Unity and Patrimony

After the thaw, Holy Trinity Winchester was back on form this morning. They even laughed at the right places in the sermon - so for better or worse, here it is:-



There is a variety of gifts, but always the same Spirit I Cor xii.4

One of the great men of Methodism was coming to Oxford to speak, and a friend of mine from college dragged me along. Well, it was unity week after all. The topic was to be ‘The Ethos of Methodism’. Little of what he said remains all these years later, but how I felt about the talk I have never forgotten. He had listed the particular emphases which he saw as being the special gifts of Methodism – and each of them seemed to me to belong equally to the Church of England.

It is a little like that over the recent proposals to welcome the special graces of Anglicanism (the Anglican Patrimony, they call it) into the Roman Catholic church. At a meeting about the proposals, held last week in Bournemouth, one Roman Catholic lady asked very pointedly just what we thought we were bringing to the Catholic Church. Did they not, after all, possess every possible gift and blessing already? My hackles began to rise; until I remembered that was just how I had thought about Methodism all those years ago.

We are beginning the week of Prayer for Christian Unity; so it is a good time to be asking about gifts; and especially so in view of today’s Epistle; ‘there is a variety of gifts, but always the same Spirit’, says S Paul. Perhaps it is because the Spirit is One that I recognised in Methodism things which I had always thought particularly Anglican.


The Holy Spirit, though, does measure his gifts according to the capacity and the needs of those who receive them. The gift of celibacy is just that; a gift, for those who are chosen to receive it. In the Roman Catholic church, that is seen as the special calling of all priests. Not so in the Church of England; and not so in the Orthodox churches, nor even in the Eastern Rite churches of the Roman Church. There is no doubt that a celibate priest can devote himself whole-heartedly to the needs of his parishioners; But there is also a vocation to Holy Matrimony, and the married Vicar, who must give attention to his wife and family, may also have them as his allies in ministry. How many clergy wives have enriched their husbands’ ministry? And how many clergy children, by humanising their father, have made him more useful to the parents and children in the parish? It is not that celibacy or the married state is better or worse than the other; as St Paul tells us, there is a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit, at work in all sorts of different ways in different people.

A very wise Roman Catholic priest told me that he never had any problem with people of other churches when they spoke positively about their belief; but when they said what they DID NOT, or COULD NOT, believe, that was where the trouble started. In the same way, it is no good looking at the Roman church and telling them “Your preaching isn’t as good as ours” or “your priests don’t give the same pastoral care as ours”. Such sweeping generalisations are necessarily wrong, and offensive too.

In fact we shall not know what is the Patrimony of the Church of England until it is working alongside other Catholics in a wider church. When that happens there may be some surprising things that we have always taken for granted, not even noticed, but which others find attractive. Equally, we shall learn just how inadequate we have always been in many ways when we compare ourselves with other Catholics.

Fifty years ago, in a parish in Guildford diocese, we began in a very small way by sharing our parish church with the local Roman Catholic community. Their principal church was in town, a couple of miles away. Their priest wanted a mass centre our near us, and wondered if they might use our Church School. It seemed silly to use a school building when we had a purpose-built church. So, eventually, after a great campaign of persuasion, our Bishop and the Bishop of Arundel and Brighton agreed that we might begin this experiment in sharing.

It began rather tentatively. At first, the priest brought everything with him, his altar linen, an altar stone, vessels, vestments, bread and wine; within a very short time he seemed at home, so that he would ask “I’m a bit short on wafers; could we use some of yours?” Slowly, an atmosphere of trust replaced the suspicion with which we had viewed one another. The experiment. if that is what it still is, continues. Woe betide anyone who tried to stop it.

