ANGLICAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
MISSIONARY DIOCESE OF CONGO
About the Church
Anglican and Catholic
The Anglican Catholic Church is worldwide body of Christians with churches in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Africa, India, and South America. We are Anglican because our tradition of prayer and worship is rooted in the Church of England and its Book of Common Prayer. We are Catholic because we believe and practice the universal or catholic faith of the church.
The word "Catholic" is often understood in opposition to the word "Protestant." However, this is both a recent and uniquely western perspective. In the ancient church, catholicism was understood to be the opposite of heresy, or false belief, and even today there are millions of Christians in Greece, Russia, and other parts of the world who consider themselves neither "Catholic" nor "Protestant," but "Orthodox."
During the sixteenth century, the Church of England sought to modify certain beliefs and practices that had developed over the centuries and appeared extraneous, unwise, or divergant from apostolic faith and practice. In doing so, the church did not abandon its catholicism; rather it engaged in a process of reform. As Bishop John Bramhall wrote in the seventeenth century, "our religion is the same it was, our Church the same it was...differing only from what they were formerly, as a garden weeded from a garden unweeded."
Anglicanism, then, is best understood as a reformed catholic faith. Likewise, we believe that the church is in need of continual renewal and reformation. It must oppose the errors of every age in order to "contend earnestly for the faith which was once delivered to the saints" (Jude 1:3).
A Faithful Tradition
In recent years, a number of Anglican jurisdictions have moved away from this historic and apostolic faith. This is why in 1977 an international congress of nearly 2,000 Anglican bishops, clergy and lay people met in St. Louis, Missouri, to take the actions necessary to establish an orthodox jurisdiction in which traditional Anglicanism would be maintained.
Acting according to the principles determined by the seven great Ecumenical Councils of the ancient Church and adopting initially the name "Anglican Church of North America," they placed themselves under the jurisdiction of the retired Episcopal bishop of Springfield, Illinois, the Right Reverend Albert Chambers. Bishop Chambers expanded that jurisdiction and devolved it upon others, by taking order for the consecration of four more bishops, and the Anglican Catholic Church was born.
In this section you will find more about our history and our beliefs. For further information, visit the Resources section of our website, or contact the parish near you.
What We Believe
Revelation and Tradition
The Anglican Catholic Church believes in the One, Holy, Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We believe that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved, and that most holy name is Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth. We believe that only through Him is the full revelation of God given to man and that we have the awesome responsibility to preach the Good News of salvation to all nations and tongues.
We believe that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the authentic record of God's revelation to man, a revelation that is valid for all men and all time. In the Bible we have God's revelation of Himself, His saving activity, and His moral demands. We believe that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works (2nd Timothy 3:16).
We believe the Catholic Faith as set forth in the three recognized Creeds of Christendom: the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and that known as the Creed of St. Athanasius. We receive and believe them in the sense they have had always in the Catholic Church.
We believe in the holy Tradition of the Church as set forth by the ancient catholic bishops and doctors, and especially as defined by the Seven Ecumenical Councils of the undivided Church.
Sacraments and Ministry
We hold dear the seven Sacraments of Grace, namely, the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and the Holy Eucharist, Holy Matrimony, Holy Orders, Penance, and Unction of the Sick. We believe them to be objective signs of Christ's continued presence and saving activity among us. We believe in the holy sacrifice of the Mass and that the body and blood of Christ is truly and really present in the Holy Eucharist.
We believe in God's gift of the apostolic ministry to His Church, asserting the necessity of a bishop in apostolic succession (or a priest ordained by such) as the celebrant of the Eucharist.
Furthermore, we hold that the Holy Orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons consist exclusively of men in accordance with Christ's will and institution.
Morality and Personal Accountability
We believe in the sanctity of human life; that life begins at the moment of conception; and that the willful taking of that life in the womb by abortion to be a grave sin (Title XV, Canon I, 1.01 of the Canons of the Anglican Catholic Church).
We believe in the family, in the God-given sacramental bond in marriage between one man and one woman. We profess that sexual activity is to be practiced only within the bonds of Holy Matrimony.
We believe that man is very far gone from original righteousness, is in rebellion against God's authority, and is liable to His righteous judgment. We believe that all people, individually and collectively, are responsible to their Creator for their acts, motives, thoughts, and words, since we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.
We believe it is the duty of the Church and her members to bear witness to Christian morality, to follow it in their lives, and to reject the false standards of the world.
Universality and the Catholic Faith
Lastly, the Anglican Catholic Church acknowledges that rule of faith laid down by St. Vincent of Lerins: "Let us hold that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all, for that is truly and properly Catholic."
The Bishops of this Church are committed to seeing that the Faith of Christ is kept entire as it was given to this Church. Any assertion to the contrary has no basis in fact. We call upon all the communicants of this church to believe without reservation that deposit of Faith that has been given to the Anglican Catholic Church and to earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints.
Jesus is Lord
An Audacious Claim
One of the great temptations in the modern world is to imagine Jesus Christ as great rabbi, moral teacher, or philosopher, but not God. In 1952 C. S. Lewis spoke to this matter in his classic defense of the faith, Mere Christianity:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
The Gospels record Jesus admitting at his trial to be the Messiah, the Son of God, and the King/Judge of the World who would reign from heaven with God (Mt 26:63-66, Mk 14:61-64, Lk 22:67-70, Jn 18:33-37). These claims were what led to his condemnation as a blasphemer and death on the cross. He also describes himself on rare occasions as "I AM" (e.g., Mk 6:50 in the original Greek, John 8:58), which is the meaning of the Hebrew name for God, Yahweh or Jehovah. What he claimed by his words he backed up with actions, since he accepted worship (Mt 14:33, 28:9, Jn 20:28) without rebuking the worshippers.
