ANCA and Continuing Churches

It’s nowhere in the definition of a human to have to be called a Priest...

unless you are saying that we should call them what they self-identify as?.. In which case, isn’t that just engaging in something similar to the Transgender pronouns xir/xer madness?

I believe we have to call ourselves and other people in accord with what they are, not what they identify as... Helping them to acknowledge reality is a basic part of our charity toward them

 

Being a minister in a diocese that is so committed to the ordination of women that it sometimes seems as though we're trying equalize the male-female ratio of clergymen, this is an issue that I've had to think about in a rather more immanent sense than perhaps most of my Continuing brethren. I'm not inclined to agree with the practice of WO myself (anymore; I was open-minded on the subject when I was discerning for ordination), so I don't like to call them "mother" or "priest", but I have to be respectful.

The best I've come up with is to refer to them as "the Rev. ___", because that way I acknowledge their ministry status without conceding a properly-ordained title.

 

Now that I think of it, nowhere in the Bible does it say to "call no woman Father"! Back then, they never dreamed how weird it would get.....

 

Do you ever think we will get rid of women priests in the ACNA?

 

Do you have any career path wherein you could move to a part of the ACNA that does not ordain women, out of curiosity?

 

I hope so, but more people need to come out and be willing to preach about the extreme moral wrongness of female clergy, without fear of causing offense (because some people will be offended, but a great preacher knows that and proceeds anyway, for example, St. John Chrysostom).

 

There are other dioceses and jurisdictions in New England that I could "move" to, if push came to shove. Right now I'm hoping not to have to leave - better for now to be a witness to solid tradition and benefit from the resource potential of my diocese for church planting.

@bwallac2335 No I don't think this practice is going to end. The ACNA and GAFCON will eventually have to split over it. If we're "lucky" the pro-WO folks will be the ones to go off and make their own denomination, but the myth of "Anglican comprehensiveness" is so embedded that I don't think we'll ever be able to pull the axe out of that stump. But hey, I'd be happy to be wrong!

 

GAFCON is showing some serious chinks in the armour. Several of the supposedly stalwart African provinces are wanting to consecrate women into their episcopate. Then there's the problem of the rampant spread of prosperity gospel Pentecostalism too.

The Latvian Lutherans are the only church I can think of in the modern era to reverse course on the ordination of women.

 

It is difficult to stuff the genie back in the bottle.

 

Do you have a link on that about GAFCON? Also do you think it will be possible for Continuing Churches to join up with non women ordaining ACNA churches?

 

Not all (by far) of Pentecostal churches embraces the prosperity message. But the churches that do embrace it probably are the fast-spreading ones. Even so, the 'prosperity' part of their message usually tends to be a teaching, not that God will make every believer rich, but that God is our Provider and our Source to whom we look to bless the work of our hands and to provide 'enough plus some left over.' There always will be isolated excesses and extremists, though, who take the idea way too far.

 

How much trouble would you get in, out of curiosity, if you preached a fiery sermon about the wrongfulness of ordaining women to the priesthood or episcopate?

Also speaking about the episcopate, is the ACNA prepared for the possibility of a female bishop?

On a hopeful note, we should consider that the SBC was able to get rid of female pastors, after at least two decades. My understanding is they were fairly well entrenched. And this was in the context of a congregational church, where the SBC has only exclusionary powers. In a church with an episcopal polity, if one does find a sufficiently bold bishop, it would theoretically be possible for that bishop to depose female clergy by right of his episcopal prerogative, assuming the ACNA has not enacted canonical legislation to preclude such an act (which would be ironic, considering how several ACNA dioceses are former Episcopal dioceses who

Good for the Latvians, but remember also the SBC; the Southern Baptist Convention is the second largest denomination in the United States after the Roman Catholic Church. If they can put the "genie back in the bottle" as @Botolph puts it, then anyone can.

It should also be remembered that worldwide, the majority of Christians are members of churches which do not ordain women. What is more, in the United States, the majority of Christians are members of churches which do not ordain women. There is, sadly, a direct correlation between female pastors and shrinking, elderly congregations; the people stay at that parish because it is the parish they have attended for much of their life, but they are not happy.

Also, strictly speaking, one can interpret the Society, the Continuing Anglican churches, and the traditional Anglican portions of ACNA, as well as the Archdiocese of Sydney, as examples of a reversal of the ordination of women within the greater Anglican community.

 

These guys cover GAFCON issues all the time: http://anglican.ink/

They also have a podcast on YouTube.

The second question is hard to answer. Continuing churches need to become a unified church before we try to fix other people's problems. There are varying degrees of cooperation already existing. My last general convention was hosted by an ACNA parish in Kannapolis, NC (which interestingly shares space with an LCMS parish). I was dispatched to do some training with an ACNA parish that wanted to go on the 1928 BCP one time. Contrary to popular belief, Fr. Shane is not the biggest ACNA hater in the room.

 

It think it is on the books that a woman can't be a Bishop in the ACNA

 

Correct, the ACNA is canonically unable to consecrate women as bishops, and the 2019 Prayer Book reflects that, using only male language for the consecration liturgy. It's a line drawn in the sand that would be very difficult indeed to change.

