IT'S 2018. I HAVE JUST BEEN APPOINTED . . .

I have updated this post from 3 1/2 years ago, because I still like it.

St Mary's Church, Kersey, Suffolk

IT’s 2018. I HAVE JUST BEEN APPOINTED ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

Oh dear. Now what? I have an indeterminate term ahead of me, I am about to be appointed by the Sovereign, and I need to know what to do to, for, and with the 77 million Anglicans of whom I will soon be the titular spiritual head. Not in any authoritative sense, for, true to traditional Anglican muddle, Canterbury is in no way a Pope. He has no power; he has no authority other than moral and traditional; he cannot order much and can command less. And nowadays, most Anglicans will be sure to disagree with him vehemently on almost all issues they consider important. So?

This has its good points, too. Canterbury can, if he likes, be individual, eccentric, and stubborn; and if he is seen to have a touch of holiness, or even greatness, he may get away with it. Rowan Williams, on the other hand, showed us all exactly what to avoid when he said that any successor of his should proceed ‘with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other’. Under that reportedly saintly man, the Church let its agenda be set by the media, and was thus always seen to be behind. Michael Ramsey, who admittedly lived in the prehistoric age Before Twitter, is a better example. When asked by a bratty Oxford undergraduate ‘Your Grace, what’s wrong with the Church of England?’ he murmured not one word about sex, gender, or LGBT, but said crisply, ‘It doesn’t preach enough.’

So here I am, with two short months before my intronisation, and some serious praying to do. I’ll start with Don Camillo. That only slightly fictitious Italian parish priest talked frequently with the crucified Christ on the wall of his church, and dealt with local ex-virgins and would-be Communists on the strength of it. We may think him pawky, but those conversations will, I suspect, be a good way to start. Right, Lord?

What (few will ask because most think they know) is wrong with the Church of England? And those other churches in our Communion? I’d begin by showing people what’s right. It is a national Church, and one of the few; because it has the vocation to be a national Church, it cannot hide itself in a comfy closed doctrinal closet but must worry the issues until they succumb. It is on the whole a tolerant Church, a reasonably kindly Church, an unpretentious Church, a Church that functions best when assembling many people of different points if view for a liturgy of Matins or Communion followed by coffee or sherry, and cake.

It is not good at taking positions on knotty problems beloved by television talk-show hosts. It is not good at dealing with morals beyond the Great Commandments. It is not good at being Cool. It is not good at being political. It is not good at being Progressive, or Liberal, or Conservative. It is not good at being Ecological or Diverse.

So I think that I will not try to be any of those things. Journalists with microphones and enormous cameras will try to make me, and I will prepare a few good one-liners to send them home with. But I will not bite.

Instead, I will surprise them. I will give each of Britain’s parishes the choice of being, like the hexes in Jack Chalker’s Well World novels, Wild, Half-Wild, or Tame, the choice to be made by all members in a parish referendum. Wild parishes will permit everything, from gay marriage to djembe-rock services; Half-Wild will choose from a small list which changes they will adopt, but will then be stuck with those for twelve years before a review; Tame parishes will be traditional (and BCP) in every way, whether Low, High, or Broad. Once those choices are made, I will put a twelve-year moratorium on all discussions of ‘modernization’, whether of morality or of liturgy, in the Church.

The place of these will be taken by an enormous effort of spirituality, accompanied (but not replaced) by active charity. Discussion will be allowed of matters of theology, but not encouraged: I will try to steer my fractious Church in the direction of being a praying Church rather than a forum for disagreement. I will put huge effort into encouraging vocations, both priestly and religious, and maintain and encourage all Anglican religious orders. Since my appointment coincides with the 350^th anniversary of the Restoration (1668) Prayer Book, I will direct that for one year it be used in all prime-time parish services, with Common Worship relegated for that time to 8 a.m. I will institute part-time seminars on preaching for all Church of England rectors and curates, and encourage longer, text-based sermons in all Sunday services.

An easily-overlooked feature of these changes is that they are low-cost financially. On that front, I will encourage a new form of tithing compatible with high taxation, and I will appoint a committee to study the feasibility of part-time curates. I will encourage Government to increase its assistance in maintaining historic churches and their fabric, and encourage the creation of lay readers and Matins and Evensong services led by them.

Finally, I will initiate a large effort of promulgating the knowledge of Anglican spirituality and its history, including the lives of persons to be venerated; I will institute popular courses on the thought of Hooker and Burnet, on the sermons of Donne and Newman (even though he left for Rome), and on the poetry of Herbert and Watts.

Thinking about this has almost made me eager to begin. Thanks, Lord.    

