CAN CATHOLICS STILL BE ANGLICANS?
By Bishop David Chislett

(The Rector's Address to the Annual General Meeting
of All Saints' Wickham Terrace on Sunday 19th February 1996)

It is a great privilege and responsibility to stand before you today at my first Annual Meeting as your parish priest, just nine months after my Induction on the Feast of the Visitation of Our Lady. The service that night was a joyous occasion for all of us, as we promised to serve God together. It was a tremendous reaffirmation of our faith in the Catholic Gospel as we thought of Mary, pregnant with Jesus, visiting Elizabeth, bringing joy and blessing to that household.

We listened to the Word of God, we sang the praises of Jesus and Mary, we were sprinkled with water taken from the holy well at Walsingham, we knelt during Benediction before Jesus truly present in the Sacred Host, and pledged our lives to him afresh in response to his redeeming love.

OUR HERITAGE
All Saints' Wickham Terrace is well known around Australia and throughout the world as a parish that stands within a particular tradition of Anglicanism, a tradition which in England is sometimes called "London, Brighton and South Coast religion"! In most metropolitan cities of the English speaking world there is a church like All Saints' which by its proclamation of the full Catholic Faith, its careful use of the Western Rite (whether pre- or post-Vatican II), and its cycle of Catholic devotion, serves to remind all Anglicans of our historic claim to be an integral part of the Church Catholic. At its best this tradition manages to combine the glories of transcendent worship, personal spirituality, a sense of fun, a practical service of the needy and a non-judgmental love of those who are trying to make sense out of life or struggling towards belief.

All Saints' Church in the heart of the City of Brisbane is a sacred site, a place where heavenly and earthly realities mingle daily in the offering of the Mass. It is an inclusive place in which the gaze of all is directed to the outstretched arms of the crucifix, the ultimate sign of love. For 126 years our church has been a gate of heaven for all kinds of people who have knelt in prayer, worship and adoration, in doubt, penitence and grief, and have found the wonder of God's love and healing through the intercession of Our Lady and all the Saints. As with other "shrine churches" throughout the world, to spend time in All Saints' when it is empty is to sense that all those prayers somehow linger in the stonework, helping us feel connected to a community of love transcending time and place, and drawing us further into God.

Early last year, Bishop Graham Walden spoke to me about my appointment to this parish. He told me just how important All Saints' had been for him in the nurturing of his priestly vocation. (Since then many other priests have said the same thing.) He told me that in those days All Saints' was a "spiritual power-house", and his prayer was that it may be so again. That depends very much on priests and people together catching the vision and then working and praying towards that end.

LIBERALITY OF SPIRIT
It has been said that the best thing about being an Anglican is that it doesn't interfere with your politics or religion! You can believe and do almost anything and be a pillar of the church. We are known for our "comprehensiveness" and "inclusiveness". Now, of course, there is a gentleness and "liberality of spirit" to be found among Anglicans that is sometimes the envy of people from other backgrounds. In the past this has been reflected in an openness to the genuine insights of modern scholarship, and in our reluctance to persecute those who live on the margins of belief or behaviour. This characteristic of our tradition makes it easy for people who are struggling with their spiritual journey to feel included and supported. It is a gift from God.

REVEALED RELIGION
But to say that our Church has no grounding in revealed religion and encourages us to "make it up as we go along" is to ignore her own view of herself as expressed in her formularies . . . that she is part of the ancient Catholic Church of the English people. Lord Fisher, the 99th Archbishop of Canterbury, summed it up when he said that the Church of England has no doctrine of its own; it has only the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

In the lead up to the 1988 Lambeth Conference, each Diocese of the Anglican Communion was asked to form a group of clergy and lay people to produce a statement commenting on what it meant to be an Anglican today. The answer given by the group from my old Diocese of Ballarat is, I maintain, the kind of answer that most of my predecessors here would have given. The Ballarat group said that to be an Anglican was to be a tiny part of the Catholic Church temporarily and unfortunately out of full communion with the wider Catholic Church.

NO SUCH THING AS "THE ANGLICAN FAITH"
Catholic Anglicans have always maintained that while there may be an Anglican "ethos" of worship and spirituality, an Anglican way of dealing with moral issues, and even an Anglican theological method, there is no such thing as "the Anglican Faith". We are committed by our own formularies to the Catholic Faith, a fact to which this dear parish church has borne witness for all of its life.

