Ad Clerum
April 11, 2003
To the Clergy of Bethlehem
Dear Colleagues,
Since we had an inspiring guest preacher at the Chrism Mass yesterday, I did
not have the joy of addressing you-and I thank you for setting records in both
clergy and lay attendance, although I note with sorrow that some parishes continue
to be without lay attendance and that two of you left without oil! I want here
to share a few thoughts, a bit of episcopal self-definition perhaps, on two
issues that seem to be troubling some of our lay people and perhaps a few of
you.
Faith and Public Morals
It is an unfortunate aspect of work as a religious
professional that whenever comment is made about public morals,
a group of people will, for whatever reasons, complain about faith
and politics not belonging together, or, with stunning ignorance,
the separation of church and state. It is my experience that very
often people who want the Church to advocate for their position
(on say, abortion or war) do not want the church to advocate for
the other person's positions (on say, abortion or war).
Let's be a bit more accurate. "Politics" is a term for the acquisition
and maintenance of power by a particular group, or more generally, organized
behavior designed to achieve a goal. What people are usually objecting to when
they are concerned about "politics" is their fear that the church
may become partisan, aligned with a party other than their own. I,
for instance, cringed to see a bishop of this Church on stage with Al Gore
at the conclusion of the last Democratic convention. For a representative of
the Church to endorse a political candidate remains very problematic for me:
we need to keep lines of communication with all parties so that we can speak
with integrity to the issues before us.
And that is not optional. The church has a duty to speak on moral issues. This
was true in the time of the Old Testament prophets, and has remained true to
our day. Nonetheless, Anglican Christians in the U.S.A. who opposed slavery
were accused of meddling in politics by those who supported it (in England,
the entire bench of bishops in the House of Lords voted against layperson William
Wilberforce's abolition legislation in the Commons). The Episcopal Church's
endorsement of the civil rights movement was resented by some segregationists
as advancing a political agenda, when it was in fact advancing a moral agenda.
Similarly, as a diocese we have acted through our national church's lobbyist
in Washington to pressure government to halt the killing and enslavement of
Christians in the Sudan, an issue in which the Clinton administration publicly
declared itself (thru M. Albright) as not interested, and in which the present
administration has taken only a bit more interest.
It is interesting, in this regard, to observe the historic pastoral letter
of Pennsylvania bishops regarding Good Schools. Among the Pennsylvania bishops
there are many political points of view, and a range of theological perspectives.
Anyone who reads the newspapers knows that some of our bishops are at significant
odds with each other, yet they agreed on this.
For the seven of us to agree that the inequities of funding
public education present a moral rather than political issue
is therefore a rather remarkable event. It comes from concern
for the children themselves, and for the future workforce of
the Commonwealth. We believe that giving each child a desk, text
books, paper, and pencil is a matter of fairness, not politics,
and one that has important implications for Pennsylvania as a
whole. Public schools in my home town of Lancaster were started
because the rector of the Episcopal Church, William Augustus
Muhlenberg, overcame resistance to educating the poor at public
expense, so this moral question is not a new idea to Pennsylvania
Episcopalians. It is one where we in fact have a noble track
record.
The pastoral letter read to Episcopalians throughout the state was not written
for the advantage of either political party; in fact, members of both parties
support the Good Schools movement. It was as clear a statement as we could
make of what we believe is our moral obligation to speak against an injustice
that hurts individuals and threatens the future of our economy. We have no
desire or means to require people to accept our view as doctrine, but we do
ask those who are persuaded by our statement to take appropriate action, and
I hope that you will help reinforce the distinction.
Where HAVE all the Catholics Gone?
The catholic ideal in Anglicanism seems to have
died out among those who most vocally claim Catholic identity,
and worse, to have fallen entirely out of the consciousness of
those we used to call Liberal Catholics. The partisans on the right
and left in our church have becoming so thoroughly protestant and
congregationalist in their polemic I now find myself wondering
what we intend when we speak of Catholicism in our tradition. Protestants
tend to emphasize apostolic doctrine, while Catholics do not-cannot-separate
doctrine and order. Order is a doctrine and the matrix of doctrine.
The tradition unfolds within the ordered Church.
A basic intellectual rule is that ideas are not responsible for who believes
them, and a corollary is that the alleged abuse of an office or power
does not make the office or power illegitimate. I am quite willing to admit
that in the past two millennia there have been heavy-handed bishops on both
ends of the spectrum throughout the Christian world. I am even more certain
that there are and have been many, many heavy-handed priests! It is, after
all, from the ranks of the presbyterate that we elect our bishops. In neither
case is that the point, however.
