11:59am Tuesday 24th November 2009
SO, did the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope have a big row when they met last week in Rome? And what about the Pope’s offer to Church of England priests who are sick of the modernising tendencies in the C of E to go over to Rome? Neither question can be answered without understanding recent historical background.
Back in the Fifties, the Church of England was, like the rest of the country, enjoying the post-war boom. Attendances were up as were Christenings and weddings. Vocations to the priesthood likewise. In the working-class Leeds parish where I grew up, three of us offered ourselves for ordination.
There were three parties in the Church of England: High, Low and Broad. The one thing they held in common was that they all worshipped using the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. It was a blissful time to be a member of the church, and to be young was very heaven.
But everything changed in the Sixties.
Books of radical theology were published, such as Paul van Buren’s The Secular Meaning of the Gospel and Thomas JJ Altizer’s The Gospel of Christian Atheism. Atrocious, Noddy-language new service books were produced.
The mood had changed suddenly from the confident faith of the Fifties to the widespread feeling that the cat was out of the bag and that no truly modern person could be a traditional Christian believer.
What has actually happened over these past 40 years is that the church has embraced the secular agenda: the so-called “progressive”
sexual and social policies, feminism, anti-sexism, anti-racism, idealistic internationalism and the dogma of universal human rights. The C of E effectually resigned.
As TE Hulme said: “No institution is ever defeated until it is penetrated by the ideas of its enemies.” The church has been so penetrated.
We have imbibed the notions and policies of the secularists whose aim is the obliteration of Christianity from public life.
It is against this background then that we must understand the Pope’s offer. He is opening his doors to disaffected traditional Anglicans and saying: “Look, here you can return to a believing church, to a church which has not overturned its own doctrines nor adopted the secular moral and social orthodoxies.”
What will be the outcome of this extraordinary gesture? It is widely reported that perhaps 1,000 traditional priests will leave, many taking parishioners with them.
No wonder the Archbishop of Canterbury has gone around with a face like a wet week.
I hope I do not sound churlish when I say that I do not intend to accept the Pope’s generous offer. So the C of E has trendified itself to the point of lunacy. But I am not forced to join in the knees-up services, the emptyheaded new prayer books, the secular sociology that passes for theological teaching, the twang of the liturgical guitar and the bishops’ obsession with the pagan fantasy of global warming.
At our church we still use the old Bible and The Book of Common Prayer. We worship to the glories of traditional English church music. We are a theologically-informed, nondumbed- down, devout and affectionate community of souls.
I do not need to go to Rome to find traditional faith. It is here at St Michael’s. So thank you Your Holiness, but I shall stay where I am and continue to rejoice in it.
■ Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.
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