Traditional Anglican Communion
This Statement is a draft for the consideration of the College of Bishops and Leaders of Forward in Faith. It has no authority until approved by the College, and published by the Primate on the instructions of the College.
Faith and Communion
Consequences of the Ordination of Women to the Presbyterate and Episcopate
March 2006
Introduction
Powerful Anglican forces have continued to attack the integrity of those Anglicans who remain opposed to the ordination of women to the Diaconate, Priesthood and Episcopate.
At the same time, an end to the debate (sometimes known as a "period of reception") has been clearly signalled. Conservative Primates of the Anglican Communion have asserted more strongly than hitherto that the ordination of women is not a matter of faith, and therefore not "Communion-breaking". Many of the Primates who form the "Global South" ordain women, or allow such ordinations within their Provinces. In several Provinces where the ordination of women has been long established, "conscience clauses" that permitted the survival of dissent have been revoked, and affirmation of the ordination of women is necessary for ordination, even of male candidates.
The Windsor Report, in breathtaking defiance of the Provinces that do not ordain women, and of the on-going opposition in Provinces that do (not to mention the existence of a thriving group of Anglican Churches outside the Anglican Communion that owe their existence to their opposition, the work of deep scholarship by the Anglican Mission in America, and the pleading of the ecumenical partners of the Anglican Communion) has declared:
There are some matters over which the Communion has expressed its mind. As we have seen, the contentious issue of ordaining women as bishops was the subject of extensive debate and discussion in the Communion for some considerable time before a common mind was reached.
It then recommended a form of basic Canon Law by which each Province will agree, among other things, to the acceptance of the ordination of women (at Article 12):
(1) (to) uphold the historic threefold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons;
(2) recognise the canonical validity of orders duly conferred in every member church;
(3) welcome persons episcopally ordained in any member church to minister in the host church subject to the necessary consents required by and in accordance with the law of that church; and
(4) permit any person ordained in that church to seek ministry in any other member church subject to its law and discipline.
Primates, both liberal and conservative, are speaking optimistically of the introduction of such a Basic Law.
At the same time, there has been a renewed battle to displace the remaining opponents of the ordination of women in Australia, Canada, the United States, South Africa, Kenya, Japan and Europe. The Church of England, in debating the introduction of women bishops, has voted to consider legislation to protect opponents, against strong attempts to end such arrangements. There has also been renewed persecution of members of the Traditional Anglican Communion in a number of places where it provides protection and sacramental integrity to opponents. Simultaneously, it would appear that no appeal to the Panel of Reference of the Archbishop of Canterbury dealing with persecution of opponents to the ordination of women has gone from the Archbishop to the Panel, even though almost twelve months have passed since urgent pastoral appeals were made to the Archbishop.
Meanwhile, some opponents of the ordination of women have reached accommodations with its proponents that appear to challenge the basic assumptions (outlined in the Affirmation of St Louis and the Concordat of the Traditional Anglican Communion, on the one hand, and the several national versions of the Communion Statement of Forward in Faith on the other). These seeming accommodations threaten the stability and long-term survival of an Anglican ecclesial body whose sacramental life remains ordered by catholic tradition.
The Ordination of Women
For the past eighty years, Anglican debate about the ordination of women has revolved around the nature of the Church, the Sacraments and the Priesthood. More recently, especially after the entry to the debate of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, the debate has been understood to be about the great doctrines of Creation, Incarnation and Redemption.
Its protagonists, on the other hand, deny much of the theological significance of the argument, seeing the issue as utilitarian (because women perform the tasks of priestly ministry successfully), as an issue of human rights and equity (in the wider context of the emancipation of women and the development of feminist theology) and as a fundamental plank in the process by which scriptural authority and ecclesial tradition have been redefined by a humanist hermeneutic. Not surprisingly, then, there has been little opportunity for direct debate, and synods have approached debates on the ordination of women using many of the instruments of coercion and manipulation that are the commonplace tools of secular politics.
The Anglican debate has been further corrupted by the disengagement of liberal evangelicals, who have increasingly defined ministerial priesthood in terms beyond the boundaries of the classical Anglican consensus, and by liberal Anglo-catholics, who have increasingly defined their relationship to the Church in terms that see Anglicanism in prophetic confrontation with both Rome and Orthodoxy, not just on questions of Holy Order, but on the more profound question of the nature of the Church.