Liberals and conservatives have both been attacking the theological and canonical
underpinnings of church order because they don't like particular results that
the system has produced. This has produced, among other palpable evils, a disciplinary
system which does not produce better results, and costs all involved a fortune.
Frankly, in my view, the liberals have been doing this longer, but of late
the conservatives have taken the center stage. A blessing on both their houses.
There are those who on account of some bad moments want to overturn a theology
of the church that goes back to the very earliest descriptions we have of the
apostolic church, as we recall those familiar passages in Ignatius, Polycarp,
and Clement of Rome, that every seminarian comes to know. The patristic sources
have one central point: the bishop is the pastor, evangelist, and teacher;
in this way of thinking presbyters function only as representatives and colleagues
of the bishop. The Tractarians recognized this and accomplished their reformation
precisely by remaining with and under their bishops - until even the bishops
caught on. It is the theology of our Ordinal and letter of institution. Priests
have no franchise independent of their relationship with their bishop.
There are two grave theological errors afoot today. They come from the very
real anxiety that some feel about bishops who persecute members of the right;
anxiety is not, however, a reliable basis for theology.
The first error is that a priest can declare her/himself
to be out of communion with her/his bishop and still be a priest. The
priest is there as a partner of the bishop's in a "ministry
which is mine and yours in this place." To reject that relationship
is to put oneself out of business as a priest, plain and simple.
St. Jerome to the contrary notwithstanding, the presbyterate
is not the foundational order of the ordained ministry. The Eastern
Orthodox churches are so clear about this relational basis for
a priest's function that nobody in the west can bear to discuss
their position for very long without trembling.
The second error is the proposal that a bishop cannot choose who will be among
the trusted colleagues, cannot determine what priests serve as the bishop's
associates in parishes or other ministries. It is the bishop's trust that the
letter of institution expresses. If a rector can be imposed as a colleague
over the bishop's conscientious refusal, one wonders how the relationship can
in fact function. Much more, one wonders what it means theologically. Even
the Lutherans cannot imagine this, despite their curious position on ordination.
If we are to have historic order in any meaningful sense of the word, we are
going to have to accept the fact that we may not always like episcopal or synodal
decisions. For priests to obey their bishops only when they happen to agree
with them is not obedience at all, and to this commonwealth's endemic congregationalism
we unhappily see added presbyterianism of the most unsubtle kind these days.
Again, by clearly teaching the simple doctrines of the catechism and by our
living out our relationship with each other, we can overcome this misperception.
I am aware of wild-man situations in the ancient
church where bishops were dumped locally. That is not the pattern
that the Catholic Church came to endorse. The way to discipline
an allegedly errant bishop is through the larger, not the smaller,
unit, an ancient principle that our Episcopal canons enshrine.
To permit any other path is to abandon the ecclesiology on which
the catholic movement is built. There is simply no point in drowning
the baby to save the bath water. There are already many ecclesiastical
structures in existence for persons desiring to inhabit presbyterian
or congregationalist polity. We have something much more enduring
to offer, and I ask that you join me in the endeavor to demonstrate
its value in word and deed.
On other business,
- I remain stunned (and somewhat convicted) by Walter Brueggeman's
recent observation that the church, especially that of his fellow
liberal Presbyterians, is content to remain fixated on the in-house
question of sexuality (and in ECUSA we would add our eternal
concern with liturgical reform), because it distracts us from
the larger question of economic justice-he adds that liberals
like to buy things, too. I would further add that some of our
concerns as a Church distract us in this way, and also serve
to distract us from the business of evangelism. The Decade of
Evangelism never happened; does the same fate await 20/20? Three
years into this designated twenty, not too much has come to us
from outside: if this expansion of witness is going to happen,
we must do it. I will be discussing with the Evangelism Committee
a proposal for "Share the Bread: Episode Three-The Loaves
and the Fishes."
- I was equally stunned by Bishop Coleridge's kind words about
me yesterday: when the blushing subsided I realized that I have
learned to live without any anticipation of affirmation from
my Episcopal peers or superiors. This is not to complain, but
to point out that my sufficient support comes from within our
life together, and I thank God for our experience of community.
Let me equally assure each of you, then, that I do know
of your commitment and passion for our common ministry, that
I value our unity at the level of the highest common denominator,
and that I sincerely admire what so many of you contribute to
the life of God's people. Thus as always, this comes with my
respect and affection, and also with my best wishes for the great
fifty days ahead of us.
Faithfully yours,
Bishop
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