Now, with the proposals of “Anglicanorum Coetibus”, we have a chance to go much further in getting to trust and understand one another. Already suspicious natures are saying this is a case of sheep-stealing, that the Pope is trying to undermine the Anglican Communion. If we look for the best motives in others, though, instead of always trying to look for the worst, we might discover that this really is someone trying to help us; not just Anglican Catholics, who have asked for provision from our own church and not been given it. No, it is much more than that; if this new experiment works, even in a very small way, it might be the very thing the Holy Spirit is doing in answer to our prayers. Once SOME of us respond positively, it might become possible for others to do the same; not perhaps immediately, but many years from now. After, perhaps, some of the unrecognised gifts of Anglicanism, our hidden patrimony, has become accepted and welcomed by the whole Catholic Church.

I’ve often been dubious about Rabbie Burns, with his wish “O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us, to see oursels as other see us!” Very uncomfortable, that might be. Yet in the Ordinariate that gift of insight might become ours, painful maybe to realise how irritating the effortless superiority of our Anglicanism must have been… but perhaps, too, we shall find some things in our Patrimony which really are worthwhile, which at present we do not see, but which others will help us to value.

One of those weeks

So, just two sermons, an address to the Church Union AGM, and an introduction to our Book Launch. Quite an easy couple of days for a retired PEV, really. In case you are in London with a little time to spare, the AGM of the Church Union is at Christ the King, Gordon Square, on Monday 18th at 2pm, and all paid up members of the Church Union are welcome. Among other things (such as the election of Officers) we shall be trying to deal with the question of the centenary fund set up in the time of Bishop Eric of happy memory, in the hope that we can use the money raised then wisely and well.

The first sermon is complete (for Holy Trinity Winchester, 10.30am), the second is well on the way (for a confirmation in Bournemouth in the evening .... since Winchester is still without two Suffragans. Fancy, not just Basingstoke gone, but also Southampton. As I reminded Bishop Michael at the time, to lose one Suffragan, my Lord, might be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness.)

The address for the AGM is in embryo, the introduction for the book launch (at the Travellers' Club in Pall Mall, also on Monday) at 6p.m. is brewing. If you have not been invited and would like to be there, you will need to contact the Church Union Office - Stephen Parkinson at 2a the Cloisters, Gordon Square (secretary@churchunion.co.uk) is the man to speak to (tel 020 7388 3588). The book is 'Defend and Maintain', the newly produced history of the Church Union, by Frs Philip Corbett and William Davage.

After such excitements I can sit back and relax; except that on Wednesday we fly to Limoges for four nights, to meet Fr Allan Hawkins of the Anglican Use RC Church, to talk of Ordinariates and such .... but more of that later.

Meanwhile, prayers, of course, for Haiti.

What's in a name?

If there's one thing Englishmen can't do with, it's Latin. Call a church Corpus Christi, and there will be hackles raised ... it's those left-footers again! Half a century ago, when there was a theological college in a little village outside Oxford, some of the students tried to make the psalms more approachable. You may recall that the psalms had Latin names attached to them in the old BCP. So there were many helpful suggestions - from Psalm 119, for instance: "Lucerna Pedibus Meis" became "The kids have gone to Switzerland" and "Adhaesit Pavimento" was "Keep to the footpath". It whiled away many a tedious moment in the time given us for meditation. It is good that the Dominicans have done something similar by rendering their name 'Godzdogz' (for Domini Cani).

Now (pace Fr Hunwicke) I wonder if someone could come up with more English names for such things as 'Anglicanorum Coetibus' or 'Ordinariate' or 'Dicastery'? Good not to frighten the natives unneccessarily... all (clean) suggestions will be posted; no prizes, though.

No Ordinary Day

St Francis', Charminster Road, Bournemouth: preparing for Benediction.

Winchester Diocese has only four 'Resolution C' parishes - yet in the depths of the bitter cold, forty and more hardy souls turned out to talk about the Ordinariate. We began with Mass - in typical Anglican fashion, it was the Mass of the Day, Eucharistic Prayer 2 from the Daily Missal of the Western Church. A said mass, with hymns. All credit to Fr Berrett and the faithful of St Francis' to provide an organist, a small choir, and a couple of servers.

