Clipped from: https://www.newhighchurch.com/p/for-the-catholic-renewal-of-anglican-mission

A Proposed Society for the Catholic Renewal of Anglican Mission

Part of a series on Anglican mission:

1. Anglican Worship

2. Church Music

3. A Rule of Life (You are here)

Background

When at the Anglican Convocation of the West's 2023 Clericus and Synod, all people, Lay and Clergy, were charged with developing a Rule of Life, and applying it not just to one's personal life, but to one's ministry; or to a church, chaplaincy, oratory, church plant, or even, if we all agreed, as a Convocation as a whole. Lay, Clergy, univocational, bivocational, all had a charge to discern and pray about a rule.

I meditated on this and the community that was thinking about mission in this way. While the convocation has never had an abundance of resources, it has been home, and one that, while over the years it has had quirks, has felt like the quirks of a family more than the quirks of an institution. I have been part of the Convocation of the West for nearly 10 years, when it was the Diocese of the West (REC), and have always found it to be a unique, compelling expression of Catholic Anglicanism. I remember one year at our annual clericus, a visiting bishop saw this group of about 15-20 clergy all gathered. He said “This is so remarkable! Everyone is so different, but they all get along; they are laughing and not arguing! As Anglicans go this is an unusual group.”

And in my experience, he was right. It is an unusual group, an unpretentious representation of Catholic Anglicanism, not stuffy, not overly Romeish (typically more aligned to either Classical Anglicanism or Eastern Orthodoxy). A group that is not particularly Three Streams, yet remains Evangelical and creatively mission-minded. A group of Anglo-Catholics respectful of the Prayer Book, preferring it to the Missal as the primary expression of liturgy and spirituality. And most importantly, the community has always had a sense of humor, namely by not taking “self” too seriously. The Convocation, after all, did in 2016 adopt the acronym “COW,” representing a predominately rural community of Anglican churches. I have at various points advocated for changing (even if just for an April 1st issue) the newsletter title from “The Line” to “Moos from the COW.” This sort of Anglicanism is able to retain joy amidst struggle (comparatively low resources, small churches, threat at times of death-by-institution-despite-sustainability) and doesn't put its faith in the institution for legitimacy; rather it upholds traditions in the Prayer Book and faith in the reality of Christ present in the Sacraments. To me this is has represented a firm confidence in Anglican Patrimony (regardless of whether in APA, REC, ACNA), through valid sacraments, but looking respectfully but not enviously towards Catholic siblings in the East as well as West, all while open to dialogue and working with Evangelicals.

After Clericus, I wanted to record what I believe has made the community unique to me, especially since the culture of the community has largely been picked up organically or through direct discipleship (of which I have been one). As time goes by, there are fewer to directly define what I have found to be compelling for nearly 10 years.

With some personal bias (especially in adapting a predominately 1928 BCP liturgical community towards a “Prayer Book Catholicism” accommodating 1662, 1928, and 2019 BCPs), I have written this culture into the form of a society, since that is what it has been1 (in light of multiple overlapping jurisdictions/dioceses in American Anglicanism). But as of this writing it is hypothetical. I am reticent to claim anything as a formal society that only has one (unless one is Monarch of Pointland), but as it is a spiritual-theological exercise, it is real and has had benefit: it is a personal Rule, and fences the boundaries of my personal expression of Anglicanism in continuity with the English Catholic tradition, Evangelical mission, and Catholic ecumenism. At a time when various quirks and controversies in ACNA, Continuum, Gafcon, and the Anglican Communion make the future of Anglicanism look tenuous, it was a settling exercise in spirituality: why be Anglican? Surely not because of an institution, but because of a spirituality of orthodoxy and orthopraxy in regards to worship, sacraments, prayer, and mission. So, along with my piece on Anglican Worship and Church Music, this has become part of my ministry philosophy.

