Category Archives: Church/State

Back Again Into the Wasteland

17 Wednesday Feb 2021

Posted by in Church/State, Lent, poetry, Tolkien

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The Hollow Men 5A note from Neo

Well, I’m back again, not that I really left, I’ve been posting on the Neo blog, as many of you know, because that has been more appropriate to my thoughts lately. I have been thinking of you though, there are a fair number of us here, but we tend to be, I suspect a good bit alike, and if you’re like me, you feel very much like a sojourner in a strange land.

Today is, of course, Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, when we traditionally give up things by which we commemorate Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, as we prepare ourselves for Easter.

I first republished this article of Jessica’s on Ash Wednesday in 2015, it is from 10 March 2013 originally on NEO and is quite similar to the one here also on 10 March 2013 called Mere Anarchy. I found the NEO version a bit more understandable, but I link them both because you may well differ. At the time I reblogged this well, it was a troubled time in my life, you who knew Jessica then will know that this was while she was at the Convent recovering from cancer, and our contact was severely limited. But God be praised that worked out. Here is Jessica’s post.

Into the Wasteland

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

The opening lines of T.S. Eliot’s 1925 poem speak with eloquence to any age and people who feel disconnected from what they feel is a calamitous and collapsing socio-political world.

Eliot was writing in the aftermath of the most catastrophic war in the history of the Western world. It was the war when hope died. How could one believe in progress after the Somme and the horrors of the Western Front? And what had all of that slaughter been for? A settlement at Versailles which few believed would really bring peace to the world.  Men like Wilson and Hoover, or MacDonald and Baldwin, seemed small men facing giant problems, and sure enough, within fifteen years the world had once more descended into the abyss.

Does the fault lie in our leaders? They do, indeed, seem to be hollow men, with heads stuffed with straw. The words of Yeats’ Second Coming seem apposite to our times:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

Writing in 1919, Yeats wondered:   

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand

But it was not so. In Lord of the Rings, Frodo tells Gandalf that he wishes he did not live in the time he did, when such dreadful things were happening. Gandalf’s reply is for all of us:

So do I,’  said Gandalf, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’

It is not for us to decide such things. All each of us can do in the end is to decide how we live our lives and by what star we steer. Those of us with a Christian faith, like Tolkien himself, know we are strangers in this world, and we know by whose star we steer. We can rage all we like against the way the world seems to be going, so did our forefathers, and so will our descendants. Eliot ends with a dying fall:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

But Yeats, in best prophetic mode wondered:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

For me, Eliot’s words in Ash Wednesday ring truest:

Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

That’s pretty much what the world feels like, increasingly to me, at least, it seems that we may have to simply burn it down and try to rebuild in the ruins. but I continue to hope not, so we will see.

In many ways, Kipling asked the question I think our political, and a fair share of church, as well, leadership should have to answer

I could not dig; I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

But as Jess said above, we don’t get to pick the era in which we live, we are simply called to do the best we can. And so we shall, God willing.  NEO

Saturday Jess: Taking sides?

14 Saturday Nov 2020

Posted by in Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Church/State

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As some of you know from my occasional contributions to Neo’s blog (what do you mean you haven’t read it! Golly, here’s the link, though those of a liberal frame of mind may need a trigger warning, but more of that in a moment) I am by way of being an Americanophile. I spent a year in the mid-West when I was ten, and fell in love with small-town America. There were no fewer than ten churches in a town of about ten thousand people, and I loved the Episcopal Church at which we worshipped. But there is one aspect of American culture which I wish we had not imported – the so-called “culture wars.”

I suppose I come at this from what I’d call a Church of England direction. I was brought up to believe that the Church of England has a mission to the whole country. As I grew up I came to value that side of things more and more. Regardless of creed, class or colour, the doors of our churches are open to all who want to go there (well, okay, they were, but don’t start me on Mr Johnson and his government). I don’t take the view that religion has no place in public life, and I value the role that the Church plays in this country. It is not just (although it is also) the work done selflessly and quietly locally through foodbanks, or through hospital and university chaplains, it is that local presence.

