Archbishop Haverland on the Formularies of the ACC

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Article source: Archbishop Haverland on the Formularies of the ACC (accessed 2013/02/20); highlights mine

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Archbishop Haverland on the Formularies of the ACC

The following is an article by the Most Reverend Mark Haverland, Ph.D., Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Anglican Catholic Church.

What are the Formularies of the Anglican Catholic Church?

What are the Formularies of the Anglican Catholic Church? What documents and authorities have the greatest weight for the ACC in determining debated issues of doctrine and morals? The question should be of interest, of course, to members of the ACC in particular. The question also may be of some interest to some others.

In such matters one often has to distinguish intrinsic and formal authority from practical and material authority. For instance, most Christians would agree that Scripture is intrinsically more important than a Conciliar formula, say the Tome of Saint Leo. However, often as a practical matter a less intrinsically important authority may provide the practical lens which brings the more fundamental, greater text into focus. Roman Catholics, for instance, certainly would acknowledge that Saint John’s gospel is more fundamental and important than a papal encyclical. However, as a practical matter Roman Catholics view, for instance, S. Matthew 16 or Saint John 21 in the light of developed assumptions and teachings about papal authority which have a kind of practical, interpretive priority. The lesser authority as a practical matter determines the meaning of texts which can be and are interpreted in widely different senses by different sincere, intelligent, and learned readers.

So while no sane or sensible person would assert that the Constitution and Canons (C&C) of the Anglican Catholic Church have any profound intrinsic authority, they have a kind of priority in any attempt to identify the authoritative formularies of the ACC.

One approach to the question before us is to apply to the ACC a line of argument following from the term ‘Continuing Church’. On this theory the ACC is a Continuing Church; what the ACC continues is classical Anglicanism; and the formularies of classical Anglicanism are, in the reckoning of the late Father Peter Toon, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (with its Ordinal), the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, and the Homilies.

As an approach concerning the formularies of the ACC the obvious problem for this theory is the fact that none of the documents mentioned in the previous paragraph is established in the ACC’s Constitution and Canons. The Articles are not given any authority at all, for the C&C do not mention them. The Homilies are not given any particular authority. And the Prayer Books explicitly authorized for use in the ACC do not include 1662 but rather are the ones in use in the U.S. (1928) and Canada (1962) at the time of the ACC’s formation, along with the first book (England 1549) and the traditional books in use in places to which the ACC has later spread, namely the South African book of 1954 and the Indian book of 1963 with its official Supplement. The C&C also explicitly authorizes the use of the American, Anglican, and English Missals.

Whatever one makes of the difference between the Toon list of authorities and the C&C’s list, any correct answer to the question posed in this article has to begin with the actual formularies mentioned in the C&C rather than with various other possible lists of documents which have been given some authority by various commentators in various places and various times in the many centuries of Anglican history.

The actual authorities recognized in the C&C, in addition to the Prayer Books and missals already listed, include:

1. The Affirmation of Saint Louis. In the light of the collapse of Christian orthodoxy and Catholic Order in the Churches of the official Anglican or Canterbury Communion (in 1975 in Canada, 1976 in the Episcopal Church, and in the early 1990s in England), the ACC correctly asserts the need to fix and establish definitely our teaching concerning many matters that long were debated in the Anglican world. Some of these matters were the precipitating issues at question in the late-20th century collapse: the male character of Holy Orders, the sanctity of unborn life, and the inadequacy (or worse) of the modernist liturgies. But other issues which the Affirmation settles were long debated in Anglican circles. The Affirmation does not debate, but affirms and asserts, for example: that there are seven sacraments, not two; that there are seven Ecumenical Councils, not four; and that valid sacramental marriages are simply indissoluble. The Affirmation also asserts that all Anglican formularies and authorities are to be interpreted in accordance with the clarified, definite teaching of the Affirmation and its basic principles. In short, within the ACC many long-standing Anglican debates are definitely and clearly settled by the Affirmation.

