What Are the Distinct Marks of Catholic Anglicanism - Essay Example

What Are the Distinct Marks of Catholic Anglicanism What Are the Distinct Marks of Catholic Anglicanism The term Anglo-Catholic may on occasion be relevant to the Church of England in its entirety, meaning that it is part of the Catholic Church without being Roman Catholic. However, Catholic Anglicanism generally characterizes the faction within the Anglican Communion that stems from the Tractarian Movement of the 1830s. The designation seems to date from 1838 at the University of Oxford toward the beginning of the movement centered on restoring the Caroline Divines' 17th-century High Church ideals through a Catholic revival in the Church of England (Nockles, P.1994:270). Catholic Anglicanism professes a high doctrine of the Church and Sacraments, ascribes great significance to the apostolic succession (meaning an episcopal lineage reaching back to the apostles), argues for the Anglican Confession's clear-cut historical continuity with the early Church in the first centuries of the Christian era, and, finally, defends the crucial autonomy of the Church from any undue interference of the State. Toward the end of the late 1820s into the early 1830s, Oriel College in Oxford harbored a number of quite erudite young fellows whose earnest concerns about the shortcomings of the 19th-century Church of England led them to unite with each other together with a slightly-older priest and professor of poetry at the college, John Keble, in commitment to renewal of the church (Chadwick, O.1990:135). On 14 July 1833 at Oxford, John Keble preached the Assize Sermon, officially directed to the judges and officers of the civil and criminal courts at the outset of a new session or assize (Cross, F. L. and Livingstone, E.A.1997:1205). The sermon entitled National Apostasy virtually indicted the English nation for slighting God by trying to run the Church as a mere branch of the government, rather than respect its mission as an emissary of God, independent of the legislative interference of a parliament composed of Anglican laymen (Reed, J.S.1996:8). Keble's delivery provoked a national uproar, marking a significant juncture in the erstwhile beginnings of the spiritual renewal known as the Oxford or Tractarian Movement - Tractarian, since the movement was to be further energized by a series of ninety Tracts, in leaflets as well as much lengthier treatises or catenae, published over the course of the next eight years (Reed, J.S.1996:8). Oriel was the highly intellectual College of the Anglican-operated University of Oxford which prepared the vast majority of clergy to serve in the Church of England. John Henry Newman, Vicar of the University Church, Richard Hurrell Froude, a junior fellow of Oriel, and William Palmer, a fellow of Worcester, joined with the aforementioned priest and professor, John Keble, to follow up his clearly-provocative challenge to the status quo with a succession of Tracts for the Times (Herring, G. 2002:25). Several historical factors contributed to the movement's immediate popularity and growth. In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, the Church in the 19th Century faced serious problems over the emergence of wretched pockets of urban poverty, as well as increasingly cavalier attitudes toward the faith in the face of secular perspectives on human advancement (Scudder, V.D. 1898). In the field of social justice, the Tractarian leaders thoroughly repudiated any compartmentalizing of spirituality and conceived of religion as asserting dominion over the whole of life. In the name of the Catholic faith, they roundly condemned the veritable worship of material things that came in as a by-product of the Industrial Revolution. (Kenyon, R.1933:). The steady weakening of Church life and the spread of Liberalism in theology prompted serious worries among the English clergy. More immediately, a threat to Anglican identity emerged from the abrupt removal of long-standing criteria for service in state office and the repeal the last of the Penal Laws with discriminatory practices (Cross, F. L. and Livingstone, E.A.1997:1205). The Catholic Relief Act of 1829 allowed the election of Roman Catholics to a seat in parliament. The growing religious unease was amplified by the passing of the controversial Reform Bill of 1832, along with the ostensibly audacious proposal of the Whig government to consolidate ten ailing Irish bishoprics (Reed, J.S.1996:8). For these unpredictable times in England long-standing convention was looking awfully susceptible, as many time- honored institutions of church and state administration and principle were woefully forsaken. For the English Church there was everything at stake (Nockles, P.1994:327). Around this period, the Romantic Movement in art and literature was awakening an increased interest in many facets of ancient Christianity and the early Church Fathers (Herring, G. 2002:25). The original Tractarians became similarly absorbed with the creeds and traditions of the early Church. The Tracts centered predominantly on defending the Church of England as being of Divine origin, on asserting the validity of the apostolic succession, and on corroborating the Book of Common Prayer as a standard for the rule of faith (Cross, F. L. and Livingstone, E.A.1997:69). These theses preoccupied the famous Tracts for the Times, initiated by John Henry Newman in 1833. Emulating