As a politcal näif, it came to me but slowly that there were “parties” in the church. At university I went along to some Christian Union meetings, but soon retreated to the calm of the College Chapel. I’ve never been one for jumping up and down and proclaiming my thanks for my salvation. C 451 tells a story of a politican who, on being asked by a Street Preacher whether he was saved, said “yes”, only to be asked “why are you not proclaiming it?” To that he responded as I would: “It was a close shave so I don’t like to shout about it.”

College chapel was like home – Alternative Service Book, decent sermon, seemly and, well, for me, a bit boring. Being an inveterate church hopper, I found one which was not boring. The Blessed Sacrament was reserved, there was incense, and the Book of Common Prayer was used. It wasn’t long before I’d bought my first mantilla and Rosary, and I asked Father to bless the latter – and he blessed the former too. I found a spiritual calm there which neither the College Christian Union, nor the Chapel gave me. But it never occurred to me to think that my preference was somehow “better”; it was different, and difference was, I thought, and still think, good.

Some at the Church I attended would refer to what had happened at the time when the Church of England had ordained women in the way that you might refer to a great disaster. As I came to know more, I realised that my Church was part of a group called “Forward in Faith“. There was considerable hostility among some of my fellow worshippers to those who, in their view, had “betrayed” the Church by agreeing to the ordination of women. Meanwhile, talking to friends at College, where I still attended early morning prayers in the Chapel, I encountered a similar hostility to the “dinosaurs” who opposed the ordination of women. As a woman, I was expected by my peers to share that view, and I was asked more than once “how I could bear” to “worship with those people?” I had a very good (male) friend in another College who was a keen Evangelical, and he used to ask me how I “could bear to worship in Laodicea”; he never darkened the door of the College Chapel.

It may just that I am a wishy-washy liberal sort of woman (guilty as charged by the way, and proud of it), but I did not see then, nor do I now, why they could not all “live and let live.” My other half (who only takes an interest in these things insofar as living with me requires it) asked me last night why I ran a “conservative blog” if I favoured the ordination of women and thought that LGBTI+ Christians should always be made welcome in church. I tried to explain that my Catholic views on the sacraments and the nature of the Church were not “conservative” to me, and constituted no bar to an inclusive view of that Church. I am not sure they were any the wiser, or even better informed.

On both sides of the Atlantic we seem to be living in sharply divided political cultures where the traditionally intolerant attitude by conservatives to things like gay rights are reciprocated on the left by a “cancel culture” to anyone with non-progressive views. This does seem to be an import, and it exacerbates existing divisions. In my own church it can seem, sometimes, as though those taking a traditional view of marriage and other social issues, are being marginalised. I was struck, as I thought and prayed about this, puzzled as to what a Church which has a national mission should do, by what Canon Angela Tilby has written in the latest Church Times: “we can take on that protective task only if we resist a too-easy identification of progressive causes with the values of “the Kingdom”.

It is a timely reminder that balance is one of the great virtues of Anglicanism, and so I leave you this Saturday, with her wise words:

We should nourish more diversity of thought, a wider theological intelligence. Scriptural truth, after all, is multi-layered. We misread our mission if we think that it is all about us and our personal preferences. In the same spirit, we should ensure that the conservative-minded among us are not driven to the edges, not only because this could encourage animosity, but because they retain insights that we need. We will engage effectively with secular society only if we know where our roots lie

Enjoy your Saturday!

Church “of England”?

08 Sunday Nov 2020

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There are times when responses to what I post don’t surprise me, and times when they do, and the response by Alys to my last one fits into both categories.

I remain unsure why an admiration for Pope Francis on issues of catholic social teaching should mean I should cross the Tiber. My own Church has a long and laudable history in the same sphere. Not only is there no economic dogma in the Bible, there is also nothing in what it has to say about the poor and marginalised to suggest that a free market in modern terms was the sole answer, still less that an individualised approach to these these things is to be preferred. How we are to help the poor and marginalised is a moot point, and any economic system which does so is to be commended, but none of them can work for Christ unless it is informed by him.