Thus we are left with two possibilities regarding his claims to divinity. They are either honestly portrayed or they are not.
Weighing the Evidence
Let us examine the matter of honest portrayal first. If Jesus' claims are accurately recorded in the Gospels, there are four possible explanations.
His claim is untrue, but he did not know it; he was a sincere but incredibly deluded man; a lunatic.
His claim is untrue and he knew it; he was an evil, deceiving fraud; liar and a con-artist.
His claim is true but was misunderstood by his first followers in that we are all gods; he was a guru.
His claim is true and was correctly understood by his disciples; he is the Lord.
Let us deal with each of these possibilities in turn.
To suggest that he was a lunatic, one must ignore clear evidence of his sanity, wisdom, and humour. One must try and square the man in the Gospels with the well-established psychological profile of the person with a "divinity complex" - dullness, predictability, and inability to love and understand others as they really are. This form of mental illness is the exact opposite of what one sees in the Jesus of the Gospels.
To suggest that Jesus was a liar, one must ignore clear evidence of his sincerity and beauty of character (generally acknowledged even by unbelievers) and call him a virtual devil in the flesh. Then one must presume that an insincere conman was willing to be slowly tortured and killed for the sake of a personal claim he didn't even believe himself.
To suggest that Jesus was a guru, one must ignore clear evidence of his Jewish background and suggest that he failed to get his most intimate associates to understand his point. One must believe that twentieth-century Westerners with a partial interest in Eastern religion understand first-century Judaism better than first-century Jews themselves.
To suggest that Jesus was Lord may seem farfetched, but it is the only option that squares with both the written records and what we know of human nature.
The Reliability of Sources
But what if the written records are not reliable? What if the disciples are the ones who cannot be trusted? This is, of course, possible, but given the circumstances, once again highly unlikely.
The earliest recorded claims of Jesus' divinity come from the generation after his death; from people who knew him or his disciples. In this respect, the Gospels are no different from other sources upon which we base our knowledge of the ancient world. They are made up of firsthand testimony from people whose claims could be disputed and checked. If we can believe that Socrates taught the pursuit of wisdom to the youth of Athens, we should be able to believe that Jesus Christ said certain things to his disciples in Galilee. There is as much evidence for one of these claims as there is the other.
Furthermore, the disciples were monotheists, and had been taught all their lives that worshipping anything other than God was a terrible sin. There would be powerful internal constraints against proclaiming a man to be divine, wonders and miracles notwithstanding. And the external deterrants would have been even more compelling. Advancing claims about Jesus' divinity often led to marginalization within the community, and in some cases to torture and death. The disciples had no motive to lie or exaggerate or lie about Jesus that could possibly compare with the benefits of keeping silent.
The Son of the Living God
In examining the evidence it becomes apparent that there are good and valid reasons to believe the Gospel record to be true. If this is the case, one must confront the possibility that Jesus is who He says He is, and that God has inserted Himself into human history in a miraculous fashion. And then it is up to us to decide whether the the possibility is not just a possibility, but is actually true.
We in the Anglican Catholic Church believe that it is. And so we echo St. Peter in saying, "thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God."
The Bible is the Word of God
The Inspiration of Holy Scripture
Anglican Catholics believe in the plenary or full inspiration of Scripture. That is, every syllable in Scripture is inspired by God and is meant to teach the Church something. However, how any particular book or text teaches and what it teaches are matters of debate. Interpretation of Scripture rests first and decisively with the whole Church through the ages, so that tradition is the best guide to its meaning.
Furthermore, the whole Church guarantees the inspired character of all of the canonical Bible equally, so that personal judgments concerning human authorship or value are not very important. A canonical text is a canonical text, guaranteed by the Church as such, whoever produced it and however he or they did so. Beyond such general assertions Anglican Catholics are relatively free in their Biblical studies and interpretations. The Anglican Churches historically, and the Anglican Catholic Church today, do not bind their members or scholars to any single theory of Biblical inspiration or interpretation. But with freedom goes responsibility. The Anglican Biblical scholar is responsible to the whole Church, and ultimately his work is judged by its fidelity to the faith and doctrine of the Church.
There are many theories concerning the way in which God inspired Holy Scripture. These theories range from the idea that God immediately and directly caused the biblical writers to produce the biblical texts, so that those writers really were nothing more than secretaries for the Holy Spirit, to the idea that God worked in an entirely natural manner within the history of his people and thereby permitted the natural abilities and interests and needs of the Church and her writers to produce what is now recognized as Scripture. Between the idea of inspiration as an almost wholly supernatural process and that of inspiration as almost wholly natural lies a variety of intermediate theories involving more or less direct divine control over the process of writing.
Probably no single theory of inspiration is adequate for explaining the whole of Scripture with all its great variety. In some cases, God may have inspired the biblical writers by providing a direct and supernatural vision or infused knowledge. In other cases, God may have inspired by exciting or encouraging extraordinary, but entirely natural, interests and abilities. Sometimes God may have inspired by guiding the selection or editing of preexisting texts, some of which may even have come from totally uninspired sources. At other times, God may have inspired by his general providential governance of human history or indirectly by shaping a second writer by a more directly inspired primary writer. So long as one accepts that God is quite capable of inspiring in any and all of these ways, and that God did fully inspire the authors of Scripture in ways sufficient to work his will, more detailed explanations may be left to private opinion.