2. The ‘Henrician Settlement’. On a number of basic matters of doctrine, polity, and Church law the C&C fix as authoritative the state of English Catholicism in the reign of Henry VIII after the break with Rome but without the Royal Supremacy. The teachings of the Fathers and of the Councils are accepted ‘as received in the Church of England through the year 1543' (Canon 2.1). So too canonical matters not determined by the ACC otherwise are to be governed by the state of affairs in the Church of England ‘in its estates in convocation assembled as specified by the Acts of Parliament of 1534 and 1543’. (Canon 2.2) This is not quaint antiquarianism. Rather the ACC establishes as its default assumptions the Henrician rather than the Elizabethan Settlement. However, the liturgical fruits of the Elizabethan Settlement, as improved by later Prayer Book revision and as viewed through the lens of the Affirmation, are also established. The ‘Henrician Settlement’ would include: the rejection of the papal office in its late medieval form; episcopal and synodal Church government; three-fold Holy Orders; the doctrinal and credal orthodoxy found in the large number of patristic authorities named in the C&C; the sacramental system which the Henrician Church retained; and large chunks of the Corpus Juris Canonici and the custom and common law of the Church. This starting point looks much more like the Church consensus of the first millennium than it does Protestantism in the common meaning of the word.

3. Subsequent, positive Anglican legislation insofar as it is consistent with the Affirmation and the ACC’s C&C. The Henrician Church included mandatory clerical celibacy, legally-enforceable tithing, mandatory Latin liturgy, and many other things which the ACC does not retain. The Henrician Church also did not include many things which the ACC establishes, such as a house of laity in all Synods. Desuetude and explicit or positive canonical legislation explain the differences in question. I am not asserting that the ACC is governed in detail by Henrician norms. I am asserting that Henrician Catholicism is a more authoritative starting point in many, particularly non-liturgical, matters than is the state of the Elizabethan Church. But desuetude and subsequent legislation affect almost all matters since the 16th century. For the ACC the most significant locus of such normative legislation is the C&C.
A quick review of the official footnotes of the C&C is instructive. Scripture, the Prayer Book, the Ecumenical Councils, and the Fathers are the authorities most often cited. John Cosin is the only individual Anglican theologian or Churchman cited by name. The C&C are not some odd invention of canon-mad Continuers, but a fairly workable set of rules which limit lawless bishops and help regulate most of our affairs. These rules are explicitly drawn from Scripture, the Prayer Book, the Councils, and our own past.

So, given this information about the ACC’s formularies and authorities, what are we to make of some of the other authorities sometimes cited?

A. The Articles. The Articles of Religion, as I have said, are not an ACC formulary, though they are undoubtedly an historical Anglican formulary. From this I conclude that when the Articles are useful they may usefully be quoted. When they are understood so as to harmonize with the actual formularies of the ACC they may be very useful. There is great apologetical and historical value in careful reading of the Articles in the manner familiar to readers of The Continuum in the writings of E.J. Bicknell or Father Robert Hart. But the Articles themselves have no independent authority within the ACC: like it or not, there it is.

B. The Tudor and Stuart theologians. C&C quotation of individuals after the Patristic era is very rare. John Cosin is quoted. Saint Thomas Aquinas is quoted. That’s about it. As a general matter I would suggest that particular theologians of the 16th and 17th century have to be read and judged as individuals. I would agree with A.M. Allchin who once wrote:
...The position of the seventeenth-century Anglican theologians is,...and must remain, of real importance for all Anglican theological thinking. But this emphatically does not mean that we have to follow them in every particular, nor that we are limited by their positions and conclusions. What it does mean is that we may find in them certain attitudes, certain approaches to theological problems, which are still valid for Anglican thinking to-day and, we would dare to say, still of value for Christian thinking as a whole. By their constant appeal to "the Scriptures interpreted by the perpetual practice of God’s Church", to use the words of Herbert Thorndike, they provide us with a method and a starting point for our own researches. But they do not give us a complete and finished system. (Our Lady in Seventeenth-century Anglican Devotion and Theology, 1963)

I wrote a master’s thesis on Richard Hooker and a doctrinal dissertation on Henry Hammond. Obviously I see a very great value in understanding the great writers of our own Church and tradition. Modern Roman Catholic scholars have argued that in moral theology the Caroline divines better preserved the great medieval synthesis than did any of their Roman contemporaries. Nicholas Lossky has argued something similar in the case of Lancelot Andrewes, whom Lossky sees as a better synthesizer of the Fathers than his 17th century Eastern contemporaries. But in any case what we gain now from these classical Anglican writers builds on firm foundations established by our own formularies.