Roman Catholic practice, Anglican Catholicism gradually restored religious life and diverse customs of private devotion, such as the use of aural confession and fasting. Early on there was less concern with rites and rituals. However, as interest grew and the movement widened into the mainstream, Catholic Anglicanism was sometimes disparaged as lost in the peripheries of worship and devotees were commonly referred to as ritualists (Herring, G. 2002:90). The recognized leaders of the Oxford Movement were John Keble, John Henry Newman, and Edmund Bouverie Pusey. John Henry Newman had been a Calvinist in his teens, then switched afterward to religious liberalism, and eventually, through his association with Froude at Oriel College, converted to High Anglicanism (Herring, G. 2002:52). Newman edited the complete sequence of the Oxford Tracts, composing a full twenty-four of them, including the infamous Tract Ninety that would ultimately secure for the series an unpredictably abrupt finish (Herring, G. 2002:63). Over the course of the Movement other Newman works, especially Lectures On the Prophetical Office of the Church (1837), University Sermons (1843), and Parochial and Plain Sermons (1834-1842), exercised a deep impact. Many of Newman's writings centered on the theologians and preoccupations of the first few centuries of the Church, such as Arians of the Fourth Century (1833) as well as Selected Treatises of St. Athanasius (1842-1844). Newman was convinced from ardent historical study that the Anglican Church in its doctrine and order was closer to the early Church than the Roman Church, and believed the Anglican Church had, as the spiritual descendants of the apostles, a greater right than the Roman to be called Catholic. However, many adversaries of the Tractarian Movement were more inclined to view Newman suspiciously as a dangerous proponent of Roman Catholic beliefs (Herring, G. 2002:80). Edward Bouverie Pusey was Professor of Hebrew at Oxford and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral from 1828 until his death (Herring, G. 2002:53). Besides writing four of the Oxford Tracts - Tract 18: Thoughts on the Benefits of the System of Fasting Enjoined by our Church and Tracts 67 through 69: Scriptural Views of Holy Baptism - Pusey delivered a notorious discourse on the Eucharist for which, through hostile political intrigue, he was suspended from preaching for two years (Reed, J.S. 1996:10). Ironically the suspension gave exposure to the movement, and actually encouraged an increase of dissemination for the Tracts. In 1845 Pusey was instrumental in the foundation of the first Anglican convent in London after nearly three hundred years (Reed, J.S. 1996:50). His works defended the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and the inerrancy of Scripture. The Oxford Movement drew many clear-headed and competent followers. Though Richard Hurrell Froude, a fellow of Oriel, had more of the revolutionary and less of the philosopher in him than either Keble or Newman he joined the movement in 1826. As one of Keble's pupils, Froude, by nature an activist, was actually instrumental in bringing Keble and Newman together at the moment in Newman's journey of faith at which he was breaking out of the darkness of Calvinism and the ensuing dusk of Liberalism. Froude contributed four of the Tracts for the Times prior to his untimely death from consumption in 1836 (Morse-Boycott, D.1933). From the outset, the history of the Tractarian Movement carved a record of conflict. The give-and-take of University politics at Oxford which today might appear inconsequential were in fact quite critical to the lasting legacy of Catholic Anglicanism in the English Church. It was not long before the liberal community of Oxford University, along with some Anglican bishops, began to criticize the movement fiercely. The Tractarians' inopportune censure of Hampden, a disciple of Whately, provoked the liberals, led by Arnold, to confront the movement passionately (Cross, F. L. and Livingstone, E.A.1997:1205). Conflicts arose and legal action was eventually served against them in church and civil courts. Within the movement itself there gradually arose a group in the parishes more attracted to Roman Catholicism than to the Church of the earliest centuries. All the same, notwithstanding the intense opposition of most of the bishops and despite the hostility of the press and of the government, the movement continued to spread (Cross, F. L. and Livingstone, E.A.1997:69). It eventually influenced the sphere of liturgy and ritual, so that ceremony and sacrament came to contribute a much greater role in the life of the Church than it had in the 18th and early 19th centuries (Chadwick, O.1990:136). At the same time, the dignity and privilege of the Christian ministry, clerical and lay, was stressed as Catholic values spilled over in social venues as much as explicitly religious circles. Slum settlement parishes rank highest out of the most prominent undertakings in the sphere of social responsibility (Cross, F. L. and Livingstone, E.A.1997:69). A further expression of the Tractarian influence was the restoration of monastic orders and religious life in the Church of England some three hundred years after Henry VIII (Reed, J.S. 1996:49). As its name suggests, the Oxford Movement's strong association with the University contributed substantial influence through its scholarship. In 1836 