Anglican patrimony: the old unity, good and bad

• Liturgical uniformity? No. It’s not traditional and we’ve seen enough of the bad kind of uniformity. So have the American Missal for the Americans, Ordinary Form with panache for the Brits and English Missal (the Extraordinary Form translated with style) as an option for all.
• Defining churchmanships. In the combox, the Revd Vicki McGrath remembers the old Episcopalianism: the stress on apostolic succession essentially defined it against (other) mainline Protestantism and gave us in the late Anglo-Catholic movement (which we didn’t see as a movement) the idea that we were in the Catholic Church, as odd as that now seems. The other Bishop Robinson like David Virtue rather sees us historically as at least misguided. In a way they’re right: what we thought was Anglicanism isn’t (answering this). As for the centrism he likes, without strong doctrine and ecclesiology that centre boogies around a bit — so for example in Episcopalianism gay marriage is centrist — and as Newman wrote in his apologia, historically the middle’s not always right, viz. Monophysitism. Starting at old-school Central and coming on board high churchmanship early on, I was just a kid taking in at face value the good liturgics, sonorous prose and, more important, the Catholic doctrine sincerely taught. To the larger church we go!

Labels: Anglicanism, the Catholic faith