After Mass, Our Lady was invoked with the Angelus, and we proceeded to the Hall (beautifully warm) for a speech by Mr Toad, aka me. If you should want to hear my maunderings, they are available by a link from the parish website .. http://www.stfrancis-bournemouth.org.uk/

There were soup and wine to complement our own picnic lunches, then we had over an hour of discussion. An ear infection rendered me more than usually dense, but the feeling of the meeting was incredibly positive. Some few are determined to stay in the CofE come what may, to fight to the bitter end. Most of us, though, seemed to think we had had enough of bitterness, and the end was more than nigh - indeed, that 'the game was up'. Everyone expressed gratitude to the Holy Father for his initiative, by-passing both Canterbury and the Catholic Hierarchy in England; though one catholic lady who came with an Anglican friend put up a spirited defence for "the southern bishops" who had come in for a certain amount of criticism.

We ended, again in our solid Anglican way, with Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Now the parishes will themselves be considering the options, and listening to the Provincial Episcopal Visitors for the advice they give us after further meetings with the Catholic authorities. In all, today's was a very heartening event. We are very conscious that the Holy Spirit has heard our prayers down the years for Unity, and is giving us answers such as we could never have devised for ourselves. Thanks be to God for his unspeakable love.

Crinkle Crankle

How wonderfully friendly everyone is in the snow! The few people who ventured into deepest Lymington today all seemed delighted to see another human being, and we greeting each other as long lost friends.

So I thought a few pictures might not come amiss, to cheer up those spending hours before the computer to avoid going out into the winter weather.

And as for crinkle-crankle, these walls seem to be a speciality here- good for fruit-growing, I'm told, but also aesthetically pretty good. Part, you might say, of Lymington's patrimony.

The Manifestation of Christ

We kept Epiphany on Sunday both in Holy Trinity Winchester (following the Western use) and in Lymington Parish Church at 8am (though since it was 1662 it should have been the Circumcision) following the use of Common Worship (ad lib).

So I preached a version of the same sermon twice; here for anyone who's interested is the longer (Holy Trinity) form:

This Mystery that has now been revealed through the Spirit. Ephesians 3.5

Revelation is what we are concerned with today. It is the defining principle of Christianity. Ours is a revealed faith; one, that is, which we have been shown. The prayer book spells out the title of today’s feast; the Revelation of Christ to the Gentiles. The Missal amends this a little; the revelation of Christ to the World. Either way, Epiphany means just that; revealing, showing, demonstrating.

All through human history, people have invented religions for themselves. Mary Baker Eddy thought she had found THE KEY: the key to the scriptures she called “Science and health”. Still there are those whose faith is built on science: the Richard Dawkinses of this world who think their whole lives can be comprehended by discovering more and more of the fundamental laws governing the world. But the wisest scientists know that their understanding of the world is based on what others have done; they are standing on the shoulders of giants.

For us, we know whose those shoulders are; we are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone. Today, we give thanks that we do not depend on ourselves or our own logic and understanding. We celebrate the epiphany, in which God revealed himself to humankind.

During the next few weeks, we shall unwrap this little by little: next Sunday with the Baptism of Jesus, revealing him as only Son of God and Beloved; then the wedding in Cana, in which his glory was revealed, and so on… But today, the manifestation is to the Magi. These Easter sages represent the world beyond Judaism, making it clear from the very start that this child is not for just one chosen people, but for all humanity.

In the Orthodox churches of the East, Epiphany rates above Christmas itself, for it is seen as the completion, the summing up, of Christmas, its twelfth day. Here is how one group of Orthodox, in New York, will be celebrating:

On Tuesday, January 19, 2010, following Divine Liturgy at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of St. Markella, His Eminence PAVLOS, the Metropolitan of America, will lead the clergy and faithful to the seaport where he will conduct a service to bless the waters of the great city. He will complete the blessing by casting a Cross into the icy waters. This symbolizes the baptism of Jesus Christ in the Jordan at the hands of St. John the Baptist. Dozens of young men will dive into the harbor hoping to reach the Cross first and return it to Metropolitan PAVLOS.
This ancient, Holy Christian ritual, dating from the time of the Emperors in Constantinople, will be witnessed by the people of New York through the cooperation of the local authorities, and NYPD, FDNY, US Coast Guard harbor launches and scuba divers.
It sounds fun. Probably the waters of the Bosphorus in the time of Constantine were warmer than the Hudson River. For all that the American Orthodox will keep their tradition alive, even if it needs the Police, the Fire department and the Coast Guard to enable it to happen.
You notice that the celebration will not be until January 19; Our western Calendar was revised by Pope Gregory in the 1580s, many of the Eastern Orthodox stuck to the Julian calendar. That did not make the adjustments to Leap Years which has had the effect of pushing their Christmas further and further from the midwinter solstice. It is remarkable that despite the Reformation, England along with other Protestant countries accepted what Pope Gregory achieved, and so our celebrations coincide with those of the whole Western church. Today, there is another adjustment; we used to keep Epiphany on the twelfth day after the Nativity, that is, on January 6th. Now our church has once more agreed with Rome, and we move it to the nearest Sunday.
What we are doing is to give greater prominence to the Epiphany, by giving it a Sunday instead of a weekday. Our western churches have come to agree with the East, that Christ’s Revelation is of prime importance. Ours is not a faith which you could work out for yourself, Christianity is not meant to align itself with the politics or the sociology of one particular age. When Jesus taught, his teaching was a revelation for all time.
Our Church of England has never been in greater need of this truth. Parts of our Communion no longer believe that there is revealed truth; they prefer to think that all truth is relative, and they will even speak of “my truth” and “your truth”. This feast reminds us that the truth is one, it is the truth once revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, and is not to be amended to suit our modern convenience.
Loving God is a duty, our first duty, not to be neglected when it does not please us. Loving our neighbour is also our duty, going hand in hand with that first duty towards God. It is not possible to love God, whom we have not seen, unless we also love our neighbour whom we do see. That is not the result of philosophy: it is revealed to us.
In the Epistle, Paul reminded his readers in Ephesus that he had been entrusted by God with the grace intended for them: that this mystery had been given Paul by revelation from God; and that this mystery, revealed by the Holy Spirit to the Apostles and Prophets in the church had been unknown to anyone in time past…. The nub of it being, that those who had been pagans shared the same inheritance with those who had been Jews, the same promise had been made to them – and so to us also – through the Gospel.
The Epiphany reminds us that no one deserves God’s promises; it is through his grace, entirely of his own will, that we are brought within the household of faith, members of the same body with the Apostles.

Ordindariate in Wessex

Not all the Answers, but certainly we shall be looking at some of the Questions on Saturday January 9th at St Francis' Church, Bournemouth. We have had less than two months to begin understanding just what the Ordinariate is about. Our Fathers in God, the PEVs, will have more to tell us in the next couple of months, but meanwhile some of us will try to go through the documents and answer such questions as can already be solved.


For some of us, this is a very exciting time; for others, worrying. It will be good to meet together to let others know how we feel, and what are some of the possible scenarios for the coming months. Because whatever is decided cannot be done without prayer, we shall begin on Saturday with the Eucharist. Then we will talk for as long as it takes - and there will be some liquid refreshment available, but we will need to bring our own food.


Everyone is welcome. You may have gone through 'Anglicanorum Coetibus' with your fine-toothed comb; or the whole thing might be just one confusing mystery. We hope especially that there will be some from parishes which have taken none of the Resolutions about women in the priesthood, or extra Episcopal care. However well or ill-prepared you are, and whatever your parish, come along.




Because I agree with Alice, that words without pictures are deadly, here is an Oyster-catcher on the edge of the Solent yesterday, busy leaving no stone unturned; an inspiration to us all, I hope.


HAPPY 2010!






St Francis' Church, Charminster Road, is on the corner of East Way at BH8 9SH. The Parish Priest, Canon Paul Berrett, can give you further details: 01202 529336.