A PLEA for continued commitment to the cause of Christian unity, and a warning against the sin of “running out of patience with dialogue” was delivered to hundreds of members of the Society of the Holy Cross (SSC) last week.
The synod of the Society, held in London one year after the 200th anniversary of the birth of its founder, Fr Charles Lowder, heard from the official at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity responsible for relations with the Anglican Communion and the worldwide Methodist Council Roman Catholic, Fr Anthony Currer.
Drawing on the Council’s 2018 document The Bishop and Christian Unity: An ecumenical vademecum, he told the gathering: “We must never despair of our differences, and never accept separation from our brothers and sisters in Christ. Instead, together with them we must continue to pursue an ever-deeper understanding of the truth of the gospel.”
After noting that the Council was “aware of a weariness about the dialogues”, he reminded the meeting that “the search for truth, the search for a deeper understanding of the gospel, is intrinsic to being a Christian; it is simply something we cannot do without, and, unless we are to abandon the progress made by the ecumenical movement, we have to be engaged in this search together.”
Some division was born of “genuine theological disagreement”, he acknowledged. But “the sin in such division can only be a running out of patience with dialogue, not being prepared to keep talking.” He drew on the words of the theologian Cardinal Walter Kasper, who had said: “We need to come to love one another and so really desire unity, because otherwise there will always be someone in the room clever enough to find a reason to remain apart.”
The Master-General of the Society, Fr Nicolas Spicer, said this week that the unity of all Christians was one of the Society’s charisms, and that last year was also the centenary of the 1920 Anglo-Catholic Congress, at which a commitment to unity had been made. This year, the Society’s members had made a commitment to going home and having a conversation with someone of another Christian denomination.
He estimated that 320 members had gathered over the course of the three-day synod, which included a meeting at Church House, Westminster, and a pilgrimage to Walsingham. Unable to meet last year, because of the pandemic, they were joined by members of Provinces abroad via video. Invited speakers also included the Revd Dr Jeremy Morris, who spoke on the history and future of the parish.
Dr Morris warned that “history — evidence — doesn’t always tell you what you want it to say,” and that, when it came to the parish, it was one of change, not stasis. But he affirmed that the parish system was “not a broken relic of the past, to be cast aside by the needs of the modern Church”. It had “proved itself almost infinitely flexible, not because it’s a better management model than any other, but because it’s not really a system or a model at all — it is simply the physically located expression of the Church drawing together as best it can the believing community of a given place”.
Among the themes that had emerged in discussions among members were finances at parish level, Canon Spicer said. Most members worked in deprived areas. This week, the Vicar of St Mary’s, Willesden, Fr Christopher Phillips SSC, who was supported by the Pusey Guild during his formation, described how being part of a Chapter while serving in West Yorkshire had been “a source of fellowship and spiritual nourishment in what was otherwise quite a lonely place to be”.
Fr Phillips continued: “I think there is also something to be said for the reality that membership is the kiss of death to any ambitions for preferment within the Church. I have always been strongly drawn towards ministry among the poor . . . and find huge inspiration in the example of our founders, Fr Lowder and his contemporaries, in the city slums. Priesthood is not about us — it’s about pointing to Jesus, and I see what I do as ‘digging a pit for the cross’.”
“I think one of SSC's key charisms is to offer a framework for priests to live an authentically catholic life within the Church of England, and in so doing to help equip all God's people to grow in holiness.” he said. “Our witness to the importance of the sacramental life in all its fullness is, I hope, a gift to the wider church. And our commitment to working with the whole church in the spirit of the Five Guiding Principles, so that we might all flourish is, I hope, a reminder that the church is called to be catholic in the fullest sense of the word.”
Founded in 1855, at a time when the Catholic revival in the Church of England faced fierce opposition, the Society had three objects as set out by Fr Lowder: “To defend and strengthen the spiritual life of the clergy; to defend the faith of the Church; and to carry on and aid mission work both at home and abroad.”
For many decades, it remained a small, private, devotional society, but, by 2005, it numbered 1100 priests, including 750 in the UK. Canon Spicer said this week that in the Pusey Guild for ordinands or deacons in holy orders seeking to follow the SSC rule there was a “very healthy number” in training.
Asked this week about current relations between the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches, and how they had developed since Fr Lowder’s era, Fr Currer acknowledged that there had been challenges including the ordination of women and questions of sexuality. But he observed that, “in remarkable ways we have taken steps where we have come closer together.” He noted that both churches had been shaped by the liturgical movement of the 20th century: “Our liturgies are now very similar.”
Pointing to the synodical process, For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission, launched this month by the Pope (News, 15 October), he said: “Theological insights developing in one church are mirrored and taken up in the other church . . . Ideas behind the Synod, about what we call the sensus fidei — the sense that all the faithful have; we talk about sharing in Christ’s identity . . . these are ideas which came mainly, often, through Protestant thinkers, then into the C of E, then Newman, then gradually have become part of Catholic thinking.”
Relations were “very warm”, he said, including those between Pope Francis and the Archbishop of Canterbury.