Do we have a Future?
An address given by the Rt Rev'd John Broadhurst, Bishop of Fulham, in October, 1996
I want to start by asking you a question. It is a very serious question that we need to face. Do you expect to be the last like you wherever you are? I suspect if we are honest, most of us would say "yes" we do.
Now, if that is our answer, I think we need to seriously think about what we are doing, for there is no virtue in being the last of anything. When they ordained women to the priesthood and when they started bringing in their inclusive language and changing the moral and ethical teaching of the Church, they did something quite appalling (and several of you have told me what I have heard in England and in America and Scandinavia and elsewhere); they have destroyed both your history and your culture. There is a very real feeling amongst us that our history and our culture have been trampled on.
And yet, I have to say quite bluntly: although I grieve for my history and my culture, I don't think that is the major problem.
Just after the vote to ordain women to the priesthood my father died. It was rather odd that I found parting from the Church of England that I have known and loved harder than parting from my father. A peculiar fact! But the thing that I resent, the thing that has made me feel very very angry, is not that they destroyed my past but they actually destroyed my dreams and my future.
When people attack our future and our dreams they actually destroy us, and if you expect to be the last then you are really saying that you have no dreams, no future and no hope. I would like to think later about the implications of that.
A PEOPLE ON THE MOVE
I found the experience following our vote to ordain women to the priesthood a profoundly spiritual and moving one. I read the Old Testament more than I have ever read it before, and preached from it more than I ever as a Catholic thought proper. The theme that I frequently used in the first year was the theme of the Exodus. I want to suggest to you that we have been for a long time, hundreds of years, people living in Egypt and not in the promised land. If you look at the Exodus story, you will see that the Jews went to Egypt voluntarily. In fact, God prepared the way for them to go into Egypt. They went there and they flourished, and it was pretty good, until there came a Pharaoh whom knew not Joseph . . . or until there came an Archbishop who knew not Jesus - same old thing! Then, what had been a place of joy and of happiness, a place of life, a place where people dreamed dreams, had children, and lived, suddenly came a very dangerous trap. They were asked to make bricks without straw. Just as we, I think, are asked to make Christians without all those sure and certain signs of ministry and sacraments which actually enable us to do it. We are in a bricks without straw church and that's a very serious problem for us.
I want to suggest to you something else. In the end, we are not the victims of the ordination of women to the priesthood. If we feel ourselves to be victims there is something profoundly wrong with our perception of our Gospel inheritance. The victims are the women priests and those who support them. We are not the victims, they are! And we are not going to suffer the consequences; they are!
When there came a Pharaoh that knew not Joseph the people knew they had to go forward. Then, just as now there were many people who yearned for the fleshpots of Egypt - people who did not want to set out on the painful road of going forward in faith in the way that God wanted them to.
We consciously called our organisation "Forward in Faith", because any situation that we face demands neither retrenchment nor going back into the past. In God's name we are going forward as only God would have us do. We need the vision with certain signs. The very natural temptation is to get back into the familiar fleshpots that are now no longer the places we once enjoyed. There are other great temptations. Moses managed to get the whole people on the road and they went the pace of the slowest. I suspect Moses was kicking the slowest pretty hard to go a bit faster!! Those who turned back perished.
We need to digest that. Turning back is death. Going forward is life. There is in a sense no life in the fleshpots. I want to suggest to you (and I don't mind if you say this publicly), I do believe that the Church of England, and the Anglican Church of Australia, and ECUSA (perhaps ECUSA above all else), is just like Egypt. It is a destroyed home and not a home. I firmly believe that although in one sense physically we are here within it, we have to live spiritually as if we were not physically in it. If we spiritually live as if we are in it, we are actually betraying the faith that we believe in. We have to more forward. We have to find a way to develop and live and grow into people with a Gospel dimension, so that we are not the last. We have to move forward.
Somebody said to me last night that, for the last ten to fifteen years in Australia, priests (I want to say good and faithful priests) have been saying to young men that ordination is a pretty rough deal at the moment - "If I were you I would wait and see!"
