A Statement from the Right Reverend George Langberg – Anglican Church in America.
TAC union with Holy See
From Bishop George Langberg
The Primate’s Statement (Messenger Journal 16 Oct 2007) and the actions it describes have generated much recent discussion. While most of the reaction has been positive, some have asked, "Why don't the members of the TAC just all become Roman Catholics?" Others have expressed the viewpoint, in one way or another, that there are essential differences between Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism, implying that the TAC's action demonstrates either that its people were not "real Anglicans" in the first place, or that its bishops have somehow betrayed their Anglican heritage by reaching out to the Holy See.
A recap of some events of the last 50 years seems to be in order. In the first place, Anglican-Roman unity is not a new scheme cooked up by the TAC. Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher visited Pope John XXIII in Rome in 1960, and among the topics discussed was unity between Anglicans and the Roman Catholic Church. A short time after that meeting, Pope John wrote: "A new hope arises that those who rejoice in the name of Christians, but are nevertheless separated from this apostolic see, may be able to make their way into the one Church of Christ ... to seek and to follow that unity which Jesus Christ implored from his Heavenly Father with such fervent prayers."
In 1966, Archbishop Fisher's successor Michael Ramsey had an official visit with Pope Paul VI. At the Basilica of St Paul's Outside the Walls, after both had signed a Joint Declaration intended to begin a dialogue leading to full communion between the Anglican Communion and the See of Rome, Pope Paul removed his ring and placed it on Canterbury's finger as a symbol of the unity they both sought, the Pope using the phrases "our dear sister church" and "united but not absorbed."
Two years later, the 1968 Lambeth Conference endorsed the Archbishop's approach to the Holy See and the proposed work of the newly formed Anglican - Roman Catholic International Commission. Influenced by the Vatican II doctrine of episcopal collegiality, the Lambeth Conference further proposed a re-examination of the question of papal authority by all concerned with the unity of the Body of Christ.
In 1970, in his homily at the Canonization of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, Pope Paul said of the Anglican-Roman unity he anticipated, "There will be no seeking to lessen the prestige and usage proper to the Anglican Church."
All of these events took place more than 35 years ago. Had the Anglican Communion not subsequently run off the rails, it is entirely plausible that the unity sought now by the TAC would have been established between Canterbury and Rome a generation ago. Progress toward that unity came to a halt, not because the Anglicans decided it was wrong, but because their journey into apostasy, begun in the early 1970's, destroyed all possibility of coming together.
The foregoing raises an interesting question for the TAC's current critics. Where would they be now if the Anglican Communion had not come unraveled, and the vision shared by both sides in the 1960's had come to fruition? Would they have cried "foul" and broken with Canterbury, claiming that "real Anglicans" must ever be separate from Rome? One can only wonder.
+ George Langberg
Ordinary, Diocese of the Northeast
Anglican Church in America
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Homily preached by The Right Reverend Peter Wilkinson OSG DD at 30th Anniversary of the Cathedral parish of Saint John the Evangelist, Victoria BC., Canada October 18 2007.
THERE are some comments that you remember forever. On Wednesday, the 3rd of October, the Feast of Ste Therese of Lisieux, Bishop George Langberg, my counterpart in the Anglican Church in America said to me after Mass, “Well, I wasn’t at St Louis, but I was at St Agatha’s.” Having been at both I knew what he meant and shared his sentiment.
So let me unpack that comment for you.
1. ‘St Louis’ means the Congress of Concerned Churchmen that took place on Holy Cross Day, Sept 14th 1977, in St Louis Missouri. On that day the Affirmation of St Louis was read out to universal applause and delight. That Affirmation is now the heart of the Victoria Concordat that brought the Traditional Anglican Communion [TAC] into being, and is deeply imbedded in the Constitution of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada. [The pamphlet the Dean compiled called “We Believe” contains the doctrinal and moral heart of the Affirmation and may be found in the Church Porch].
The Congress of Concerned Churchman was the culmination of several years of work by various renewal organizations in the USA and Canada to find a way of continuing to be Anglicans outside the Anglican Church of Canada [ACC] and the Episcopal Church in the USA [TEC]. Not to put to fine a point upon it – we had been betrayed by their lawless Synods in matters of doctrine and morals. The chief error was the purported ordination of women to the priesthood, thus placing in jeopardy the validity of the sacraments the church intended to administer. The Holy Catholic Church has never ordained women as deacon, priest or bishop, and for a sacrament to be valid –- in order to effect what it signifies -- the priest must at least intend to do what the Church does. Those two Churches no longer intended to do that. And anyway – what authority did they have to make such a change to the Apostolic Ministry that was not theirs, but a gift of God? None!