Christmas Carol Service, Canterbury Cathedral

 

ANTI-GRAVITY?

"SOLEMN" (Oxford English Dictionary)

1.   a.  Associated or connected with religious rites or observances; performed with      due ceremony and reverence; having a religious character; sacred.

The seruice daylie doon..so deuoute, solempne, and full of Armonye. (Thos. Cromwell)

3.   a. Performed with, accompanied by, due formality or ceremony; of a formal or ceremonious character.

Watching the glorious Kristin Scott Thomas perform Sophocles’ ‘Electra’ recently, I was reminded of the Catholic Mass as practiced in the village churches in my area in rural France. The theatre performance was filled with passion, vast floods of it; there were occasional flashes of humour, but the semiotic of the whole production was “(Greek) Tragedy is Passion” – rip-roaring, throat-tearing, rolling-on-the-ground passion.  The Mass – the modern, post-Vatican-II Mass as presided over by our hyperactive, charming, big-hearted Algerian priest – has, obviously, a different kind of passion, but that is not its main characteristic. Its main feature is upbeat intimacy: the semiotic here is “the Mass is a family get-together – God’s family”. There are flashes of humour, and the moment of the Peace, where the liturgy is interrupted while everyone shakes hands with or kisses neighbours, here is not nearly as invasive an interruption as in some more formal Masses: it preserves the mood that has been there all along.

            Well, so what? In Electra, we are caught up in an uncontrollable hatred and grief; in the village Mass, we are absorbed into a good-humoured communal celebration. And yet, and yet. In both manifestations, something huge and important is missing, and it is the same thing: solemnity. Greek tragedies were solemn occasions, not religious services but performed and beheld with reverence and gravity. The performers wore masks. The ending comprised katharsis, a cleansing, a purification of the emotions of pity and terror that the story had called forth.

            The Mass is a religious service. It is the supreme moment of meeting between man and God, between Man and God-made-Man, between an ordinary person and the Resurrected Christ. Few people have said this better that John Henry Newman, the Anglican who became a Roman Catholic – and what he wrote is equally true for Anglo-Catholics:

To me nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling, so overcoming, as the Mass, said as it is among us. I could attend Masses forever, and not be tired. It is not a mere form of words -- it is a great action, the greatest action that can be on earth. It is not the invocation merely, but, if I dare use the word, the evocation of the Eternal. Here becomes present on the altar in flesh and blood, before whom angels bow and devils tremble. This is that awful event which is the scope, and the interpretation, of every part of the solemnity.

Words are necessary, but as means, not as ends; they are not mere addresses to the throne of grace, they are instruments of what is far higher, of consecration, of sacrifice. They hurry on, as if impatient to fulfill their mission. Quickly they go, the whole is quick, for they are all parts of one integral action, for they are awful words of sacrifice, they are a work too great to delay upon, as when it was said in the beginning, "What thou doest, do quickly".

Quickly they pass, for the Lord Jesus goes with them, as He passed along the lake in the days of His flesh, quickly calling first one and then another. Quickly they pass, because as the lightning which shineth from one part of the heaven into the other, so is the coming of the Son of Man. Quickly they pass, for they are as the words of Moses, when the Lord came down in the cloud, calling on the name of the Lord as He passed by, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth". And as Moses on the mountain, so we too "make haste to bow our heads to the earth, and adore".

So we, all around, each in his place, look out for the great Advent, "waiting for the moving of the water", each in his place, with his own heart, with his own wants, with his own thoughts, with his own intentions, with his own prayers, separate but concordant, watching what is going on, watching its progress, uniting in its consummation; not painfully and hopelessly, following a hard form of prayer from beginning to end, but, like a concert of musical instruments, each different, but concurring in a sweet harmony, we take our place with God's priest, supporting him, yet guided by him.

There are little children there, and old men, and simple laborers, and students in seminaries, priests preparing for Mass, priests making their thanksgiving, there are innocent maidens, and there are penitent sinners; but out of these many minds rises one Eucharistic hymn, and the great Action is the measure and the scope of it.

What Newman wrote still supposes a congregation, a community; but it is a congregation united in a joy that is solemn, in a solemn hour of celebration. “Here becomes present on the altar in flesh and blood, before whom angels bow and devils tremble.” I have seldom if ever attended a post-Vatican-II Mass, or indeed an Anglican Common Worship Eucharist, where this sense was expressed. Solemnity is not boring, nor is it old-fashioned: it is gravitas, the expression of the respect and awe due to what is greater than our sloppy humanity. An expression that picks up and involves our sloppy human selves and catches us up, for all too short a moment, into the portals of eternity. Please, can we have our solemnity back?