From Bishop Joseph Boyd (HCCAR):
In 2013, as a toddler convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, I saw an ugliness that I was trying hard to ignore as the reality of a “soft schism” between Hellenic and Slavic worlds settled into our daily lives in China, at the fringe of the Christian world. Both the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Moscow Patriarchate claimed China as their own, and neither one would give in to the other, concelebrate with one another, or recognize the mere presence of the other, revealing the deep division that was already solidly in place by the time I came onto the scene. I wanted Eastern Orthodoxy to be the answer for Western apostasy, to be an easy alternative to the hard process of rebuilding faithfulness and piety one generation at a time, through persecution and marginalization over many centuries. The understanding that communion could exist on paper for apologetic reasons and not in reality was deeply devistating. It was an extremely difficult time, and one that helped me understand the importance of the Anglocatholic theological inheritance, even though I had gone straight from being a lifetime Baptist to converting to Eastern Orthodoxy, and had no love for Anglicanism beforehand. I wrote extensively during this time, writing much of the deeper material that I have posted on this blog, as a way to work myself through the cognitive dissonance. Here were two churches that claimed to be the “one, true church,” and within them, there were factions that said that other weren’t really a part of that church - secretly, even if canonically compliant, ideologically and morally compromised. Trying to wade through these claims, as someone without a “horse in the race” and coming from the outside, I was overwhelmed with how much of the debate was about political loyalties, cultural affinities, and the assumption that something is good or right just because it reflects “our” identity or because it is familiar or resembles “us.” The strangeness, newness and liberating qualities of the Ancient Church in opposition to the Roman Empire was nowhere to be found, and in its place was a loyalty to a Romanitas that mistook the Roman Ecumene for the Kingdom of God.
Read the whole thing here.
Indeed. In light of the recent revelations about the homosexual culture that pervades the Church of Rome and the spats between the Orthodox over turf which seem to have led to a new schism in Orthodoxy, one might ask, "Where, really, is the Catholic Church?" As my friend Bishop Boyd opines, what's happened in Rome might be the death of the institutional church. We can only hope that's true, because the instiutional Church isn't necessarily the Catholic Church. So, where is the Catholic Church? From St. Ignatius of Antioch, c. 110 AD:
...Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.
I am a priest in the Orthodox Anglican Church. Our Presiding Bishop, who "entrusted" me with the preaching of the Word and the confecting of the Sacrament, stands squarely in the succession from the apostles. The protestations of Roman Catholic and Orthodox apologists don't matter: we are the Catholic Church per the defintion of St. Ignatius, and of the two kinds of apologetes, the Orthodox ones should have a clue as to what I'm talking about, because our ecclesiology is essentially the same as theirs.
Are you finally done with your fallen institutional churches, my Roman Catholic and Orthodox friends? Are you ready to drain the swamp? If so, start talking to us miniscule Anglican Continuers. Whether you want to believe it or not, we may very well be the ones pointing the way back to Catholic authenticity. Your move.