THE CHURCH IS GOD'S
As Catholics we believe that the Church is a supernatural mystery. Jesus said, ". . . You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matthew 16:18-19).

S. Paul, writing to the Ephesians about the risen Jesus says that "the Church . . . is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all" (Ephesians 1:16-23). Again, writing to Timothy he speaks of "the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 1:14-15).

These and many other passages of Scripture, make it clear that from the very beginning the Church was viewed, not as a voluntary club of people who get together because they think it is a good idea to do so, but as the supernatural community of the risen Jesus, spanning heaven and earth, pulsating with his Spirit, a channel of his love and grace.

THE BODY OF CHRIST
S. Paul calls the Church "the BODY of Christ". This is a striking phrase. It means that the Church is an organism made up of many parts which form a single living whole, of which Jesus is the head. S. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) can even speak of Jesus "redeeming us by his blood, incorporating us with himself, making us his own members, that in him we also might be Christ . . . We all are in him both Christ's and Christ, since in some manner the whole Christ is the head and the body."

The Incarnation ("enfleshing") of Jesus is the beginning of salvation. During his earthly ministry the grace of God flowed to people through his physical body. If we are to take the New Testament and the early Fathers seriously, we must affirm the Catholic doctrine that Jesus remains incarnate on earth in his mystical Body, the Church, "the fullness of him who fills all in all". This is how Jesus continues his work of salvation and renewal. This is how the Good News is brought to the poor today, how he liberates the captives today, and how he still proclaims the year of God's favour (Luke 4:18).

It is also as his body that the Church worships the Father. We are "caught up into the movement of his self-offering" (to quite ARCIC), so that as the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus is re-presented to the Father, we are offered IN HIM, one living sacrifice of praise. So coming to Mass is not just something we do because we "like that sort of thing"; it is a sacred liturgy of the whole Body of Christ in union with its Head.

OUR CATHOLIC BACKGROUND
Generations of Anglicans have been taught that their church is part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church . . . the Body of Christ in the world today. We knew that this is what we had in common with Rome and the Orthodox. (Indeed, it was brought home to us by the fact that if a Roman Catholic or Orthodox began worshipping with us and receiving Holy Communion, nothing more was required of them in order to be Anglicans - except in some places a simple "reception". However, when someone came to us from one of the Protestant communities, they had to receive episcopal Confirmation.)

As Catholics we focused on Jesus, God in the Flesh, crucified, died and risen. We encountered him in prayer and in the sacraments. In BAPTISM Jesus joined us to his dying and rising, we were born again, cleansed of sin and became his priestly people. In THE SACRAMENT OF RECONCILIATION Jesus freed us from post-baptismal sin. In CONFIRMATION Jesus filled us with the Holy Spirit and empowered us to be his witnesses. In the MASS Jesus offered us to the Father in union with his own perfect sacrifice, and then fed us with his actual Body and Blood. In MARRIAGE Jesus gave us the grace to be faithful until death. In HOLY ORDER Jesus ordained men to be bishops, priests and deacons in succession to the Apostles, continuing their ministry. In THE SACRAMENT OF ANOINTING Jesus brought healing to the sick and strength to the dying.

As Catholics we heard Jesus speak to us in the Scriptures, both in the liturgy and in our times of reflection and prayer. We took the Scriptures seriously and resisted the temptation to water down their teachings to suit ourselves. We read them as the Church's book, and avoided both fundamentalism on the one hand, and the reductionism of extreme Biblical criticism on the other. "The Church to teach; the Bible to prove!" was a cry that rang out from many an Anglican pulpit in the old days.

As Catholics we sought to live disciplined lives of prayer, knowing that in this way our union with God and his people of every age and place is nurtured. This meant, for those who could possibly manage it, returning to church on Sunday nights for Evensong and Benediction. Priests and people alike were urged to have a "rule of life". Quiet days and retreats were not just the practice of the clergy. Weekday Mass attendance and other devotions strengthened the sense of being on a spiritual journey together.