Interpretation and Inerrancy
As for the interpretation of these inspired texts, St. Thomas Aquinas notes that "all the senses of Holy Scripture are built on the literal sense..." (Summa Theologiae, I.i.10). So, for instance, if Scripture says, 'God stretched out his mighty arm to save his people', one must begin with the literal sense of ‘arm’ and literal examples of a mighty arm rescuing someone. Without understanding the plain and literal meaning of such terms, the text will mean nothing or anything. However, the primacy of the literal meaning does not require one to believe that God is a physical being with a bodily arm or that he always saves his people by a physical intervention. One must begin with the literal sense, or else any text can mean anything one wants it to; but sometimes that literal sense is not the best final interpretation. In the case of God’s mighty arm, for instance, the ‘literal figurative’ sense is better than the ‘literal literal’ sense.
From the time of the Fathers onward orthodox students of the Bible have known that texts in Scripture sometimes have both literal and figurative senses. One traditional division of meanings is four-fold: literal and historical; allegorical; tropological or moral; and anagogical or eschatological. So, for instance, ‘Jerusalem’ in Scripture can refer to the city in Palestine (literal); the Church (allegorical); Christians as God’s pure and holy people (moral); and heaven (anagogical). In any given case all four of these levels of meaning may be in play, or one or two of them might be and the others not. Many students of the Bible, however, caution against excessively figurative or allegorical interpretation. Aquinas again, for instance, says that a figurative interpretation should not be used to establish doctrine by itself and that what is conveyed in one text figuratively always is found elsewhere in Scripture literally.
The Bible includes a variety of kinds of literature and genres. It is not always clear what kind of literature one is dealing with in any given text. Obviously parables, poetry, historical narratives, apocalyptic visions, and didactic letters, to give a few examples, require different interpretive approaches. Since different genres must be interpreted differently, and since many biblical texts must have a ‘literal figurative’ or metaphorical sense (again, consider ‘God’s mighty arm’), it is not clear that the Fundamentalist approach to Scripture is helpful or even meaningful. (‘Fundamentalism’ is the belief that every verse of the Bible is inerrant, not only in its original doctrinal purport but also in matters of science and historical fact.) What, for instance, might it mean to say in a Fundamentalist sense that the Song of Solomon, with all its exotic images, is verbally inerrant in every way?
The Bible is inerrant in that as God’s inspired word it conveys saving truth and the meaning intended by God when he inspired its authors. God’s purpose quite probably differs in different parts of Scripture. Nevertheless, whatever the divine purpose is for a given text, that purpose most assuredly is inerrantly fulfilled by the text. To discover this purpose and the saving truth intended by God, the interpreter of Scripture must always read with the eyes of the Church. If one reads without the guidance of the Church and her tradition, then God’s purpose in inspiring a given text will not necessarily be fulfilled. The ACC holds that there is a conservative, non-fundamentalist, mean between the poles of extreme literalism and free-floating allegorization. We should neither divorce Scripture from facts, nor push the facts beyond the need to ground necessary doctrine. We should not push the stories too far; nor should we presume to judge the stories as primitive.
The Church's Book
Anglicans have traditionally insisted on a Biblical foundation for all dogmas or essential doctrines. In that respect the Anglican tradition could be said to maintain sola Scriptura, Scripture alone, a cry of the Reformation. But the Protestant church-bodies almost always understand sola scriptura in a sense that cannot be sustained. Scripture does not exist apart from the tradition of the universal Church. The Bible is the Church’s book, and the Church is its authoritative interpreter. The Church existed before the Bible in point of time. The Church determined which of many contending books were in fact authentic Scripture. The Church decided which of many contending interpretations of the contents of Scripture were correct. And the Church still shows us the proper interpretation of Scripture. Scripture holds the roots of the tradition, for the developing books began to form with and in the earliest Church, but Scripture never exists apart from that tradition. There is no sola Scriptura in that sense.
These ideas are evident in the Elizabethan divine, Richard Hooker. Hooker warns against the idea that Scripture can be read without consulting the tradition, as extreme Puritans and Anabaptists proposed: "when they and their Bibles were alone together, what strange fantastical opinion soever at any time entered into their heads, their use was to think the Spirit taught it them." (Laws, Preface VIII.7) The result of isolation from the tradition is "phrensies concerning our Saviour’s incarnation, the state of souls departed," and the Trinity, as well as civil revolution, moral enormities, and in fact anything the human mind can think up. Apart from the tradition as an anchor, Scripture can be made to support almost anything.
One central problem in the Christian world today is the exaltation of private opinion above the tradition. This exaltation fits well with modern individualism and the common suspicion of all authority, not to mention the postmodernists’ radical perspectivism, skepticism, and relativism. While the abuse of authority often may explain suspicion of authority, Christianity cannot long survive where the tradition is rejected wholesale.
So far as Biblical interpretation goes, the Church guides interpretation through tradition and living consensus. Creeds and doctrine clarify and focus the meaning of Scripture, and especially of Scriptural narrative. The narrative, with its stories, histories, parables, and allegories, in turn both grounds the creeds and also has a dynamic openness that creeds and theology alone would never have. The story of the Good Samaritan, for instance, illustrates and teaches propositions about universal obligations and charity; but it is also is dynamic, inexhaustible, and never fully reducible to mere propositions--in short, the inspired Word of God.