As a proposed Rule, this can serve as a manifesto for a society-in-formation (I can be contacted here for those interested). Since it is more of a casting of vision than a present reality, I've omitted governance clauses I wrote for membership and maintenance of the rule within a community.

The Society for the Catholic Renewal of Anglican Mission, or SCRAM, was my working title, poking fun at obscure members-only groups that seem impossible to become part of the in-group, at the same time as the Anglican propensity for episcopoi vagantes “I'm going to do it my way” groups that separate rather than work together. In other words, the Society equivalent—that of obscurity—of taking the moniker “COW.” More seriously, as below, I call it “The Caroline Society (of Catholic Anglicans)” but in my heart I think SCRAM.

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Feast of St Lawrence, 2023

Preamble:

Past foundation

The Anglican Diocese of the West was established in the 1990s under Bishop Richard Boyce, and continued under Bishop Winfield Mott, both of whom sought to retain Anglican Spirituality, Prayer Book worship, and Catholic Order, with Ecumenical Charity.  Bishop Mott often said that “a sectarian Catholic is an oxymoron” and applied the aphorism as the primary philosophy of the Diocese of the West, in contrast to the division and exclusivism prevalent in the years following the Affirmation of St Louis.  As the Diocese of the West gathered parishes and ministries to itself, it earnestly sought and established communion relationships with various continuing Anglican groups, including functioning within the Anglican Province of America and the Reformed Episcopal Church. In 2016, it reorganized as a regional convocation within the Missionary Diocese of All Saints of the Anglican Church in North America, and has continued under the same ethos under the excellent pastoral leadership of Vicar General Michael Penfield.

Vision and Purpose

The Caroline Society seeks to form out of this foundation; not as a replacement but as a supplement, to strengthen and crystallise the foundation and ethos that was established as an unwritten culture in the Diocese of the West/Convocation of the West, and continue within, but not limited to, the Convocation of the West.  By contrast to a diocese, a society operating as a sodality—a religious community independent of a particular diocese, geography, or jurisdiction—is not subject to sustainability clauses, to loss of relationship due to diocesan transfer, or to concern with the institutionalism of the larger church structure.

As a community of Christians who worship according to the Book of Common Prayer as we have received through the classical Anglican tradition, we uphold Catholic faith and order, practice missionary flexibility, and express ecumenical charity.  To this end, we seek here to form a society as defined above to be preserved, strengthened, and enlivened through common Principles of Community & Fellowship, Liturgical Norms, and Rule of Life.  Through this we hope not just be sustained by but grow in our common culture and sensibility, as we seek to make disciples and receive those friends in Christ we have not yet met.

Name of the Society

The Caroline Society (Carolina Societas Catholicorum Anglicanorum) is so named for the Caroline Divines, which is to say it is under no specific patronage; rather it is so named because of deriving inspiration from a movement — inclusive of, but not limited to, King Charles the Martyr, Lancelot Andrewes, William Laud, Jeremy Taylor, John Donne, and George Herbert — in a pivotal time for the English Church, which proved a refining time for Anglican identity in contrast to Puritan and Roman opposition.  It was self-aware to be a church consistent with the early councils and fathers, representing a reformed Catholicism in the English tradition.  The Caroline church, while tragically cut short by a hostile political climate, established practices as a Reformed Catholic Church, one far more sympathetic to Eastern Orthodoxy, while remaining differentiated from Romanism, Lutheranism, and Presbyterianism.  Scholarship of the last 100 years has noted the interest of the Divines, most especially Lancelot Andrewes and William Laud, in Eastern Orthodox theology.  This thread continued through the Scottish non-jurors, and was picked up variously by the Anglo-Catholic revival in the 19th Century. Such a connection has been noted by Martin Thornton.2  Further, recent scholarship has made the case that the Caroline Divines as a movement in historical context have strong ecumenical points in common with the church of Rome after the Second Vatican Council.3  As such the Caroline Society seeks to uphold Orthodox Reformed Catholicism in the English Liturgical Tradition.

Caroline Rule