‘Digital Fasts’ and Disability

For the last couple of years, there has been an important campaign asking people to think before they give up social media for Lent. Put forward particularly by the Disability and Jesus group, this campaign rightly reminds people that there are many disabled people for whom social media provides a much needed connection with the Church, and that to give up social media is to leave these people with a diminished connection to the Church.

While I think that this perspective is important, and that it is always right to consider the impact of our Lenten disciplines on others, it is also important that this does not becomes an unquestioned orthodoxy: “If you give up social media for Lent, you are giving up on/not paying enough attention to disabled people.”

I gave up social media last year because it was damaging my mental and spiritual health. Social media, as a created thing, is essentially neutral, and can be either good and bad. For me, and I’m sure for others, the constant setting up of unhelpful binaries and the desire to score points by demonstrating that you are more woke/trad than someone else is exhausting. This is because of my mental illness – but it is no less real for that.

Those of us who have mental illnesses or other conditions which make social media a difficult place to be, despite their positive features, not only can but should spend less time in these spaces. Similarly, people for whom the constant cut and thrust of digital argument on Christian Twitter is an occasion for sin. I also count myself in this group – pride and anger are both easily roused by spaces which are set up around debate, and being aware of that makes it important to limit engagement.Of course, the same factors apply in other areas and to other created things and spaces. And it is not just OK but good to avoid or limit access to spaces which exacerbate illness or provide an occasion for sin.

This isn’t just about me – I’ve spoken to others who have felt strongly that giving up social media is something that they should do for the good of their relationship with God, who have felt pressured to go against their own consciences for fear of being thought a ‘bad person’. This kind of thing is unhelpful, as it turns fasting or not fasting into a work of public performance, rather than a vehicle for growth in the love of God.

So if your social media fast stems from an over-inflated sense of your own importance, or from a lack of anything better to do, then think again, and consider that your presence in online spaces is actually important for those disabled people who rely on that input.

If you are constantly involved in Twitter arguments, think that you could make Twitter a safer space for people with mental health issues by tempering your rhetoric.

And if you have discerned, either through personal prayer or discussion with a Spiritual Director, that fasting from social media would provide spiritual benefit, reduce your tendency towards sin, and improve your mental health and wellbeing, this is also OK.

Anglican-Methodist Proposals – Context Matters

I said that the previous post was ‘all I wanted to say’ about the Anglican-Methodist proposals. However, the debate has gone on, and this has made some things clearer about changing contexts.

Many people, most recently a letter in todays Church Times, have asked why Catholic Anglicans seem opposed to the proposal for a ‘temporary anomaly’ when Michael Ramsay, himself clearly a Catholic Anglican, was in favour of a very similar scheme.

When Ramsay was writing, there was a strong sense that the Church of England was an episcopal church, and that this was part of its heritage which was important to maintain. Catholic faith and practice were strong and encouraged. In this context, it was perhaps easier to put aside theological concerns in favour of unity – there did not seem to be any prospect that the precedent could or would be used to undermine what was a strongly held part of Anglican identity.

The widespread critique of Catholic Anglican concerns this time suggests that the context is very different. Accusations of a lack of generosity (which predominated when I was writing last week) have been replaced by much nastier accusations of rigid, exclusive, magical and unAnglican thinking – not in relation to this proposal, but in relation to any sense of apostolic succession being related to episcopacy, and in particular to the question of sacramental assurance.

Richard Peers, although offering a generous and attractive way of reading the proposals within a Catholic framework, also dismissed concerns out of hand, accusing those holding them of believing in ‘magical sacramentality.’ Ian Paul has gone much further, essentially suggesting that there is no place for a Catholic understanding of orders and episcopacy within the Church of England.

Consider this alongside the repeated (if minority) calls in Synod for lay presidency; the way in which discomfort with the outworking of the Five Guiding Principles in the Sheffield affair has led to sweeping criticisms of Catholic theology; and the ongoing sense that many in the Church of England wish that Catholics of any stripe would just ‘go to Rome’ and let them get on with reforming the Church. In a setting where not only Catholic understandings but also episcopacy itself seem less secure propositions, it is less surprising that it has been harder to generate sympathy for proposals which appear to suggest that episcopal ordination is a ‘nice addition’ rather than part of the fullness given by Christ to his Church.

Marcus Walker has offered a full and detailed account of why Catholic Anglicans can see grounds for quieting their consciences, which I find persuasive in suggesting that Methodist orders can be understood as irregular but potentially valid from the Catholic point of view. My concern at the moment remains that this is not the understanding which the rest of the Church of England, or our Methodist brothers and sisters, will have of what is being done. For the past 50-odd years, it has been the case that Anglicans have been able to more-or-less amicably disagree over precisely how to understand what Anglicanism is. The nature of this discussion, and the extent to which it has largely ignored Methodist voices (with the exception of using them as rhetorical devices), suggests that there is now no guarantee that this is the case – loud voices are insisting that one particular understanding (which has been and remains widespread) is beyond the pale.

In this context, it is perhaps unsurprising that Catholic Anglicans are proving harder to convince than they may have been in the past. What is needed to ensure that we can move ecumenical discussion and agreements forward is a more widespread reassurance that Catholic Anglicans (whether traditionalist or not) are still recognised to be Anglicans trying to be faithful to a strand of distinctively Anglican heritage, not simply bigots, killjoys, or Roman Catholics in disguise.

If we cannot make this work in our own church, why would we think that we have the standing to enter any agreement with any other?

What is ‘Generosity’?

Discussions of the Anglican-Methodist document ‘Mission and Ministry in Covenant’ have revolved around the question of ‘generosity.’ In particular, it is seen to be ‘ungenerous’ to feel uncomfortable with the proposed ‘temporary anomaly’ of allowing Methodist presbyters to minister sacramentally in the Church of England without receiving episcopal ordination.

So far, responses to the Anglican Catholic Future statement on the document have largely been to suggest that it’s insulting to Methodists, represents a theology of ‘dry bones,’ and, crucially, is ‘ungenerous.’ It is apparently important that Anglicans make ‘sacrifices’ – and the sacrifice it is proposed that we will make is that of sacramental assurance.

