The Church

Observer
Easter 2009

Included in this issue:

l Bishop Edwin warns us that Bishops are not to be trusted!
l Fr Robert Mackley: the bodily implications of the resurrection
l Fr Robert Wilkinson fears ‘blame’ is fatal at the foot of the Cross
l Fr John Twisleton ponders the theology of the Church universal
l Fr Owen Higgs urges us to have faith in the power of prayer
 passionate about priesthood

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Welcome to the Easter issue of The Church Observer, It was with
pleasure I accepted the invitation to edit this journal on a temporary basis
whilst Fr Simon Heans takes a break for some study.

I would like to publically thank him for all he has done as editor in the past and
for his kind assistance in handing over the baton.

And so your new temporary editor is parish priest of Saint Barnabas’ in Tun-
bridge Wells. Born in Wigan, raised in Norfolk and educated in Cambridge; I am
married to Hayley, a painting restorer, and have one daughter Jemima. Amongst my
hobbies is the running of a blog on all matters Anglo-Catholic; view it at www.
sbarnabas.com/blog
As I take up the task of editing this journal I am increasingly aware of low morale
amongst orthodox Christians. After years of struggle this is hardly surprising! These
are not easy times and, in an increasingly secular world, such discomfort is unlikely
to diminish.

What does the future hold for traditional Anglicans? How many copies of this
magazine can drop through our letter box before it is posted for the very last time?
Who will survive in the terrible fight for the soul of our Church?

I am convinced that only one group will thrive. Not those reforming the faith in
our time. Not those looking to synod for hope. Not those looking to Rome for safe
harbour. Not those looking to Gafcon. Not those looking to Bishops, structures or
anything else. Only those looking to Jesus will find life. Only those clinging to the
faith of the ages will navigate a path through this mess!

Thus it is my hope that this journal might help us find Jesus and better understand
his truths. It is for this reason that I am delighted with the articles in this edition.
From Fr Higgs reminding us that prayer can be trusted, to +Edwin’s reminder that
Bishops cannot, each points to the author of life; Jesus Christ who brought life out
of death.

He alone is our life, our hope, our Lord of resurrection.

Fr Edward Tomlinson
Editor
frtomlinson@yahoo.co.uk
01892 533826
The Church Observer is the magazine of the Church Union.
The articles do not necessarily represent the policy of the Union and are the responsibility of the Contributors.
Material may be reproduced, providing that the source is acknowledged.
Book reviews and unsolicited articles should be sent to the Editor at Faith House.

The Church Observer The Church Union, 2A The Cloisters, Gordon Square, London WC1H 0AG, United Kingdom
 From the President...
Never trust a bishop
Bishop Edwin Barnes