We are called to Repentance
From Paradise to the Fall
The Church has always read Genesis as the foundation of a number of doctrines and also as foreshadowing’s of Christ and Christian salvation. The doctrines grounded in the Genesis stories include creation ex nihilo (from nothing – God at the first created from nothing, he did not merely shape something preexisting); creation of humanity by divine inspiration or ensoulment; the monogenetic origin of humanity (we have a common ancestor); and the fall. Contrary to what the world would have us believe, none of these doctrines rooted in Genesis conflict in substance with modern science or history.
The Big Bang sounds very like creatio ex nihilo, to the extent that a prominent physicist described its effect as "let there be light!" Likewise with ensoulment. If one believes in evolution, then one believes that at some point, that which was not human became human--evolutionary theory is simply an explanation of the mechanics of that 'becoming.' As for the monogenetic origin of mankind, modern genetics suggest that there is, in fact, one common human ancestor--the so-called 'mitochondrial Eve'. And the reality of man's fall into sin is amply demonstrated by watching the nightly news. The question of science versus scripture is really a red herring that distracts us from pondering what the Bible actually teaches about the human condition. If we put unnecessary speculation aside, we find the message of Genesis to be as such.
When human beings came into existence as rational and moral beings endowed with free will, aware of the realities of truth and love, they simultaneously became capable of knowing Love Himself: this is part of what it is to be made 'in the image of God'. Our Creator, who had designed and caused this to be, immediately revealed Himself to the first such beings in His image. However, at some point in the relationship, Mankind chose to reject God, break communion with Him, and attempted to become his own god.
From this pride, rebellion and self-deception came the corruption of human nature due to its disconnection from God and loss of the supernatural blessings of this relationship. Humans continue to seek short-term pleasure over long-term happiness and continue to undermine their specifically human dignity and purpose by allowing animal instincts to rule over the reason and will, rather than the other way around. We retain a life of the body and soul, but have lost the spiritual life which alone could inspire and strengthen their will and safely order their reason.
Our fundamental problem is that we cannot consistently love God or neighbor from the heart and are lost in selfishness. This is the truth of the Fall.
The Good News
However, all is not lost. God, being Love, wants to rescue us from our evil and bring us back into fellowship and friendship with Him. By word and deed He revealed himself to and through a chosen portion of humanity (a particularly oppressed portion: those descendants of Abraham known as the Israelites) and showed them the way of love and goodness. But the weakness of mankind led to rejection of His love, and so, having prepared the way using prophets and the few other faithful ones, He came down to our level, given we are not capable of reaching up to His. God the Son took human nature upon Himself as part of a plan to restore us to the divine family, giving us a share in his relationship with the God the Father in the power of God the Holy Spirit.
Through this Incarnation (literally en-fleshment), God in the person of Jesus restored our human nature by taking it on Himself and absorbing the terrifying consequences of our sin (as seen in the suffering and death of his torture and crucifixion) without, of course, being or becoming sinful. At the Cross-we see the collision of pure, forgiving love with pure, hating evil. Thus, on the Cross, Jesus Christ overcomes the evil in us on our behalf: and with his divine life destroys human death in the Resurrection. His act of perfect, self-sacrificial obedience fulfils God's holiness and righteousness and has the power to undo and reverse our disobedience and its results.
This victory is a victory for all of us, if we will only accept and receive it by saying 'yes' to God's offer of love and mercy. We do this by joining ourselves in loving trust to Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, as our very Life -- and carrying this 'yes' to God through our lives. The final result is reunion with God forever, as the free gift we have accepted is in fact the Life of God, the Holy Spirit, who is able to make us share in the Resurrection of Jesus.
A Change of Heart
Pope John Paul II once said, "conversion means accepting, by a personal decision, the saving sovereignty of Christ and becoming his disciple." To be converted is to make a personal choice of faith, the choice to trust and follow Jesus. It is to say 'yes' to God. God wants us to turn away from the darkness of selfishness, self-obsession and self-worship and turn towards His light by accepting the forgiveness of sins and new life offered through Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. This is a significant step, and even a difficult one to take, for two main reasons.
First, it does not happen by default, just because we are baptised and/or go to church. It is possible to go to church every week out of habit, convention, obedience or fear and never take advantage of the grace God offers there. It is possible to be a 'Christian', but only in appearance; to know and recite the creeds but not know God because you have never sought Him. This is not something anyone else can do for you. You have to choose, you have to make a commitment. Second, admitting we are not self-sufficient and need God's mercy because of our sinfulness goes against the grain. It goes against our pride. We have to admit to the dark corners of our hearts and we have to admit that God is in charge.
So, why bother? Why not just carry on regardless? Because to ignore and treat with disdain God's crucified love is not only terrifyingly dishonest, ungrateful and loveless; it is the kind of sin that spiritually kills us by hardening our hearts. This is serious business. It is not a game, it is life and death. But more importantly, it is because what God offers, we need. In the end, many things in this world will claim to offer us 'fulfillment', but, to quote a prayer of St Augustine, "You made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You."
Who needs to be converted? Anybody who is not spiritually connected to Christ through faith and love, either because they have never had that relationship or because they have lost it. What does conversion involve? It consists of three parts, will, word, and action, each involving two aspects, faith and repentance.