C. The Anglo-Catholic movement. If the main impetus for early lay membership in the ACC was Prayer Book loyalty, the main impetus for early clerical membership in the ACC was partisan Anglo-Catholicism. These two obvious facts of our history are such that any wise ACC leader will incline towards American rather than English Anglo-Catholicism. At the risk of oversimplifying, I think it is true that American Anglo-Catholics were more loyal to the Prayer Book than English Anglo-Catholics. We also were less inclined to be Anglo-Papalists. In both cases our greater confidence in our own Anglicanism may have come from the fact that our disestablishment limited the power of our bishops to persecute and to suppress the positive developments of the Tractarian and Ritualist revivals. It also comes from the fact that the 1928 American book is much more adequate than the 1662 English book. Americans did not feel as great a need to fiddle with what was in place. In any case, in matters liturgical I know of no ACC bishop who would attempt to foist a missal or any addition therefrom on a parish that is happy with an unadorned Prayer Book rite. It also is clear that no ACC bishop could get away with an attempt to stop a united priest and parish from doing anything liturgically which can be clearly supported by any authorized missal. There is a spectrum of accepted liturgical usage, and I think we have achieved a broad agreement on that spectrum.

In brief, then the Affirmation of Saint Louis is the lens through which we view all Anglican authorities. This place for the Affirmation is established by material provisions of our Constitution and Canons. The particular Anglican authorities actually received in the ACC are not what they were in the Churches from which we came. Nor are specifically Anglican authorities a razor for trimming the basic affirmations of the ACC as found in our actual formularies. We are not a Church in which Catholic opinions (e.g., that there are seven sacraments and Councils) are tolerated. We are a Catholic Church in which all opinions are subject to correction on the clear basis of our formularies.
Posted by PALEOLOGOS at 4:30 PM
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8 comments:


    1. Awesome article by our bishop! I'm saving this one. Thanks for posting it.

      ACC Layman,
      St. Worm
      Reply

    2. This is one which I am going to have to re-read and think about because what it essentially asserts is that the ACC is not continuing traditional, classical prayer book Anglicanism, but a new creation in which the classic formularies are rejected for a new set.

      Anyone familiar with the Tracts knows or should know that they quoted extensively from the historic Anglican divines. In quite the same manner the ritualist movement in the Church of England was first based upon a literal obedience of the rubrics of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer which had been carried over from that of 1559 and the Elizabethan Settlement. Unfortunately, the average English or American priest or bishop lacked the necessary historical liturgical scholarship and began simply copying the worst of the Roman Church as it was at that time. One would be hard put to find a decent liturgical scholar among them while those quoted by Roman scholars since are not those associated the "Back to Baroque" Anglo-Papalist movement.

      It should be no secret that the oldest Eucharist canon known to scholars, that in the Verona Fragment, is far, far closer to that of the prayer books of 1552, 1559 and 1662. Likewise the pattern of the classical prayer books reflect much more closely the pattern of the Eucharist of the middle of the second century according to Justin Martyr than what we find beginning in the fifth century.

      It is a shame that the ACC's "partisan Anglo-Catholicism" is so ashamed of any thing more closely resembling a historically real Anglicanism that it is in fact and practice more Anglo-Papist than Anglo-Catholic so that what the layman and the outsider sees and experiences in its worship is a significant psychological divorce from what most of us understand as honestly Anglican.
      Reply

    3. I think it is fairly clear from Archbishop Haverland's Article, which is completely consistent with his short work on Anglo-Catholic Faith and Practice, that the Anglo-Catholic Church ("ACC") is, for him, more of an English Old Catholic jurisdiction, very much similar to the original Old Catholic Union of Utrecht, than a continuation of Elizabethan Settlement Anglicanism. Indeed, the only point of contact between the ACC and Anglicanism is the ACC's use of certain editions of the Book of Common Prayer, but even then, typical Prayer Book usage and understanding is highly conditioned by interpolations and supplementations from other works completely foreign to classical Anglicanism. Hence, it is fair to say that the ACC is not really Anglican at all, but rather "Anglican-ish," or "Anglo-," which is what it in fact all that it claims in its name.