[Recognition of this confrontation is to be found in the choice of the subject for the next round of ARCIC conversations - "The Nature of the Church". The desire of Archbishop Ramsey and Pope Paul VI (in their Common Declaration of 1966) was
that all those Christians who belong to these two Communions may be animated by these same sentiments of respect, esteem and fraternal love, and in order to help these develop to the full, they intend to inaugurate between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion a serious dialogue which, founded on the gospels and on the ancient common traditions, may lead to that unity in truth, for which Christ prayed.
By 2001, such a Common Declaration seemed to have become too difficult, and the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope issued individual letters for the first meeting of the International Anglican Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission - itself a product of growing confrontation. Pope John Paul II wrote that in Anglican/Roman Catholic relations,
We have seen many . surprises in recent decades, and when discouragement threatens or new difficulties arise, we need to focus once more upon the Spirit's power to do what seems to us impossible. At times of apparent pause we must wait for the Holy Spirit to do what we ourselves cannot do.]
This leaves a handful of Provinces, dioceses and extra-mural bodies in a precarious and diminishing relationship to the liberal consensus, in which people, some who see themselves as "liberal" and others as "traditional", most of whom already ordain women as priests, argue about where on the spectrum of human sexuality they should draw the boundary of orthodox belief. There is a profound difficulty in their position. The doctrines of Creation and Incarnation demand a recognition of God-given differences between male and female (that have no bearing on the equality of men and women before God, but a profound bearing on the relationship between men and women), recognition that the Christ became male, and that a catholic understanding of priesthood demands a gender-specific identification with the Incarnate Christ. To draw the line at same-sex marriage, or other conduct that perverts sex roles in creation and procreation, having already determined that these differences can be perverted in matters "chosen by God to give Grace", requires the very selectivity in relation to Scripture and Tradition that is the ground on which they condemn their opponents in the Episcopal Church and elsewhere.
The compulsive determination of this group, who ordain women and object to homosexual sin, to maintain the institutional integrity of the Anglican Communion makes the drawing of a compromise boundary, born out of compromised theology, almost certain. Meanwhile, Incarnation and Redemption, at the heart of Christian self-understanding and the Christian encounter with God, are forcefully redefined within this consensus by sacramental practise and ecclesial order. These, of course, are high priorities for Anglican Catholics, and the power and influence of Anglican Catholics in the Anglican Communion has diminished during the years of these debates to the point where commentators (including the London "Times") now speak freely of "the death of Anglo-Catholicism".
An even more profound difficulty is the simple fact that faith may be defended and attacked by debate and intellectual confrontation, but faith is not established by debate. Faith is revealed, and exists quite independently of the arguments that are employed by each generation to defend what they have received and now transmit. Faith is never the conclusion reached by the last winner of a debate about belief. Once both Roman Catholicism and Holy Orthodoxy determined that the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate was outside the deposit of faith, and that the male presbyterate and episcopate is of apostolic origin and has been defended as such through the ages, Anglican arguments for change became difficult to sustain intellectually, and impossible to sustain ecclesially on the basis of Anglicanism's sharing in "the church catholic". Hence the care with which Pope John Paul II reiterated the teaching on this matter of Pope Paul VI:
Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate, or the Church's judgment that women are not to be admitted to ordination is considered to have a merely disciplinary force. Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful. (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 1994)
And the firmness of a statement often repeated as representing the mind of Orthodoxy:
...the Orthodox Church has never faced this question, it is for us totally extrinsic, a casus irrealis for which we find no basis, no terms of reference in our Tradition, in the very experience of the Church, and for the discussion of which we are therefore simply not prepared...the ordination of women to priesthood is tantamount for us to a radical and irreparable mutilation of the entire faith, the rejection of the whole Scripture, and, needless to say, the end of all 'dialogues'. This priesthood is Christ's, not ours...And if the bearer, the icon and the fulfiller of that unique priesthood, is man and not woman, it is because Christ is man and not woman. (Archpriest Alexander Schmemann, "Concerning Women's Ordination - a letter to an episcopal friend", 1984)
For Anglicans, it is the nature of the Church and her obedience to Scripture and Tradition that are sharply defined by either acceptance or rejection of the ordination of women. In a debate in the General Synod of the Church of England recently on the consecration of women as bishops, the Archbishop of Canterbury concluded the debate with these cogent words:
People have talked at times about differences of opinion and how the Church can live with differences of opinion. I think that the problem is, for those who are not content with the idea that we should go forward along the line of ordaining women as bishops, the problem is not one of opinion, it's rather one of obedience. It's one of obedience to Scripture, or obedience to the consensus of the Church Catholic. And, while that's not a view I wholly share, I think we ought to recognize that that's where it comes from, those who hold to it are not just thinking 'this is a matter of opinion'. And therefore it is rightly and understandably a lot harder to deal with dissent if you are talking about what fundamentally comes down to a question of whether you obey God or human authority. That's why it's serious. That's why it's difficult. More than 'opinion'.