Keble, Newman, and Pusey commenced to prepare a sizeable anthology of the Library of the Fathers for publication, and, a few years afterward, the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, as a body of Caroline theology, was released (Nockles, P. 1994:41). The ideology of the movement, above all its attention to the highest criteria of Catholic worship, progressively shaped not only various groups within the Anglican Communion but even many a naysayer, and had a significant effect on the organization of Church life in England and beyond (Cross, F. L. and Livingstone, E.A.1997:1205). The specific faction of churchmen with whom the Tractarians had some affinity were the Nonjurors. In British history, a Nonjuror was any of the clergy of the Church of England and the Episcopal Church in Scotland who declined to submit to the oaths of allegiance to William III and Mary II after the deposition of James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 (Nockles, P.1994:156). These clergy, along with eight bishops and some of the most respected and scholarly men at the time, numbered about four hundred. In essence, the Nonjurors broke away from the Established Church to form a distinct ecclesial body and shortly began consecrating their own line of bishops. Over time they were reabsorbed into the mainstream Church of England (Herring, G. 2002:7). Since Nonjurors were free from the restraints of the establishment, their position on the apostolic succession of the episcopacy, as well as on the spiritual independence of the Church from the state, made them precursors to the future Tractarians (Herring, G. 2002:8). As time wore on, supporters of the movement gave ever-increasing weight to Christian accountability in the life of society and a good deal of consideration to social ills. As a lasting credit to the genuine renewal and depth of the theology promoted by the Tractarians, faithfulness to its spirit expressed itself eloquently in contexts very far removed from the University. The call to holiness - personal and communal - had been from the first at the very heart of the Tractarian doctrine. Inevitably, its dedicated devotees would set their sights on the social and spiritual problems of the newly emerged and sorely afflicted industrial working class. Young scholars won over by Pusey's influence felt drawn to labor in tough and challenging slum parishes (Scudder, V.D. 1898). Many of the ritual aberrations with which the Tractarians were charged stemmed largely from the grave pastoral concerns which confronted their ministry. The newly-formed Devonport Sisters of Mercy joined forces with the clergy of St Peter, Plymouth, in the 1840 cholera epidemics and implored from Fr George Rundle Prynne the daily offering of the Eucharist to sustain them in their perilous work (Reed, J.S. 1996:263). The first daily Mass in the Church of England since the Reformation was born from dire necessity. Likewise, the clergy of St. Saviour in Leeds arranged whatever medications they accumulated for the day on the altar at each communion in anticipation of bringing it to the dozens of dying cholera victims to be visited shortly (Reed, J.S. 1996:163). The courage and goodness of the priests and faithful of these slum parishes are a living witness to the solidity of the renewal awakened by the movement. It should be pointed out that ingrained prejudices of the Church of England at the time spurned all ritual as an impious imitation of a Papist Church (Herring, G. 2002:90). Though church vestiture might have been horrific to most, for places such as the mission church of St George in the East, incense was in frequent use, genuflecting was likely, the sign of the cross was common, and respect for the blessed sacrament was implicit. Auricular confession and holy anointing were regular sacramental practices. In these parishes the clergy and faithful were living their understanding of the Tractarian message (Herring, G. 2002:59). The poor deserved the care of the Savior through evangelization and the sacraments. In 1841 Newman published his famous Tract 90: Remarks on Certain Passages in the Thirty-Nine Articles, demonstrating that the Thirty-nine Articles, a loose compendium of beliefs in the Church of England, were actually in harmony with the Roman Catholic Council of Trent. Newman's contention provoked a great chorus of disapproval from both the University of Oxford and Anglicans everywhere, followed by a blanket ban on the Tracts for the Times from the bishop of Oxford. According to the Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church, the Thirty-Nine Articles were never intended as a statement of Christian doctrine. Written to give brief synopses of dogmatic views, each deals with an existing controversy and outlines in broad terms the Anglican position. Though not purposely ambiguous, the articles circumvent clear-cut definitions. A range of interpretation has been left open without constricting the sense, which it was almost certainly designed to do by the authors. The Articles outline the Anglican stance with regard to alleged distortions of Catholic teaching felt to have occurred in the Middle Ages, as well as in contradistinction to Calvinist and Anabaptist tradition. Adherence to the Articles was compulsory for the clergy, as well as affiliates of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge (Cross, F. L. and Livingstone, E.A.1997:1249). William George Ward, a