      Bishop Peter Robinson of the United Episcopal Church of North America (UECNA) has recently publicly commented about his perception that a noted trend towards English Old Catholicism and away from Anglicanism exists in the so-called Anglican Continuum, and Archbishop Haverland's public writing about the identity of the ACC completely confirm Bishop Robinson's insight. Indeed, by giving priority to (1) an Henrican national catholicism rent from its fully developed manifestation in the Elizabethan Settlement, and (2) the post-Tractarian, Advanced Victorian Ritualism movement with all its Tridentine and Counter-Reformation sentiment, and finally (3) a later day Constitution and Canons and peculiar interpretation of the Affirmation of St. Louis that is in no way an organic development from, or recapitulation of, classical Anglicanism, Archbishop Haverland is plainly making the case that the ACC is not a creature of the English Religious Settlement at all, but rather a new religious settlement similar to historical Anglicanism yet decidedly discrete in a number of significant doctrinal and liturgical and spiritual matters.

      Though I personally do not favor English Old Catholicism over mere Anglicanism, I am grateful that Archbishop Haverland is putting the case quite clearly and starkly that the ACC is not a creature of the Elizabethan Settlement and the traditional Anglican formularies do not have priority in the ACC without significant qualifications that make something other than manifestations of classical Anglicanism. Indeed, this clarification of what the ACC really stands for should make future ecumenical dialog more clear cut.
      Reply

    4. Cannon Tallis:

      I don't think you can find anything in Archbishop Haverland's article which evidences anything like being "ashamed of anything more closely resembling a historically real Anglicanism". What is set forth is simply a clarification of what constitutes, for the ACC, "historically real Anglicanism", and that without the fuzziness regarding its Catholicism.

      Liturgically speaking, there is room for a spectrum of ritual. Doctrinally, there is definition. Given a modern situation in which "Anglican" has come to mean so many things, this definition is needed if the ACC is to distinguish itself from the "alphabet soup". This definition wasn't necessary, perhaps, in an age when the basic doctrines of the faith were upheld by everyone along the Anglican spectrum, but this situation is long gone.

      Evangelism is one of our most important duties, and the definition provided by the ACC's formularies makes the job of evangelism easier. We don't have to worry about our doctrinal foundations; we can move on to winning people over. If they don't agree with this approach,there are other options for them. I agree with Death Bredon that "this clarification of what the ACC really stands for should make future" dialogue, evangelical and ecumenical, more clear cut.
      Reply

    5. Gosh, this sounds too similar to liberal episcopalians who often say the same thing-- ignore classical formulas (which are either too rigid or not 'catholic'/ecumenical enough), focus on mission, put head in sand, let present authorities tear down and demolish a once unique and historic patrimony... The ACC is "what it is". Bp. Mote made sure it would become a broadly catholic church. My question is why would any catholic from either RC, EO, or ACNA want to join the ACC when they can have the "real deal" across the street? Does a mish-mash please everyone?

      Reply

    6. Anglican Rose:

      Doctrinal definition is exactly the opposite of what liberal Episcopalians (or conservative Episcopalians, for that matter) are doing. There is no sense in which the ACC, which explicitly upholds the faith of the undivided Church, the Fathers, and the Councils, as well as of the Prayer Book and the Anglican Divines, can be said to be ignoring classical formulas.

      In fact, the ACC's doctrinal definition makes it exactly the "real deal" to which English-speaking Catholics can look for refuge in an age of liturgical and doctrinal nonsense.
      Reply

    7. THank you dear Father M. Haverland.
      Though being baptized as Orhtodox believer I got interested into Anglican church.
      In this article I paid special attention to the theology in the 17th century. I don't Know much at all but I do appreciate your opinion and your devouted faith.

      God Bless You,

      Lyudmyla Petrovska
      RSEP(IREX)2002
      Reply

    8. Archbishop Haverland has made everything I ever suspected. The ACC is Henrician, with all that the term implies. Bishop Crawley of the Canadian Continuers expressed this reality many years ago as a 'Brigadoon Church'. The way I see it, the ACC, like the ACA, might just as well swallow the whole thing and swim the Tiber. All the pseudo-Romish introductions into our faith and worship are a hindrance to our perception of what is truly Apostolic, truly Catholic, truly Anglican.
      Please, Archbishop, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that the ACC might be mistaken in its Henrician approach.
      In +, Benton
      Reply

THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010

More From Archbishop Haverland on ACC Formularies


Archbishop Haverland kindly sends an occasional note, which I gratefully use (with his permission, of course) as blog material while I am mired in the busyness which keeps me from blogging regularly.