The Incarnation is essentially a message of hope. In becoming Incarnate, the Eternal Word who was with God and was God in the beginning, showed the concern He has for what He created and whom He created. What follows from that, certainly for a man like Temple, is certainly not socialism. After all, as he wrote in Christianity and the Social Order:

A statesman who supposes that a mass of citizens can be governed without appeal to their self-interest is living in a dreamland and is a public menace. The art of government in fact is the art of so ordering life that self-interest prompts what justice demands.

In short, he believed what St. James wrote about true faith producing good works.

Temple may have flirted with it, but he was no collectivist. One of his three principles was the importance of ‘freedom’. This was why he was so passionate about education. Ignorance prevented men from reasoning as God wanted; ignorance was not freedom, it was bondage. In his early life he had flirted with collectivism as a way of ensuring that men and women realised they had responsibilities as well as rights, but by the late 1930s he had moved to the position just described. He opposed both fascism and communism, writing that: ‘Man has a status which is independent of nay earthly society and has a higher dignity than any state can confer.’

Nonetheless, mankind is not a solitary beast, and society existed in part to enable men and women to supply needs they could not fulfil themselves. The State was necessary, but people did not relate to it the way they did to their church, their football club, their trade union or their school. What Edmund Burke called the “little batallions” were critical to a healthy society and freedom – hence Temple’s second guiding principle, ‘Fellowship.’ That led directly to his third principle – ‘Service.’ If man did not live by bread alone, he did not live for himself alone – the very word ‘church’ derived from the Greek ‘ekklesia’ which meant a gathering; literally, you could not be a Christian by yourself. Nor could you live the life God meant if you focussed solely upon your own needs and wants. That was not a call to be a ‘do gooder’. Temple recognised the call family and fellowship made, but stressed the need to serve those needs in a way which did not damage those of others.

If we set before ourselves, or there is set before us, a creed of ‘enrichissez vous’ in which we find our highest satisfaction in piling up riches and consuming, then Our Lord is quite clear that this is a foolish aim – ‘Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee:’ [Luke 12:20] And yet, as a society, does the modern West have any higher aim to set before us? The sop of ‘trickle down’ economics is just that, and given the lack of social mobility in the last decade or so, there is little sign even of that.

Christ’s charge to us is a moral, not a political of economic one, and a political or economic system which is not charged with them may deliver many things, but those things will not be of Christ, but of the ruler of this world. Love your neighbour as yourself; love the stranger within your gate; feed the poor; care for all; let those who have share with those who have not, heal the sick in mind and body. Do these things because we are all children of the One God and are redeemed by Christ if we will follow him, regardless of colour or class.

As that great and good man, Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (RIP) wrote in his last book:

Societal freedom cannot be sustained by market economics and liberal democratic politics alone. It needs a third element: morality, a concern for the welfare of others, an active commitment to justice and compassion, a willingness to ask not just what is good for me but what is good for all-of-us-together. It is about ‘Us’, not ‘Me’; about ‘We’, not ‘I’.

If we focus on the ‘I’ and lose the ‘We’, if we act of self-interest without a commitment to the common good, if we focus on self-esteem and lose our care for others, we will lose much else. (Jonathan Sacks, Morality 2020, p. 1).

In the circumstances in which we find ourselves, someone or something needs to speak for something wider then the self – for freedom, for sure, but also for fellowship and service. Here the Church shows it is ‘of England’ by continuing to do just that. Nearly half our churches ‘are running organised activities to tackle social isolation through programmes such as youth groups, parent-toddler groups or lunch clubs.’ Two third of our churches are involved in running foodbanks, the need for which is growing exponentially. As Tim Thornton, the Bishop of Truro, has said: “social action is deeply embedded into the mission of the Church of England.”

Do you read any of this in the press, or see it on television or hear it on the radio? No, of course, not, but the Church is there all the same, doing the work which the Word Incarnate wants. Socialism? No, it is Christianity doing what it has done from the time of Christ. Getting on with building the kingdom, brick by brick, sometimes with precious little straw.

Authority?

06 Friday Nov 2020

Posted by in Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Church/State, Early Church, Faith

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The Council of Jerusalem

One of our commentators, Cath.Anon raised the issue of ‘authority’ in a searching and penetrating comment on my post of ‘catholicity’; it’s a jolly good question and one to which I had been (sort of) coming. He has encouraged me to get my skates on and brace myself to do it – so thank you Cath.Anon, both for the excellent comment and the nudge!