Most of us have encouraged the idea of defeat. Yet when the Jews were in the desert they had children; when they arrived in Israel they were more than when they left Egypt. Not less - more! We need to think about the implications of those images of old, images of a people called by God and on the move. The history of Israel is an endless story of being dragged away from where they wanted to go; battling forward then being dragged back they always return.
We need to see that we are a people on the move, a people with God on our side. If we are faithful, we will not, and we cannot lose. In fact it is inconceivable that the truth fails if we are faithful. It is defeated if we are faithless, and I think we need to understand that.
NO ANGLICAN ANSWER
If you read the two chapters I've written in that book* you will see that I do not believe this to be an Anglican problem. And if it is not an Anglican problem then there is no Anglican solution. I want to say to those of you who are in what I would call the Prayer Book lobby, (and I don't want to be offensive) that the suggestion that a re-assertion of classical Anglican Prayer Book standards is the answer to a problem not peculiarly Anglican is, I think, absurd!
I would like to just ponder the implications of that. That is not to say that there is nothing valuable in the Book of Common Prayer. But the suggestion that I have heard in England, in America and here, that somehow digging out yesterday's answers, (you know, the answers of Egypt when Pharaoh knew Joseph!) as the answer to today's problem manifestly is not acceptable and cannot hold any intellectual water.
SCANDINAVIANS AND OLD CATHOLICS
That is why we formed alliances. We formed alliances with the Scandinavians in Norway and Sweden and our friends in the Free Synods in those two countries. They are very impressive and are very Catholic in their theology, and their parish life. In spite of their very different history, in their situation, interestingly, there is the same tension. There are people arguing for return to the Ausburg Confession which has been their doctrinal basis (their Book of Common Prayer, if you like) as an answer. Their leadership is saying "No!" . . . It cannot be because the problem we face is a common one and not a national one.
We have also sought to form relationships with some of the Old Catholic Churches and particularly the Polish National Catholic Church in America with whom we have a very close relationship. They broke with the Anglican Communion excommunicating the Archbishop of Canterbury!
THE CONTINUING ANGLICAN CHURCHES
The other thing that we have done in Forward in Faith (which I think has caused some difficulty both for our American friends and, I think, for some of you here) is that we said at the outset that we were victims of a common disaster and in seeking a way forward we would make alliances with all those who shared a common vision of the problem. As a consequence we made some approaches to those Continuing bodies that are mostly in America but also elsewhere.
Bishop Ackerman said that there about eight to ten Continuing Churches in America. But only four of them are of any real significance in terms of numbers and membership. Two of those, I think, are heretical (that's another story!) but certainly the Anglican Church of America which is part of the Traditional Anglican Communion and related to your Anglican Catholic Church of Australia is reasonable.
That group responded positively to our approaches and we have declared that we are in Communion with them "in so far as the law of the Church of England allows". Interestingly, you could do that. I suggested that to Bishop Silk. There are problems with the law; but saying "in so far as the law allows" you have actually defied the modus vivandi, you have asserted what you intend and you haven't got yourself into trouble.
ATTACKING FRIENDS!
We need to be open to other people. One of the things that appals me is how, after the collapse, I found everybody slagging everybody off. You know that the Roman Lobby (which in one sense I am part of) were slagging off the Prayer Book Lobby, and the Staying Lobby and everyone was attacking those who were going off to the Continuing Churches.
Whose work is this, Jesus Christ's or Satan's? Two of my curates have actually become Roman Catholics in the last year. I have got a big staff in my parish but two of them have become Roman Catholics. I have to tell you that I praise God, because if after five years of working with me they haven't learned the lesson that we are to follow our consciences in prayer they really are in trouble. They both prayerfully and carefully thought it through. That's their answer to the dilemma! I cannot condemn them, though personally I regret that they are no longer alongside my shoulder, fighting the fight that I am fighting.
I think we need to be very careful about the temptation to attack each other rather than those who are not only our enemies but the enemies of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We are often so kind to them, and so nasty to each other. I wonder as I said, who's at work.