I mentioned in a previous post on Retro-Church some examples of things clearly present in the Henrician Church but not found in the Anglican Catholic Church now due to authoritative ACC formularies to the contrary or due to desuetude. In that category I mentioned 'mandatory clerical celibacy, legally-enforceable tithing, mandatory Latin liturgy, and many other things which the ACC does not retain'.


Likewise I mention positively a number of things from the Henrician Church that the ACC does keep. These include 'rejection of the papal office in its late medieval form; episcopal and synodal Church government; three-fold Holy Orders; the doctrinal and credal orthodoxy found in the large number of patristic authorities named in the C&C; the sacramental system which the Henrician Church retained; and large chunks of the Corpus Juris Canonici and the custom and common law of the Church'.


Some have wondered about the significance of the ACC's canonical starting point in the Henrician, rather than Elizabethan, settlement of religion. To explain that significance it might help to expand the list of positive elements in the ACC flowing from Henrician Catholicism. An expanded list might include the permissibility of the invocation of the saints; the objective (though not magical) efficacy of the seven sacraments; baptismal regeneration; and a high doctrine of the Real Presence. These beliefs are all features of the faith of the Universal Church which were preserved in the Henrician Church and are believed in the ACC. Such beliefs are not authoritatively contradicted by anything that binds us in the ACC, whatever contrary views one might cite from some in the Elizabethan Church of England. If the Articles seem to teach something to the contrary, either the Article in question has been misunderstood or is not authoritative, since it contradicts the more central and authoritative tradition of Christendom to which it is the purpose of the Articles to bear witness. Tract 90 and Bicknell and Father Robert Hart generally would say that the Article would in such a case have been misunderstood.


I try to be an ecclesial thinker. I joined the ACC as soon as it formed and have never looked back. I begin with the actual faith and actual formularies of the actual Church in which I actually find myself. I think the faith that I hold is Anglican in a variety of ways which are very important to me. However it is much more important to me to maintain the faith of my Church and to be squarely within the consensus of the central tradition of Christendom on controversial matters. If that approach is insufficiently 'Anglican' in the minds of some, I am not too worried. I am more interested in being a faithful Anglican Catholic and in standing within the central tradition of Christendom than in meeting some criterion of Anglicanism that is not itself firmly rooted in the ACC's actual formularies.


For the most part the central tradition of Christendom can be identified simply by looking for the consensus of East and West even today. I see nothing in the actual faith of the ACC which contradicts anything actually held by both the East and West. The only exception might be the marriage of bishops, but on that matter everybody admits that our position is in fact consistent with Scripture and the earliest Church, while the contrary position is a disciplinary matter rooted in no doctrinal necessity. The supposed agreement of East and West against Anglican Orders is clearly contradicted by actual Orthodox positions in the 20th century. Is there anything else held by Rome and the Orthodox but rejected by the ACC? Perhaps that there is One True Church. But as the Two One True Churches disagree about which is True and which Not, I am content with our charitable position that both are True, as are we.


Another advantage to a doctrinal starting point in Henrician Catholicism is that it historically antedates the most revolutionary claims of Roman Catholics and Protestants. Everyone now agrees, I think, that the late medieval Western Church had many serious problems, practical and doctrinal. For instance, the late medieval Church had a powerful Pelagian strand which Trent, a reforming synod in many ways, rejected as did Luther, Calvin, and the Articles. Everyone also agrees that all early modern monarchs sought to control their national Churches and to limit papal authority therein. But both the continental Reformers and Trent responded to the problems of the late medieval Church and the challenge of the monarchs by a radical abandonment of the Conciliar movement. Both radically abandoned Erasmian and Conciliarist reason, one for fideism and the other for the authoritarianism of an absolute ecclesiastical monarchy. The Henrician reformation at its best may be seen as an attempt to reform rather than revolutionize. Henry's bishops only abandoned the effort when forced to choose between the Romanism of Mary and the new-model revolution of Edward's later reign. But already with the Elizabethan anti-Puritans and Hooker the moderate, reasonable spirit began to revive. We in the ACC combine unambiguous doctrinal Catholicism (looking back to the Henricians and reasserted in the Affirmation of Saint Louis) with the riches of the later Anglican patrimony (literary, musical, architectural, spiritual), and the liturgical glories of the Prayer Book tradition. We have the best of all theological worlds.

THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 2010


Archbishop Haverland replies to some of the questions and points made in comments on his post.

