Andglicanism Defined

John Sackme, the Bishop of Imp, has written on how the Pope has made a "genuine and generous offer" intending to undermine the Church in England by initiating an Ordinariate for right wing Anglicans. The bishop thinks that this bolt-hole may want to be embraced by some and not embraced by others, but if they could leave it might rebalance the Church back towards a theology like his own. It might even lead to a name-change for the Church of both Catholicism and Reformation.

Writing in the diocesan magazine, CrossedImp, using a kind of make-believe reporting style, the bishop states that the Pope's Finger only strengthens the definition of Anglicanism:

Anglicanism cannot be a hermetically sealed Catholicism only Church, and those who think the Reformation was a mistake might just be in the wrong Church. Nor can Anglicanism be a purely Protestant Church that knox Catholicism as one long session of heresy, because there are Churches existing like that and if you are that way inclined you might as well be in one of them. No: the And in between is very important for Anglicanism and whoever might be left behind. In fact we might even go on to call it Andglicanism (!), to make a distinction between that and an Anglican Ordinariate which is Catholic only as well as any other extraordinariate that could be Protestant only.

Bishop Sackme went on to say that in Andglicanism you can be a little bit of this and a little bit of that, with more of one or the other, so long as you keep the 'And' in the recipe:

The Andglican cake has both nuts in it and icing on top, and some people prefer to be more nutty and others more icy. And this is absolutely necessary to avoid fundamentalist and exclusivist tendencies. That's why I am an Affirming Catholic, which is a sort of liberal, and an Affirming Evangelical, which is also a sort of liberal, and on top of these a Confirmed Liberal - though did I mention I was also a Bit Conservative, especially when I say nothing in the face of current ethical issues sweeping Andglicanism and which rot away what ethical core it once possessed?

The bishop, who appears prominently and frequently in every issue, said that the very real inherited wealth of the imagined undivided Church needs to be informed by the poverty of Reformed insight so that the faith can be Fresh Expressioned to every generation, "although we often emphasise only a part of the Reformed tradition," he said, "and changes can be somewhat surface level and unchanging in both tradition and changefulness."

And we can be witty in sourcing a comment from the heremetically sealed Church too, because, as Pope John Paul said in Help!: the future Church should not only be Mother and Father but also Son and Daughter, because sons and daughters learn from their parents, and so as long as in our Church the entire family is involved - Mother and Father, Son and Daughter - then we get both a family outing and learning pilgrimage to both Walsingham and St. Andrews at the same time.

"That's Andglicanwang," said the Bishop:

And we need to do difference differently, at least different from the other ones who do difference their own way. Our way is distinctively different, but has nothing exclusive to itself, and thus we have Andglicanism. It is how we get over disasters, dislocations and divisions, additions, attractions and anarchisms, multiplications, marginalities and magnificats, subtractions, seasonings and Sackme.

He went on, full of enthusiasm:

We can forget plainsong and polyphony, which is found in an exclusive Church like Catholicism, and the throaty warblings found in Protestantism, but instead learn how to hum two tunes at once with completely different words. If you hear a choir like that, you know it's either a complete mess or bloody fantastic.

He still carried on:

Why is it both Knox and Mary then? Well because doing both we get the kind of muddle that gives space, space to include what is normally excluded, even from both, and this leads to compassion, dialogue and a state of disagreement. Disagreement is very important, especially when people disagree with me, and that leads to the further quality, the ability to maintain silence. However, this must be both silence and noise, because to exclude one without the other is not a drawing in or charitable acceptance nor the exclusion of sin, and I'm not sure where I am now.

So in terms of having a little bit of silence and a little bit of noise, or more of one and less of the other, I shall opt for silence again now that I have been a bit noisy and lost my way in explaining what the hell I was going on about. But do let us give thanks for the Pope's Finger, for being both an interfering git and a most useful and helpful individual when it comes to clarifying Andglicanism as I shall now think of this Church.