Many thanks for the most sensible and historically truthful account I have seen so far. Anglican papalism really has accounted for a tiny fragment of people within the Church of England since the notion was first invented just over a hundred years ago. The game is now up, perhaps, for that narrow strand.

For the rest of us, we have always held the Catholic Church, which we profess in the creed, to be more than simply a denominational franchise centred in Rome. The pattern of functionally autocephalous episcopacy within a loose whole served the Church well enough up to the time of Hildebrand, with his radically centralised reforms, and we see no reason to follow him in them. We simply adhere to the polity of the ancient Church, that’s all. It’s subtle, and hard to turn that into some kind of imperialistic war cry, but it’s not an ignoble vision of how to do Church.

Very much looking forward to your next post

as ever

Alan

- Joel’s account is not of confirmation, but of reception of a person already episcopally-confirmed in another Church (he is quoting the TEC Book of Common Prayer).

-On incardination, I am not sure all readers will quite get that it refers to the placing of a cleric under a specific jurisdiction, not a specific rite; the two may amount to the same thing of course.

Olga Rasmussen, D.Min.

I have had the privilege of seeing an Anglican Confirmation liturgy for the first time a few weeks back.

The language is “N., we recognize you as a member of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church, and we receive you into the fellowship of this Communion. God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,bless, preserve, and keep you. Amen.”

I am having trouble finding the Catholic version because of ICEL copyrights. But from my recollection it went something like “Do you believe everything the Roman Catholic Church teaches as true?”

Certainly the Anglican way is much more welcoming and promotes (I believe) a much more full and accurate understanding of what it means to be the catholic church. As a protestant, it felt very welcoming to witness the confirmation service in the Episcopal church, whereas I felt like very much an outsider at the Roman Catholic confirmation.

That has been my personal experience.

In East-West inter-religious dialogue, I recall certain admonitions against any false irenicism, facile syncretism or insidious indifferentism. Sometimes, these dynamics seem to be no less in play as we pursue Christian unity, discerning what is truly essential or accidental.

In my view, we can all aspire to finding the most nearly perfect articulation of truth in creed (dogma), most nearly perfect celebration of beauty in cult (ritual), most nearly perfect preservation of good in code (law) and most nearly perfect enjoyment of fellowship in community. However, we must also aspire to avoid the decay of dogma into dogmatism, ritual into ritualism, law into legalism and fellowship into institutionalism, and this includes an eschewal of any Petrine Ministry that would be so broadly conceived that it becomes a creeping infallibilism.

To the extent that orthopraxis authenticates orthodoxy, one measure of the church’s salvific efficacy would be the successful institutionalization of conversion: intellectual, affective, moral, social and religious. Any infantilization of the laity would militate against these Lonerganian conversions. To the extent most adults would still be relating to church doctrine and disciplines obligationally and not aspirationally, this would be a sure sign of such infantilization.

I’m tossing out certain norms that come to mind and not evaluating any denominations in light of them. Gathering sociologic data and evaluating it for matters like this is way over my head. I do of course have a general impression and it is this: It seems to me that, even under the most ideal circumstances, it is too early on humankind’s journey to adjudicate this kind of stuff between denominations and traditions based even on clearly defined and widely accepted norms. So, even as we eschew any indifferentism, syncretism or false irenicism, it doesn’t mean, at the same time, that we must arrogate to ourselves any type of decisive judgment about who’s “got IT” and “who ain’t got IT” vis a vis denominations, which are means and not ends, anyway (HT Bosco). I for one ain’t got the foggiest notion and am in no position to foist such an opinion on anyone else. I am happy to just muddle along, singing our song, side by side. Although I’m Roman, I feel like Anglicans have a better polity, better disciplines and more but I don’t feel like we differ in essentials. So, I’m staying with my dysfunctional family as a member of the mostly loyal opposition.