The Anglican Catholic Church does not ordain subdeacons, though the liturgical function exists in parishes that celebrate Solemn High Mass. The function may be performed by layreaders or deacons or priests. Ordination of subdeacons, like the mandatory vow of celibacy taken before that ordination (as in the Roman Church between Trent and the post-Vatican II reform), is a matter firmly covered by the principle of desuetude, to which I made reference in the posted articles. I am unaware of any ACC bishop purporting to 'ordain' subdeacons. If one did so, it would be little more than licensing a layreader or an acolyte.

Trent occurred after the reign of Henry VIII.

Trent rejected medieval Pelagianism also, of the sort exemplified by Gabriel Biel, and asserted the unelicited character of prevenient grace. As I believe Ronald Knox once observed of his Anglo-Catholic days, the one element of the Roman system which no Anglican that one has ever heard of, no matter how spiky, ever felt the least attraction to is indulgences. The notion that any lingering elements of the indulgence system in the Henrician Church require explanation by any modern Anglican Catholic is not serious. This matter too is covered by desuetude. Indulgences have not existed in any Anglican Church for centuries, and the formularies of the ACC do not revive them. This issue strikes me as a red herring.

As for the idea that a reconstruction of late medieval vestment color schemes is important, much less central, to the identity of any Church: well, that too does not seem to me to be very serious. As Percy Dearmer and many others demonstrate, late medieval English usage in the matter was various and flexible. Many parishes did not have full sets of vestments, and the rule was that one used the best that he had for important occasions, whatever the color. Dearmer also notes that as best one can now reconstruct a color sequence in strict accordance with the Ornaments Rubric, the result 'would differ but very slighty from the Roman sequence which is so well known at the present day.' Which suggests that the ACC's critic in this case need not be so worried.

Anglicanrose is mistaken in thinking that my seeking a consensus of East and West even today assumes that 'one of the two (likely the East) have [sic] no innovation.' On the contrary, the obvious purpose in seeking consensus (a good, Hookerian exercise) is precisely that matters of agreement are much more likely than either the East or the West alone to avoid erroneous or dubious innovations. This implies no Anglican self-negation but rather an Anglican refusal to confuse a part for the whole.

Anglicanrose's liturgical questions simply ignore what I actually wrote about the relevance of Henrician Catholicism for the ACC. I explicitly said that in many matters, including liturgical, desuetude and positive legislation have altered matters since Henry's reign.

+MDH
POSTED BY PALEOLOGOS AT 9:10 AM
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2 COMMENTS:


Anonymous said...
I'm so glad we have an archbishop who is bold to speak and write with clarity and conviction. I have been impressed with Archbishop Haverland's clarity since first reading his book Anglican Catholic Faith and Practice some years ago.

JUNE 14, 2010 11:37 AM


https://web.archive.org/web/20110511110429/http://anglicanrose.wordpress.com/
anglicanrose said...
The problem with an appeal to Henrician standards, I believe, is one must specify which period of Henry's rule. We have what preceded 1536 where Henry asserts royal supremacy but is otherwise Roman Catholic in doctrine as demonstrated in Henry's 1522 defense of seven sacraments. But then a break occurs after 1536 and continues to develop through 1547. Which do we draw from? Post-1536 is critical as definite theological reasons given for suppressing relics and prayers to saints, namely the working of justification as applied to worship (a particular appropriation of Augustine). Yet the ACC cuts off necessary doctrine at 1543 (freezing it), creating very confused approach to English reception of medieval councils listed as authoritative in the CC's? My problem is we have 'two' Henry's-- one which defends the medieval faith and another who reluctantly breaks from it. Which one is being appropriated? That said, I think grasping late Henrician standards are vitally important and offers a way out as well as a means to correct the Affirmation.

The problem is very few priests know anything about late Henry except his divorce and supremacy in the Church, and this usually is not spoken of very favorably. What remains is an identity that rejects protestantsim and this ultimately leads to a smorgasbord approach toward catholicism that finally undermines Anglican identity, mission, and growth. This is the kind of generous ecumenicalism which erodes foundations, and I believe the ACC is not especially clear nor consistent with what it borrows from Henry other than jurisdiction. But perhaps this has more to do with the legacy of men like Mote, Falk, du Bois, and Stahl who wrote ACC standards than any particular churchman today? Yet it's a legacy that has to be overcome, in my opinion.
JUNE 24, 2010 9:20 AM