From Thought, to Word, to Deed
In the Old Testament of the Bible God says, "cast away from you all the transgressions you have committed against me and get yourselves a new heart" (Ezekiel 18:31); elsewhere the prophet Hosea says, "take words with you and return to the Lord: say to him, take away all guilt" (14:2). In the New Testament St Paul states "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10:9). We need to turn our backs on everything opposed to God and follow the living Lord.
Once we have walked the path of penitance and prayer, we make it a practical reality by allowing God to work in us by his sacraments, and through us by our good deeds. For those not yet baptized and/or confirmed this means receiving these sacraments to unite them fully with Christ and his Church by the power of the Holy Spirit. For those who have received these sacraments, but who have drifted or fallen away from God, the normal way to come back to him is the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession & Absolution).
For all of us what comes next is to live the Christian life in earnest, obeying the commands to love God and neighbour. We can only manage this if we are continually sustained spiritually by the Eucharist, prayer and meditation on the Scriptures. We are called, then, to repent...and be converted, that...sins may be wiped away, [and] that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord (Acts 3:19).
The Sacraments Convey Grace
More than Signs
The sacraments are the means through which God unites his creation to himself and shares the fruit of the Incarnation with mankind. The Prayer Book Catechism says that a sacrament is:
...an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us; ordained by Christ himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof. (1928 Book of Common Prayer, p. 581)
From this we learn that a sacrament is a means of grace: not a mere badge or token of grace received otherwise, but rather an effective sign by which grace is given and by which that gift is pledged for our assurance. This definition is in contrast to some Protestant views which hold that a sacrament has no objective, actual effect, but only is a mere sign or token of grace that is given aside from the sacraments.
Ex Opere Operato
The Catholic view is that sacraments are not mere signs, but rather are signs which effect what they signify and signify what they effect.
Consider, for example, baptism. Some Protestants hold that baptism is a mere token of forgiveness of sins, which forgiveness God actually gives immediately to the soul of those to be saved in response to faith or merely of his good pleasure. The Anglican Catholic view is that baptism is the means used primarily by God to forgive sins, convey grace, begin new life, and incorporate the new Christian into the Body of Christ. We believe in ‘Baptism for the remission of sins’ (Nicene Creed), and not merely as a sign of such remission given otherwise – though the sacraments also are such signs or pledges. So, baptism not only signifies washing from sin, but also is the means by which sins are washed away.
Sacraments are confected by human ministers, but these ministers are merely instruments. The primary agent is God. The sacraments are divine acts performed by human instruments for human beings. Since the sacraments are primarily God’s acts, they do not depend upon the personal worthiness of their ministers (cf. Article XXVI, BCP, p. 607). Likewise the sacraments are effective even when they are imperfectly understood by their minister or recipient: indeed, we can never fully understand the sacraments or the grace they convey. However, a direct or habitual rejection of God or of the grace offered in a particular sacrament does render the recipient incapable of receiving the grace of that sacrament.
A ‘direct’ rejection of God or of the grace of the sacraments would include, for instance, someone making his communion to please his parents, while in his heart rejecting belief in God or telling himself that the Eucharist is superstitious nonsense. An ‘habitual’ rejection of God or of the grace of the sacraments means the recipient is living a life that as a whole is turned away from God and the possibility of growth in grace. Someone, for instance, who lives persistently in a state of adultery is habitually turned away from God. In such a state he is essentially closed to receiving the grace of a sacrament, though he may not directly or consciously reject that grace and though he may not think that he is receiving the sacraments fruitlessly.
In short, in the sacraments God always, truly, really, and objectively conveys grace, except to those who positively reject the grace offered or who have rendered themselves incapable of receiving it. Grace is always offered through the sacraments, but sometimes the offer is refused. The sacraments are sometimes likened to a train on a track: the train will reach the end of the track necessarily unless something stops or derails it.
There are, of course, many other means of grace besides the sacraments. For instance, prayer outside the sacraments is a means of grace. These other means of grace (many of which are called, somewhat confusingly, ‘sacramentals’, as opposed to ‘sacraments’) differ from the sacraments. Sacraments convey grace objectively to all who do not positively reject it. Sacramentals depend much more on the subjective intention, piety, and effort of those who use them. For instance, someone who blesses himself with holy water is not thereby objectively made any better or holier. If he does receive grace on account of his act, that grace flows from the pious intention he brought to it – from the recollection of baptism stirred up by his act, for instance.
This distinction between sacraments and sacramentals is sometimes spoken of with two Latin tags. Sacraments convey grace ex opere operato (by the work worked – as the objective result of what is done). Sacramentals convey grace ex operando operis (by the working of the work – as a result of something subjective in the process of doing what is done). So, a sacrament is an ‘outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace’ which both gives the grace it signifies and also assures us that that grace is objectively offered. A sacrament is real and effective if it is ‘valid’. To be valid it must have several elements: proper form (the words said), matter (the thing done or the visible action or the material used), minister (the person who performs the sacrament), and intention (the intent or purpose of the minister). Proper intention usually means intending what Christ or the Church wishes us to do in the sacrament and not intending anything that contradicts that. No one can receive any other sacrament until he is baptized. To have a good effect the sacrament most also have a proper recipient.
Besides validity, theologians also speak of sacramental regularity and irregularity. An irregular sacrament is valid (i.e., it truly offers grace) but unlawful. For instance, a priest who has been deposed from holy orders ought not to administer the sacrament of penance or absolution (except, perhaps, to someone in extremis). Nevertheless, if he does so, the grace of the sacrament is given.