He is right to say that there needs to be authority. The quickest survey of church history shows this has been a problem from the start. However one wishes to interpret the claims of Rome that its Bishop is more than primus inter pares that is not how things operated for most Christians for most of the history of the faith.

We know from Acts and Paul’s letters that when Peter drew back from table communion with Gentiles under pressure from the church in Jerusalem, the matter was resolved only by what we have seen as the first council – and there Paul told Peter he was wrong – and the majority agreed with him. That set the precedent for the next four hundred years or so.

No one seeks to deny that the Bishop of Rome had a prominent place in terms of authority, but that authority was as a presiding bishop over those bishops in the western part of the Roman Empire. Alexandria, the most fertile intellectual and cultural centre of the Roman Empire was far more prominent in terms of the development of doctrine and theology, and its Bishop, like his counterpart in Rome, had authority over bishops in north Africa and to the south. The Bishops of Jerusalem and Antioch also had an authority which stemmed from their historical importance, and with that a right to be heard. The establishment of the new imperial capital at Constantinople created a tension and a dynamic which became important once Christianity was recognised by the Emperor.

Prior to that, in cases of theological controversy, local bishops did what the Apostles had done, got together, when they could, to sort things out. The establishment of the See of Constantinople and the official recognition of Christianity changed things decisively – as we see at Nicea and after. As C451 has written extensively on this (just follow the link), I shall confine myself to the question of authority.

The decisions reached at Nicae followed the template of that first council – except for the presiding of the Emperor. Rome sent representatives, but no one asked the Pope whether he approved or not. The pattern which developed across the next few councils is interesting. Rome and Alexandria had a common interest in trying to contain the upstart claims (as they saw them) of Constantinople. We see the apogee of this alliance at Ephesus in 431, where Cyril of Alexandia’s alliance with the Bishop of Rome saw off Nestorius. This alliance broke down in the unskilled hands of Dioscorus at Chalcedon in 451, where Constantinople was able to win the support of Rome. But the dynamic was the same.

None of this is to deny the theological and doctrinal issues that were at stake, but it is to suggest that the church dealt with them by dialogue and discussion as between equals; the Pope in Rome mattered greatly, but his imprimatur was not decisive (or even, sometimes needed), and ecclesiatical politics often resembled coalitions in countries with a system of PR. Where there were three major sees, two against one would always win, and Rome was skilful. The demise of Alexandria, first after Chalcedon and then the Muslim conquest, left only Rome and Constantinople. The latter refused to recognise the claims of the former to primacy, and indeed tried to claim the same for itself (follow the link to C’s posts). This led to the schism of 1054, which was never healed, and helped lead to the downfall of the great imperial city.

In the four centuries which followed, both Sees faced encroachments from secular power, but where Rome was dealing with kings who were Christians and, while sometimes disputing the extent of it never denied its power, Constantinople was dealing with Islamic invasions which were to leave it a shadow of its old self, a decline not helped by the Catholic Venetians sacking the city in 1204 in an act of disgraceful vandalism.

After 1453 Rome alone remained of the old five major Sees of Christendom, at least in terms of freedom from Muslim domination. However, within a century, it managed to create schisms within its own domain by its ham-fisted response to calls for change. Of course, further east, and as far as China with the Nestorians, there remained Christians who had never acknowledged the claims of Rome. In the end, Rome reformed itself, but not before the unity of Western Christendom had fractured.

In terms then of ‘authority’, where should a Christian wanting certianty look. Rome? I look acros the Tiber and see warring tribes, with many Catholics claiming not only to be more Catholic than the Pope, but that the Pope is not even a Catholic. If that’s ‘authority’ I can have that, without the nastiness, in my own Church. Of course, you can decide to convert and take the view that the Pope is right on matters infallible, but you can do that anyway, and as I understand it, there is even dispute on how many infallible pronouncements the Popes have made. I am sorry, none of that would be comfort if I needed the security of a single voice of authority.