Depending upon how things go for the ACNA and for the Contiuum (especially that G4 coalition coming together), the non-WO dioceses of the ACNA may in time develop new/better relationships with the Continuum. I've met a couple ACA priests in our overlapping region, and am comfortable with the idea of maintaining friendships on both sides of the fence.

 

I am actually not sure a full union of the Continuing Churches is neccessary. In fact I think it would be undesirable. We should consider that historically, the population of the Anglican provinces was much lower than it is today, and we should also consider that jurisdictional boundaries provide a firewall to prevent the spread of heresies. Also, the continuing Anglican churches are able to embrace their churchmanship more fully, so we have in Ventura, California, St. George’s Anglican Church which is a very low church congregation (with its own bishop; it was a part of a grouping called the Anglican Episcopal Church), and in Chico, St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, part of the Anglican Province of Christ the King, which is Anglo-Catholic. Both churches are united by the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, traditional moral values, a respect for each other as Anglican, and a fear of becoming like TEC.

So I think the solution is communion without union. In the Eastern Orthodox world, there is incessant whining about the need to unite the different Orthodox churches in the US, but aside from being politically impossible (with the exception of a proposed union between the Antiochians and the Orthodox Church in America), these different jurisdictions are beneficial in that that they allow for diverse expressions of the one common Eastern Orthodox faith, and also act as watertight compartments on a ship: if the devil manages to take out one with a torpedo of heresy, the watertight doors will slam shut and the Ark of Salvation* remains afloat. This did not happen with the mainline Protestant churches because they have been pursuing a course of ever-closer ecumenical union since the 1920s, but the Orthodox churches and the Continuing Anglican churches greatly benefit in this regard, by virtue of being suspicious of each other, but not so suspicious as to blindly reject each other as being hetetodox; rather, there is a reasoned, moderate, healthy desire to, if I may paraphrase a Russian proverb in English, “Trust but verify.”

The Oriental Orthodox for their part have no qualms about overlapping jurisdictions, and the idea of a single Oriental Orthodox Church in America would never work as there are four different liturgical rites. But amusingly, there are eight Oriental Orthodox jurisdictions active in the US at present.

 

I get blasted by my own people for saying this but of the 400 or so parishes and missions that constitute the continuing Anglican scene I suspect less than a hundred are sustainable past the next decade. There are a lot of them which are enclaves of 15-20 elderly people in a building that is way too big. And some jurisdictions are facing severe clergy shortages. Continuing Anglican unification is thus something of an expedient to salvage whatever it is that we've made.

 

Some people are beginning to wake up and suggest ideas that would never have been heard 20 years ago: ie. things like BCP revision. Ministry to ESL speakers and so on. I had an exchange with a guy a while back that steamed me. I was discussing whatever one thinks of illegal immigration, as Christian people we need to acknowledge that there are several million Hispanic people out there who, let's be honest, are not going to be deported back to wherever they came from. He told me they can be Roman Catholics and he wasn't worried about reaching out to them. That attitude is its own special kind of stupidity.

On that front the APA publishing house just put the Spanish translation of the 1928 BCP back in print. So at least someone gets it.

 

Unification is good where needed, but I am an optimist; the continuing Anglican churches I like seem to be growing. But some are doubtless shrinking. So federation is clearly a good idea; I think it would be a mistake to create another monolithic entity like TEC, but something like the ACNA, only looser, might be ideal. Something like the SBC, but with Continuing Anglican dioceses instead of individual congregations as members.

Also, the more successful continuing Anglican churches should look into unifying with those who are less successful, but who share a common set of values.

The 1928 BCP is very good, but not absolutely perfect. With my 2020 BCP project (or Editio MMXX as I prefer to call it), I am compiling a modular set of texts based around the Divine Office of the 1662 BCP, with the additional offices of Prime and Compline from the 1928 Deposited Book, and Midday Prayer loosely based on the 1979 book as an extra module, another extra module containing a monastic-type Divine Office with a complete set of the hours, the basic Holy Communion services from the 1662 and 1928 American book, and then a module with Holy Communion from the 1549 book and the 1929 Scottish book, and other sources, and various other modules optimized for churchmanship and congregational need. I think many people, for example, would rather have an enlarged set of domestic prayers and scripture lessons or other devotional material instead of the Ordinal in their personal BCP. But a classic layout should also be available.

The main idea however is to provide a book which integrates the 1928 and 1662 BCP editions as seamlessly as possible, and then makes available via modules a vast array of supplementary material.

I also believe the BCP of the future will tend to be an ebook read on tablets, which I predict will become much cheaper and easier to use in the years ahead, with better visibility, and new display technologies such as flexible OLED and digital ink cels. But some people will want a print on demand book, and Lulu does print a Quarto sized book on demand. Unfortunately not a Folio; I had hoped for a Folio-sized option, like the famed 1928 Standard Edition or the proposed 1979 Standard Edition by Arrion Press (next to homosexuality and female priests, the distant third place among things I am irritated at TEC about is their failure to produce the Standard Edition of the 1979 book, which would have been gorgeous).

http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/Standard1979.htm
^ The Prospectus for the unprinted 1979 BCP Standard Edition