Beyond reformation and the counter reformation

 

Many Roman Catholics have only limited familiarity with the diverse traditions of Anglican thought and spirituality.  There is often an excessively simple narrative that traces Anglicanism to the Protestant reformation in the 16^th Century and ignores key developments and departures in the course of the centuries. Many will acknowledge the significance of ‘Anglo-Catholicism’ associated with Keble, Pusey and Newman in the 19^th Century.
 

However, there were strains of ‘high church’ theology much earlier in the writings of what are known as ‘Caroline Divines’ – theologians associated with the Stuart era, particularly the reign of Charles I and the decades surrounding it in the seventeenth century. We ought to recall that the disruptive decades of the 16^th Century did not precipitate a sudden and dramatic change in liturgical practice in all places and all at once. There were hold-out places, reversals, purges and splintering.  Much of the liturgical material was initially adapted from medieval Latin sources and rendered into the English of the day, although subsequent revisions reflected differing theological priorities.  From the very beginning of what we know call ‘Anglicanism’ there were notwithstanding significant official changes in doctrine and liturgy under successive Tudor monarchs considerable variations in theology, liturgical practice.

Over the centuries, there was fights over incense, bells, genuflections, crucifixes and even the odd direct invocation of the saints! Anglicanism tends to be messy and inclusive. Today, Anglicans tend to fight less about these things and more about sexual orientation, female clergy and sexual ethics more broadly. There was a time when divorce was an issue but that is largely gone now as a dividing issue.
 One of the Caroline Divines was Bishop Lancelot Andrewes.  He is remembered for profound liturgical and sacramental theology.  He was a scholar, who held high positions in the Church of England during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I.   An entry for Wikipedia states:

Andrewes was considered, next to James Ussher, to be the most learned churchman of his day, and enjoyed a great reputation as an eloquent and impassioned preacher.

It may come as a surprise to many Roman Catholics that someone of Andrewes’ calibre could write the following:

As to the Real Presence we are agreed; our controversy is as to the mode of it. As to the mode we define nothing rashly, nor anxiously investigate, any more than in the Incarnation of Christ we ask how the human is united to the divine nature in One Person. There is a real change in the elements—we allow ut panis iam consecratus non-sit panis quem natura formavit; sed, quem benedictio consecravit, et consecrando etiam immutavit [i.e., "that the bread once consecrated is not the bread which nature has formed, but that which the blessing has consecrated and, by consecrating it, has also changed"]. (Responsio, p. 263)

In his own words, Andrewes did accept the real presence and what might be termed sacramental realism but without subscribing to the doctrine of transubstantiation. In that sense, Andrewes represented a strand within the Church of England that differed both from more explicitly Reformed approaches and from later Anglo-Catholic developments. He summarised what we now refer to as Anglicanism as (sometimes referred to as Andrewes Rule):

One canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries. (Opuscula Quaedam Posthuma, 1629, p. 91)

A deeper awareness of the history of Anglican thought and the diversity of approaches in that strand of Christianity would benefit mutual understanding and reignite some of the energy and even urgency of making progress in ecumenical dialogue that all may be one in Christ.
I for one continue to believe that Anglicans and Roman Catholics have far more in common than what divides us. In many ways, Anglicans have shown us  the way forward.  Its orderly messiness if appealing.  At the same time, Anglicans have a great wealth of catholic spirituality, theology and social teaching to explore. I pray and look for the day when we can recognise one another's ministries and eat and drank at the Sacrament together.

I would love to see this happen in my own lifetime but I do not think it will happen yet.  Perhaps in the current Century.  Sometimes, change happens very slowly and then all of a sudden.  The Roman Catholic church has the advantage over a diffuse and decentralised Anglican communion of being highly centralised.  If a Pope - following a period suitable reflection, prayers and consultation opened a door know knows where it might lead. My sense is that a great many Anglicans would accept the authority of the Pope as the 'primus inter pares' (first among equals) if the form of governance from the centre was looser and if some legitimate diversity in theology was agreed on.

Later the coming days, I will look at a number of other Anglican writers during the 17th - 19th Century.