I was moved by one of the comments on my last post, the link from Scoop to a friend’s blog wherein the latter, a recent convert to Rome, lamented both the state of the current Pope and the Church, but expressed his joy at being in the right Church, the one founded by Jesus. I felt his pain, as I feel that of Scoop. It can’t be easy to be an orthodox Catholic at the moment. It’s a feeling which I know drove some Anglicans out of the Church of England into Rome, some via the Ordinariate.
I have a sense from those I know that those in the Ordinariate are happier than those who converted and joined their local Catholic congregation, though would be delighted to be wrong on this, as I know, from personal experience, how bitterly awful it can be when you and your church seem constantly at odds, and I can well understand why people change church. But I have also observed how often it does not bring what the person converting hoped it would bring.
At the centre of much of this is the question of the Pope. If you sincerely come to believe that the only Catholic Church is the one headed by the Pope, then the Tiber must be crossed, though quite what you do if you conclude Pope Francis isn’t the Pope, I am not sure. I guess wait out the storm and hope for better days. But, outside the Roman tradition, no one else believes that the one infallible mark of being the Catholic Church is recognising the Bishop of Rome as the supreme authority. It was not so in the Church of the Fathers, and not all the selective cherry-picking of quotations will ever make it so. It would be hard to convict the Eastern or non-Chalcedonian Orthodox of a love of novelty, and neither of them holds the Bishop of Rome in that role. My own Church takes the same view.
I am a Catholic in so far as the Church to which I belong recognises the historic Creeds and the Councils of the undivided Church, and it adheres to the ancient orders of the Church – deacon, priest and bishop. For those who feel that these orders can never be held by women then the Orthodox Church or the Roman Church is the place to be. For those, such as myself, who are unconvinced that such a view is based on more than a patriachal insistence on reading Scripture in that way, the Anglican Communion is the place to be.
Is it perfect? No more than any other Church. But the idea that unless you are communion with the Bishop of Rome you are bound to hell is a confection of late origin, designed by Rome to strengthen its hand against Constantinople. This insistence by Rome helped shatter the unity of the early Church, just as Rome’s insistence on having its own way shattered the unity of the Western Church. This, naturally, is not how Rome reads it, but it is how all the other Catholic Churches read it. It may, of course, be that Rome alone is correct, but its own openness to ecumenism since the Seconf Vativan Council suggests a willingness to move beyond old disputes, which many of us welcome. No-one is happy to see the Bishop of Rome separated out from the other Apostolic Churches, though I doubt anyone much thinks that the way to union is easy, or near.
I can do no more by way of concluding with what that great Christian, Bishop Lancelot Andrewes wrote about the Church of England’s fundational beliefs:
One canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period – the centuries that is, before Constantine, and two after, determine the boundary of our faith.
Andrewes introduced two other related features which became characteristic of Anglicanism and which differentiated it from both Rome and Geneva – a reserve about points of doctrine which are not central, and a freedom of private judgement outside these central articles of faith. If you want to make windows into men’s souls, fine, but I have to say that I prefer the Anglican way.
All Along the Watchtower 
That is, of course, the problem with changing church. It’s one that faces all of us when we contemplate such a change. For me becoming a Lutheran felt like a homecoming, but then I found the same problems with orthodoxy in the ELCA as I had in the UCC (even though the ELCA uses the same source documents as all Lutheran synods) to me much of what they preach comes under the “things done and left undone” rubric.
I agree that if one believes the Bishop of Rome is paramount, one has little choice, and I too was moved by Scoop’s link. Still one never finds a perfect church, it simply does not exist.
Churches may have been founded by God, but they are run by imperfect men, often men who fit Lord Acton’s dicta. One simply must do the best he can as an individual and as a family to do the right thing. It’s not easy, of course, what worthwhile ever is, and salvation is worth more than all the earth.
I agree with Bishop Andrewes that you quote and would only add, “Keep the Faith and trust God.”
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If we do that, and love one another then we go a long way, dearest friend xx
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That is very true, dearest friend 🙂 xx
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😊 xx
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I do not think that “honest converts” (by which I exclude those who choose a faith to soothe their spouse or their families or because one is easier than another or allows them more licentious freedoms without pangs of conscience etc.) do not choose to convert by personal preference but because they are compelled. Fr. Rutler (an Anglican Priest for 10 years) is not unusual among those who are converts of good will. The following from Insight Scoop”:
If you were to ask Father George Rutler, pastor of the Church of Our Saviour on Park Avenue in Manhattan, what his cosmopolitan parish has in common with the little country village of Ars where St. John Vianney served, he would tell you a great deal.
“The life of Vianney can be transferred to any parish in the world,” Father Rutler maintains. Each parish is a “microcosm of the Church” that must face many of the same spiritual problems and challenges, the same personalities, the same conflicts, however manifested in different ways.
Father Rutler’s path to the Catholic Church was uniquely inspired by the Curé D’Ars.
During a retreat in a monastery in England during Father Rutler’s early days as an Anglican, a green book sitting on the shelf happened to catch his eye. That book turned out to be the “Life of the Curé D’Ars,” by Alfred Monnin. Encountering the life of St. John Vianney for the first time was a watershed moment in Father Rutler’s spiritual journey to the Catholic Church.
“I was just hypnotized by the book and could not put it down,” Father Rutler said.
The example of St. John Vianney exerted a formative influence on Father Rutler: “This man is living the life of a Catholic priest and that is what I was striving for.” Inspired by his life and devotion, Father Rutler as an Anglican knew he faced a dilemma: “If Catholicism is wrong, how could it produce such saints?” Thus began his conversion to the Catholic faith.
It was as also as an Anglican that Father Rutler encountered another towering Catholic figure, Cardinal John Henry Newman, who also played an influential part in his own spiritual formation. While studying at Oxford, Father Rutler began to read the works of Newman and would pray before Newman’s pulpit.
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Thank you, Scoop. Both very good and holy men, as were Newman’s friends Keble and Pusey.
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“One canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period – the centuries that is, before Constantine, and two after, determine the boundary of our faith”
A problem with this would be that texts never interpret themselves, they always require a living human person to interpret them. And when, as inevitably happens, living human beings come up with radically incompatible interpretations of crucial concepts an acknowledged authority is required to definitively rule on the meaning of the text unless you are happy to see an infinite multiplication of groups each of whom claims to have the authentic interpretation of all disputed texts. For various reasons Rome has come to be such an authority and until or unless it definitively teaches as true something which is false there is no reason to lose trust in it role regardless of the shortcomings of any particular occupant of the Apostolic See.
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I take your point, but how many verses of the Bible has Rome pronounced on infallibly? Your claim, with which I can sympathise, would be stronger if you could point to Rome doing that? I have quite a few RC commentaries and can’t find a single incidence of an infallible pronouncement on any text.
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I respect your view. I think there is a beauty in the simplicity of that quote from Bishop Lancelot Andrewes. Something that bothered me though was this thought, “the idea that unless you are communion with the Bishop of Rome you are bound to hell” which you attribute to Catholics. There’s a hefty caveat to that which is that the Catholic Church recognizes that people who follow their conscience faithfully (as you seem to do) and, in good conscience, don’t join the Catholic Church, can have hope that they will be in Heaven, too. I believe the Catholic Church teaches that you must follow your conscience, even if that happens to lead you away from the church.
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Thank you doubly. I should have been clearer that I was referring to some of those who regularly comment here.
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