The interesting thing here is that ‘generosity’ is not here an active principle, but a rhetorical device. There is no recognition that generosity is not just from undifferentiated Anglicans to undifferentiated Methodists, but should also be extended across the disagreements within our Churches.

It is not generous to ask others to make sacrifices which are not sacrifices for you. It is not generous to attribute genuine theological concern to malice or spiritual weakness. It is not generous to suggest that people who feel concerned about sacramental assurance should ‘go to Rome.’

It may be the case that those of us who are concerned about sacramental assurance are weak, and those who are making the proposals have knowledge. Perhaps our theology really is stunted, sad, ungodly.

However, we do hold it, and to receive an Anglican eucharist from a Methodist minister who is not episcopally ordained would, for us, be to go against conscience, to sin. St Paul is clear that those who have knowledge should be careful that they do not use that knowledge to harm those who lack it.

So, my plea is that those who ask generosity of us show the same generosity towards us. We are not opposed to unity. We are not in an enclave. We are not denying the creative power of God. We are attempting, as you are, to prayerfully move towards the unity for which Christ prayed. What that looks like looks different for us, but we do not desire it any less. Please don’t ask us to make a sacrifice which is not a sacrifice for you.

Of course, I don’t believe that my understanding is weak. Rather, I think that by sacrificing sacramental assurance we are sacrificing a crucial gift given us by Christ. Sacramental assurance is how we prevent worship being about us. We don’t have to feel the presence of God, we don’t have to be ‘in the mood,’ we don’t have to feel worthy or holy. The sacraments were instituted so that we might have sure tokens of God’s generosity towards us. It is the assurance we have in the sacraments which allows us to have assurance of Christ’s presence even when we don’t feel it subjectively.

Sacrificing this sure source and token of generosity will not lead us into true unity, but accelerate our fragmentation. Using ‘generosity’ as a rhetorical weapon will not make us more generous. The only thing which can make us more generous is the infused grace of the sacraments, the presence of Christ with us, our heartfelt prayers that Christ will show us where we are already one and lead us into a more visible unity.

Unity will not be the result of word-games and compromise, but of divine action. This unity will not feel like compromise or sacrifice, it will not be used in service of internal politics. Rather, it will be a strange, unexpected joy. I pray that we will look for the signs of already-existing unity, pray fervently for deeper unity, and be drawn deeper into all truth.

Edit: I want to be clear that nothing here should be taken as downplaying what it would cost to Methodist self-understanding to accept episcopacy in whatever form. The debate parsed here is almost entirely an inter-Anglican one, and this is part of the problem. I do not disagree with the aim of Anglican-Methodist unity, or with the necessary steps towards that. I do recognise the cost to Methodists of the proposal. My concern is purely with the mode of argumentation employed by Anglicans against those of us for whom these proposals would be particularly difficult, and the implications this mode of argumentation has for the tenor of ecumenical dialogue more broadly. If movement towards unity is being used to attack rather than seek to understand other members of our own denominations, perhaps there is more work to do than we might think.

Hat Tricks

 

Are you sure this is right? – ed.

My Finals results may come out today. Or maybe tomorrow. So I’m returning to a topic I have already suggested on Twitter isn’t really worth talking about: Hats.

More particularly, mitres. Ian Paul has suggested recently that Bishops should ‘throw away’ their mitres, on the basis that they are unflattering, un-Anglican, recent, derived from the Old Covenant, symbolic of an ‘un-Anglican’ (again) suggestion that the Bishop dispenses the Holy Spirit at Ordination, and responsible in some hard-to-pin-down way for the ‘culture of deference’ identified in the Gibb report.

It is true that mitres aren’t worth talking about, if we are thinking in the context of the Church as a whole. Improving Safeguarding, dealing with clergy well-being, addressing the problems raised by the ordination of unauthorised bishops, getting stuck in to finding some sort of resolution to the conflict over how to welcome LGBT people, and above all, actually saving souls, are all far more significant than whether bishops wear hats.

However, the amount of traction the Rev. Dr. Paul’s blog post has got, in national newspaper and television news, suggests that it might be important after all.

Partly, we are in some kind of ecclesiastical ‘silly season’ – a non-story about valid matter for the eucharist in the Roman Catholic church has sparked outrage, even though it relates to the technicalities of how ‘gluten free’ or ‘low gluten’ bread is produced, and the Church of England has similar guidelines.

Partly, however, mitres remain almost synonymous with the Church. Bishops in chess are recognisable by their mitres, and visual language is an important way in which meaning is communicated. Ian Paul does recognise this – and suggests that what is being communicated is wrong, for the reasons detailed above.

The problem is, that his argument is just not as strong as it might appear at first glance.

Silliness

The argument about what looks ‘silly’ is entirely in the eye of the beholder, and certainly doesn’t lead to the conclusion that they should be abolished. Indeed, if mitres are ‘singularly unflattering,’ then it is hard to see how they can also contribute to a problematic ‘culture of deference’ – one does not show undue deference to one who ‘looks silly’!

More importantly, the concept of ‘looking silly’ ties into the more general ‘antitheatricality’ implicit in much of the arguments against vestments per se – the idea that if something is ‘theatrical’ it is somehow less ‘true’ or ‘honest,’ and a privileging of the text over the embodiment of that text. Simon Park’s post on the same topic argues that ‘in a world that loves a show, loves a bit of theatre, [the mitre] can play into that madness.’

The identification of ‘a show’ or ‘theatre’ with an (implicitly corrupt) ‘world,’ and the idea that it tends towards ‘madness’ is a very limited way in which to engage with the world of symbol and embodiment we encounter in liturgy.

Of course, any situation in which an individual stands in front of a group of individuals and commands their attention is ripe for abuse – this goes for a worship leader in a Christian guitar band just as much as for the bishop at a pontifical High Mass.

I would argue that the symbolism of the Mass in fact works, in part, to mitigate this by constantly pointing away from the celebrant and towards the sacramental reality that celebrant ministers, but the more important point is that we need more fine-grained tools than simply ‘theatre’ and ‘madness’ to engage with these dynamics.