What then, is the alternative for those of us who do not find the claims of Rome convincing? In a way it is the same as for those who are Catholics but do not find the Pope very convincing oin the environment or what some wags call “tutti frutti”, which is to make up our own minds – reason and scripture working on how we interpret authority. I suspect most of us do that anyway.

In terms of ecclesiology, there are bishops and a synodical system with lay participation for Anglicans which are our equivalent of that meeting at Jesusalem – and the Archbishop of Canterbury, like Peter, can find himself challenged. Its better for all of us than a system where the Pope is challenged only by some bishops, priests and laity after the event, and where people genuinely spend weeks and months trying to work out what he actually said and then what he meant by that.

In the end, we make up our own minds as guided by the Spirit which moves us. I respect those who find their destination in Rome and ask no more than respect for those of us who find it in Canterbury – even if the architecture is not so grand and ancient.

Lockdown 2 … more bad news

05 Thursday Nov 2020

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There are very many reasons to regard this UK Government as a shambles, but the one I want to concentrate on is the decision to lockdown churches in terms of pubic worship. Despite many attempts to get the PM to explain the rationale, he has refused to provide evidence that this is necessary. Not only that, but it turns out he did not even consult the Archbishops before making his decision. We have an Established Church which has Archbishops and Bishops in the House of Lords, and the PMs refusal even to consult before making his decision is a shocking sign of the casual way he seems to treat his job. Lord North, move over, in the “worst PM” stakes, a position formerly held by Theresa May, we have a new winner, Boris the careless.

Let’s be clear here. There is no evidence that the churches have been part of the rise in Covid cases, though there appears to be plenty to suggest that the government’s subsidy for eating out was. The idea that going to church and receiving communion is not essential reveals a staggering state of theological illiteracy. As one very good article in the Church Times puts it, ‘The Church’s sacramental ministry is not an optional extra.’ My own Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Mosques and others, have all protested against both the manner in which the government has acted and what they have decided.

I have seen the argument ‘but you can still go to church to pray’ put forward as mitigation, and have had to explain to some friends what the Eucharist is and how, if we are to be conformed to Christ, communion is essential. Last time round we were deprived of this for three months, and for some of us, it was harrowing, but we accepted that in the face of the pandemic it was necessary. But we have put so much work in our churches to make them Covid-secure that it is maddening to have it ignored and to be told that our faith is an optional extra, like going to the pub or the cinema. It is a real sign of how religious illiteracy effects our public life. It took a Vicar’s daughter, Theresa May, to remind her party of the importance of our church, but Johnson did not even have the manners to stay and listen to her. Religious illiteracy we take for granted, alas, but discourtesy on the scale we have seen, is another matter.

As someone who did not vote for this shambolic government it may be I am biased, but when thirty four of his own MPs can’t vote for him, it seems I am not alone. I think Church leaders had led from the front here, it is a sad thing that our elected leader can’t follow suite.

Rendering under Caesar

21 Wednesday Oct 2020

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One of the few things of which Bishops and Archbishops can be sure in this fleeting and fitful world is that if they comment on its affairs they will be criticised, and if they don’t, they will also be criticised. Thus, when the Archbishop of Canterbury intervened in the ongoing Brexit saga to protest against the idea that the Government was willing to abrogate international law, there were the usual cries for the Church to stay out of politics, intermingled with the usual “whabouttery” to the effect that how could a church where a recent investigation into child abuse had revealed real failures, comment on politics. The latter reaction, which we get in the Catholic Church too, would puzzle me if it were not so obviously the product of an inability to think. People who engage in that line of casuistry are best left to wallow in their own vomit.

The first cry, “stay out of politics” is odd in a country with an Established Church where the Archbishops and some Bishops have seats in the House of Lord. The Archbishop has responded with robustness: “Christians and people of all faiths take part in the national debate. This is democracy and freedom. I have seen the opposite. Treasure what we have.” He spoke a truth of which we stand in sore need of hearing on both sides of the Atlantic:

Politics, if it is to draw out the best of us, must be more than just the exercise of binaries, of raw majority power unleashed. It exists to seek truth, to bring diverse peoples together in healthy relationships.

