Unity

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Created on Monday, 01 November 2010 00:00

Written by Steven Chandler

Perhaps, like me, during the Labour Party conference you saw David Miliband speaking to Harriet Harman during his brother Ed leader's speech. He asks her why she is clapping Ed's negative comments about the Iraq war, when she had voted for it several years before. She replied: "to support the Leader."

This incident made me reflect on the Pope's visit to Britain, his views on Anglicans and the prospect for unity between our churches. This is now on the agenda again, after the goodwill generated by the Pope's visit in September. It is difficult to forget the sight of the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury in Westminster Abbey, praying together, embracing each other and giving a joint blessing. It gives me great encouragement that we really are moving closer together, as parts of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, as the Creed puts it so concisely.

But am I overcome with enthusiasm and overlooking the difficulties? In the last few weeks we have heard that the bishop of Fulham and a congregation in Folkestone are moving to the Roman church. Some may ask if unity is even a desirable end in itself? Certainly in the past, many would have been horrified by the idea and some people a re now. Some of you may know about the boards showing endowments to the parish, that we have up in the tower ringing chamber at St Mary's, one of which is for an endowment on condition that the vicar preaches a series of sermons every year on set subjects. Two of these are "the excellency of the Church of England" and the "errors of the Church of Rome." So that leaves little doubt about what they thought about the Pope in the 18th century! That of course was still the time when no one who would not take the sacrament according to the Church of England rights could be eligible for public office. It was not until 1829 that Roman Catholics were allowed to sit in Parliament, and only after taking an oath "not to subvert the present church establishment as settled by law," that being the Church of England of course.

Deep antipathy to the Church of Rome continued for much longer. When John Henry Newman, (now the Blessed, since the Pope beatified him on his visit to Birmingham) who was a prominent Anglican priest, converted to Rome in 1845 it caused a scandal. He lost most of his friends and academic colleagues and effectively had to start a new life. The composer Elgar, who set Newman's "Dream of Gerontius" to music, attributed the length of time it took him to gain any recognition here in England to the fact that he was a Roman Catholic, as well as the son of a tradesman. When the Organist at Worcester Cathedral wished to perform Elgar's oratorio at the 1902 Worcester Festival in the Cathedral, the clergy at first objected and finally made it a condition that the text be purged of any references contrary to Church of England doctrine. So words like "purgatory" had to be omitted.

I could say a lot more, but I hope I have said enough to explain why, after centuries of mutual loathing, it was never going to be easy to bring the Roman and Anglican churches together. So we should not be too impatient and perhaps not expect too much too soon on church unity.

However, much has happened over the past 40 years, since Archbishop Michael Ramsey and Pope Paul VI set up the Anglican-Roman CatholiC International Commission in 1966. There has been real progress on a common understanding of many doctrines, such as the Eucharist and the significance of the Virgin Mary. Now we have Pope Benedict's highly successful visit to the UK and the clear evidence of a warm relationship between him and Archbishop Rowan. Are we right to be optimistic for the future and is unity a desirable goal?

Surely it is. As St. Paul says to Timothy: "The Lord lent me strength, so that I might be his instrument in making the full proclamation of the gospel, for the whole pagan world to hear." We are stronger when we are united in the proclamation of the gospel. I think the diversity of Christian churches, while it has some strength for us as individual believers, is a big turn off to agnostics and atheists. How can we expect them to believe when we cannot agree ourselves what we believe?

Should we be optimistic? Those who are pessimistic will point out the big areas of remaining disagreement, particularly over the nature of the priesthood. There is no doubt that the ordination of a gay bishop in the US and of women clergy in England has been a setback to unity. And over all this time the Pope has never retracted the papal bull (a formal sealed document issued by Popes) of 1867, which declared Anglican orders, that is our bishops, priests and deacons, to be "absolutely null and utterly void." Not much argument with that and many people would say there can be no hope of unity until that statement is withdrawn. No doubt Catholic pessimists would say the same about women priests and bishops: no hope of unity until their ordination is discontinued.

But, I wonder. I wonder if the situation is more complex than we imagine. I wonder if the ordination of women, and gays come to that, really is non-negotiable for the Catholics? I wonder if it really matters to anyone in the C of E that a Pope declared our priestly orders to be worthless over 100 years ago? So I wonder if there may just be quicker progress than seems likely if one surveys the obstacles.
This has often been the way in resolving wars. Think of Northern Ireland. It was necessary to turn a blind eye to the atrocities and start to negotiate with the men of violence. If we had said we would not talk until they declared a ceasefire we might still be fighting now, with many hundreds more deaths having taken place. So, perhaps Harriet Harman was right to clap Ed Milibands' speech, when he was criticising something she had supported before. There comes a time when you have to move on from past disputes and not press for final resolution of all the old differences, however important they once seemed.

I think that this is a profoundly Christian approach to the challenge of church unity. We need to reach out to others in a spirit of forgiveness and acceptance, regardless of how fundamental the issues that divide us seem, or once seemed to be. Healing comes from faith that we will be whole and acting as if we were whole, not stressing how damaged we are and waiting for a miracle to happen.
That miracle may happen; the Pope may say it was all a ghastly mistake made by his predecessors. But don't hold your breath! No, rather we need to move ahead, on a personal level, as if unity with the Roman Catholics, and indeed other denominations, was indeed a reality. That is the way unity will happen, from the bottom and not from the top.

So let us pray for an ever deepening understanding and unity with all of our Christian brothers and sisters, in the Roman church and elsewhere.

Steven Chandler