Turning to Rome? by Fr. James

Letter to Virtuosity Digest on Anglicans Turning to Rome
Thursday, November 06, 2003

Dear David:

Jake Dell's "Anglican Manifesto" only confirms my belief, expressed in my last email to you, that exhausted Anglicans, when tried and buffeted by ecclesiastical nonsense, look to Rome for a haven and for some measure of peace.

This is regrettable, because it just doesn't go far enough. To speak, as Dell does, of reconciliation with the Holy See (Rome) as the final goal to be sought, is to miss the true goal of the Anglican pilgrimage - the recovery of and return to that original ecclesia Anglicana that, for nearly a millennium, existed in Britain, in dogmatic and ecclesial unity with the original Catholic and Orthodox Church. Regrettably, when Rome broke away from Orthodoxy, the ecclesia Anglicana went with it (for historical and cultural reasons not necessary to go into here).

Rather than realigning with Rome at this time, disenchanted and disenfranchised Anglicans have been given a rare opportunity to "go all the way" and return to the original Orthodox church of the English peoples. Providentially, God has prepared the way for them by restoring within present-day Orthodoxy a familiar Anglican liturgy and western rite. Never has it been more possible for Anglicans to "come home" to that true and venerable and familiar Anglicanism of their earliest fathers. That home, grounded on unshakable dogma and firm scriptural faith and tradition, is the true Anglican Church as it existed before the Reformation, before the Great Schism. It is to that faith and tradition that Rome itself needs to return if it is to be truly itself and truly catholic.

This may seem a quixotic and quaint vision. But it should at least be numbered among the possible visions of those Anglicans looking for a solid and reliable gospel path to walk in.

In our Saviour,
V. Rev. James M. Deschene
Abbot ofChristminster

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