I will return to this later, but I believe that it would be a grave mistake to simply assume that the ‘culture of deference’ identified by Gibb is the result of those parts of the Church with which we are already uncomfortable. This is particularly true if we then use the rhetoric of abuse in our already-simmering conflicts, since such a marriage of important pastoral work to old divisions can only be to the detriment of the kind of systematic self-examination, confession and reparation so desperately needed.

Old Covenant

I am not qualified to comment on the relationship with the Old Covenant mentioned in the original post, but I would note that we are not Marcionites, and there is at least a typological relationship between the ministry provided by the Aaronic priesthood and that provided by ordained ministers of contemporary Churches. Even if this is simply as broad-brush as ‘Aaronic priesthood is a type of Christ (as in Hebrews), Christian ministers follow Christ’s pattern’ we cannot simply discount something because it has an Old Testament analogue.

Un-Anglican?

The meat of Ian Paul’s argument, however, is that mitres are ‘un-Anglican,’ and ‘recent.’ This presumably builds on his earlier suggestion that Anglicanism doesn’t have ‘priests,’ and the BCP was wrong to so name the second order of ministry ‘Priesthood’ – ‘Presbyterate’ would be his preferred term. The first argument for the ‘un-Anglican’ nature of mitres is that they were abandoned at the Reformation, because they imply that the Bishop is no longer part of the laity, a view which would be alien to St Augustine. It is also a view which is alien to any even with a ‘high view’ of ordination. Augustine’s account of episcopacy remains an important one, and isn’t ‘watered down’ by the wearing of a mitre (or, by extension, any distinctive presbyteral vestments, which also indicate a ‘difference,’ and which it is highly likely Augustine would have worn).

I’m not an expert on the history of vesture, but it is certainly contentious to claim that the Reformation marked a full and clean break with the mitre. They were no longer worn with regularity, but remained a part of episcopal arms, appear on statues of bishops, and were occasionally carried at episcopal funerals, as detailed in a 1907 report (esp. pp. 104-7) prepared by a subcommittee of the Convocation of Canterbury. The same report suggests that Laud and other Caroline figures may have continued to wear the mitre, as may Cranmer.

Particularly strange is the argument that mitres represent the idea that bishops are the dispensers of the Spirit, and that Anglicans reject this understanding:

The bishop who ordained me believed that mitres were vital, because their flame-shaped outline symbolised the bishop as the dispenser of the Holy Spirit at confirmations and ordinations, something the liturgy actually contradicts: at no point does the bishop pronounce ‘I ordain you’, since the language is all about what God (and not the bishop) is doing.

It is true that the ordination service does not say ‘I ordain you.’ However, the BCP ordinal does not contradict, but strongly affirms, the notion that one role of the bishop in communion with his or her priests is precisely to dispense the Spirit:

Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained, and be thou a faithful dispenser of the Word of God, and of his holy Sacraments.
– Ordination Prayer, Ordering of Priests, Book of Common Prayer

That bishops and priests together lay hands is here irrelevant – priests alone cannot ordain, it is the ministry ‘by the imposition of [the bishop’s] hands’ which dispenses the Spirit, and the Spirit who in turn enables the Priests to dispense Word and Sacrament.

The importance of Spirit and Grace being given at the imposition of hands is underlined by being twice repeated in the prayer for the consecration of Bishops, also in the BCP. This is not a major point in Ian Paul’s argument, but it is important, since it suggests that it is not the mitre which reflects a misunderstanding of Anglican Orders, but rather his reasons for wishing to ‘throw it away.’ Changes to vesture must not indicate a change in the Church’s doctrine – and removing the mitre for implying that the bishop dispenses the Spirit at ordination would directly contradict the BCP Ordinal.

Abuse

As indicated above, Ian Paul also directly links the wearing of mitres to the ‘culture of deference’ condemned in the Gibb report. This seems like something of a ‘magic bullet’ argument: if we can create a spurious but plausible link between anything we personally don’t like and abuse, we place our opponents in the position of having to demonstrate outright both that there is no link and that they really do care about abuse.

Appealing as such argument are, I think it does a disservice to survivors of abuse to allow our response to abuse to be tangled up in ongoing ecclesiological disputes. Ian Paul himself rightly protested when Evangelical theology was linked to abuse, arguing that

The last thing we should do is use such incidents as ways to ‘score points’; it is the victims and the quest for both healing and justice which must remain at the centre

I fully agree with this – Evangelical theology is not necessarily abusive, and nor is Catholic theology. Abusers are abusive, and will use whatever tools are present in their traditions, workplaces, social circles, families, and communities to continue to perpetuate abuse.

Theology is one of those tools – but when we begin to recruit the response to abuse in the service of our own theological agendas, we fail those who should really be front and centre – and risk missing the ways in which we are all culpable for the abuses which happen in our midst.

Mitres, then. I still hold that there are more important things to talk about, but to reject them on the grounds put forward recently is itself un-Anglican, reflects a narrow anti-theatricality which leaves us unable to properly analyse power dynamics, and risks steamrollering the vital question of how we respond to abuse over a fancy-dress re-enactment of the Reformation debate.

 

On Ordination, Photos, and Communication

It must be the start of the vacation, as I’m blogging again. It also must be a bit hot, as Church of England twitter is engaged in yet another arcane and inconsequential spat about…ordination photographs, and their decorum.

I want to say at the outset that I am less bothered about this than some other people. I don’t think that individuals should be prevented from looking happy in group photographs, or even looking a bit silly in individual photographs. It almost shouldn’t need to be said, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with looking ecstatically happy in your ordination photographs. After all, those newly ordained have been filled anew with the gifts of the Holy Spirit and given the necessary Graces for a new life and ministry in the Church. And we know what people fully of the Spirit look like – people who are drunk at 9 in the morning!