Until the plan to hold the St Louis Congress was made public many of us had been trying to find another Church home. When the meeting was announced, we put all such plans on hold and went to the Congress as a last hope. It was a wonderful experience and set in train the Continuing Church movement. I aligned myself with the one Bishop-Elect, since we had no consecrated Bishops at that time. I resigned from the ACC and began this parish thirty years ago on the first Sunday in October. Present at Mass were Denys and Janet Byrne, Nell Bradshaw, my mother and me. We were very soon joined by Christine and Bobbie Crawley, and Carl Reid then working as a municipal engineer and now our Auxiliary Bishop in Ontario and Quebec. On Advent Sunday we obtained the use of Grace Lutheran Church on Fort Street and were there for ten years until we bought this building. Fr Crawley [later Bishop Crawley] joined us in a couple of years but he was a real co-operator and friend in getting us going.
Despite the many problems we faced as Continuers (and there are stories I could tell you of friends we lost, lies told about us, the heart-aches, the just plain nutty characters who plagued us), we have survived, but only just. It was probably the worst time in the 20th century to make such a move, and yet it was at just such a time that the ACC and TEC could get away with doing what they did – and what their abandonment of Catholic Faith and Morals has now spread round the globe and is presently ripping the Anglican Communion apart. And it will continue because no one is in charge – not the Archbishop of Canterbury, and not the Bishops of the Anglican Communion, because the Lambeth Conference of Bishops has no authority to enforce Catholic Faith and Morals, and it suspect it wouldn’t even if it could.
Our first Traditional Anglican Communion Primate, Archbishop Louis Falk, understood this, and was instrumental in giving us in the Victoria Concordat a worldwide College of Bishops with a Primate, which has the Magisterium – the Teaching Authority that Bishops have – so that we can keep track of one another, discipline those who may need it, and eject those who will not comply. The same applies to the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada – our Constitution states that your House of Bishops (+Botterill, +Crawley, +Mercer, +Reid, and I) has the teaching authority. We, in turn, are responsible to our brother Bishops and the Primate in the whole TAC College of Bishops for what we teach and how we behave.
2. Now while all this was going on something else was happening. The desire for Christian unity was beginning to stir in earnest. The Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church had given it a big boost – it even said nice things about Anglicans. After about 450 years of attempts of varying seriousness, Anglicans and Roman Catholics really began talking to one another after the joint decision by Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey, expressed in a Common Declaration during their meeting in Rome at the Basilica of St Paul’s Outside the Walls in March 1966 -- 41 years ago. Within a year the Commission they established had produced a report that proclaimed "penitence for the past, thankfulness for the graces of the present, urgency and resolve for a future in which our common aim would be the restoration of full organic unity."
Eleven years later, in April 1977, just a few months before the Congress of St. Louis, Archbishop Ramsey's successor in the See of Canterbury, Donald Coggan, and Pope Paul VI, made a further Common Declaration declaring their desire for "the restoration of complete communion in faith and sacramental life."
Later in September of the same year, The Affirmation of St Louis, so deeply embedded in our ACCC Constitution and the Victoria Concordat, also declared "our intention to seek and achieve full sacramental communion and visible unity with other Christians who 'worship the Trinity in Unity, and Unity in Trinity,' and who hold the Catholic and Apostolic Faith in accordance with the foregoing principles." This should not be news to anyone in the ACCC!
The Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission [ARCIC] produced many reports but nothing really substantial, since as one member said the whole process was really came to be about Roman Catholics trying to help Catholic Anglicans and Evangelical Anglicans to understand one another! Be that as it may, while those talks were taking place, Anglicans began to ‘ordain’ women despite the protests of Pope Paul VI and then Pope John Paul II (1978 onwards) that such a move was hardly in the spirit of the discussions they were having, and could have disastrous effects on their quest for unity. Lutherans in their dialogue with Rome took the same course – talking a good line but doing exactly what they pleased. It was obvious that there was no real desire to advance unity, and many Anglicans and Lutherans began to trickle away and go to Orthodoxy or to Rome. Since then there has been a wave of refugees to Rome – many Lutheran theologians and bishops, and three Episcopal Church Bishops this year alone.
In the early 1990’s some of our men were invited by the Secretariat for Christian Unity in Rome to pay a visit and to tell them who we are and what we hope for. They gave us good advice, which we tried to follow. Rome also knew that the Affirmation declared "our intention to seek and achieve full sacramental communion and visible unity with other Christians… who hold the Catholic and Apostolic Faith ...."
Since then, every meeting of the College of Bishops of the TAC (and we have managed to meet every two years) has endorsed the principle of our seeking to be "an Anglican Church in communion with the Holy See". Every National Synod has passed some form of resolution accepting the concept of "an Anglican Church in communion with the Holy See", at least in principle.
Why are we doing this?
The TAC has simply determined to continue the process begun by Archbishop Ramsey and Pope Paul VI, since the impediment of uncatholic Faith and Morals does not exist within our Communion. And there is another reason. Having had our communion with the Anglican Communion shattered, we cannot remain "a church on the loose". To hold the Catholic faith requires that faith be exercised in communion. Bishops cannot exist cut off from the mainstream of the Church's life; they must be in communion with other Bishops. Unity is not an option. Jesus commanded it.