If anyone is authorised to speak about morality in politics it is an Archbishop. The binary approach to politics which we have seen growing across the past decade is destructive of the body politic itself. If we cannot disagree civilly with those who have views different from our own then democracy is going to die. In this country at the last general election we had a choice between a communist and a clown, whilst the USA has one between an egotistical braggart and a man slipping into dementia, and neither of their financial affairs bears close scrutiny. Where a system offers people this sort of “choice” whilst failing to deliver on the first duty of government – public safety – then that system is on borrowed time.

We have already seen, with the growth of populist movements, where this could lead, and it is to be hoped that one of the few positives of the current debacle in the UK is that it will provide an object lesson in the consequences of entrusting government to those who make promises which they knew they cannot not keep. The Archbishop is right, if a government admits that it is willing to break international agreements in order to get its way, that needs calling out and condemning, and if it takes a Church to do it, so be it. Sometimes what Caesar needs is reminding that morality plays a part in his world too.

We have created an economic system which lacks any sense of an objective moral order – what Aquinas called natural law. We are stewards of this earth, not its owners. Our leaders are stewards, not absolute monarchs. When they, or we, put power, technology or money above the health and welfare of people, we makes them idols, and we frustrate God’s purpose for mankind. We cannot serve God and Mammon, and it is the duty of Church leaders to call our leaders to account.

*And to help those who wonder why the ABC does not talk about other things, he does, as with this about the situation in Nigeria.

Saturday Jess: compromise?

17 Saturday Oct 2020

Posted by in Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Church/State

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I was struck by a letter in the latest edition of the Prayer Book Society magazine which decried the idea that Anglicanism could be associated with “compromise” and that the latter could be a good thing. The erudite writer quoted Lady Thatcher and Lord Edward Cecil. I understand that point of view. They both seem to have thought of compromise as giving up what you believed and persuading others to do the same so you ended up with the lowest common denominator – something C451 brought up in his moving post on the Reformation Martyrs yesterday. But that Thatcher/Cecil view is itself a caricature; it also ignores the history of the Church of England.

With the aid of a long reading list from C451 (for which many thanks!) I have been occupying my enforced leisure time by catching up on the history of my own church. Being of an Anglo-Catholic persuasion and a fangirl of the Oxford Movement, I had taken on board its view that the Church of England was the reformed Catholic Church in these islands. That’s still what I see, but I can also see there was another side to it, and that there was a strong reformed element which wanted to be almost Calvinist. That did not happen, though it might have done, and it is unwise and inaccurate to ignore the strong Protestant element in the Church.

How then, you might wonder, did the Catholic and Protestant elements come to coexist. I am not an historian, though I wish C451 would attempt the task for us, but in large measure it was to do with being an Established Church. That great woman, Elizabeth I, loved elements of the old Catholic school, especially the liturgy and music. She also, with good reason, feared the misogynistic and republican elements in the the sort of Protestantism favoured north of the border by that ghastly man John Knox. She feared also the effects of religious strife, seeing elsewhere how it divided kingdoms and made them weaker. Being by far the most intelligent person ever to have sat on the English throne, she used her royal authority to ensure that reasonable men and women of faith could find a home in the Church. She declined to make windows into men’s souls.

That did not mean that at times of peril such as the Aramda, she would not take action against those whose religious allegiance threatened her throne, but it did mean she was willing to have a Prayer Book which many of the more Protestant wing thought Popish, whist accommodating herself to the absence of incense and Marian veneration in a way the more Catholic wing found not to its taste. This is something of a simplification, but it’s how I read it. It all came a bit unstuck under the Stuarts who (with the exception of Charles II) could never see a compromise which might have allowed them to keep their throne without chucking it, and their throne, aside, but after 1662, settled down.

Compromise? Yes, I think so, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing or a sign you lack principles to acknowledge that others can hold different ones and then try to find, in Christian charity, whether there is a common way forward. I recommend it, not least to those friends and former bloggers here who scream into the void their vitriol at their own Pope. The Anglican way can seem. I know, not least to men of bold spirit, a little “wet”. As an avowed “wet” woman, I am fine with it. We stand on foundations laid by the first five centuries and on reason and scripture. We have come a long way, and there’s a long way yet to go until His kingdom comes !