I also think that there is a tendency among too many in the Church of England, regardless of ecclesiology or political allegiance, to see other people seriously practicing faith and get snooty about how it differs from their own. It is boring to see complaints about ordination photographs every year, just as it is boring to see arguments about the Feast of the Assumption/Dormition/Death of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or to see the same people responding to posts about the Walsingham National Pilgrimage to complain about how absurd it looks or to telegraph their own principled boycott.

We live in a Church in which we disagree about how things should be done, and what is important, and we know what those disagreements are, and it would probably be a lot healthier if we didn’t indulge the temptation to pick at the scabs at every opportunity.

However, I think there is a difference between criticising individuals and groups for practices on which we disagree, and asking questions about the message being sent by the Church as a whole about things which are central to the Church’s life.

There is a tendency, across Dioceses and traditions, to downplay the solemnity of all aspects of the Church’s life. Witness, for example, the Installation of Stephen Croft as Bishop of Oxford – at which the newly installed Bishop sported ‘L-plates’ inside his cope:

Source: https://www.oxford.anglican.org/who-we-are/oxford/bishop-of-oxford/, Photos by KT Bruce [please contact me if this is not ‘fair use’]

Similarly, there are photos of newly confirmed Christians ‘dabbing’ with their bishop, and of course the inevitable Church Times cover photograph. None of these things are terrible on their own, but collectively they serve to give an impression that we are uncomfortable with the more serious side of what we are doing (or perhaps we don’t believe that there *is* a serious side).

Of course, there are plenty of well composed group photographs of Ordinations which go completely unremarked because they are just that – nice, well composed photographs (this one from Peterborough, and this one from Southwark are both good examples). And of course there is an extent to which those who wish to avoid this point will happily share around particularly unfortunate images as though they are the norm. This is akin to left-wing tweeters giving the most extreme pronouncements of right-wing columnists extra circulation through their outrage.

Nevertheless, I think it is important to recognise that the more ‘controversial’ photographs are part of a marketing process on the part of dioceses, and that the message being communicated in this marketing material is important. See, for example, the images used to illustrate this (actually very good and interesting) interview with two Durham ordinands.

The visual language used in these images, as in other images of ordinands ‘jumping for joy,’ or doing jazz hands, or whatever, is reminiscent of other media images of completing a course of study – graduations and A-level results, for example. I had a discussion on Twitter with someone who rightly pointed out that the ordination images are not identical to these other genres. The wearing of clerical vestments, for example, makes it clear that this is an ordination, and the lack of decorum rarely reaches the heights (or depths…) of tabloid A-level photos.

However, just because there are differences which mark ordination photos out as a distinct subgenre, doesn’t mean that they are not related to the main genre of ‘earned completion.’ What is communicated is that ordination is something earned, like A-level results or a degree, in which the participants should take pride.

On one level this is fair enough – as an ordinand myself I would never say that we shouldn’t be proud of what we achieve during training. The balance of academic, pastoral, liturgical, and spiritual formation means that ordination training is a very different proposition to just ‘doing a degree,’ and it is right to feel pride at successfully navigating it.

However, for people both within and outside the Church, their main access to both the meaning of Holy Order and the meaning of training comes through how ordinations are publicised. Until I knew people who were being ordained, I never attended an ordination service. As a result, it is important that ordinations are publicised in such a way that not only the notions of achievement and joy are communicated, but also self-abandonment, obedience, sacrifice, and the prior action of the life-giving Spirit.

This isn’t just some kind of Catholic accretion, but rather at the heart of the nature of Holy Order as expressed in the Ordinal – the ‘treasure entrusted to you is Christ’s own flock, bought by the shedding of His blood,’ and ‘you cannot bear the weight of this calling by your own strength.’ The profound seriousness of Ordination is something which must be front and centre of what the Church says about the nature of the Deaconate and Priesthood, or we end up with a kind of technocratic clericalism.

If Ordination appears to people within and outside the Church to be mainly about successfully completing training, this implies that the reason that Priests and Deacons are leaders in the Church is because they have been trained or have particular skills which enable them to do so. Such a model inherently excludes the laity, as it suggests that the only difference between a Priest and a lay person with the same skills is Ordination. This leads to some of the resentment among lay people, and the tension between lay and ordained identified in the recent report on lay ministry.

Such an understanding of Holy Order is not just problematic for political reasons, but also falsifies the nature of Ordained ministry. Priests and Deacons are ministers of Word and Sacrament given the grace of Holy Order through the outpouring of the Spirit to serve the whole People of God and to set them free to use their God-given skills in His service. Priests are not inherently better theologians or preachers or children’s workers or administrators than lay people – Priests simply possess the Grace and authority to minister those Sacraments which are the objective means by which the whole people of God grow together into the Body of Christ.

It is crucially important that this is understood, as it would perhaps give pause to our tendency to pick at the scabs of our disagreements, an approach which almost inevitably suggests that our desires for the Church are identical with the Church God is forming through the Spirit and Sacramental Graces. In order to ensure that the role of Holy Order is understood, the Church should communicate more about its understanding of Orders through the ways in which Ordinations are publicised.

I suppose this is simply a modest proposal that equal weight is given to images of self-abandonment (kneeling at the moment of Ordination, for example) as is given to celebratory photographs. Obviously, broader catechesis about the nature of Ordination is also needed, but images speak more loudly and say more than we might perhaps think, and taking this seriously is important. If we collectively recognise and commit to communicating both the joy and the radical seriousness of ordination, perhaps we can both avoid some of the less edifying social media clashes and recognise that what unites us – the Sacramental action of the Spirit in the Church – is deeper and more fundamental than those differences which we so often allow to define us.

Catholicity, Crisis, and Paradox

A compromise between two mutually incompatible positions, which was adopted by a committee without fully understanding what was meant by it, and which has caused serious division ever since…

…The Chalcedonian definition of the faith has been attacked in much modern theology as incomprehensible, or logically incoherent. It is suggested that to say that Jesus Christ is:

truly God and truly man…of one substance with the Father as touching the Godhead, the same of one substance with us touching the manhood…to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation…concurring into one Person and one subsistence (ὑποστασις)

is to assert either meaningless abstraction or logical contradiction.