At earlier stages of the evolution of this problem, orthodox Anglicans were concerned with the validity of the sacramental life of a church in which the priesthood of some clergy was not recognised. That problem has been exacerbated, as more bishops have clarified their intention to dissent from the intention of the "church catholic" when conferring Holy Orders. The Traditional Anglican Communion, and some Anglican Communion bishops (such as the late John Hazelwood of Ballarat) have followed the advice of Doctor Eric Mascall who, when asked whether male clergy ordained by male bishops who have ordained women should be conditionally ordained when coming under the jurisdiction of the TAC, stated "You would be very wise to do so."
More recently, in framing such documents as the Communion Statement of Forward in Faith, and in the TAC's acceptance of the intention of such documents when entering into relationships of inter-communion with Forward in Faith, the emphasis has shifted. While still being intent on maintaining a separate sacramental life from the churches that have women priests (and an acceptance that those arrangements cannot be sustained once women become bishops in those churches), the emphasis is on maintaining ecclesial integrity. Hence the importance of jurisdiction in the proposal for a "Third Province" in England, and on the formation of a "single eucharistic community" in the arrangements by which Forward in Faith Australia and the TAC in Australia have determined to share an episcopate. Inevitably in these jurisdictions, there has been some friction between the TAC and FIF. The different stages (even within the TAC and within FIF, let alone between them) along the way of becoming "ecclesially distinguishable" from churches that ordain women (in the words of the Concordat between the TAC and FIF England) create tensions and misunderstandings about mutual intentions and legitimacy. The different experiences of persecution also fuel this friction. On the other hand, a profound level of sacramental and communal union has developed already between the TAC and FIF in a number of places. It is now common, for instance, for clergy of FIF and the TAC to concelebrate at and participate fully in ordinations.
Even allowing for the frictions inevitable in a complex international relationship at a time of conflict, and the fact that the three Concordats between FIF and the TAC carefully create relationships that take care not to violate canonical provisions that might still apply, the decision of bishops of Forward in Faith North America to refrain from joining with other FIF bishops (and TAC bishops) in the Moyer/Chislett consecrations, even though some of the FIF bishops had felt able to take part in a consecration with the Presiding Bishop of ECUSA, at about the same time, raised serious questions even before the issue of communion with a women-priest-including Network was introduced. (The Archbishop of Canterbury had privately given personal encouragement to David Moyer and to David Chislett in their plans to "look to the TAC", and has been reported as describing the Network as "having a rift from top to bottom - women's ordination".) The fact that bishops involved in an Episcopal consecration with Archbishop Griswold (the Primate of ECUSA) did not robe to take part in the Griswold consecration raises "robing" to new theological heights in the Anglo-catholic cosmos, but must surely have been theologically meaningless.
At the same time, the emphasis has shifted from those (often clergy) who have made local arrangements to survive at the parish level until retirement, to those who are actively planning a future for Anglicanism that provides a viable ecclesial structure beyond the present generation - what the International Chairman of FIF (Bishop John Broadhurst) calls "A church for my grandchildren." Inevitably, as our minds have shifted from individual refuges to corporate life as the Body of Christ, there have been stirrings among traditionalist Anglicans to review the ecumenical losses of the past thirty years, and a growing determination to revive the vision of unity that has been fractured by the ordination of women. This has involved of necessity a reappraisal of what constitutes membership of the Anglican Communion, and a concomitant reappraisal of the options - and imperatives - for wider ecclesial groupings and for a rebuilding of the shattered dreams of ARCIC for communion between an Anglican ecclesial body and the Holy See.
