By Phillip C. Cato
Much of the discussion, some of it quite impassioned, about the prospects of a new Province of the Anglican Communion being established in North America misses the mark.
In the Boy Scouts you are taught, when attempting to see an object in the dark, to look to the side of the area where you believe the object to be and the object will become more visible. There is, I believe, a wider applicability here.
Blogs, newspaper, and periodical articles have focused attention on the legality of parishes, dioceses, clergy, and bishops breaking away from the Episcopal Church, or on their announcing that they are putting themselves under another bishop’s or province’s jurisdiction. Not much is made of laity doing this because the laity has always been able to move around with impunity.
Objections have frequently been raised that the clergy who are departing are in violation of canon law and the promises that they made at their ordination. Parishes and dioceses are said to be in violation of their legal ties to the larger entities to which they belong, and which, in many cases, established them.
A lot of the discourse revolves around the issue of who owns the church property, and, for the moment, the property goes with the majority in this dispute. Dioceses are aggrieved, and have filed lawsuits, very expensive lawsuits, to retain what they claim to be their property.
All the talk about separation and schism creates anxiety among clergy and the laity and some bishops feel obligated to find ways to reassure them, claiming that the likelihood of these breakaways receiving permission to establish their own province is very unlikely. The bishops and other commentators even count potential votes among provincial leaders, betraying their own anxiety in this matter.
Much of this fretting is, in my view, the consequence of excessive concentration on the details of this de facto schism and its potential spread. The inability to see the real issue results from looking straight at it in the dark.
Look to the side. When you do, it will become apparent that there is no need to stampede or die of fright.
Long ago, I learned that in a strident controversy, it is instructive to grant the adversary their point in its entirety, and then step back and look at it as calmly as possible. Those who take strong and unbending positions are, more often than not, not all that sure of their claims. Else, why all the energy being put into the defense? The next step is to ask the question, “If they get their way entirely, what would the world (or my world) look like?” If necessary, the next question is, “Can I live in this world?” [There are more steps but they are irrelevant in this case, as will become clear.]
In this instance, I have concluded that the last question is not necessary. We will not have to live in that world, not because someone, like the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Anglican Consultative Council, will not allow it to happen. We will not have to live in it because the proposed province is completely untenable.
A philosopher might say that it will collapse because of its internal contradictions; the truth is more mundane and banal.
In this province, as proposed, we find strident Evangelicals, Charismatics, Anglo-Catholics, those who allow for the ordination of women to the priesthood and those who regard this as a metaphysical and theological and Biblical impossibility, those who were ordained and consecrated in the canonical ways of national churches in the Anglican Communion and those who have received express consecration in total disregard of any canons, those who are conflicted over the theological issue of Baptismal regeneration, those who have flirted with Rome and those who are of a radical Protestant bent, and a notorious collection of massive egos, unlikely to concede much in the way of theological, ecclesiastical, or Biblical views. All have shown complete disregard for their ordination vows and canonical obligations, and lay claim to property they do not own.
In your most generous imagination, can you conceive of such a coalition surviving? I cannot.
Looking to the side, and seeing the object in the dark, I feel quite reassured.
The Rev. Phillip C. Cato is a retired priest of the Diocese of Washington. His current work is in bioethics, for the National Institutes of Health, and professional ethics.