And yet, in its messiness, in the fact that it only succeeds in communicating ‘as precisely as possible’ what can be said in human language about the nature of the incarnation ‘if you don’t read it too closely,’ (Robert Jenson) it has stood as ‘the best that we can do’ for 1500 years. Indeed, the quantity of scholarship and serious theological reflection it continues to generate, even from those who wish to reject it, suggests that it works in important ways to point beyond itself into the Mystery of Godhead.

Our faith is a faith of paradox. God is Three and God is One. Jesus is True God and True Man. At its best, the Church of England embodies precisely the nature of that paradox, in attempting to be all things to all people, in trying to encompass a true breadth of views, and in steadfastly refusing to splinter into a million pieces despite the tensions.

This is possible because it is a Catholic church, with threefold order and Apostolic succession, with the Eucharist at the heart, and the guarantee it gives of Christ’s presence with us. It is possible because it is a Reformed church, a church which recognises that too strong a central teaching authority threatens properly formed consciences.

The 5 guiding principles which allowed all Orders of the Church to be opened up to women are indeed a messy compromise – but they are a messy compromise which in fact communicates something important about the nature of the Church. The Church can embody paradox. The Church must embody paradox because the Church embodies Christ.

The genius of the Church of England lies in its recognising that the best way to hold to the faith passed onto us by the Apostles is not to hold it too closely, but rather to live it.

However, the opposition to Philip North’s appointment to the Diocese of Sheffield, and in particular the manner in which it was conducted, threatens all of this. It is crucially important that the Church is not a democracy. It is equally important that the democratic elements which must necessarily make up any human organisation like the Church are engaged with correctly – due process protects people.

What has happened instead is bullying, and a desire to impose a standardised, dogmatic, and legalistic notion of Episcopacy without following due process. Martin Percy set out a long, repetitive list of why bishops are vitally important – and has proceeded to completely undermine any notion of episcopacy or ecclesial loyalty. Episcopacy has no meaning if a duly elected bishop can be bullied into standing down through attacks on his integrity which boil down to ‘I don’t understand how he can hold this tension, and therefore he cannot.’

The Church of England, through the exercise of Episcopal leadership and Synodical governance has declared that there must be a place in the Church or England for those who cannot be certain that women can be ordained. St. Paul tells us that it is a sin to act contrary to conscience even when that conscience is mistaken. To ask +North to change his mind in order to take up a post is to ask him to sin.

As far as I am concerned, these events suggest that we are now experiencing a fundamental challenge to the fabric of the Church of England, as there is a move to bypass any sense of Episcopal leadership (and hence of Catholicity), and instead to impose doctrines by an apparent democratic mandate. If such challenges continue, we will not just be saying that the Church of England has no place for Traditionalists, we will be saying that the Church of England has no place for anyone with a Catholic, sacramental theology. We will be cutting ourselves off from the line of the Apostles, and from the reality of the living God.

We have agreed to consecrate women as bishops in such a way as to ensure that they will be bishops in the apostolic succession. It would be a tragedy if the supporters of these women were allowed to compromise that succession. If the reality of a Church of England in which women are consecrated as bishops is a church in which episcopacy means nothing, then all the battles for it have been in vain.

As a Church, we should all be deeply ashamed of ourselves.

If necessary, use liturgy

It’s the feast of St Thomas of Canterbury, midway between Christmas and New Year, and the clergy of the Church of England have finally started to relax. You can tell, because there’s an almighty argument going on sparked by an article in the Church Times. This time, it’s about the language we use in liturgy, and whether our language is ‘accessible’ enough.

Like all good rows, it started with a simple mistake. A box in the article suggested that words like ‘almighty,’ ‘family,’ ‘grace,’ and ‘worship’ are ‘complex’ and ‘might be avoided.’

Reading the article carefully, however, it’s clear that these are the core words ‘that will be difficult to avoid,’ not those that should or might be avoided. We seem to have the familiar sub-editing problem.

This mistake has not prevented some people from defending the list as printed, rather than as intended. This shows that there is some sympathy for the idea that liturgy as a whole should consist of texts far simpler than those we currently have. Indeed, Geoff Bayliss, who wrote the piece, is right to point out the problem that only 44% of Collects designed to be accessible achieve this aim.

However, I feel that Bayliss has not taken his opening comment,’liturgy is about more than just the text,’ seriously enough. While he discusses reading ages and readability scores, he does not discuss the more appropriate ‘Speaking and Listening’ descriptors. These suggest that students should ‘listen to […] a wide range of poems, stories and non-fiction at a level beyond that at which they can read independently’ (English KS1 & 2 2013, 11).

Doug Chaplin has already made the point that ‘readability’ might not be the correct measure for intelligibility in liturgy, so I’d like to add some brief thoughts from my own background in theatre studies.

Shakespeare is perhaps the archetypical ‘hard writer’ students will encounter at school. Even those of us with English degrees would admit to having to pause over a phrase like ‘I had as leif…’ (Hamlet 3.iii). However, teachers still persevere in making him, to some extent, understood. Not every word, perhaps, but the broad sweep of the narrative.

One way in which teachers try to help students understand Shakespeare is by showing them videos or taking them to live performances. This is because texts for performance come alive when spoken and acted – spoken language is an embodied, communal medium. I once watched a wonderful production of A Streetcar Named Desire, or, more properly, Endstation Sehnsucht, performed entirely in German. I don’t speak any German, and was not very familiar with the play, yet I could follow the plot. Of course I missed some nuances, and of course German speakers ‘got more out of it,’ but there was still plenty to ‘get’ without the language.

This phenomenon is why live performance is used to teach Shakespeare – because language is only a small aspect of communication. As a result, if I was concerned that a congregation was failing to follow the liturgy, my first instinct would not be to simplify the language, as though somehow I could offer God more comprehensively in easier words. Rather, I’d look at whether and how the liturgy worked as a whole dramatic action. Is it clear why there is a confession at the start of the service? Is there a clear difference between the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Sacrament? Are the priest and other ‘speaking roles’ speaking clearly? Would manual actions during the Eucharistic Prayer clarify what is happening?