THE BISHOPS ON OUR SIDE
I am going tell you a story. We had a meeting with the "Catholic Bishops". The Catholic Bishops of the Church of England asked to meet the Council of Forward in Faith. The three "flying bishops" are members of the Council ex-officio, but I wrote to Bishop Eric Kemp who is the Chairman of the Catholic Bishops and said, "of course, we would love to have the Bishops come if they want to talk to us". (I think they wanted to tell us not to rock the boat and to be careful!) But I said that if they came we wanted to know what their aims were, and what their strategy was.
It was fascinating. After an hour and a half I repeated the point. Every single bishop who came had a written letter from me saying that we wanted to know their aims as well as their strategy to achieve them. I have to say it was blatantly obvious that they had no aims at all and no strategy.
Suddenly, one of the Bishops said, "Yes, we have got a strategy, we are going to have a retreat for all catholic clergy in England!" Geoffrey Kirk who is Secretary of Forward in Faith and not known for his politeness to bishops said, "That is wonderful; it will make a marvellous headline in New Directions - 'Catholic Bishops lead clergy in retreat'!"
When they left I said to the bishops that they would never again be invited unless they had a strategy. Never again would we allow them (simply with a mantle of the patronage of the State Church - which I have now got! -) to presume to lead by virtue of an office which has failed.
Somebody once said, "Don't look to the bishops", and I think history will demonstrate that he was right. I will carry on in the Church because I happen to be quite confident I am not going to be afraid (like Daniel) to get into the lions den. The truth is that in the history of our church (and particularly for those of us in the Catholic tradition) the story of the bishops' participation is appalling in leadership, in prophetic proclamation, and in standing up for truth alongside us. It is lamentable. Many things that have appalled me (and this is not a knock at Bishop Hazlewood), but I can think of dozens of Catholic Bishops who on this very issue have acted defiantly and decisively after they have retired. Go to America . . . there are dozens who acted defiantly and blatantly after they retired!
It is a tragedy that there are no serving Bishops willing to stand up, willing to say "No!" I suggest it would only take one to say "No!" and the whole pack of cards would come tumbling down.
It is their great concern that we hold the Anglican Communion together. What on earth for? So that the Liberals can corrupt New Guinea, Melanesia, or East Africa? So that they can destroy the Church of Nigeria (which has got more communicants than ECUSA and Canada put together and less Bishops than the Anglican Church in Australia)? That is their goal - to corrupt them and destroy them.
What is your Church doing, or what is ECUSA's mission agency doing? I will tell you. They are using your money, from your parishes, to corrupt, blackmail and to pressure faithful and orthodox Christians in the Third World in a way that is so colonial and imperialist as to be beyond belief. Quite evil! Quite evil and yet it happens.
DEBASING THE CURRENCY
We need to be quite clear about the whole thing. Strategy is important. Now what have they done? What have our opponents done? I think many people have suggested that they have sold the faith cheap. You know - they have run it down hill slightly. I don't think that's what they've done. I think they have debased the currency. It is not that it's all cut price - it is that the currency in itself is no longer worth what it once meant. Instead of gold coins we have bits of lead with tin foil over the top.
A ministry which is not a ministry is nothing, and a church which says you can accept women priests or reject them is nothing. Where are the sure and certain signs of Gospel and redemption in a church where many faithful people reject the priesthood of those women priests?
The whole thing is debased. It becomes a question rather than a statement of God's love, and God's purpose and of God's holiness. It is a nightmare and it is a nightmare which we all share. I am sure many of you have had the experience of actually going to the Church noticeboard to see what clergy serve in the church.
This is madness! It is sheer madness! It is not Gospel! It is madness! And it is what they have done. They have debased the currency. They have taken away the gifts of Jesus Christ and his Church and turned them into questions. That's what they have done to you, and to me, and to millions of people out there. Even to people who don't know or believe as we believe, who don't understand . . . they have debased the currency. Swine before pearls rather than pearls before swine, and it is a disaster. But as I have said, the liberals are the victims in the end, and not us.