Enter St Agatha’s Church in Portsmouth, England, on the 3rd of October 2007. The TAC Bishops have gathered there from all over the world, they sing the Veni Creator Spiritus, and read the document that has been prepared. The Primate invites each of us including the Vicars-General of areas that don’t have Bishops to speak to the Resolution. We do; there is no disagreement; we vote – and the Bishops and Vicars-General unanimously agree on the text of a Letter to the See of Rome seeking full, corporate, and sacramental union. We sing Newman’s hymn “Firmly I believe and truly” followed by the Doxology (during which to my great surprise we spontaneously hold hands!) and the sun breaks through the windows of the church. It was all too much, and some tears are shed. Then we vest for Mass (a Votive for Christian Unity), during which we all solemnly sign the Letter on the altar, and entrust it to the Primate and two Bishops chosen by the College to present it to the Holy See – those fortunate two were Bishop Mercer and me.
On Tuesday the 9th of October the Primate, Bishop Mercer CR, and I attended a meeting in the Vatican at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Pope Benedict’s old office) to deliver our Letter by hand. We were warmly greeted, and when Pope Benedict has read the Letter something may begin to happen. At the end of the meeting I was privileged to lead us all in saying the Angelus as the bells of St Peter’s rang.
The main point I want to emphasize is that our October 2007 resolution is really no different from the Declaration of Archbishop Ramsey and Pope Paul VI in 1966 that our common aim would be the restoration of full organic unity." Nor is it different from the Common Declaration of 1977 of Ramsey’s successor Archbishop Coggan and Pope Paul VI declaring their desire for "the restoration of complete communion in faith and sacramental life." That has always been our goal.
I get asked two questions:
1. “What happens now?” We talk, but when, where and how discussions begin is not up to us. I suspect it will not be a quick process.
2, The other question everyone wants to know is, “Will we be absorbed by Rome?” In 1925, the RC monk Dom Lambert Beauduin coined the phrase ‘united but not absorbed’. Roman Catholics themselves (including a significant number of former Anglican clergy and laity) have urged us to value our Anglican heritage, which of course we do! One author has written movingly that the TAC seeks "to achieve communion (with the Holy See) while maintaining those revered traditions of spirituality, liturgy, discipline and theology that constitute the centuries old heritage of Anglican communities throughout the world".
We seek to be "Anglican Catholics" in full communion with the See of Peter. That is, to value our Anglican heritage while being visibly united to the "whole Church Catholic" of which our Formularies have always spoken. There are over 20 Churches in full communion with the See of Peter, some of them smaller than the TAC. The Latin Rite (Roman Catholic Church) is only one of them, but it is the largest.
I think something will come of this – I think, and Rome too believes, that we are only the vanguard of a larger group of Canterbury Anglicans presently fleeing their former home as it goes up in flames.
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The Church of Ireland (Traditional Rite) – A Clarification 9th November 2007
THERE has been a remarkable surge of publicity concerning the statement released by the Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion concerning the letter delivered to the Holy See seeking “full corporate sacramental union”. The Church of Ireland (Traditional Rite) wishes to make clear that its Vicar-General was unable to attend the plenary meeting of the TAC bishops, and so did not have the opportunity to sign the letter. It also wishes to make clear that, unlike most of the national synods of the Traditional Anglican Communion, it has not yet voted to endorse the actions of the bishops in relation to unity with the Holy See.
It is correct in reporting that all the Bishops and Vicars General of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) attending their recent College of Bishops meeting in Portsmouth England, delivered a letter to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. In it, they seek “a communal and ecclesial way of being Anglican Catholics in communion with the Holy See”.
The Church of Ireland (Traditional Rite) is sympathetic to a genuine initiative of this kind to resolve the issues that are the cause of division within the body of the Holy Catholic Church.
The Church of Ireland (Traditional Rite) also notes that the decision to write was a collegial act of the bishops and vicars- general of the Traditional Anglican Communion. In the past five years, most of the synods of these bishops and vicars-general have confirmed the proposal. The Church of Ireland (Traditional Rite) is among the few that have not thus far had this opportunity. We also note that the letter to the Holy See records a process that began in the time of Pope John XIII and anticipates the continuation of that process, with the full involvement of local TAC synods.
Where there is commonality of belief, and where the Roman Catholic Church is currently confronting evils perpetrated by changes in moral values to conform with what may be called the religion of ‘Western Enlightened Humanism,’ the Church of Ireland (Traditional Rite) will make common cause with the Church of Rome.
The Church of Ireland (Traditional Rite) wishes to place on record that its unwillingness to sign the documents in question has been met with great understanding and respect by the College of Bishops of the TAC for which it is grateful, and with whom we continue to enjoy cordial relations.