I have certainly attended churches where these things are not clear, where the only logic organising the service seems to be ‘this comes next because it’s next on the pew sheet.’ I’m sure I’m not alone in having wandered into a lunchtime Communion service, where an elderly priest is mumbling through the liturgy as though no-one were present. In these situations it isn’t primarily the language which is impeding understanding, but the performance.

Some of this, as I’ve suggested before, is a result of an ‘anti-theatrical prejudice,’ an over-valuation of text resulting, at least in the Church of England, from the Protestant rejection of Medieval Catholic ceremonial. Indeed, when there is little ceremony in a service, and when the majority of what happens is simply a priest reading aloud, more simple language may be required. This is because a liturgy with this shape understands itself to be more about the priest teaching the congregation than about the priest and congregation together offering worship to God.

However, this is not to say that ceremony, manual action, and an awareness of the performance of liturgy will always make everything comprehensible. Lively sermons which take the time to explain more difficult words and ideas are always vital. Sometimes, as we once did in my sending parish, a ‘commentated Mass’ can help to make things easier to understand. Annotated pew sheets can also provide information for newcomers and visitors, like the programme notes at the theatre. A comprehensive desire to teach the Christian faith is essential.

If we do all of this, if we offer worship which engages all the senses, rather than simply relying on words, we’ll find that complex words become more comprehensible. If we really commit to teaching the faith, we’ll find that congregations come with more and deeper questions. And, if we might worry that we or our congregations are still missing something, we needn’t worry. Most audience members don’t understand everything in an RSC Shakespeare production. Indeed, Thomas Aquinas would remind us that, while understanding of God is possible, it is only ever partial. We only understand God ‘after the manner of composite things’ (ST 1.13.9) even though God Himself is not composite.

Saving Christian Marriage (Not How You Think…)

As someone instinctively in favour of extending sacramental marriage to same sex couples, I was troubled to read a recent blog post which had me questioning that instinct.

This post, by the Canon Chancellor of Portsmouth Cathedral, opens with an imagined dialogue between a gay priest and an unnamed representative of the Church. By this means, it suggests that the discipline of celibacy is impossible to enforce, and that what is done ‘in the bedroom’ is none of the business of the Church. Indeed, it argues that ‘to expect to be able to control an area of someones life as intimate as their loving and sexual (or not) relationship dehumanises them.’

My response to this, I have to admit, was disbelief. That the Church of England’s current approach is clearly untenable in the long term, and representative of institutional disagreement and dissonance, is undeniable. That it is harming the people who are caught on the prongs of this dissonance, is similarly clear.

But to argue that the Church has no authority over the conduct of its members, and especially its priests, is a nonsense. As a (straight) ordinand, my ‘loving and sexual relationships’ are controlled by the church. I can have a sexual relationship with someone I am married to, and not otherwise. I am not free to sleep around, nor to carry on an affair. If such conduct was discovered, my ordination would be in doubt. And this is right – the sexual conduct of Christians should be distinctive, particularly in a culture where sexuality is increasingly commodified and individualised.

So, I worried, does supporting same sex marriage mean that we must give up any sense that the Church, as the body of Christ, has a claim on our sexual ethics? Are the conservatives right in arguing that same sex marriage requires the hollowing out of Christian understandings of marriage and replacing them with something else?

I often see arguments in favour of same sex marriage which imply this. For example, whenever someone responds to the suggestion that children are one of the ends of Christian marriage with ‘well, does that mean that infertile couples can’t get married?’ I feel they are ceding the Anglican understanding that marriage ‘is given as the foundation of family life in which children are [born and] nurtured’ too easily. While biological parenthood may not be possible for all couples, a role in the nurture of children, whether through adoption, fostering, or spiritual parenthood within their church communities, is possible for all, and is one mechanism by which the grace of marriage is turned outward to bless others.

This sense of disorientation, of ‘am I wrong after all,’ has brought me back to reflect on the meaning of marriage, particularly as expressed in the Church of England marriage service, as well as to St. Paul’s comment that, while celibacy is to be commended, ‘it is better to marry than to burn with desire’ (1 Cor 7:9).

Marriage, for St. Paul, is an accommodation to human weakness. Ideally, all people would be celibate, and in heaven ‘people will neither marry nor be given in marriage’ (Matt 22:30). However, since we are not yet living in the resurrection, marriage is given so that the sinful passion of lust might become a means of sanctification: ‘Wife, for all you know, you might save your husband. Husband, for all you know, you might save your wife’ (1 Cor 7:16).

Why is lust sinful? Because it wants to possess the other person – it puts the self first, and turns the other into an object. The vows of marriage, and the grace of the sacrament of marriage, provide an opportunity to turn this human tendency to possess the other back on itself. Recognising this desire to possess the other, in marriage, couples vow instead to submit themselves to the other.

Throughout Christian history, this negative view of marriage as accommodation to weakness has developed into a more positive understanding:

Marriage is a gift of God in creation
through which husband and wife may know the grace of God.
It is given that as man and woman grow together in love and trust,
they shall be united with one another in heart, body and mind,
as Christ is united with his bride, the Church.
CofE Marriage Service

However, this more positive understanding emerges from the earlier view, and relies on it. Marriage vows are as solemn and exacting as monastic vows – they bring every interaction between two people under the authority of God, and oblige them to work through problems and arguments. The sacrament provides the grace for this, but the outworking of it relies on commitment on the part of both partners. Marriage as a school of holiness can often be difficult, and requires a constant decision in favour of the other person – but marriage is also the way in which God calls many people to sanctification and joy in the other. As Christians, we know that ‘love wins’ – but we also know that love looks like the Cross.

This isn’t to say straightforwardly that ‘marriage is a cross’ – but that, like the cross, marriage partakes of that distinctively Christian alchemy in which joy and grace can be found not just in the obvious places, but also where they seem most absent. Marriage is not a happy ending, but the beginning of a process of growth. The antitheses in the marriage vows (sickness/health, richer/poorer etc.) are a reminder that this growth is often painful, and that marriage is a commitment to a future which is unknown.