fellow at Balliol College at Oxford ordained in the Church of England, had joined the Oxford movement in 1838. As a consequence of his outspoken defense of Tract 90, Ward lost his teaching license at the college. Upon his publication of The Ideal of a Christian Church (1844), a longer work that contrasted all Anglicanism adversely with the Roman Church, Ward was ignominiously stripped of his Oxford degrees in 1854, and was sometime later on accepted into the Roman Catholic Church. William Ward's infamous book precipitated the climax of the whole controversy. The Oxford Movement lost other key players to Roman Catholicism, including Newman, and Henry Edward Manning, both of whom were later to become Cardinals in the Roman Church. A devastating and critical blow had overwhelmed the Tractarian Movement and with it its entire credibility. Oxford disowned it. Its philosophy, its modest accomplishments, its scholarly authority, its magnetism, all appeared to succumb in a heartbeat to the intolerant and proud ascendancy of the victors. The Tractarians as a group may have been shaken in the self-assurance of their actions but not their cause. Unwavering belief in their convictions assured them that they had accurately estimated the Catholic spirit, the validity, and the purpose of the English Church. Extraordinarily dedicated to its transmission as a calling from God, whatever might transpire in the future, the Tractarian conviction stayed the course in the face of what R.W. Church refers to in his final chapter on the Oxford Movement as simply The Catastrophe (2004). Pusey deplored the transfer of so many of the group to Roman Catholicism as a heartbreak, but under his leadership a majority of Tractarian faithful stood loyal to the Church of England. Through Pusey the movement was able to transcend its ignoble termination at Oxford, and push on into wider spheres as an effective catalyst for clerical and social reform in Anglicanism. Though he did not live to see the end of discord and dissention, Pusey survived to see the theology of a Catholic Anglicanism disseminated over all of England. The reenergized focus on apostolic succession, on the Catholicity of the Church, on the sacred priesthood, on sacrament and sacrifice, on prayer, sanctity and the splendor of ritual, comprises the Catholic Anglican inheritance. A quick look over the modern-day Church of England, still immensely diverse but adorned with many-sided emblems of faith and worship, improved liturgies, ardent hymns, solemn processions, oratories and retreats, is an outstanding acknowledgment of just how radically the life of the Church of England was transformed by the Catholic imagination and dedication of the brilliant visionary fellows of the University of Oxford. References Chadwick, O.(1990) The Spirit of the Oxford Movement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Chandler, M.(2003) An Introduction to the Oxford Movement. London: Church Publishing, Inc. Church, R.W. (2004) The Oxford Movement: Twelve Years, 1833-1845. The Project Gutenberg PG Distributed Proofreaders and Million Book Project. Available at: www.gutenberg.net Cross, F. L. and Livingstone, E.A. ed.(1997) The Oxford dictionary of the Christian Church 3rd Edition Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press Herring, G. (2002) What Was the Oxford Movement London, New York: Biddies Ltd, Guildford, and Kings Lynn. Kenyon, R (1933) "The Social Aspect of the Catholic Revival". Northern Catholicism. London, Church Publishing, Inc. Available at: http://www.anglocatholicsocialism.org/ Morse-Boycott, D. (1933) "Richard Hurrell Froude 1803-1836." Text from Lead, Kindly Light: Studies of Saints and Heroes of the Oxford Movement New York: Macmillan, 1933 Available at: http://anglicanhistory.org/bios/kindly/froude.html Nockles, P.(1994), The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship 1760-1857, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Scudder, V.D.(1898) Social Ideals in English Letters. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1898. Available at http://www.anglocatholicsocialism.org/anglicanleft.html Reed, J.S. (1996) Glorious battle : the cultural politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. Bibliography Chadwick, H. (1983) Newman Oxford: Oxford University Press Faught, C. B. (2003), The Oxford Movement: A Thematic History of the Tractarians and their Times University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press Forrester, D.(1989) Young Doctor Pusey: A Study in Development. London: Mowbray Parsons, G. (1988) Religion in Victorian Britain I: Traditions Manchester: Manchester University Press Parsons, G. (1988b) Religion in Victorian Britain II: Controversies Manchester: Manchester University Press Rowell, G. (1983) The Vision Glorious: Themes and Personalities of the Catholic Revival in Anglicanism Oxford: Oxford University Press Skinner, S. (2004) Tractarians and the 'Condition of England' : the social and political thought of the Oxford Movement, Oxford: Clarendon Press Yarnold, E. (1976) Truth And Authority: A Commentary on the Agreed Statement of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission 'Authority in the Church' Venice, London: Church Publishing, Inc. Yates, N. (1999) Anglican Ritualism in Victorian Britain 1830-1910 Oxford: Oxford University Press Yoder, E. M., Jr. (1985) "A Revisitation: Oxford Movement" National Review January 11,1985 Read More