"OBSEQUIOUS CREEPING AROUND HERESY"
I want to say something else to you, going back to the bishops. The Archbishop of Perth, it seems to me, is a bishop who behaves as if he were a Catholic. I think he is right. You know, if we are wrong then we have to be exterminated and driven out. That's a Catholic point of view. Heresy should be removed and one of the peculiar things that happened in the Anglican Communion is that increasingly heretics behave like Catholics and the Catholics are saying "please let us have a place in the Church. All we want to do is to be allowed a place for our point of view".
Think about it! We behave like liberals, and they behave like orthodox! I find that thought frightening. And I find the obsequious creeping around heresy by some of our so called leaders deplorable and terrifying. Because what we are saying is we want the truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be another acceptable point of view. No way! No way! If that's the future, I ,for one, am off - and whether it's Rome, the Continuing Churches, or Orthodoxy seems to me to be totally irrelevant. I would be off if I thought that all we could offer ourselves as a future was to be "an acceptable alternative minority point of view".
STRATEGY
Now I want to go to strategy. What is our strategy? I will tell you what Forward in Faith has done, and I think it is quite clear that this new strategy is a possible strategy for all orthodox Christians in mainline churches affected by the new heresy. We have said that we are going to fight within the structures of the Church, and whether it is the Anglican church of Australia or the Church of Norway is irrelevant. We will fight within the structure of the Church in so far as we can - but not on their conditions, on ours! They are not going to burn you, crucify you, but they might ridicule you, bully you, be nasty to you. On our conditions.
COMMUNION STATEMENT
We adopted a Statement of Communion which caused great offence because they never believed we would do it. I will tell you quite clearly, I am not in Communion with anybody who ordains women to the priesthood nor with anybody who concelebrates with women priests, nor in the end with anybody who promotes the concept. I am not in communion with them.
I said to the Bishop of London when he offered me this job, there was no way I will ever appear in the sanctuary with a vested women priest unless it is what is genuinely an ecumenical occasion. There is no way that I will put my ministry on the line in a way which affirms what I believe in the depths of myself to be a falsehood for the people of God.
The Americans have said to us that they wish to God that at the beginning they had defined their relationship because when you go down the path it is harder and harder to make a stand because you find yourself pushed along. It was only with our knowledge of their situation, and the situation of Scandinavia, that we were able to say "What are we going to do when they ordained women?' We were prepared for it. I think you do need to ask an honest question of yourself. Have most of you actually defined your present relationships in what you doing? A document which sets it out clearly is a basis for a relationship with the majority. It is actually a very powerful weapon.
NOT ABOUT HISTORY, BUT DREAMS
The other thing that we have said (and again the last chapter of the book refers to this) is that it has to be about dreams and not about history. Surely the dream of every reform movement, (including the evangelical revival and the catholic revival) was of a church which was more authentic to the New Testament and Patristic vision.
Our dreams are about faith and order in accordance with the Gospel. We made a statement (which I have to say I think in Anglican terms is the most outrageous) and nobody has batted an eyelid. We have actually said that we accept the faith of the Undivided Church the Seven Ecumenical Councils. The Church of England only officially recognises the first four! Part of its problem I hasten to say! As a Catholic Anglican I know that those of our tradition have always lived with the Seven Councils as our basis and standard.
I think you need to say, not where you come from, but what you believe and what you're working towards. The lowest common denominator for Christians surely has to be the faith of the Undivided Church! That has to be, not the goal, but the starting point. I could make far more ultramontane points about what I believe in. The Forward in Faith statement is not the high point but the lowest common denominator of Christian faith and practice.
ANGLICAN ORDER
We have also raised some serious questions about Order. I said a minute ago they've debased the currency. I have been slated in the press for something I said in that book in the last chapter of the book about the Pope. Interestingly, what I have said about the Pope is identical with the ARCIC statement that your bishops and mine (and your Synod and my Synod) agreed to ten years ago.