An argument in favour of same sex marriage should take into account the fullness of Christian marriage as we have received it from tradition. Christian marriage, at its origin, is an accommodation to human weakness, and a means to translate that weakness into grace. It is a school of holiness, where the destructive passion of lust is transmuted into a source of joy and grace, even in the hardest of circumstances. Extending this accommodation, with its discipline and joy, to same sex couples, follows the logic of St. Paul’s argument about the ends of marriage.

It seems to me that opponents of same sex marriage, who argue that it heralds the breakdown of family and community, are largely shutting the stable door too late. Secular notions of marriage as a happy ending, or simply a ‘celebration of love,’ all too easily make it something focused inwards. A focus on marriage as simply ‘where sex happens’ (a focus all too often found in the Church), leads to endless letters to Dear Deirdre about guilty flings with ‘mind blowing sex’ – but ‘he won’t leave his wife.’ Divorce rates are sky high because marriage is not understood as a vocation to be discerned, but as something you kind of have to do when a relationship has been going on for long enough, or as a ‘solution’ to relationship problems.

Neither ‘side’ in the debate over marriage in the Church seems to be making an argument for this distinctively Christian understanding of marriage. “One man, one woman” or “Love is love” both partake too strongly of the secular view of marriage as either ‘locus of sex’ or ‘happy ending.’ By offering a robust defence of same sex marriage as school of holiness, the Church might be able to make an intervention into a culture which has forgotten what marriage is altogether, a culture which sees marriage as a ‘right’ rather than a vocation. By reasserting marriage as a discipline, but one which can be entered into by both same- and opposite-sex couples, the Church might be able to recover marriage as a decision for the other, a decision which must be repeated daily through death to self and life to Christ through one’s partner.

Granted, this is less romantic than many other conceptions of marriage, but it has the advantage of being true to lived experience, and to the Christian tradition. At the moment, the public voices on both sides of the debate are failing to do this. Perhaps, counter-intuitively, it is through accepting, rather than opposing, same sex marriage, that we can truly recover and reassert the essence of Christian marriage.

Amoris Laetitia, @Pontifex and Disability

While most of the recent headlines about the Roman Catholic Church have concerned the status of divorced and remarried Catholics and whether they can recieve communion, there has also been controversy on social media relating to disability. Specifically, there has been widespread criticism of the following tweet from Pope Francis’s account:

People with disabilities are a gift for the family and an opportunity to grow in love, mutual aid and unity.

-Pope Francis (@Pontifex) Apr 9, 2016

A particularly good response to this can be found in a storify by @PunkinOnWheels. On its own, this tweet does indeed objectify disabled people, suggesting that their value lies solely in what they can offer to other people, rather than in their existance as intrinsically valuable individuals. Nothing that I will say in this post contradicts the fact that this construction of disability is destructive and dehumanising, and that the most natural way to read this tweet is precisely in such an objectifying and dehumanising way.

Part of the problem with this tweet is that it is doubly removed from context. At the moment, the @Pontifex account is tweeting ‘pull quotes’ from the recent Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, a document which is itself a response to the Synod on the Family. The comment in the above tweet is part of a lengthy quotation from the final Relatio of that Synod, and both the Relatio and Amoris Laetitia draw heavily on the language of ‘gift’ to describe family life in general, so that the family as a whole (AL §5, R §5), marriage (AL §§ 61, 61, 72, etc., R §40, 48 etc.) and all children (AL §81, R §60) are described as gifts.

Indeed, the use of the language of ‘gift’ to describe disabled people in the Relatio is explicitly structured so as to rebut dehumanising constructions of disability: ‘The process of integrating people with special needs into society is more difficult because of an enduring stigma and prejudice — even to the point of a theorization based on eugenics […] If the family, in the light of the faith, accepts the presence of people with special needs, they will be able to recognize and guarantee the quality and value of every human life, with its proper needs, rights and opportunities’ (R §21).

Such a construction may be particularly important in parts of the world which are both heavily Catholic, and which also maintain more overt social narratives in which a disabled child can only be seen as a sign of divine disfavour (as in e.g. this story from Reuters, although such constructions are hardly absent in so-called ‘developed’ countries, even when the language of ‘curse’ is somewhat attenuated). In such circumstances, asserting strongly that disabled children, like all others, are a gift, provides an important pastoral resource.

From the perspective of disability studies, however, this desire to assert the full humanity of disabled people is irrelevant while the underlying construction of disability is based in stereotypes, such as the idea that all that must be done is to ‘celebrate the gifts of God in these people with special needs, particularly their unique communication skills and ability to bring people together’ (ibid.). Also problematic is the slippage between ‘people with disabilities’ and ‘people with special needs’ – the desire is to assert that all people, even those who are more dependent on others, are as much a gift as each other, but there is a failure to recognise that all individuals are dependent on others, and that, for many disabled people, the language of dependence itself is harmful.

Similarly, the specific tweet from Pope Francis’s account must be examined as a self contained statement, and as a self contanted statement it has precisely the opposite meaning to that intended both by the Pope and by the Synod Fathers. In part, this is because both documents from which the phrase is taken are hamstrung by their own limited conception of disability.

What should be our response to this as Christians, and especially for those of us (both Roman Catholic and not) who wish to take seriously the role of the Pope in shaping theological discourse? Obviously, to accept this construction of disability is to limit our ability to recognise that ‘disabled people are people.’ Despite the intent of both documents, disability remains a concept abstracted from lived reality, and disabled people remain an undifferentiated mass, rather than concrete individuals with spiritual lives and human complexities.

However, the alternative approach, to simply condemn the illiterate and harmful construction of disability on the part of the Pope and the Synod Fathers, and to then ignore both documents as irrelevant to a theology of disability, is to make the same mistake in reverse. Rather than simply blindly accepting harmful language, or simply rejecting the whole becuase of the evident failures it contains, approaching the documents through a process of discernment can produce a construction of disability which both draws on and critiques the approaches taken.