As Catholics, we used to believe that the supernatural dynamic of the Church is meant to renew the society in which we live. And so parishes had all kinds of groups that helped the poor and the marginalised. Many political leaders with a concern for the transformation of society received their spiritual grounding and their vision of justice and peace from their upbringing in our tradition. We sought to engage creatively with the world and the community around us for the glory of God.

CANTERBURY & ROME
As Catholics, we felt keenly our lack of full communion with those other Christians with whom we have most in common. What's more, we knew that the main reason for our attempts at evangelisation not being as effective as they might have been was the disunity of the church. As Catholics we thought often about the words of Jesus in John 17, when on Maundy Thursday night he prayed that we would be one so that the world may believe.

Even in Henry VIII's time there were attempts to heal the breach between Canterbury and Rome. These continued over the next 130 years until the Church of England drifted off to sleep. She was roused by the Evangelical Revival of the late 18th Century, and then by the Catholic Revival of the 19th Century. So great was the influence of the Catholic Revival that at the First Lambeth Conference in 1867 the Bishop of Salisbury presented a petition signed by 1,112 clergy and 4,453 lay people of the Church of England, urging the bishops to end the long separation between Canterbury and Rome.

Lots of things happened since then, and most Catholics looked to the ecumenical future with real optimism, in spite of some setbacks along the way. Indeed, since the 1950's, Archbishops of Canterbury and Popes have consistently committed themselves to the full ecclesial reunion of our churches. The ARCIC process issued forth in agreed statements on the Eucharist, the Ministry and Authority. Most Anglicans (even those who didn't really approve!) were aware that this was happening and that reunion was the goal.

Until very recently, many thought that the turn of the century would see some major step taken. On 2nd October 1989, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, and Pope John Paul II signed and issued this common declaration:

" . . . Against the background of human disunity the arduous journey to Christian unity must be pursued with determination and vigour whatever obstacles are perceived to block the path. We here commit ourselves and those we represent to the restoration of full ecclesial communion in the confidence that to seek anything less would be to betray our Lord's intention for the unity of his people."

WOMEN PRIESTS
That brings us to the present crisis. I was not ordained an "Anglican Priest". According to Anglican formularies there is no such thing! I was ordained to be a priest in the Church of God, the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. What's more, I was ordained in a tiny part of the Catholic Church that had already committed itself to full ecclesial reunion with the rest of the Catholic Church. Now, however, priests and lay people of my persuasion live every day in crisis mode because, as we see it, the actions of some of our bishops are inconsistent with our historic claim to share the sacrament of Holy Order with the whole Catholic Church. Many would say that our church as a whole can no longer claim to be part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, that it is now officially on the liberal Protestant side of things. Hence the exodus from us to other parts of the Catholic Church.

I know that while most parishioners here see things the way that I do, there are some who take the opposite view. A few of you rejoice at the 1992 legislation, and are probably irritated that in order to have parishes like this you really do seem to need priests like me! You know me well enough by now to realise that you are important to me whatever you believe about the ordination of women, and I have no desire to treat minorities here at All Saints' in the manner in which people of my persuasion have often been treated throughout the Australian Church.

But you must understand that in all conscience I cannot pretend to believe that women who have been "ordained" are in fact priests, or that what is received in their "Masses" is the Blessed Sacrament. This is nothing personal (any more than your Baptist friend's assertion that you have not been baptized yet is personal!); it is simply a statement consistent with the teaching of the Catholic Church down through the ages. At the same time, we cannot treat the women who mistakenly think they are priests as anything less than our sisters in Christ, and we must make our stand in such a way as to refrain from personal abuse. I admit that this has not always been done. The new developments have caused deep pain to many of us, and we have responded in kind, sometimes forgetting to pray for those "on the other side".

COMMUNION IS "IMPAIRED"
When promoting the ordination of women in the run-up to the vote, the Primate said he recognised that the price would be a certain "impairment" of communion within the Anglican Church; he also said that priests like me would not be squeezed out.

As predicted, this impairment of communion has taken place at the very point of our sacramentality, and therefore at the heart of our Church life. A note of uncertainty has been injected into the sacramental arrangements of dioceses like this one where the new teachings have been put into practice, making the full liturgical involvement of Catholics quite impossible, because the whole point of sacramental signs is to assure us that we receive the grace of which they speak.