But I also made a very radical statement. In the book I said that Anglican Order is at best a question and not a statement. Nobody has noticed it. I have to say to you, it is an outrageous statement! But it is the truth. It is the truth. I could say to you I think I am a Catholic Bishop and if I say to you I am a Catholic Bishop, after a few questions I end up saying that I believe I am. There is a question underneath Anglican Order, and it is a question that I believe in the end we have to resolve, and we have to resolve it ecumenically. The Gospel is not about questions. The Gospel is about Christ's statement and Christ's gifts to Christ's people. So there is a sense in which Forward in Faith is quite a radical, free thinking, dangerous organisation.
SETTING UP A STRUCTURE
Let me then come on to the whole business of structure. We have structured ourselves synodically. We have created an organisation which exists on two levels: a synodical level and a pastoral level. We have set up chapters of clergy, many of whom in every single county are broken. One of the interesting things is that somebody said to me, "You will need to grips with Australia before you analyse what is there".
I can tell you (and Bishop Ackerman will tell you I am right) that it is no different here than in his country or mine or any other country. It is exactly the same. The complex situation is identical everywhere. Geography is not anything to do with where we are. You have a peculiar problem because of distance, but if you live in a country like Norway, in which over half the country the sun doesn't come up for six months, you have got the same sorts of problems.
Structure is quite important because in a sense we have to organise for ourselves within the church. The church's structure has failed us; and more than failing us, the church's structure in many ways is actively persecuting us, and is working against not only our personal interests, but the interests of what we believe to be the Gospel.
The strength of the Catholic movement was in faithful priests and faithful people in the parishes. And if you go out there, you will find many of those faithful priests are actually broken. They are broken into little pieces. They are bowed down. They are lost. You have to create the structure which enables them to get up off their backsides and start working again. I know many, many priests who have literally stopped work. Who's doing the devil's work? Who's stopped work? Priests who have stopped praying! Priests who have actually stopped caring!
That is what they have done to us, or rather perhaps its what we have allowed them to do to us. It is a nightmare situation. And many of the stronger willed and the more incisive, and the more aggressive, and the more up-front, are those who have gone elsewhere. True in every single country. If we are not going to get up off our backsides and take up the Gospel fight we had better go ourselves. Because we will be accountable on the day of judgement for our stewardship. We will be held accountable.
One of the themes in the Old Testament we think a loy about these days is the whole thing about the faithless shepherds. You know, in Isaiah and elsewhere in Jeremiah, it's the prophets who desert the people who then collapse in a heap and who give up. It is a very serious issue and its a recurring theme - it is not a new one. Heaven alone knows. It is a common and recurring theme in Christian life and in Christian ministry.
A pastor who will not pastor, a preacher who will not preach, a prophet who will not prophesy is useless. No! they are worse than useless, because they look like a pastor, a preacher or a prophet. They are a disaster! You have to have the courage to get up and open your mouths.
The other day I heard a priest say, "I am afraid to say what I really think" . What the hell were we ordained for if we are afraid to say what we really think and what we really believe - what we really know? They are not going to terrify me. Woe to you shepherds. And indeed woe to you laity to put up with it!
We have to get a structure up and running which enables us to reactivate the lost. Some of them are very good people who have lost their way. And, if we don't go out and re-activate them and if we don't find our strength again in the parishes (where it always was, and not in the Diocesan Synod or the Bishop's palace), if we don't go out and do that, we will all perish and there is no future. And if we don't go out there and encourage young men to present themselves for ordination we will all perish. Forward in Faith is going to start its own order of Deaconess. The Order of Deaconesses in England was started as a private enterprise. You know, a sort of club on the side. The Church of England (like it does with everything else) took it over and then destroyed it.
THE CHURCH'S "LAW"
Get back to our origins. The Catholic Revival did what needed to be done at that particular time in history against the law. We have not yet really stated where we stand on liturgy. We get those mealy mouthed little liturgical phrases that can mean this, or can mean that, but certainly don't mean what anybody wants them to mean. One of our priests had a bishop who told him he was not to say "This is the Lamb of God . . . ", because the agreed text was "Jesus is the Lamb of God". The priest concerned said "This is Jesus. Jesus is the Lamb of God". What are these people playing at in demanding the law!
