Seconds out... Round 2

Crossing the Line - part 16

I went back to Oxford with a plan.

In college, I would go to the Christian Union every Wednesday and the Chapel for the main Communion service each week, which was on a Saturday.  In Oxford more widely, I would go to OICCU (pronounced Oy-Cue) and more importantly, I would find a church that suited me.  There was nothing wrong with St Aldates, the church I went to in my first term.  It was full every Sunday with lively worship and world class preaching, but it wasn’t me. 

I started the term by attending a different church each week.  I went to student churches whose ministry revolved around attracting and meeting the needs of students.  I went to local parish churches which were much more like what I was used to at home.  I went to quirky churches who didn’t really care who came – they just did their thing.  I prayed as I went along and in the end, my decision surprised me.

Worship at Pusey House

Pusey House was a shrine to the Oxford Movement, which had attempted to reshape the Church of England in a more catholic direction in the Victorian era.  There was a team of priests there who celebrated all that was good about an Anglo-Catholic approach to worship and theology.  The congregation was small on a Sunday, often only around 40 or so people.  They had a choir which sang anthems and provided the backbone for much of the congregational singing.  Sermons were short, often by guest preachers, some of whom were famous in the Anglican world.  The use of incense was profuse, with one thurifer feeling he had not done his job if he didn’t set off the fire alarms in the college beyond.  Three priests would robe in elaborate vestments and process surrounded by a phalanx of servers and acolytes.  They celebrated communion with their backs to the congregation.  Everything was very formal, choreographed to perfection, and woe betide any server who put a foot out of place.  It was definitely not charismatic or evangelical and yet something spoke to me in the worship there.

Being in the congregation there was more about being than doing.  However you felt, the worship went on around you, enveloping you in God’s presence like sinking into a deep luxurious cushion.  So much of my busy life was about doing rather than being and this was the balance I needed.  I didn’t have to be enthusiastic, engaged, or even sing if I didn’t want to.  I could simply go and be carried along by a river of prayer and sacrament.

Some of my friends in the Christian Union were surprised by this decision.  Most of the people I was getting to know in OICCU were shocked, but that was ok.  I was not conforming to what was expected.  I could be at OICCU on a Saturday night for the main Bible Exposition of the week and in Pusey House on Sunday morning for High Mass.  I was learning to cross lines and to inhabit both spaces, whatever they thought of each other.

There were also others in college who were attracted to Pusey House.  There were two Jonathans in the same year as me in Brasenose, who were also involved in the Chapel and Christian Union in college and they began to worship at Pusey House.  One became the Sacristan there, living above the chapel and providing the practical logistics for the daily services.  We became prayer partners, meeting to pray for each other every week or so.  The other Jonathan … well that’s the next part of the story.

Then towards the end of my second term, there came a complete surprise.  Each college had two Christian Union leaders and they were appointed by OICCU.  Technically they were the ‘OICCU Reps’ in each college, although the reality was a little more complex.  Our reps needed to find their successors, and have them approved.  To our astonishment, they invited Jonathan and me to take on the role and lead the CU in college for 3 terms, starting after Easter.  Jonathan was a Methodist by upbringing but was definitely discovering a more Catholic spirituality at Oxford.  I can’t remember who we talked to before agreeing to do it, but we accepted the invitation.  OICCU didn’t usually have college reps who worshipped at Pusey House.

Brasenose College Chapel

Our first term was spent largely delivering the programme that our predecessors had planned but we did began meeting with our college chaplain, Jeffrey John, for croissants and pain au chocolate after early morning communion once a week to foster a closer relationship between the CU and the Chapel. 

In the summer break, Jonathan and I met together to plan the term ahead.  Independently, we both came with the same Bible verses in our minds, from John’s gospel where Jesus is praying for all believers before his betrayal and crucifixion.  After praying for his disciples, he continues,

“My prayer is not for them alone.  I pray also for all those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.” (John 17:20-21)

We both took this to heart, and built a programme for the term around these verses.

