The General Convention/Triennial Issue of The Living Church magazine arrived in my in-box the other day. I braced myself for some depressing reading. What I found, however, surprised me. My reflections here are not so much about any particular action contemplated by General Convention itself, but the larger context in which these actions will be taken, as illustrated by two articles in this issue of The Living Church and some similar examples they called to mind.
The first article was the sad news, already reported elsewhere at Covenant, of the departure of the All Saints Sisters of the Poor in Catonsville, Maryland to the Roman Catholic Church. The All Saints Sisters is a traditional Anglican religious order whose convent is located within the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, but not controlled by it. One minor detail that sticks out from the article is that the Superior of the order “added it is possible that one sister will choose to remain with The Episcopal Church.” Other sources have told me that it was two sisters—perhaps one has since changed her mind. I have been told that for the time being, the remaining sister(s) will stay with the community and continue to pray the office with the others even beyond the community’s reception into the Roman Catholic Church on September 3rd. I have been told that an Episcopal priest will be provided to celebrate mass for the remaining sister(s), presumably until such time as a more suitable place may be found.
I would like to challenge that presumption that there is another suitable place for someone who has already taken life vows within a particular religious community, however. Not that this can’t be the case, but that it isn’t necessarily the case. I was reminded of other intentionally ecumenical expressions of the religious life such as Taize. Who is to say that this arrangement could not be made permanent, and even attract other ecumenical vocations? This is a matter for orders such as the All Saints Sisters themselves to discern, of course, but it seemed to me, as an admittedly outside observer, that an ecumenical opportunity may be presenting itself. It would not surprise me if the ecumenical dimension of this situation were overlooked or undervalued, but an intentionally ecumenical focus could stand as a powerful witness to the churches at large.
The second article, entitled “Reaching a Godly Consensus,” recounted just the sort of ecumenical, out-of-the-box thinking that I wish we had more of in The Episcopal Church and throughout the churches. This article recounts the discernment of Blessed Sacrament Church in Placentia, California. The rector reports, “Most of our people will remain in The Episcopal Church…A significant number of others will align with the emerging Anglican Church in North America but continue to worship—as Anglicans—with the Episcopalians of Blessed Sacrament. A few—perhaps fewer than a dozen—will enter the Roman Catholic Church and receive sacramental ministrations there while also retaining their participation at Blessed Sacrament. All ministries will be done jointly/ecumenically. In this way, the parish is intentionally expanded rather than divided.” The rector now refers to his church as a “diversified parish.”
I was delighted to learn of the results of this parish’s discernment, because it has the hallmarks of, as the article’s title asserts, “a godly consensus.” It reminded me of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Virginia Beach, Virginia, a joint Episcopal/Roman Catholic parish that shares the Liturgy of the Word but maintains separate altars for the Eucharist so that “Roman Catholics in good standing may receive from the Roman Catholic priest; all other Baptized Christians in good standing with their own church may receive from the Episcopal priest.” This parish is sponsoring one of the seminarians who is doing field work at my own parish, St. Paul’s, K Street in Washington, D.C., and I was intrigued to hear of how this congregation presents a way for Roman Catholic/Episcopal couples to maintain their ecclesial integrity while also not ignoring the painful symbol of separate altars—a scandalous reminder of the reality of schism and its implications on the local level, implications that we can conveniently ignore when separate altars are enclosed within separate buildings. The liturgy of the Eucharist that has developed there, however, apparently allows for as much convergence during the consecration(s) as possible, with the principle of “waiting upon the other” so that at crucial points, the priest on one side of the church waits for the priest on the other side of the church before proceeding. I cannot describe it adequately since I have not experienced it first-hand, of course; perhaps I shall sometime soon.
The other reason I was pleased with Blessed Sacrament’s actions is that the parish is doing formally what my own parish (and many other Anglo-catholic parishes) have been doing for some time now informally: including Roman Catholics in our worship insofar as their consciences and the teaching and discipline of their church permits, welcoming Anglicans from other provinces and the Continuum, and being a parish in good standing in The Episcopal Church. You can have it all, if the “all” is the Gospel: The Gospel does not demand schism. Rather, being faithful to the Gospel calls us to confront the painful realities of schism and to find ways of living together in communion that recognize the scandal of schism without papering it over but also do not allow the threat of schism to impede our mission as local incarnations of the Body of Christ. The forces within the church and world that would rend local communities asunder cannot stand up to a robust understanding of the ground of one’s ecclesial commitment in Christ if, as with Blessed Sacrament and Holy Apostles, as with Taize and perhaps even, in its fragile and tentative way, the All Saints Sisters of the Poor, we can learn to live in a real, if imperfect communion with each other, rather than allowing the imperfections of our communion to lead to even more division and estrangement.
In this context, General Convention 2009 in Anaheim, California has an opportunity to take actions with ecumenical convergence as the goal. I believe that those on the left and the right of our church are capable, with God’s help, of charting a course forward that will not give aid and comfort to those on the left and right who would like to see us divide. While the odds are against convergence, perhaps we can pray that for once, General Convention will be more concerned with godly consensus than moving a particular ball (liturgies for blessing same sex unions, the proposed Anglican Covenant) a yard or two up or down the field toward some predetermined “end zone” on either side.
Admittedly, General Convention is not well-structured for finding consensus. It is much better at dividing the church into winners and losers, and each wing of the church has felt both the embittering sting of defeat and the hubristic elation of victory. Winning and losing are spiritually dangerous spaces to inhabit. Only that space wherein all can say, “It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28) is a space worth occupying—that space is where the Church is to be found.
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