Seven in Number
There are seven sacraments: Holy Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, the Holy Eucharist, Holy Matrimony, Holy Orders, and Unction of the Sick.
The Articles of Religion say that there are two sacraments ordained by Christ, namely baptism and the Eucharist, and that the other five things commonly called sacraments are different from these two in that they lack a visible sign or ceremony ordained by God. The Catechism also speaks of "two only, as generally necessary to salvation..." ordained by Christ (BCP, p. 581).
Most Anglican Catholic theologians interpret these two formularies as follows: there are, as commonly held in the Eastern and Western Churches, seven sacraments. Two of these were instituted by Christ himself as the generally necessary means to salvation, namely baptism and the Eucharist. The phrase itself is a term of art with a closely defined meaning. To say that two sacraments only are generally necessary to salvation means exactly what is says and nothing more or less. By `generally necessary’, we mean that some of the other sacraments may be necessary for some people, but not in general or for all.
So, for instance, if John has a vocation to the priesthood, or if Jim and Mary have a vocation to the married state, then one of the other sacraments is particularly necessary for their salvation. But not everyone has such a vocation, so matrimony and ordination cannot be generally necessary for salvation. Likewise, everyone should be confirmed: confirmation is a sacrament that should be general. But confirmation is not absolutely necessary to salvation, or even for admission to Holy Communion, if, for instance, there is no bishop available for a long time, as in the American Colonies before the consecration of Samuel Seabury on November 14, 1784. But the fact that Confirmation may not be generally necessary to salvation, does not make it any less of a sacrament.
The Question of Faith
Some might ask, 'why must we have these sacraments at all; is not faith in Christ alone necessary for salvation'? The brief answer is this: in general it is necessary to have faith in Christ, be baptized, and then regularly receive the Eucharist. This brief answer needs elaboration.
It usually is easier and safer to speak positively about salvation than negatively. God has told us infallibly what we need to do to be saved. God does not tell us infallibly who in particular will not be saved. God is free to save anyone anyway he pleases, for "the Spirit bloweth where he listed." That God promises to save people in a certain way, however, does not mean that he cannot or does not save people in other ways. We don't know about that. We are not invited to make judgements about who is not saved. We are commanded to do what God tells us so that we will be saved.
So, what is necessary for salvation? The general picture we get from the New Testament is that salvation is a two-fold process. It requires that we die to self and live to God. We die to self by repentance for past sins, which are revealed by the light of God's commandments, and with faith in his promises. This dying to self is accomplished `generally' by faith in the heart and by baptism: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved..." (Mk 16:16). So too when the Philippian jailer asks Sts. Paul and Silas, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved," Paul answers, "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ," and then baptizes him "straightway" (Acts 13:30-33).
After we die to self by inner conversion and baptism, we live to God by following his commandments, especially concerning love. The Eucharist both enables and symbolizes this `new life' (Book of Common Prayer, p. 75) in God, for it feeds us constantly in and with the Body of Christ into which baptism incorporates us. Naturally the other sacraments and practices of Christian piety enter into this new life.
This is the general, positive rule. It does not follow that there are no exceptions. The Church from very early days, for instance, enrolled among the martyrs those catechumens (people preparing for baptism) who were killed during persecutions. While the Fathers certainly view baptism as "generally necessary," the circumstances of persecution create an anamolous situation where the general rule cannot apply. The Fathers speak of such martyred catechumens as receiving the "baptism of blood," which certainly is adequate to wash away their sins. The necessity for baptism presupposes opportunity. Where opportunity does not present itself the Church accepts the "baptism of desire," the desire to be baptized, for the fact of baptism. Our Lord suggests as much: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.' (Mk 16:16, again.) Note that Christ does not say, `He that is not baptized shall be damned.'
Nevertheless, it is never safe to suppose that a mental, subjective state of faith in Christ can replace the objectively effective sacrament established and commanded (Mt 28:19) by him. A positive refusal to seek baptism at the first opportunity argues that what seems to be faith is no such thing. Faith properly leads, not to a minimal, grudging participation in the sacramental life of the Church, but to the fullness of such participation, with all of its sacraments, acts of piety and worship, and opportunities for service and growth in faith, hope, and love.
Moral Principles Matter
Christian Moral Teaching
Christianity is not primarily about morality. Most moral duties, obligations, and prohibitions do not flow from the Bible or from God’s special revelation but rather from the natural law and from common humanity. The Bible often reveals, and the Church often teaches, the content of the natural law in a particularly clear manner. However, when the Church asserts a duty flowing from human nature, she is not usually attempting to impose a specifically religious obligation. The Church’s moral teaching merely explains what is in accordance with the specifically human goals of life and with the common requirements for humane existence. The Church’s moral teaching, therefore, rests upon reason, first, but reason as most clearly understood in the light of Scripture and tradition. Or as St. Thomas Aquinas put it, "Grace does not destroy but rather perfects nature."
Good deeds do not earn us salvation. Rather good deeds are a natural response to God’s free and unelicited gift of grace to man in Christ. God gives grace freely in the first instance. Thereafter God calls his people to cooperate with his grace by "a godly, righteous, and sober life" (BCP, p. 6). The Church’s moral teaching is meant to help people respond to God’s initiative for their salvation. Morality is a secondary, though vital, consequence of the Christian Faith.