Communion
The concept of Communion, which is at the heart of Christian life, has been greatly abused in recent Anglican history.
In its most classical formulation, the Fathers understood communion to be the intimacy of bishops teaching with one voice and sharing in the Breaking of Bread. It implied the union of each diocese and of each member of each diocese whose bishops were in communion with each other. The consequence of heresy was schism, and the consequence of schism was an inability to share the Eucharist. There was no dispute about the fact that priests and people who desired to avoid the consequences of schism had to withdraw their allegiance from a heretical bishop, and associate, not with a bishop of choice, but with the nearest orthodox bishop.
It was always understood that an individual who refused to repent of public sin or apostasy had to be separated from the Breaking of Bread, but that was an individual tragedy for the local congregation, not something that could influence the relationship of dioceses and churches.
Until the ordination of women, the Anglican Communion maintained as much of these characteristics as could be sustained in the face of modern conditions. In ancient days, especially in places like Jerusalem, migration and multi-ethnic communities led to a diminishing of the territorial nature of episcopacy. Territory and communal identity were both factors that determined jurisdiction, and the weighting of each varied markedly in different times and places. To some extent since the Great Schism, and to a greater extent since the mass migrations of the industrial age, and the consequences of the Reformation, territoriality is largely a fiction and jurisdictions are almost entirely determined by ethnic and cultural communities. Thus qualified, Anglican bishops were in communion with each other, fractures were clearly recognisable, there was a consistent pattern of behaviour by Archbishops of Canterbury towards localised schism, and mutual recognition of the sacramental legitimacy of each member church was presumed and practised.
This level of communion could only be sustained after the ordination of women by redefining communion in an Anglican context. Clearly, neither minister nor sacramental integrity was any longer assured of recognition across member churches.
This leads to the extraordinary series of redefinitions by the Windsor Report, in which sacramental integrity is replaced by the institutional vehicles called "the instruments of Unity", none of which carry sufficient authority to bind the member churches, and which are only entrenched in the canonical procedures of the individual churches, where the legislation that has broken eucharistic (or classical) communion has occurred in the first place. The thief becomes the policeman, yet again.
There is a spiral of unendingly diminishing communion, resulting in the absurd concept of "diminished communion", which is in fact nothing more that a statement that classical communion has become impossible, sacramental life has largely become disparate and fragmented, and some "bonds of affection" still remain that might restrain member churches from displays of public denigration of each other, and allow some continuation of cooperation and charitable works. If the recent spate of formal announcements that bishops are not in communion with member churches and with each other, including a growing number of Primates who say they are not in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury (whom the Windsor report calls the "pivot of unity"), then the Anglican Communion now can most accurately be described as looking remarkably like a less successful ecumenical experiment.
This situation is anticipated by some commentators as signalling the disintegration of the Anglican Communion. In fact, the Communion has shown remarkable resilience by moving to exclude those who would create fractures (such as opponents of the ordination of women), and to restructure both the credal formulae and the nature of communion to ensure that the Communion remains structurally integral.
The Anglican Communion Network
Founded in 2004, the "Network" states in its Charter:
This association shall be known as the "NETWORK OF ANGLICAN COMMUNION DIOCESES AND PARISHES," hereafter known as the "Network," and shall operate in good faith within the Constitution of The Episcopal Church.
Having defined itself as belonging within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, it then goes on to define its attitude, among other things, to the ordination of women:
The affiliates of the Network hold differing positions regarding the ordination of women and pledge that we shall recognize and honor the positions and practices on this issue of others in the Network.
This is a highly problematic statement for both the TAC and FIF, binding as it does those who oppose the ordination of women as a fundamental and irrevocable break in apostolic faith to public tolerance - and honor - of those who create this break.