The Reformation Martyrs

16 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by in Anglicanism, Catholic Tradition, Church/State, Faith, Persecution

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Martyrs’ Memorial, Oxford

As an undergraduate and then a graduate, this was a view which greeted me most days as I went about my studies. On this day there would be flowers and other tributes laid here. Occasionally a tourist would ask me what it was about, and some of them seemed none the wiser (though at least they were better-informed) when I told them it marked the site of the burning of an Archbishop of Canterbury and two other bishops of the Church of England. On one occasion only did I get an answer which surprises me, less now than it did then: “They took the Faith seriously back then, not like now!” It has not ceased to shock me – no one who toils in the blogosphere could be shocked – but it saddens me, not because I am some milquetoast who wants us all to “lurve” one another, but because it brings to mind Byron’s comment in “Don Juan” about “Christians have burned each other, quite persuaded, that all the Apostles would have done as they did.” God is the only just judge, and anyone who thinks that burning someone to death is a sign of how seriously they take their faith should pause and ponder what Jesus might have meant when he said that “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again”. [Matt. 7:2].

In addition to Bishops Ridley and Latimer, whose burning was on this day in 1555, the more famous Archbishop Cranmer was burned on the same spot six months later, which is why today, in the Church of England calendar is called the memorial of the “Reformations Martyrs”. There were, as any historian can tells you, plenty of Catholic martyrs too, although, perhaps tellingly, it took until 2008 for a small plaque to be erected on Holywell Street in memory of four Roman Catholics — Thomas Belson, Humphrey Prichard, and the priests Richard Yaxley, and George Nichols — who were hanged, drawn, and quartered there in 1589, and beatified as martyrs in 1987. When a memorial was dedicated in 2009 to 23 Catholic and Protestant “Martyrs of the Reformation” in the Uni­­ver­sity Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, there were complaints that this was not what those who had been martyred would have wanted. Perhaps those complaining would have preferred another public burning of a “heretic”, which might well have been what those who were martyred would have wanted?

Violence begat violence, and and whatever one’s view of the English Reformation, and it remains a hotly contested field of scholarship, it was marked by a level of cruelty which to most of us does no service to the name of Jesus or to our common faith, for make no mistake, divided as we are by ecclsiology and history, Anglican or “Roman” Catholic, we share one faith, even as we share a sorry history of intra-communal violence.

None of this is to denigrate the martyrs on both sides, they were men (and women) who paid the ultimate price to stand by their beliefs, but we do their memory no service by continuing to dig ditches and erect barbed-wire to defend positions which a century of ecumenical dialogue has shown need no such defences. As Churchill put it in another context: “Jaw Jaw is better than War War.”

On the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York spoke in the spirit of the fruits of ecumenical dialogue when they spoke firts of the “blessings” of the Reformation:

Amongst much else, these would include clear proclamation of the gospel of grace, the availability of the Bible to all in their own language, and the recognition of the calling of lay people to serve God in the world and in the Church

but also of the:

 the lasting damage done five centuries ago to the unity of the Church, in defiance of the clear command of Jesus Christ to unity in love. Those turbulent years saw Christian people pitted against each other, such that many suffered persecution, and even death, at the hands of others claiming to know the same Lord.

Much has been done to try to overcome the resulting legacy of mistrust, and indeed it can seem at times as those the most intense warfare is the internecine sort, where Catholics can be vitriolic about their own Pope and about those Catholics who are vitriolic about him. Maybe we really do learn nothing from history?

The Reformers in the sixteenth century, like later reformers within the Catholic Church, wanted to draw us back to what is at the heart of our faith, and that is the love of God for us, manifested through His Son, Jesus Christ who died for us that we should have life eternal. It is easy, which is why it is done so often, to mock ecumenism as a search for the lowest common denominator, and it may, or may not, be significant that this tendency is often to be found among converts, but properly understood, it is a search for the highest common factor – that the love and sacrifice Jesus made for all who would receive Him, can be made manifest in this vale of tears where we see Him as through a glass darkly, but where the scars of sin run vivid red and orange in the flames which consumed the martyrs.