All human beings with the use of reason, except for some kinds of insane persons, have a general moral sense, which one may call conscience. In addition all persons make practical judgements, again often called acts of conscience, concerning the rightness or wrongness of their actions. Humans are always obliged to do what they believe to be right, since to do otherwise would be to do what they believe is wrong. It is, therefore, never safe to disobey one’s own conscience. However, conscience, although it must always be followed, is not objectively infallible. A right conscience is one that is properly informed and that is attentive to the appropriate laws or rules governing a particular act.
Following one’s conscience does not excuse from sin if the agent has failed or refused to do his best to see to it that his conscience is rightly informed. The Christian’s duty is to consider the morality of his actions carefully and to attempt to inform himself concerning the circumstances and laws that properly should govern those actions. However, if one has attempted to inform oneself and to follow the proper laws as best one understands them, then he has acted conscientiously and without moral fault or subjective sin, even if his act is actually and objectively wrong.
Life and Death
God is the "Lord and Giver of life" (Nicene Creed). The right to life is the most fundamental human right, since without it no other right can be enjoyed or exercised in this world. God alone, therefore, has the right to take innocent human life. For this reason the Church ‘has universally upheld the sanctity of human life, and...this Church continues to condemn the wilful, intentional, and direct taking of innocent human life’ (Canons of the ACC: Title XV, Canon 2). This is the most basic rule governing all life and death issues: it is always wrong to will directly the death of an innocent human being.
Thus murder, which is by definition the wrongful taking of an innocent life, is obviously condemned. Suicide is similarly seen as a violation of this rule. The fact that the life being taken is one’s own does not change the evil of directly willing to take innocent human life. If one is guilty of some crime, and does not consider himself innocent and deserving of life, then he must let the civil magistrate or God consider his case and impose punishment, if appropriate. It is not just for a man to be judge in his own case, even if he is inclined to condemn himself.
Human Sexuality
The Anglican Catholic Church teaches, as the Church has always taught in conformity with Scripture, that genital sexual acts are only licit and moral within the context of monogamous heterosexual marriage. For Christians the physical act of sexual intercourse has a kind of sacramental character. That is, it is an outward and visible sign, which expresses and deepens the inward and spiritual character of the sacrament of matrimony. Matrimony itself properly presupposes a lifelong, exclusive commitment for the ends of mutual comfort and support and for the procreation and nurture of children if that may be. Insofar as sexual acts fall outside this normative setting and commitment, they are disordered and wrong: they are outward signs of an underlying reality that is not present.
Sexual sins are by no means the worst sins. However, neither are they trivial, for sexuality is an important part of a person’s humanity and personality. While some society can probably be found somewhere that permits any given sexual practice, nevertheless, every known society has sexual rules, taboos, and norms. The idea that sexual acts are merely private is wrongheaded, for sexual acts and attitudes have profound social consequences. The Church and state both quite properly have an interest in seeing that individuals are taught and encouraged to direct their sexual energies in positive, constructive channels.
The Christian in Society
The Church’s moral teaching includes principles that are both ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’, and as a whole the Church’s teaching is outside the current political spectrum. For instance, the natural law as understood by the Church includes the principle of subsidiarity, which holds that in general things that can be done privately, rather than publicly, should be left private, while things that must be done publicly should be done by the lowest level of public authority that is practical and efficient. This principle might well seem to be ‘conservative’ in the modern political scheme. The Church’s moral teaching also holds that the right to private property is qualified by the higher demands of the public good. This principle might well seem to be ‘liberal’.
In general, however, the Church’s concern is for the salvation of souls and the promotion of "true religion and virtue." Modern regimes are not generally organized around any particular vision of true religion or virtue, but rather around instrumental, secondary goods (such as economic prosperity or liberty). It is not clear that such a truncated political vision is desirable or can long endure. While the Church does not endorse contending political candidates or parties, the Church’s moral teaching at times might well have political and even partisan implications. Some of these teachings are discussed in brief under the links located at the right. In modern democracies, it is up to the individual believer to determine which party or candidates best conform to the teachings of the Church.
Traditional Worship is Relevant
Rites and Ceremonies
‘Liturgy’ comes from two Greek words meaning literally ‘the work of the people.’ Liturgy is worship, the proper activity of the people of God. Liturgy is composed of rites and ceremonies.
Ritual and ceremonial strictly speaking are quite different. ‘Rite’ can mean: either a broad liturgical family consisting of distinct liturgies, forms, customs, and ceremonies (e.g., the Roman Rite, the Coptic Rite, or the Byzantine Rite); or a particular liturgical form, such as the rite of baptism, the rite of the blessing of a house, or the Eucharistic rite. Ceremonies are the physical actions, gestures, or other ‘embroidery’ of a particular rite. So, for instance, making the sign of the cross and bowing are ceremonies. Strictly speaking, then, one attends a wedding rite, at which a number of ceremonies occur such as the giving and receiving of rings.
Ceremonial is sometimes criticized by Christians who do not understand that it is both humanly unavoidable and also a natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine. The central doctrine of the Faith is the Incarnation, our belief in the embodiment or enfleshment of God the Son by which he became God-with-us. It is natural, given this doctrine, that the Faith continues to express itself outwardly in physical rites and ceremonies. Christ himself implied such physical expres-sions in his ministry and teaching, as when he was baptized with water, when he used bread and wine at the Last Supper, when he healed using spittle and clay or by breathing on someone, and when in instructions to the disciples or in sermons and parables he spoke of the healing or preservative nature of oil and wine and salt.