The network then declares that its vision is to be:
a united Anglican missionary movement in North America of such irresistible spiritual power in Word and Sacrament that people are drawn to a personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ and become members of the Body of Christ, His Church. We will be known for our commitment to evangelical faith and catholic order.
This would appear to be creating an ecclesial, sacramental entity, rather than an organization for some common purpose. It is organised into a number of geographical regions, known as Convocations, a non-geographical Convocation for Forward in Faith, and an emerging seventh Convocation for those former ECUSA parishes now under the pastoral oversight or jurisdiction of overseas bishops.
There appears to have so far been no attempt to provide adequate alternative Episcopal oversight by Network bishops (FIF or otherwise) outside the canonical provisions of the Episcopal Church, provisions that have been widely condemned as both unjust and theologically and pastorally inadequate. There have been sporadic events in which Confirmation and other pastoral ministry has been provided to orthodox parishes who attempt to reject the ministry of diocesan bishops for reasons of conscience, often including overseas bishops, but sometimes including retired bishops of FIF (several of whom have renounced communion with ECUSA). But this is not adequate alternative oversight that even approximates what is provided elsewhere, and asserted at great cost where it is not provided. That any FIF bishop in North America can remain in communion with the bench of bishops of ECUSA (and testify to that communion by receiving Holy Communion at Episcopal gatherings and by repeated assertions of belonging to ECUSA) undermines the most basic premise of catholic opposition to the ordination of women, and especially of those in England, Australia and elsewhere who are demanding minimum structures based on that premise.
The decision to integrate Forward in Faith North America into the Network, perhaps because of the slow pace of FIF parishes joining the Network of their own volition, raises a number of questions for other parts of Forward in Faith and for the bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion:
- Does the Network operate as a Communion, as its Charter would suggest, that is, is it a unified ecclesial entity with a sacramental life implying that its members, especially its bishops, are in communion with one another?
- Are its bishops in sacramental communion with bishops of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada, both of which have colleges of bishops that include bishops who ordain women and, with fatal effect on sacramental communion, women bishops?
- Have there already been sufficient liturgical events, including concelebrating of the Eucharist, participation in ordinations and consecrations, and reception of the sacraments, between Network bishops, FIFNA bishops and bishops who ordain women (and give strong public support for the ordination of women), to indicate that the Communion Statement has been set aside?
- Has adequate provision for the Episcopal oversight of Forward in Faith parishes by bishops who do not ordain women been assured by the Council of the Network?
- What steps have been taken by bishops of FIFNA to ensure that the parishes of FIFNA being taken into the Network can observe the Communion Statement of FIFNA?
- Can the bishops of FIFNA give an unequivocal assurance that they observe the Communion Statement themselves?
- What are the implications of the actions of FIFNA for the thus-far remarkably successful campaign by FIF England to win a form of Episcopal oversight in conjunction with the appointment of women as bishops in the Church of England that assures a jurisdictionally and sacramentally distinct future for those in England who cannot accept the ordination of women?
If, in fact, the Network is acting as an ecclesial entity, the implications appear serious, and the presence within it of FIF, taking into account the Network policy of moral indifference to the ordination of women (in marked contrast to the recently expressed understanding of the Archbishop of Canterbury in support of FIFUK), then it would seem that both the TAC and other parts of FIF are being compromised by the actions of FIFNA.
If, on the other hand, in spite of its published declarations, the Network is simply an association with (for opponents of women's ordination) some unfortunate attitudes, it may well be possible for people of good will to cooperate in the undoubted good works that it does, without compromise to conscience or hurt to their friends.
The decision on whether the Concordat between the Traditional Anglican Communion and Forward in Faith North America should remain in force as circumstances change (as indeed those in Australia and England, in equally changing but very different circumstances), is one for the TAC College of Bishops and the respective Councils of Forward in Faith to decide, acting under the always powerful bonds of Christian love. It is because of these bonds, which I have held dear and treasured over many years, and in which I know that I have been supported by my brother bishops, that I release this document in draft form so that both the TAC and FIF leaders can thoughtfully and prayerfully respond.
I assure you that I offer the prayers and discipline of the Lenten Season for you, as I seek your advice on this grave matter, involving our future and the future of our tradition.
†John Hepworth
Primate
Traditional Anglican Communion