Look at your revised liturgy or mine. Look at the flabby Trinitarian formula. Peter Toon (an evangelical theologian) has written a very good book about what they have done to the Trinitarian formula. Everywhere including a new creed. Look what they have done to the language of God. Look at some of the modern books. l like modern liturgy. I am not an old fashioned fellow at all. But look at some of the trite rubbish - the words that are nothing compared to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we put up with it. The Church of England changed the liturgy because we in the Catholic Revival challenged it. We challenged it and they followed. And I would say to you if a liturgical formula is not satisfactory, change it. Change it. (When they have finished with their new creed we are going to produce our new version to be used in our parishes. In the Church of England - and I am sure in your church - you are allowed to make any changes that are not doctrinally significant. I would defy them to take you to court for the using a creed which is a more accurate translation of the original. They wont!
CHURCH PLANTING
I have talked about priests who are grieving, priests lamenting, and priests not working but there is another side to the disaster. There are thousands of people out there who are unchurched.
I recently went, not to the bush in Australia where it must be a much worse problem, but to a Forward in Faith rally in rural Salisbury. In England the next village is only 1 mile and a half down the road. I am not talking about 500 miles of sheep stations and then there is another church! At this Rally there was a couple, (he in a wheelchair) and they cried at the Eucharist because they had not been able to make their Communion for 6 months. There are people out there unchurched and destroyed; people faithfully saying their prayers who are actually starved of the sacraments and the Gospel. And I would say to you, if you are a faithful shepherd, you have to devise the structures which enable you to provide for them and if you don't you are failing.
In Forward in Faith we have firstly arranged for many retired priests, who don't have to worry about the compensation or their pensions, to go round the country and look after those people. We have established Regional Deans with the specific responsibility for the faithful in their region. They are the pastors of pastors.
Something else we are just beginning to do is to Church plant. If the Evangelicals in Sydney can do it (and I know it will cause some problems in the Anglican Church here), we can do it. I would suggest you find three or four clergy around. You know, who are retired. Why not start a new church in the middle of wherever it is that all churches have gone to the enemy. You could soon provide enough money to keep yourself going and eventually pay for a pastor.
IN THE SYSTEM BUT NOT UNDER ITS CONTROL
We should work in a way within the system which enables us also to live outside, and puts part of our effort outside their control. Because you know that what they would like is for you to be the last orthodox priest in your parish. If they can't get away with it, they will look for somebody else's parish and one by one they will pick us off if they possibly can. That is true even in the Catholic Diocese of London. A degradation of ministry and of life and of practice.
So you have to find a structure which is directed towards your mission and to your task, and not directed towards talking about the problems, feeling fed up, sharing your frustration or your anger. That's not gospel.
I want to say something else to you. You must have a strategy and a programme. What you need to find is an organisation and a structure in which you can talk more to each other about your needs and about your strategy, and about your life, and - how you achieve your aims.
I think you do need to churn it out and find what works for you. You need an enormous amount of time. (Interestingly the Episcopal Synod of America has become more radical.) Because until you come to a common mind you haven't got an organisation, you've actually got a group of people grieving for the past. You have to work for a common mind. The common mind has to be not about being anti-women priests which is really the tip of a very enormous iceberg which has sunk the Titanic, (and we certainly haven't got to be rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic which a lot of us temperamentally would rather do in every country in the world). We have to work to propagate, to protect, and to extend the Catholic faith, and that is about the pastoral. It is about being brave. It is about encouraging people. It about setting up structures and life which work for you.
Now I have seen the problems of Australia quite clearly in one sense. It is a massive country with a small number of very big cities and enormous spaces between them and my suggestion would be that in this situation you need a structure which has got a very strong base or strong camp in each of the major cities relating to each other across the country. You have got to find a way of having a structure and a strategy which is about your future, and your goals and not about the glorious past that we grieve for. I would say to you: Courage!. It is not in vain - we have not lost and we will not lose if we strive fearlessly, and courageously to achieve what we know is Christ's will, not simply for us but also for those out there who are on the other side.
* Quo Vaditis, published by Gracewing (London, 1996)