Furthermore, ritual and ceremonial are inevitable. When someone comes into a home or office most people have a little ritual of greeting with its own ceremonies: they open the door or stand up, shake hands, usher the visitor in, show him a chair, offer coffee, sit down, arrange papers on a desk or lean back in a chair. The fact that such rituals and ceremonies are unconscious does not change what they are. Even religious bodies that formally repudiate ritual and ceremonial in fact inevitably smuggle them back in: their worship has its own patterns and customs, even if these are not recognized as rituals and ceremonies or written down anywhere. The difference with Anglicans is that we recognize our rituals and ceremonies for what they are, we draw them from Scripture and tradition, and we use them consciously to express and teach the orthodox faith.
The use of largely fixed, written rites is very ancient. It is true that in the most ancient Church the Eucharistic canon was often said extem-poraneously by the bishop, though always with certain elements and formulas included. However, the danger of this method appeared quickly as heretical bishops imported false doctrine into their prayers. A fixed liturgy became a way of protecting the congregation from both heresy and also from the perhaps more common problems of bad taste and bad sense in their clergy. Of course Jewish worship, from which the early Church drew much of its earliest liturgy, involved many fixed forms and ceremonies, both in the sacrificial cult of the Jerusalem temple and in the worship of the synagogues.
The whole point of a fixed liturgy is that it frees the worshipping mind from the need to exercise critical judgement during worship. That is, since one already knows what the fixed prayer says, there is no need to distract oneself in the middle of prayer in order to analyze the meaning of the words. But if one does not know the prayer, then a part of the mind has to analyze it in order to discover whether its meaning. And if one does not know the prayer, then it is difficult to say `Amen' to it until the intellect has determined whether it is theologically sound and expresses the thoughts of the heart. And, as C.S. Lewis correctly observed, few things are so destructive to devout prayer as the necessity of exercising such simultaneous critical judgement.
Traditional Language
The whole idea of liturgical worship is traditional rather than contemporary. The idea of people sitting, listening, singing, and praying mostly in quiet for an hour is radically not contemporary and unlike anything else people do these days. Even in liturgically-oriented Churches that use ‘modern’ language rites, the clergy dress up in funny clothes and expect people to listen to them as people listen to no one else (except perhaps university professors in class) in our day and age. Then too the Churches are, or at least should be, talking to their listeners about things that are also radically not contemporary: death, judgement, heaven, hell, God, immortal souls, sins, righteousness, faith, hope, charity, virtue, vice, grace, and eternity. These things are important and abidingly relevant, because human nature and human needs never change at their roots. But these things also are not ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary’. As many pointed out during the Prayer Book debates of the 1970s and 1980s, our culture at present is not capable of generating a modern liturgical language that will do for the purposes of worship.
Why? Well, for one thing our culture at the moment is deeply fragmented. The prose of Shakespeare, for example, conveys astonishing layers of meaning that can keep the greatest mind working for a life-time. But Shakespeare’s prose also was easily ‘understanded of the people’, the everyday folk who attended his plays. We have no such general culture or language now. Today a group of teenagers talking among themselves, computer geeks, the people who go to see Shakespeare, and policemen all can makes themselves understood to each other, but their preferred language can be nearly unintelligible to others. It’s partly a matter of education, but more a matter of fragmented interests and specializations. There is no possible liturgical language that will mirror the preferred, contemporary language of all of those, and a thousand other, groups.
Furthermore, the language available to us for sacred things is traditional and comes from a period when English popular culture and English religion were closely intertwined. It has been pointed out that one modern Bible translation usually renders ‘righteousness’ as ‘justice’ and, occasionally, as ‘integrity’. But ‘righteousness’ is a word suited to the reality intended by the Hebrew and Greek words that it renders. ‘Justice’ and ‘integrity’ are quite different and are not so close.
Likewise, there is no possible modern translation for ‘Lord’, which is a word absolutely central to the Christian faith. What are the ‘modern’ alternatives? ‘CEO’? ‘President’? These obviously will not do. Our choice is to stick with an old word that refers to a reality utterly divorced from ‘modern’ experience and yet utterly necessary for Christians, or to substitute a word that will falsify entirely the reality. Abolish the old word for a contemporary substitute and you will do violence to the faith and, in the end, as George Orwell taught us, you will render the idea of the 'Lord' literally unthinkable.
In any case traditional language for sacred things not only cannot be replaced at the present time, but also doesn’t need to be replaced. It is still intelligible, except insofar as the hearers are cut off from the very concepts and culture of the sacred itself. The Prayer Book is far more easily understood than, say, Shakespeare. But if ‘righteousness’ or ‘divine majesty’ sound strange to some, then it is precisely they who need to be challenged with such words and the realities that they express. People who are far removed from sacred things need to be shown that fact by the slightly foreign language of worship.
Rather than do violence to the faith by expressing it in inappropriate language, the language of worship should challenge the modern hearer to learn of the new and strange things of which the Church speaks. The art historian speaks with a special vocabulary (Romanesque, gesso, fresco, iconic) which the student has to learn and which cannot be abandoned without making it harder to explain art history. Why do we suppose that, in an age when people do not typically imbibe their religion with their mother’s milk and their mother tongue, that the Church can abandon traditional liturgical language without making it harder to learn the faith? The fact is, it cannot.