It is important to have stated these things clearly so that you know exactly what I believe and why. It is also important to treat others with courtesy and not to over-exaggerate the distance between us and our opponents, co-operating as fully as possible in other areas.

SHRINKING CIRCLES
The big question now becomes, "Is it still possible to live the Catholic life in the Anglican Church of Australia?" To this I would want to say "Yes", but with a qualification. The circles in which the full Catholic life can be lived in the Anglican Church of Australia are getting smaller by the day. Fortunately they still include some whole Dioceses, and it may be that the Bishops of those Dioceses will one day provide leadership for us at the national level. I know not how the future will shape up.

The one thing I do know is that if Anglicans of our tradition - dioceses, parishes and individuals - network together, we will not become isolationist and negative in our thinking, our opponents will not be able to "pick us off" one by one, and we will actually GROW!

POSITIVE AND GROWING
Negative movements and organisations do not attract good people. I did not come from Ballarat to All Saints' because I am against the ordination of women! I don't want to be known as someone who is primarily AGAINST something. I came here because I am FOR God; because I am FOR Jesus; because I am FOR the Catholic Faith that comes to us from the Apostles. I came because I am FOR the tradition of this parish community, and because I believe that what we have here is the very gate of heaven. I came because the love and grace of God which we share is what the thousands who hurry past this church every day desperately need in their lives. I came here because I am FOR the vision of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. I came here because I believe that All Saints' finest hour is not in the past, but up ahead!

Your clergy are members of the Society of the Holy Cross, an Institute of Anglican priests who are committed to the full Catholic Faith, and to the reunion of the Church. We are nourished and fortified by our life in the Society. It is felt by many that the same kind of networking must be done by lay people and parish communities as we make our stand for orthodoxy, enabling us to put the battles of the past behind us, and move forward in faith.

FORWARD IN FAITH
In fact "Forward in Faith" is the name of an umbrella organization that was set up in England immediately after the vote of the General Synod on the ordination of women to the priesthood in November 1992. Its existence has enabled many who would otherwise have left the Church of England to remain in all good conscience. It has a vision for unity and truth: "for the unity of all catholic Christians according to the will of Christ and by the means he chooses; for truth to the apostolic message and ministry".

Its Mission Statement says:

"We seek an ecclesial structure
in which our children and grandchildren can grow in faith;
which will continue the orders of bishop, and priest
as the Church has received them;
and which can guarantee a true sacramental life".

Forward in Faith has had an astonishing growth since 1992. Most English parishes of the tradition that we at All Saints' hold dear are affiliated. Forward in Faith works closely with the three "Provincial Episcopal Visitors", the so-called "flying bishops" set aside to care for people like us in England. A monthly magazine, "New Directions", is published in co-operation with the Church of England Newspaper.

As the name suggests, "Forward in Faith" is not about fighting rearguard battles; it is not a negative organization. Rather, it is about gathering up and inspiring orthodox Anglican clergy, lay people and parishes for our mission in the world. It is about spiritual growth, teaching the Faith, reaching out to new people with the love of God and the Sacraments of Jesus. It is a network or structure within the Church to enable the best of what we have loved and known as Catholic Anglicans to be passed on to new generations, and to continue our ecumenical journey with Rome and the Orthodox. Being part of Forward in Faith is a way of being part of an Anglican network far bigger than ourselves, whatever happens at the local level.

PARISH AFFILIATION?
A number of Australians have become members of Forward in Faith. I have belonged since its inception. Its Chairman, Father John Broadhurst (who is also on the Standing Committee of the English General Synod), will be coming to Australia at the end of September and will visit Brisbane and All Saints' on his way to Melbourne. At the back of the hall I have put some copies of the Forward in faith magazine "New Directions" for you to see. It is possible for us to have Parish Affiliation with Forward in Faith. Such affiliation would, I believe, greatly inspire and strengthen us at All Saints' for our life and witness at this particular stage of our faith journey. It would firm up our link with Catholic parishes and dioceses throughout the Anglican world. It would greatly encourage your parish clergy. It would help all of us to realise that far from being an eccentric sideshow, we are thoroughly mainstream! I know that there is a motion coming to this meeting supporting such affiliation.