When we got back to college, another surprise greeted us. The Christian Union and the Roman Catholic Society had always been a bit tetchy with each other.   The RC Society liked drinking, enjoying life and not bothering anyone else; the CU liked to appear holy, earnest and evangelistic.  There was very little overlap between the two, but now a new RC Committee had been elected with a more open attitude.  In particular, there was Sarah, who was a devout Roman Catholic (alongside enjoying life, a drink and not bothering anyone else).  Sarah also came to Chapel & CU and was now a leading member of this new committee.

Sarah made the suggestion that we should have a joint Christian Union/Roman Catholic meeting in college to set aside any previous animosity and meet each other as equals.  It was a wonderful opportunity and we began to plan the meeting.  We agreed that our college chaplain, Jeffrey John would be a suitable speaker, respected by both groups.  We set a date and started to advertise it.  That is when the shit really began to hit the fan – and in case you are wondering, that really is the only adequate way to express what happened next.

OICCU's HQ - The North Gate Hall

I foolishly mentioned our joint meeting at an OICCU prayer morning, expecting at least some understanding of why this was a good thing.  Quite the opposite!  At the end of prayers, I was pulled aside by members of OICCU’s Executive Committee to tell me why it was a bad idea.  Things quickly went from bad to worse.  After the next OICCU committee meeting, Jonathan and I were told that the joint meeting could not happen; that it would compromise the clear Evangelical identity of OICCU; that we had to cancel it.

When we said ‘no’ the response was equally swift.  If the meeting went ahead, we would be sacked as OICCU Reps in Brasenose and other reps would be appointed to lead the CU in college. 

We were astonished.  So were others. 

Members of the CU in Brasenose started to say that if they sacked us, it didn’t matter who OICCU appointed, we would carry on as before.  We started to get messages of support from some OICCU Reps in other colleges, saying that if we were sacked, they would resign, potentially taking their college Christian Unions with them.  It was all getting out of hand.

Jonathan and I knew that we couldn’t cancel the meeting, even if we wanted to.  The damage if cancelled would create a greater divide than the fracture we were trying to mend.  It would send all the wrong signals to our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters and further entrench divisions.  For me, this epitomised everything that I had come to hate in my first term and had decided to challenge.

I also recognised that escalating confrontation and further division was not the way forward either.  I began a kind of negotiation with OICCU.  There were some reasonable people on the Exec and we began to explore a way forward.  Eventually after a great deal of shuttle diplomacy, a compromise was agreed.  OICCU would not take action if we renamed the meeting with the snappy title “A meeting for all Christians in college organised by the leaders of the CU and the Roman Catholic Society”.

It was a fudge of course.  OICCU could then say it wasn’t a ‘joint meeting’ and we could go ahead as planned.  The posters were already out around college and the date was only a few days away, so in practise this simply meant me writing the ‘snappy title’ on the blackboard in the porter’s lodge which announced events on college.

The evening went ahead and was a great success.  Some of the old prejudices from each group were challenged or melted away.  Jeffrey John spoke well and we prayed together before enjoying a glass or two of wine together.

Why should something like this be so hard?  I still don’t know the answer to that, except that it usually happens when people become too religious to the exclusion of others.  I find this particularly annoying because it is the opposite of what I read about Jesus.  He constantly crossed the lines of control which criss-crossed his world. Eating and drinking with sinners; calling nationalist zealots and traitors (tax collectors) to be among his closest friends. Going the Pharisee’s house but then letting a prostitute wash his feet with her tears to the disgust of his host.  Healing the centurion’s servant, even though he was part of the occupying army.  Overturning the tables of the free-market capitalists in the Temple.  Talking to the Samaritan woman at the well, breaking 2 taboos in one go.  Indeed, shaming his Jewish brothers and sisters with the story of the good Samaritan who does what their religious and political icons failed to do.  I could go on.

Standing up to such sectarianism can be difficult.  In some places in the world it can put you at risk of violence or even death, but then Christians do follow the man who gave his own life to bring others peace.

Round 2 had been fought and won – but there was more to come.

Click here for part 17 - The power of the institution

Click here for an Introduction to Crossing the Line

To Rome... and back

Crossing the Line - Part 5

I was three months old when my parents left their home, job and ministry, taking their baby with them into an uncertain future.  They left without telling anyone in the parish, leading to a headline in the local paper, “Vicar disappears with wife and baby!”

What prompted this rash action will seem almost incomprehensible to most people today but in 1963, for conservative Anglo-Catholics, it was an issue on a par with women priests and bishops more recently.

What was the issue?  Methodists!

In 1963 the Church of England and the Methodist Church appeared to be nearing agreement to come together and be united as one church.  While for many this was a cause for joy, the idea struck horror and fear into the hearts of those whose identity lay in seeing the Church of England as the true ‘Catholic’ Church of England.  For them it was not politics or the Reformation which defined the Church of England.  Rather, it was its Catholic heritage with orders of ministry handed down by Apostolic Succession.  After all, Henry VIII’s faith was thoroughly Catholic.  His treatise “Defence of the Seven Sacraments” in 1521 against Martin Luther, earned Henry the title Defender of the Faith, bestowed on him by Pope Leo X.  Whatever his political and marital motives, Henry was no Protestant!

Unity with the Methodists would put the Catholicity of the Church of England in jeopardy.  In England, Methodists had no Bishops and their theology was methodically reformed in its nature.  There was no Apostolic Succession and they had ministers, not priests.

For my parents, this would be the end of the Church of England as they knew it.

My father wrote to his Bishop to announce his resignation and intention to convert to Roman Catholicism.  The Bishop’s reply was polite but to the point – if you are going, go quickly.  I have the letter, and it almost reads like Jesus’ words to Judas at the last supper (John 13:27).

So that is exactly what he did.  Together they left without a word.  They took nothing with them except a baby and a couple of suitcases.  They stepped out into the unknown.

Fortunately, the Roman Catholic Converts Aid Society had a plan.  They offered us a room in Top Meadow, a house in Beaconsfield left to the Roman Catholic Church by author GK Chesterton in his will.  He was after all, a convert to Roman Catholicism himself.

There were others at Top Meadow too, beginning a new life having ‘gone to Rome’.  It was a kind of safe-house for defecting Anglican clergy.  While there, we were all baptised again (at the time The Roman Catholic church didn’t accept any other church’s baptism as valid) and my parents were confirmed.  In more mischievous moments, I have teased my Baptist and Pentecostal friends by telling them I have been baptised twice.  They would invariably nod with approval, assuming that I mean once as a baby and again as an adult when I was old enough to do it properly.  I usually wait a moment before spoiling it by saying that both were as a baby and one was as a Roman Catholic!

After a few months there, the Converts Aid Society found David a job as a Maths teacher in a Roman Catholic school in Kirkby, Liverpool.  David could not be a RC priest, of course, with wife and baby in tow.  We moved into Kirkby and settled into our new life.

I’m not sure when it began to dawn on David and Irene that this wasn’t the promised land they hoped for.  I think they had high hopes in joining the ‘mother-church’ and finally being able to be as Catholic as they pleased.  Now they were there, perhaps it wasn’t everything they had envisaged.

In any case after a year in Kirkby, David decided to find his own job as a teacher.  He was offered a job in a local authority school in Rochdale.  We moved to Hollingworth Lake on the edge of the Pennines and David started work at his new school, only to find that the Head Teacher and the Deputy Head were both Methodist lay preachers! 

Whoever said that God doesn’t have a sense of humour?

Over the next two years, they had a profound effect on David’s life and attitudes. Having ‘jumped ship’ and left his church, his vocation, and his ministry on account of Methodists, he could have simply jumped ship again and found another school to teach in.  Maths teachers were in demand, but something made him stay.

During his time at that school David came to the conclusion that they were two of the finest Christians he had ever met.  Their pastoral care and dedication to all the children in that school, from the most able to the most troubled, made a deep and lasting impression on him.  He began to see that there were more important issues than Apostolic Succession or Church labels.

For Irene, it had not been an easy transition either.  She went from vicar’s wife in the CofE to an oddity in the Roman Catholic Church and no-one knew how to treat her.  A former nun, married to an ex-Anglican priest with a baby!

I don’t think I helped either.  Mum told me of one occasion at Mass when I was about three years old;  I fell asleep during the sermon and started singing in my sleep.  Unable to wake me, she ended up walking out of the church with me in her arms, still singing the Flanders and Swann song Mud, Mud Glorious Mud at the top of my voice!

By 1966, David knew what he had to do.  He went back to the Bishop who ordained him and said, “I’m sorry. I was wrong.  Can I come back?”  Graciously, the answer was yes, albeit with a challenging first appointment to test his resolve.

From that moment onwards, David and Irene were committed to a very different form of Christianity.  Their theology had not changed.  They were still Anglo-Catholics, steeped in sacramental faith.  They still went to Walsingham each year.  They continued as Oblates at the convent in Wantage but from then on, they refused to be sectarian Christians and were always open to expressions of Christian faith different to their own.   The most important thing was recognising Christ in others, whatever our disagreements might be.

That is the Christian home where I grew up from the age of 3½ and these values have become a deep and intrinsic part of who I am.  At times they have been tested by the intransigence and prejudice of other Christians, but the roots run deep and were forged in the fire of those difficult years in my parent’s lives.

I experience a variety of feelings about their decisions in my early years.  Although my memories of that time range from sketchy to non-existent, I had 6 homes in my first 4 years of life.  We were constantly on the move, not knowing what would come next. 

I admire them for their courage to act on principle, even if they later regretted it.  Faced with similar dilemmas, many people just stay and grumble. This usually results in their impotent moaning sapping life from those around them and provides no opportunity to be challenged or changed.

I admire them even more for being willing to change when they realised they had been wrong - for being willing to admit it and say sorry.

Crossing the line doesn’t always lead us in the right direction, but when we do it in good faith it gives God the opportunity to do something in our lives and bring us to where he wants us to be.

Perhaps we may all need to be more like that sometimes?

Click here for an Introduction to Crossing the Line

Click her for Part 6 - From rubble to a garden

Roman Catholics add insult to injury...

Following the Christmas tirade against same-sex marriage by the Pope and senior Roman Catholics, the only Roman Catholic congregation in England to offer special masses to LGBT church goers has now found itself homeless and closed down.

The ‘Soho Masses’ at Our Lady of the Assumption church had provided a ray of hope for gay Roman Catholics in London for the past 6 years, and operated with the permission of senior clergy.

But now the most senior Roman Catholic in England and Wales has put and end to the masses, reaffirming that “same-sex activity is not consistent with the teaching of the church” and saying that it is not appropriate that Mass be offered as part of pastoral care for LGBT Catholics as the Mass has to “retain its essential character as the highest prayer of the whole Church.”

Dismissing sexual orientation as a dangerous deception, the statement says that “of great importance, is the teaching of the Church that a person must not be identified by their sexual orientation.”

Many people will interpret Vincent Nichols words and actions as further pressure on LGBT people to deny their sexuality, backed up by the threat of exclusion from this ‘highest prayer of the Church’ until they do.

But to add insult to injury, the Church in Soho is going to be made available to the Roman Catholic Ordinariate instead – a group made up of disaffected Anglicans who have been offered a special place in the Roman Catholic Church because of their opposition to women’s ordination.

So the church which has acted as a beacon of inclusive Christian faith is to be turned into a centre for those who deny the equality of women before God, and the validity of women’s ministry as Priests and Bishops.

Once again I find myself reminded of one of the most powerful stories of injustice in the Bible - the time when God sent the prophet Nathan to confront King David after he had committed adultery and murder. (1 Samuel 12)

Rather than face David head-on with what he had done, Nathan told David a story of a rich man with many flocks of sheep and a poor man with just one lamb who he loved dearly.  When a guest came to visit the rich man, he did not want to slaughter one of his own sheep to provide a feast, so he took the poor man’s lamb and killed it instead.

As King David’s anger raged against a man who would do such a thing, Nathan faced David  with the words, “You are the man.”

Today the Archbishop of Westminster has taken the one much loved lamb from the LGBT Catholic Community – the Soho Masses – and slaughtered it to feed to his new guest – the disaffected Anglican Ordinariate.

