The Benedictine Spirit in Anglicanism

From a Roman Catholic Benedictine, Fr. Robert Hale, OSB, published in 1980.  An excerpt:

Most Roman Catholics probably still think of the Anglican Church (in the United States known as the Episcopal Church) as arising in the sixteenth century and as a direct consequence of certain marital problems of Henry VIII. But Anglicans themselves resolutely propose another conception of their Church quite different from this simpler interpretative model. John Macquarrie, for instance, one of the most influential of living Anglican theologians, [writing in 1970] affirms: 'Anglicanism has never considered itself to be a sect or denomination originating in the sixteenth century. It continues without a break the Ecclesia Anglicana founded by St Augustine thirteen centuries and more ago . . . Our present revered leader, Arthur Michael Ramsey, is reckoned the one hundredth Archbishop of Canterbury, in direct succession to Augustine himself.

In this view, then, the Anglican Church was founded by St Augustine of Canterbury (a monk, it might be noted here, sent to England by the great monastic Pope Gregory I).

The Anglican Bishop Stephen Neill insists in the same way as Macquarrie upon this continuity of Anglicanism with the pre-reform Church in England, only he takes us back even further into the Celtic origins of Christianity in England; he writes: 'The [Anglican] has never imagined that the Reformation was anything other than a Reformation. It was in no sense a new beginning. The English Churchman regards himself as standing in the fullest fellowship and continuity with Augustine and Ninian and Patrick and Aiden and Cuthbert and perhaps most of all, the most typically Anglican of all ancient saints, the Venerable Bede.'

Thus, the Anglican insists that if one wishes seriously to come to terms with Anglicanism, he is going to have to go back to its true roots and study Augustine, Ninian, Patrick, Aiden and Cuthbert (all of them monks), and especially that most Benedictine of these founding fathers, also 'that most typically Anglican of all ancient saints, the Venerable Bede.'

The Anglican theologian Anthony Hanson notes that there is nothing particularly, new about this insistence on Anglican continuity with the pre-Reform Church: 'Anglican apologists in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries constantly maintained that the Church of England was not a breakaway Church, like the Evangelical Church in Germany or the Reformed Church in France. It was the same continuous Catholic Church that had at the Reformation "washed its face."'

And the Roman Catholic scholar of Anglicanism George Tavard, citing Anglican theologians of the sixteenth century regarding the 'uninterrupted succession' of their sacraments, theology and faith, acknowledges that among the Anglican writers of that period 'this theme constantly recurs.'

Thus, to the traditional polemical Roman Catholic query of' where was the Anglican Church before Henry VIII?' the Anglican pointedly responds: 'In England, where else?' And he proposes this response very sincerely, it should be noted, not as a rhetorical trick but as a true expression of his experience of the sacramental, liturgical, theological and devotional continuity of the post-Reform Anglican Church with the pre-Reform English Church. The Roman Catholic may have some difficulties in accepting tout court and without qualification this Anglican thesis; but correct ecumenical method requires him to recognize that at least this is the way Anglicans ('high Church' and 'low', although emphasis might differ) sincerely experience their own Church life. And it is primarily with this Anglican experience and self-identity that Roman Catholics must come to terms in a true ecumenical dialogue, and not just with their own conception of what Anglicans must be.

It's refreshing to read a Roman Catholic Benedictine monk almost come out and acknowledge that the Church of England and her progeny constitute a branch of the Catholic Church.  For that is what we as Anglicans believe, and we believe it because it's true.  (This is why Fr. Hart repeatedly refers to it as the "branch fact" and not "branch theory.")  It is refreshing, but not validating.  We need neither Rome's nor Orthodoxy's validation.  Our Catholic validity is a fact.

Fr. Hale's article echoes the argument of Canon Arthur Middleton, whose books I have written about here.   That argument is that Anglican identity is going to be found neither in a Maurician notion of comprehensiveness, nor in that notion taken to the nth degree by liberal apostates, nor in the reduction of the English Reformation to its Edwardian phase.  It will only be found in its historical and dogmatic connection to the undivided Church of the first millennium, and as a "nationalistic" ecclesiastical jurisdiction that is modeled largely on that of the Orthodox Churches.  There is no need for Anglicans to jettison the English Reformation, but by the same token we ought not place undue emphasis on our Protestant character, except a Church that has "washed its face", to quote Fr. Hale.  We are Protestant only to the extent that we believe in the importance of our Augustinian inheritance.  We are not Presbyterians with prayer books.

Please read the whole article for the author's wider point about Anglican's essentially Benedictine character.  This is a great read.