This process recognises that the Church as a whole (not simply the Roman Catholic Church) is limited by the social conditions within which it attempts to witness to the love of God, and in particular by the languages available within those conditions. The desire of the Synod Fathers to assert strongly the full humanity of disabled people runs seriously aground when it fails to recognise that its own language works against that aim. As a result, while in some contexts the documents will provide important pastoral resources, in others they have already become a means to do harm.

The references to the formation of consciences (AL §37) and to mutual aid (AL §47, R §21) already provide a framework for precisely this kind of critique. Since, as the documents want to emphasise, disabled people must never be considered as anything other than fully human, with their own ability to engage in Christian discernment and mutual aid,  we must also take very seriously their critiques of how disability is constructed in official Church pronouncements. This need not, and I would argue must not, involve a wholesale rejection of everything which is subjected to critique, but rather a willingness to recognise the gaps between intention and actuality in which immense harm can be done. This is important not just in responding to these specific documents, but also when thinking about our own theological language more generally.

Ordained Women are not a Challenge to Catholic Ecclesiology

From the title of this post, you might think that I’ll be attacking those who, in conscience, cannot accept the ordination of women. Perhaps you think I’ll be demonstrating that, because ordained women are a logical development of Catholic teaching on the nature of ordination and the church, there are no grounds for the existence of the Five Guiding Principles and the notion of mutual flourishing.

This isn’t what I want to do. Instead, I want to pick up on an odd tendency from those who rejoice in women’s ordination which continues to trouble me as someone in the Catholic tradition who is similarly in favour. This tendency, which assumes that somehow ordaining women will trouble, undermine, destabilise or otherwise challenge our ‘traditional’ notions of orders (beyond simply the fact that women are now recognised to be appropriate ‘material’ for the sacrament of ordination), implies that somehow the Church has only now fully understood itself, and that therefore, with the ordination of women, everything must change.

This trope is firmly anchored in the debate. It featured in the sermon at Rachel Treweek’s consecration, where +Stepney stated that he hoped women bishops would ‘disturb’ us, ‘challenge the conventions of the Church of England,’ ‘raise nonconformity to new heights’. It features in books about the subject, in which varied arguments are put forward to the effect that ‘a feminist ecclesiology […] seeks profounder transformation of Christian assembly, its patterns of leadership, and its images of God’ (Thompsett 2014, 104). At the extreme end, there is a suggestion from some that the consecration of women as bishops might ‘bring down the system from within’ and offer a critique of ‘the whole idea of bishops’ (Al Barrett).

I’m firmly within the Catholic tradition of the Church of England, and it is from within that tradition that I consider the ordination of women to be possible. We are an Episcopal church, a church whose orders are (pace Apostolicae Curae) in the Apostolic succession. Our Episcopate possesses the Apostolic sanction to bind and loose, a sanction which refers both to the forgiveness of sins and to church order. As a result, the decision to consecrate women bishops (and to ordain them priests) is a valid one.

Ordained women stand in the Apostolic succession and confect the Eucharist in communion with their bishops, who guarantee that Eucharist through their own succession from the Apostles. Indeed, the ordination of women brings the doctrine of in persona Christi into sharper relief, as the disjunction between Christ’s first person ‘this is my body’ in the Eucharistic prayer, and the (female) body of the celebrant necessarily draws attention back to the mystery that the priesthood exercised by the ordained minister is simply the priesthood of Christ acting through them.

So this widespread trope of women ‘shaking things up,’ necessarily imposing a new ecclesiology, is a troubling one. My Traditionalist colleagues, while they would surely disagree with my justification sketched above, have never suggested that I should choose between a Catholic ecclesiology and my conviction that women can be ordained – my communion with them is impaired, but there is a desire for it. The absence of full communion is keenly felt. At bottom, we agree on the substance of ecclesiology but not on how it works out in practice.

With my more liberal colleagues, it seems I do have to choose. Attempting to maintain a Catholic ecclesiology in which the ordination of women is permitted appears suspect. Apparently, a failure to recognise that ordaining women really entails the complete rethinking of the priesthood, of how we conceive of orders, is to not really be in favour of the ordination of women. It seems that, in assuming that the movement to ordain women is a natural consequence of the theological truths set forth in the Gospels and the Creeds, and transmitted through Apostolic succession under the guidance of the Spirit, I am failing to see the truth that the ordination of women is in fact the apotheosis of the Church, the moment at which She finally became what Christ had initially willed and which the Apostles had destroyed.

Although this is something of a caricature, it is accurate insofar as it reflects the kinds of claims that are being made for the ‘new era’ of the Church over against the rest of the Church’s history. A Catholic understanding of women’s ordination and of the Church as a whole recognises that the Church develops organically within an Episcopal structure. The claims being made for women’s ordination now, however, appear to characterise it as a moment of rupture, of disturbance, challenge, even destruction. I’m not convinced that these claims are accurate – they appear to simultaneously place the whole future of the Church on the shoulders of women rather than in the hands of the Spirit, and to paradoxically argue that women will be responsible for the destruction of the Church, but that this will be a good thing, because the Church (as an institution) is inherently Patriarchal anyway.

This is bad ecclesiology, bad theology, and bad politics. I am not arguing here that we must always preserve the status quo, but rather that, on the eve of the Primate’s Conference, when the nature of the Anglican Communion itself is up for grabs, it is crucial to restate the nature of Anglicanism as an Episcopal Church, and as a part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Whatever attempts may be made to ‘loosen’ the Communion must nonetheless retain ‘the highest possible’ degree of that Communion. Indeed, the very fact that these decisions are being made by a college of bishops under the guidance of the Spirit should give us confidence that even the sordid political wrangling which will undoubtedly take place can be tranformed into a vehicle for God’s glory.

The virtue of an Apostolic Church which does not claim to be the One True Church is that it can model what Catholicity might mean beyond doctrinal disagreement. However, it can only do this if it remains committed to the key markers of Catholicity which are the Episcopate and the continuity of faith. Women’s ordination is a tool in this task, but only if it is viewed as such, rather than as some kind of magical, destructive and disruptive power – a notion which in itself troublingly echoes some of the more pernicious patriarchal tropes.