+Edwin highlights the

dangers of a
‘Code of Practice’ which relies
It is not only
bishops, it is true
of us all that we de-
on trust not law; warning us that ceive ourselves – St
man is sinful John has some-
during my and inherently thing to say
fallible -Bishops about that in
time as included! his first Let-
Bishop of ter, chapter
Never trust a one verse
Richborough bishop. It is not 8. Where
whenever only sound advice, it bishops
is also Biblical. “Put are con-
a bishop not your trust in cerned,
Princes nor in any though, the danger of self-deception is
refused to child of man” says particularly strong. He (or in future per-
operate the the Psalmist, and haps she) believes that he is acting for
bishops are in both the best interests of the Church, and in
Act of Synod categories. Now all particular of his diocese. Certainly dur-
properly, this is not because ing my time as Bishop of Richborough
bishops are inher- whenever a bishop refused to operate
he always ently more dishon- the Act of Synod properly, he always
believed he est than anyone believed he was right in doing what he
else. did. In relation to the proposed Code
was right in of Practice there are already bishops
They are amiable who have said that whereas they are en-
doing what men, seldom beat titled to delegate a wide range of pow-
he did their wives, even oc- ers to complementary bishops, they will
casionally will stand not need to do so. That is because they
a Round. So why are we not able to know that themselves are so patently
trust them when it comes to a Code fair-minded and so clearly have the mind
of Practice? You will have seen that the of the Church.
Provincial Visitors together with For-
ward in Faith, have said that a Code of Strangely, those who have drawn up
Practice will not suffice. I believe it will the Code of Practice are, it seems, not
not do for most of us in the Church Un- quite convinced about this . The code
ion either. of practice, they admit, is not binding
2 The Church Observer
in law in the same way as a Measure may and often does remove.
would be. For all that, a recent deci-
sion of the House of Lords suggests that Always in such cases the bishop be-
a statutory code of practice represents lieves he has acted honourably and fair-
guidance that has to be considered with ly. It has not looked like that from the
‘great care’. The Lords continue, saying outside where, for instance, a parish has
that it does not have the binding effect been suspended, persuaded to rescind
of a statutory instrument would have. the third resolution on the promise
So, says the draft Code of Practice, “it of being given a male priest, and then
remains lawful for the decision maker within a year that parish has been put in
(that is to say, the bishop) to adopt a the charge of a neighbouring incumbent
policy that is different from the policy who just happens to be a woman.
contained in the Code provided he or
she can give cogent reasons for doing The Code of Practice will not
so. The requirement for cogent rea- do. Meanwhile,
sons sets a high standard that is not eas- though, you have the Code
ily satisfied”. Well, perhaps not easily in just a chink of an
a court of law; but in the bishop’s own opportunity. You of Practice
mind, he or she will be acting perfectly can take the third will not do.
reasonably if he chooses to ignore some resolution under
element of the Code. the Act of Synod Meanwhile,
(so long as that though, you
Oh, but we have covered that, say Act is permitted to
those who have produced the Draft survive) and ask have just a
Code of Practice. “His or her decisions
are liable to be set aside by the High
for the care of a
bishop other than
chink of an
Court on an application for Judicial Re- your diocesan. It opportunity.
view”. So even the drafters of the Code would be good for
admit that there might be bishops who your parish to do
You can take
are sinners. But it is all right, because we this. It would also the third
can go to law. be good for your
diocesan bishop. resolution
What a dreamland these legislators He is in terrible under the Act
live in! We all know of parishes which danger, for as we
have been suspended without regard know absolute of Synod
to the fact that this should only hap- power corrupts
pen when there is a genuine prospect of absolutely. By diminishing his power,
boundary reorganisation. Some PCCs even in this tiny degree, you are contrib-
have wanted to test this with a Judicial uting to his eternal salvation. So why are
Review; only to find that the cost was you waiting?
far beyond their means. So bishops have
demolished parishes by taking away the (And of course, if you want to ignore
rights of patrons and by only creating all this, you are quite justified in doing so:
Priests in Charge rather than Incum- never trust a Bishop).
bents – and Priests in Charge operate
with a licence from the bishop, which he X Edwin Barnes

The Church Observer 3

 Tufton Books
From the Chairman
Fr John Pitchford
A black cloud hangs heavily over
Anglican Catholics, and our
future is uncertain. However,
the authors who are now writing
Tufton Tracts for us have not
thrown in the towel. But it is
not easy to write under these
circumstances.
In the world at large, the recession
seems to have helped book publishers.
People have less money to go out for
an evening’s entertainment, and some
are starting to read books (again?). It
was once thought that television and
the internet would herald the demise of
reading, but the death of publishing has
been greatly exaggerated.
At Tufton Books, we have now
reached number Ten in our series of
new Tracts. The last three are Getting Rid
of Sin (Confession) by Fr Nicolas Steb-
bing CR; How to Read the Bible by Ian
Boxall; and Called by God, a re-print of
the Mirfield classic by the late Fr Ray-
mond Raynes CR to mark the 50th an-
niversary of his death. (I wrote about
them in the last Observer).
The Church Union exists to protect
the faith of the Church, and to teach the
orthodox Christian doctrine. Hence,
the creation of Tufton Books. We are
aiming to produce teaching in a read-
able form. Sharing the faith in the 21st
century is not easy, especially as Atheism
4 The Church Observer
appears to be militant, and many think
that God is either dead, or that they do
not need Him.
Some are looking for a deeper mean-
ing in their lives, but most of them seek
it in strange ways. Sadly, not many turn
to the Church. Yet Our Lord says to us:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all
nations…” However, there is a prob-
lem. The Church (i.e. all of us) are not
very good at mission and carrying out
the Lord’s command.
Tufton Books, hopefully, is a small part
of the ongoing mission of the Church.
A question comes to mind -How can we
make our literature available for existing
Church members, as well as for those
who do not belong to any Church. With
this in mind, we are seeking to work
more closely with other catholic soci-
eties in terms of publishing and distri-
bution. Preliminary meetings are tak-
ing place with the Society of the Holy
Cross, the Confraternity of the Blessed
Sacrament, and the Additional Curates
Society and the Church Union.
All our future literature is to be
printed and distributed by the Addition-
al Curates Society. My experience as
an editor is limited, and I would like to
thank SCM Canterbury Press and their
Publishing Editor, Mrs Christian Smith,
for their help over the years, both for
me personally and for Tufton Books.
Tufton Tract Series
1 Authority – by Bishop Edwin Barnes

2 Catholic or Protestant – by Canon Arthur Middleton

3 The Prayer Book and Ordination – by Anthony Kilmister

4 The Saints our Friends – Sister Mary Michael CHC Rempstone

5 The Rite Answer (Tract about the Eucharist) – Fr Robert Wilkinson

6 Marriage – an honourable Estate – by Fr Robin Ellis

7 Women Bishops – by Fr John Pitchford

8 Called by God – by the later Fr Raymond Raynes CR

Originally published by the Community of the Resurrection, and
now re-published to mark the 50th anniversary of his death An easy
read, and how relevant for today – both for those whom God may
be calling to the priesthood, and also so that members of the Church
may know what is involved when God calls someone to be a priest.
This should be available on the bookstall of every Church.

9 How to Read the Bible – by Ian Boxall

Ian Boxall is Senior Tutor at St Stephen’s House, Oxford. It is
interesting how both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have
extensively used the Scriptures in their teaching and writings, and
they have encouraged the Church to study and use the Bible. This
tract is easy to use, and it will be a great help for individuals, and for
Parish Study Groups – with useful Questions for Discussion.

10 Getting Rid of Sin – by Fr Nicolas Stebbing CR

The subject of Confession is perhaps difficult for some, but what a
joy for those who have discovered the benefits which it brings to us.
Sin separates us from God and from the Church. This Tract is useful
for individuals, and also for Parish Study Groups – with Questions
for Discussion.

These publications cost £3-50 plus £1-50 P & P.

They can be purchased from the Additional Curates Society,
Gordon Browning House, 8 Spitfire Road, Birmingham, B24 9PB.
Tel: 0121 382 5533. Email: info@additionalcurates.co.uk
Or from the Church Union website - www.churchuniom.co.uk
where there are many other publications available

The Church Observer 5

 Who killed Jesus?
Fr Robert Wilkinson
T he history of Christendom
is littered, nay polluted, with
accusations about who killed Jesus.
Much of this is directed against the
Jews, vilified during unfortunate and
regrettable periods of our tradition
as “Christ Killers”. Aware of recent
tensions between Christians and
Jews, Fr Robert Wilkinson SSC, a
member of the Church Union, and
Team Vicar in the Parish of Wood
Green, London, takes an historically
critically examination of the events
surrounding the Passion, and
concludes that seeking to blame any
one person or group is a travesty of
the much more theologically robust
idea that the events of the first
Good Friday were, of course, part
of God’s own plan, laid before the
foundation of time.
In purely theological terms, