an Anglo-Catholic to do. I do not see how it would be possible for a Lutheran to do. Such a Lutheran would simply be a convert to the Catholic faith. A separate status would not be necessary.

Why would anyone want to swim the tiber? I mean its not like Rome has corrected any of its many doctrinal errors which brought about the Reformation. In fact the Catholic church has strengthened its resolve that “It” is the only church and all others are just sub-par as well as its continued doctrine on indulgences just to name two errors. Both the Traditional Lutheran and Traditional Anglican traditions are much more Orthodox bodies than Rome could ever hope to be.

This is interesting indeed. It shows the power of the specter / reality of homosexual clergy that came to the fore also in the reactions to the recent decision of the ELCA. This visceral power even lets people go back behind the reformation on issues like justification and rejoin the Church of Rome.

My question for those TAC members would be: why don’t you start / remain your own global Anglican Church? Why do you, chiefly over an issue like homosexuality (as it now appears; the 1980/90s decisions to embrace women’s ordin. are also mentioned above), throw away everything evangelical that is to be found also in Anglicanism and go to Rome? Is that not throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

Imagine the folks affected by the early 19th century confessional revival in Lutheranism in Europe deciding to join Rome because their respective state churches did not want to reform and set aside their magisterial mix of Pietism and Rationalism! That would have been weird, wouldn’t it? I think this shows the difference in these reform “movements”.

The former, the Anglican one seems more along the lines of John Wycliffe, mostly about moral corruption; the latter, the Lutheran one was mostly about the gospel; it was a rediscovery of the evangelical depth of Lutheran theology that had been made shallow by Pietistic and Rationalistic moralism.

I suspect the TAC members, for voluntarily desiring this reunification with Rome (mostly on Rome’s terms), must have more problems with traditional Anglicanism than their name suggests. Despite Puritan criticism of Catholic tendencies in early 17th-century Anglicanism, Anglicanism originally was a Protestant church, strongly influenced by Luther, Bucer, and Calvin.

In fact, when you study the doctrinal statements highlighted by the TAC on their website — the late 19th-century Chicago Quadrilateral, 1977 Affirmation of St. Louis, the 1990 Concordat establishing the TAC –, then justification by faith is not really mentioned there. Much is talked about tradition, the ancient creeds (the Nicene Creed as “the sufficient statement of the Christian faith”), church order, bishops, the sacraments (baptism “completed” by confirmation!) and other topics that have energized Anglicans generally in recent ecumenical dialogs. The closest I found was a declaration that salvation is by grace alone through Christ alone. Well, Rome can easily live with that. If you read these documents, then they have clearly drifted away from what Anglicanism once was or at least was meant to be. Maybe the Puritans did have a point after all…

In fact, elsewhere Cardinal Newman’s notorious 1841 Tract 90, the last in the series of “Tracts for the Times,” as they were called, is mentioned as also having some importance to this organization as to all Anglo-Catholics in the Anglican Communion. In this writing, Newman, who later converted to Catholicism when he realized that the Anglo-Catholic Oxford Movement was really neither fish nor fowl, attempted to reconcile the 39 Articles with Catholic theology. And his statements on justification by faith alone are indeed that: neither fish nor fowl, but, as always happens when you mingle law and gospel, tending towards a synergistic understanding of salvation by faith and works.

One then wonders: what are the “Anglican distinctives” that are allowed preservation? Liturgical forms? The English language? “Independent” jurisdiction and training of priests?

Rome wasn’t satisfied to let the LCMS be the only ones with an English District.

It’s like the Borg in Star Trek Next Gen–”you will be assimilated.”

Jonathan :It’s like the Borg in Star Trek Next Gen–”you will be assimilated.”

rather more importantly “Resistance is futile.”

Jonathan,

Or not.

Some very witty comments on this post.

What with GAFCON in 2008 and now reports of up to 50 Anglican bishops in the US, Australia and the Pacific region having petitioned Rome to be accepted as ‘Anglican Rite’ Catholics, it looks like the much vaunted comprehensiveness of the fabric of Anglicanism is beginning to fray, and rather quickly too.

As an ex-Anglican who came over to Wittenberg, it is fascinating to watch but rather depressing too.

Any serious study of Anglicanism should disabuse anyone of the notion that so-called ‘Anglo-Catholicism’ is the same faith as that of Hooker, Laud, Andrewes, Taylor, et al. Just as any serious study of the Roman Catholic church post-Vatican II should make it obvious that the post-conciliar church ain’t that of Trent, let alone the Baltimore Catechism. So, since both groups play fast and loose with their theological history, it should come as no surprise that they found each other after all these years.

Such overtures on the part of ‘tradition-minded’ Anglo-Catholics puzzle me: Rome clearly teaches that them who think they should be Roman Catholic must become Roman Catholic; only the ‘invincibly ignorant’ can claim any hope of salvation should they be caught outside the gates at the eschaton. Ecumenism is a red herring here; the fact is that Anglo-Catholics, like Byzantine Catholics, live in an ‘in-between’ world, theologically-speaking, one that is unfaithful to both their respective, historic, confessions and separations from Rome and to Roman Catholicism. False unity elides real differences (and Anglicanism, for all its current foibles, has never accepted such Roman doctrines regarding Mary, purgatory, the saints, justification by works, indulgences, the Papacy), which is understandable in these dim times for traditional-minded Christians everywhere. Just as many Lutherans, over the past 20 years, have preferred to jettison the theology of the Reformation, for Rome in the face of creeping liberalism, many more will choose to yoke themselves to the Papacy rather. I do wonder, however, how many once-proud Protestants who have ‘crossed the Tiber’ over the past few decades have done so not out of love for Roman distinctives, but out of fear and exhaustion at fighting liberalism, and have therefore chosen to ‘look the other way’ when faced with those same Roman doctrines that have divided Christendom since either the 11th or 16th Centuries (take your pick). It has admittedly been much easier to do this since the surface innovations of Vatican II; though the underlying theology of Rome has not budged since Trent.

All of which is to say, for those still indebted to Luther’s witness, this story is a non-issue.

I’ll go to Rome when they take me with my Augsburg Confession.

Holger Sonntag: One then wonders: what are the “Anglican distinctives” that are allowed preservation? Liturgical forms? The English language? “Independent” jurisdiction and training of priests?

A good question! Though one could in fact ask: what are Anglican distinctives at all? Liturgical forms? The English language of Cranmer? Even the peculiar Anglican view on the offices of the ministry are no longer distinctive, having been adopted by Vatican II.

I think Mark in Spokane is generally right. The people who will swim the Tiber at this opportunity are already essentially Roman Catholic; something that’s not unusual among Anglicans. The old Via Media has reached its end.

My point being..

“up to 50 Anglican bishops in the US, Australia and the Pacific region having !!petitioned Rome!! to be accepted as ‘Anglican Rite’ Catholics”

The Borg analogy doesn’t fly. Last time I checked John Luke Picard wasn’t petitioning to be accepted by the Borg.

@Rev. Joseph Eggleston

Careful there. The pope might just take you up on your offer — not! In all seriousness, there was some discussion about a Catholic “recognition” of the Augsburg Confession in the 1970s in Germany. However, Ratzinger, back in 1982, did not see this “recognition” as possible for a number of reasons. And if possible, it would also have implications for how the AC is to be interpreted by Lutherans (kind of like Newman’s attempt for the 39 Articles, it seems). In other words, “recognition” would not be a one-way street.

I don’t know what the current status of that debate is, maybe it was just some post-Vatican II euphoria gaining strength in view of the 450th anniversary of the AC in 1980. Clearly, the EKD’s recent refusal to embrace the AC as a common Protestant Confession should make Catholics wonder: well, if they don’t even want it (anymore), why should we even care? Besides, one senior EKD bureaucrat — in an internal opinion paper that (what’s new?) got leaked to the press — recently splashed some icy water on the treasured ecumenical relations in Germany by calling the leading Catholic bishop in Germany weak and by evaluating the Catholic church in general as being like a boxer close to being knocked out.

Not nice, especially when coming from a church that perhaps has been knocked out already by its close alliance to the culture of the day. How was that again about sitting in a glass house?

In other words, Rev. Eggleston, you probably need not worry too much after all about your offer being taken up by the pope.

@Rev. Joseph Eggleston, be careful what you wish for:

from http://www.st-francis-lutheran.org/ncr990910.html

“Those who know Ratzinger, however, say few figures have exercised greater influence on him than Luther. In a 1966 commentary on Vatican II’s ‘The Church in the Modern World,’ Ratzinger said that the document leaned too heavily on Teilhard de Chardin and not enough on Luther – a remarkable comment in an era with no offical Lutheran-Catholic contact, when many Catholics still branded Luther a heretic.

‘Ratzinger has been involved in dialogue with Lutherans from way back,’ said Br. Jeffrey Gros, ecumenical affairs specialist for the U.S. bishops. ‘In the 1980s he was even interested in declaring the Augsburg Confession [the first Lutheran declaration of faith] a Catholic document. To think that he wanted to torpedo [the Joint Declaration] is a total misread.’ “

I don’t have any fear of his Holiness taking me up on my offer. As a quia subscriber to all of the Lutheran Confessions, I would resolve to not budge on a single article of faith. I suppose the real question is whether a Lutheran could voluntarily acknowledge the Pope as one’s bishop, while denying any divine right for such authority, provided that the bishop would acknowledge Lutheranism as a special rite or order. It seems beyond the realm of possibility at this point.

Meanwhile in Rome, some see this move by the Vatican in line with a general rapprochement between Rome itself and tradition, as exemplified by the pope’s recent rekindling of the embers of hope of the group of traditionalists around deceased French archbishop Lefebvre.

Obviously, since the leadership is not a monolithic block, there seem to be some in the Vatican who don’t agree with this direction. They’d apparently rather be in fellowship with the (liberal) Church of England, not with the “backwards-looking” Traditional Anglican Communion. Now, after the Vatican’s move, the relationship with Anglicanism’s liberal “branch” should be more difficult, as the very existence of the TAC, and its soon to be expected incorporation by Rome, is an indictment against the non-traditional trajectory on which the Church of England and other, Western Anglican churches have embarked. According to Rome, all’d be fine if they all were like the TAC.

To be sure, in an official statement by the archbp. of Canterbury (Anglican R. Williams) and the archbp. of Westminster (Catholic V. G. Nichols) from yesterday, the new apostolic constitution is seen as a positive outgrowth of years of dialog between Anglicans and Catholics. Yet I wonder whether that’s really an honest assessment from a genuinely Anglican perspective.

We’ll have to see how this development affects things in the global relationship between Rome and other Protestant churches. Maybe it will remain a relatively isolated incident due to Anglicanism’s unique character within Protestantism.

In one of his letters to pastors, Hermann Sasse, reflecting on the 1958 Lambeth Conference, states that the English church during the middle ages was most faithful to the pope. He writes:

“At one point, the English church had been the most faithful daughter of Rome; the first Germanic church where the pope truly ruled and from where the continent was Romanized since Boniface; the church of the cult of St. Peter … and of pilgrimages to Rome. No people loved St. Peter as much as the English; no people was then humiliated as much as the English by the successors of St. Peter when Innocent III turned England into a papal fiefdom. Since then the “no popery,” the English equivalent of the German “away from Rome,” sounds forth through the history of England. Only think of Wycliffe’s polemics against the papacy as the antichrist who during the last years of Wycliffe’s life lived in Rome and in Avignon.”

How times have changed for some.

It seems like the Pope probably did this because of the warming relations between the New OCA Metropolitan and the new ACNA Province . It would seem to be a numbers grab for the catholic church before the orthodox could claim them. A little Early bird gets the worm kind of thing.

@Holger Sonntag
Holger,
Do you have the reference for that Sasse quote?
(i.e. which Letter # & English translation?)
Thanks in anticipation.

@Mark Henderson
Mark — the letter number is 48, and the translation is my own. But I think there was a plan to publish it and other letters in a Lonely Way III volume. Maybe Paul McCain knows something about the status of that project?

@Holger Sonntag

Thanks Holger.
Could I have permission to post that extract in your translation on my blogsite?
If you have translated the whole letter, I would be very keen to read it (I won’t post it, in view of the book coming out).
I can be contacted via my blogger profile.

In that 2007 event, Traditional Anglican bishops signed the Catechism and placed it on the altar of the historic National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk, England in order to attest to “the faith we aspire to teach and hold.”

Here’s a pithy observation by John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter:

Picking up on this theme was NCR senior correspondent John Allen, writing for The New York Times: “There’s also nothing preventing the Anglican Communion from creating similar structures to welcome aggrieved Catholics who support all the measures these disaffected Anglicans oppose. Certainly, after today, the Vatican would have no basis to condemn such a move as an ecumenical low blow.”

What strikes me more than anything about the whole Anglican issue is the usual set of rules, rules, rules in these “hierarchically-ordered” churches. Some things never change.

Christine

I think that simply reading this creation of a Personal Ordinariate for Anglicans against the current squabbling over homosexuality and even women’s ordination, etc. is a mistake. The position of the Anglican church relative to the Catholic Church has always been complicated, with periodic waves of interest in corporate reunion. While the Anglo-Catholic reading of English church history is obviously biased, I’m not sure it is entirely without merit. Also, we should be careful when lumping all Anglo-Catholics together as accepting purgatory, transubstantiation, etc. Actually, only a very tiny portion of Anglo-Catholics have ever claimed to fully accept the doctrine of transubstantitation, despite often seeking full reunion with Rome. On the other hand, I would also watch out for saying that “Anglicanism, for all its current foibles, has never accepted such Roman doctrines regarding Mary, purgatory, the saints, justification by works, indulgences, the Papacy.” Guild promoting the rosary and devotion to the BVM sprang up in the Church of England in the 19th centur, along with groups promoting purgatorial doctrine. See, for example, the still existing Guild of All Souls: http://guildofallsouls.net/about.html. I would also argue that justification by works was alive and in the background of the Victorian restoration of monasticism and a sacerdotal priesthood. In any case, there have been serious overtures on the part of Anglo-Catholics to Rome since the mid-late 19th century. The hope of full corporate union was dashed when the pope nixed the Anglican orders in 1896, thus setting in motion of the necessity of some kind of reordination and perhaps parallel structure. In any case, this move has been a very long time in coming. Also, as I mentioned on the BJS website, “it will be very interesting to see how the newly-formed Anglican Church in North America responds to this. The church is a bizarre conglomeration of Calvinists, Arminian Evangelicals, and Anglo-Catholics thrown together by their mutal distaste for homosexuality. Will the Anglo-Catholic wing of the ACNA hang on, or will they jump ship for Rome, thereby endangering the success of the fledgling ACNA? Time will tell on that one. I suspect that most converts will com from the Anglo-Catholics of Australia. In any case, the Lutheran Church is an entirely different scenario theologically and historically. There will be no Personal Ordinariates or Prelatures for Lutherans in the foreseeable future.”
Bethany Kilcrease

Bethany,

Pardon my ignorance, but what is the BJS website?

In regard to your comments re most anglo-catholic converts coming form Australia, you may be right, since anglo-catholicism is historically quite strong here (where, until recently, Anglicanism has been the majority church, as in England), although it (both Anglicanism and anglo-catholicism) has been in numerical decline for several decades now, such a steep decline that the Roman Catholic church is now the largest in the country. But on the other hand it will still be a big jump for the anglo-catholics here.
To start with, they don’t seem to have any doctrinal discipline, they are not united by doctrinal confession, it seems, but by devotional practices and a hierarchy. From personal discussions, I have learned that many of them do not believe in transubstantiation (as you note), and some may actually be closer to Calvin on the Real Presence than to Luther. Even receptionism is not unknown among them. Rome, even though no longer the monolith it once was, would be like a cold bath for them (i.e. quite a shock!), as they wont be able to so easily subscribe to doctrine with their tongue in cheek, as in Anglicanism, and in turn it will be interesting to observe how flexible Rome will be in the effort to accomodate the Anglicans.
Then there are the practical hurdles – their priests will have to be re-ordained (?), which I think would be quite humiliating, although as you note that has been flagged since 1896, and those who have been divorced (not an inconsiderable number, from what I gather) will have to seek an annulment of their previous marriage(s) before being considered for ordination. Not to mention that none of their current bishops who are married will “go across” as bishops.
Is it all worth it? It remains to be seen. Already, I believe, the Anglican Church in Papua New Guinea, which may well have been a candidate for this as it is largely anglo-catholic due to past missionary endeavours and quite conservative (no women priests), has indicated that they are not interested. So we shall have to wait and see who the “up to 50 bishops” reported to have petitioned Rome on this matter are and whether the bar has been set too high for them.

Here’s the link to the Brothers of John the Steadfast website:
http://steadfastlutherans.org/
Best,
Bethany

According to an article from yesterday in the British newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph, the Anglican bishop of Chichester, John Hind, announced that he would be happy to be reordained as a priest in the Catholic church. Another bishop stated that “the Anglican experiment is over.”

Hind asked: “How can the Church exist if bishops are not in full communion with each other” due to major theological disagreements? Another bishop comments: “Anglicanism has become a joke because it has singularly failed to deal with any of its contentious issues.”

This looks like a major crisis, even a meltdown in the Church of England. This also should give some pause to other churches.

I forgot to mention that one of the predecessors of Bishop Hind was Bishop G. Bell, the close friend of D. Bonhoeffer.

Holger,
The comments of the bishops re the lack of unity in Anglicanism and how difficult that makes church life echo issues I faced in my own mind some 15 or so years ago. To a certain extent, of course, the seeds of this disunity were sown in the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559, where unity in polity and worship forms prevailed over unity in doctrine. In that regard I agree with the comment, ‘the Anglican experiment is over.’

However, we must not ignore the rise of a new phenomenon, ‘confessional Anglicanism’, guided by Archbishops Akinola of Nigeria and Jensen of Sydney, which is seeking to re-build Anglicanism, not on the foundation of communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury, but on the foundation of scripture. We cannot ignore it because, by sheer volume of numbers, it will before long cast its shadow over the remnant of official, liberal Angicanism and demand to be taken seriously.

Which is to say that rumours of the death of Anglicanism are premature.

Interesting developments, Mark. I’m sure those Anglo-Catholics who are ready to jump across the Tiber are painting an especially dark and hopeless picture. They still have some rationalizing to do.

As to the other Anglicans, if they truly build on Scripture then they should indeed arrive, not at Canterbury, but at Wittenberg. We’ll see whether that happens. I wish them God’s blessings on their endeavors!

I think an important thing about the comments by Bp. John Hind and Bp. John Broadhurst, SSC is their context. Bp. Hind is certainly a Catholic-leaning Bishop and he was addressing the assembly of Forward in Faith (an Anglo-Catholic and traditionalist Anglican organization). I wouldn’t necessarily count on him to jump ship immediately. Broadhurst might though. He’s also the chairman or FiF and a SSC (Society of the Holy Cross) brother. That’s an Anglo-Catholic priestly society.
The most important thing to watch in England will be how the FiF (and smaller SSC) crowd react. There around around a thousand FiF priests in Britain alone, so if they do go en mass, it could leave a dent.

Bethany

Thanks for that further information, Bethany. Do keep us updated on developments. The Society of the Holy Cross, btw, have largely taken over the Anglican diocese where I minister, introducing the Anglican Missal, prayers to Mary and the saints, etc., much to the consternation of the few Reformation-minded Anglicans left here, some of whom have begun worshipping with us.

Holger, full of promise yes, but also with the leaven of Zwinglianism mixed in, at least as far as the Sydney Anglicans are concerned (and they are crucial to the movement, as they are a very wealthy church, or were, having lost AUS$150 000 000 in the GFC- no doubt they will recoup that in the long run. I suspect they financed GAFCON, for instance).

Dr Sasse had quite a bit to do with them in his time here, even speaking at their InterVarsity Fellowship plenary meetings a number of times, but they have hardened somewhat since those days (1950s & 60s). Still, at least there is no doubt about their formal committment to the authority of scripture. Somewhere I have a pamphlet that contains his address to them c.1967 on just that topic.

I’m sure, though, that Dr Sasse would regard the offer from Rome as the last chapter in ‘the great tragedy’ of anglo-catholicism.

@Rev. Joseph Eggleston

Pr Eggleston,

But Rome will let you take your AC with you, in fact they will let you even have your BoC, so long as you do not buck the Pope, you can have your cake and eat it too.

Rome is big and can accommodate anything. So long as you accept the Pope all is sweet with Mother Church.

LPC
LPC