Today I believe that the Son of David’s anger is equally burning against any Church (Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, or Pentecostal) which builds its faith on the exclusion of others, and teaches others to do the same.

Jesus had a name for such religious institutions – he called the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees of his day hypocrites and blind guides for doing the same kind of things.  In Matthew 23 he let his anger fly against those who place heavy burdens on people’s shoulders in the name of God, and who shut the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven in their faces.

 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” (Matthew 23:13)

And he was very clear about the way we should regard such religious institutions,

“Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, ² ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; ³ therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practise what they teach. ⁴ They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.” (Matthew 23:1-4)

Jesus last command was to go into all the world and draw all people into his Kingdom – not to go and find ways to keep people out.

When Church leaders exclude people from the fullness of the Kingdom of God because of their gender, sexuality or who they love, they would do well to pray that they don’t find the prophet Nathan waiting for them at the Pearly Gates… saying “You are the man!”

 

We pray for their return ...

So yesterday the Church Of England lost 5 Bishops as they make the journey to Rome over the issue of women Bishops...

Some may find it tempting to say "Good riddance" but that would graceless. Instead I would like to tell the story of an young Anglican Priest who left the Church of England back in 1963 to become a Roman Catholic .

He did it for theological reasons.

He was an Anglo-catholic, trained at St Stephen's House in Oxford, under Fr Arthur Couratin. And he, along with others, felt that the Church of England was in danger of betraying its Catholic heritage by moving towards unity with the Methodist Church. In doing so, any claim to Apostolic Succession would be broken and we would have priests & ministers who had not been properly ordained. In short, the Church of England would cease to be part of the' one holy catholic and apostolic church' of the creeds.

And so he left, with his wife and young baby, following the courage of their convictions.

They left their home for a room in a Roman Catholic house for defecting Anglican clergy. They received a warm and practical welcome in the Roman church, with the Converts Aid Society helping him to get a job and home to live in, and Roman Catholic priests helped them through this momentous time of change in their lives.

At that time, their Anglican baptism was not accepted in Rome, so they had to be conditionally baptised and confirmed again - and of course, as a married man, there was no possibility of being able to move to ordained ministry as a Roman Catholic priest.

So he became a teacher, initially in Roman Catholic schools, but then in a state school in Rochdale. When he got there however, he discovered something - that the Head and Deputy Head at this school were both dedicated Methodists and the Deputy was a Methodist lay preacher.

During his time there, he began to question his attitude towards Methodists and his reasons for leaving the Church of England. These Methodists were among the finest Christian he had ever met, and as a result he realised that he had been wrong. In that realisation, he felt God calling him back and he went to the Bishop who had sponsored him for ordination him to ask to be allowed back into Anglican ministry. Graciously, the Bishop welcomed him back, and there followed another 28 years of ordained ministry before retirement.

This story is not unique by any means, but it is special to me because that Anglican priest is my father, and I was the young baby in their arms as they left their Vicarage to 'go to Rome'.

Its point is to show that sometimes we can be wrong. Sometimes there are issues which seem so fundamental to our faith, that lead us to difficult decisions and drastic action. Yet in the fullness of time we realise they are mere distractions to the call to love God and our neighbour in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.

Paul knew this of course, after his momentous change of life and faith on the road to Damascus. In Philippians 3, he lists all the things that he thought were so important before his encounter with Christ - and then he says that now he counts them all as loss compared with the all surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. Not many of us will have a Damascus experience to redirect our lives, but we do meet Christ in other people every day and if we are open to see Christ in them, we too can find Christ calling us to new understanding of His work in the world.

Of course things are very different now. The issue of the day is Women Bishops, not Methodists. Anglican priests can go to Rome and be welcomed into ministry, even if they are married with a family. And now there is the promise of an Anglican Ordinariate within the Roman Catholic Church.

Now, with the resignation of five Bishops to join the new Ordinariate, there will be other clergy who are tempted to join them. My hope is that they will think twice before leaving the Church of England on such an issue - but my prayer is that even if they go, they will remain open to seeing Christ at work in the ministry of others, and through seeing Christ at work, they will one day feel the call to return.