The heirs of Newman skirt tricky questions

Charterhouse Chronicle by Angela Tilby ANYONE reading the papers this Easter would get the impression that the Church of England is on the skids. A thousand priests will shortly defect to Rome, taking whole congregations and parish churches with them, presaging the dramatic realignment of Christianity in this country.
Wounded Roman triumphalism will be vindicated by the longdelayed "conviction of England", while the Church of England will be left stranded, a heterodox rump of evangelicals, liberals and women priests.
Richard Ingrams wrote this Sunday on The Observer that what he calls "Dr Carey's Church" has almost no support among "religious writers, intellectuals or journalists", almost all of whom lean towards the Anglo-Catholic or Catholic position. He looks forward to the Roman Catholic Church becoming the "real" Church of England, while "Dr Carey's Church" becomes increasingly irrelevant. Sara Maitland's announcement of her reception into the Roman Catholic Church comes with the same message. Since 11 November "real" Anglican Catholics have no choice but to convert to Rome.
For me the question raised by the Synod debate is, what is Anglican Catholicism? I was baptised into the Roman Catholic Church, but was brought up as an Anglican. I was evangelical in my teenage years, and an Anglo Catholic by my 20s. For me, the glory and gift of the Church of England is its genuine catholicity. Within it, one can move and grow. Newman, I recall, owed his spiritual directness and intensity to his evangelical roots; and it was this that he brought to Catholic theology, both as an Anglican and as a Roman Catholic. I am one of those who rejoices not only that Newman began his journey as an evangelical, but that it was the insights of his intelligent Anglicanism that have so influenced the development of Roman Catholic theology in this century.
Are the heirs of Newman really to be found among the black-suited clergy who play at being Roman Catholics while enjoying the freedoms of the Church of England? Newman would have deplored such behaviour. He was never a ritualist, and thought that those who put ritual before theology were frivolous.
Nor would we have approved of Anglican Catholics who get themselves elected to the General Synod, only to pour contempt on its authority. It is hard to see as his heirs the people who claim they will bring to Rome a tradition of Anglican worship and lay involvement, while everyone knows that they have, (for years, and illegally) used the Roman Missal, and who show their contempt for the laity by their dismissal of the very processes designed to give lay people a voice. These are the apparently conscience-stricken who talk of defecting on the issue of women priests, while ignoring, and even in some cases, endorsing, far more radical threats to the catholicity of Anglican orders. I am thinking of experiments like that of local ordained ministry, which have been going on for 20 years.
These make provision for men to be ordained to serve their local communities, although their ordination is not considered "valid" anywhere else. The issue of what exactly their "priesthood" means has been conveniently skated over. Some Anglo-Catholics, now talking high mindedly about the Roman option, have encouraged these experiments. Why? Because in spite of their defective theology of priesthood, they help keep women out. There is a lot of hypocrisy about, and English Roman Catholics should be in no doubt that the pro-Roman cause among disaffected Anglicans is indisollubly linked to misogyny.
Meanwhile the Church of England is trying honourably to deal with its differences. This is not a new situation. When I moved from evangelicalism to catholicism I encountered different theological emphases, different styles of worship, different spiritualities. The Church of England has managed to hold these together for years, and I believe that it will manage having within the same communion those who welcome women priests and those who must, at least for the time being, remain opposed. There will be bickering and hurt feelings, but at least debate is not oppressed, and difficult circumstances gives charity a chance to flourish.
DURING Holy Week and Easter I attended a Roman Catholic Mass on Palm Sunday, conducted a two-day retreat for senior Anglican clergy, was present at a Maundy Thursday Eucharist in an Anglican cathedral, and preached on Good Friday and Easter Sunday in an Anglican parish church of the Anglo-Catholic tradition. The Roman Catholic Mass was a jolly, well-meaning shambles. Little girls and boys tumbled about in a procession, reenacting the Entry into Jerusalem with a broom-handle donkey and sawn-off dressing gowns, under the direction of a cheerful extrovert priest. But there were no girls or women servers, no models of what it might mean for a women to serve in the sanctuary, or preach the Word of God. The retreat was silent, scholarly, fraternally austere. I was the only woman present.
One member of the group, a clergyman who is known for his vocal opposition to women priests deliberately came to talk to me and we had a friendly and constructive exchange of views. He made it clear that he had not intention of leaving the Church of England, and believed that our differences could be accommodated. As he left he thanked me for the fact that one of my retreat addresses had provided the basis for his Easter sermon. The Maundy Eucharist was a High Mass in Anglican style with magnificent music and a rousing sermon. The celebrant, who is opposed to the ordination of women, washed the feet of two Lay women.
One sees what Anglican Catholicism is all about. It is a messy reality because it is human, but it is real and strong. This is the Church that welcomed the Pope to Canterbury in 1982, delighted at his initiative in responding to the English bishops' invitation to come to Britain, determined to continue to work at relationships with English Roman Catholics, without betraying history, and that process of development of which John Henry Newman was a prophet.
On 11 November I was involved in the live transmission of the General Synod debate on the ordination of women to the priesthood. When I got home there were a dozen messages on my answerphone. A considerable proportion of them were from Roman Catholics who had been cheered, not only by the outcome which they saw as the work of the Spirit but by the discovery that the Church of England trusted the process by which bishops, clergy and laity were committed both to discerning the will of God together and caring for the needs of the disappointed. Such trust they do not yet find in their own communion. Nor would the majority of English people be convinced or persuaded by the kind of re-alignment the chattering few are talking up at the moment. They will remember the one thing that is forgotten in the current hysteria. It is that in English cathedrals and parish churches several thousand women are already occupying priestly roles, as incumbents, as spiritual directors. pastors, unofficial confessors, preachers and administrators. Their cause is quietly forgotten by all but the ordinary faithful who recognise in them the gifts of Christ.
Angela Tilby is a lay reader in the Anglican diocese of St Albans.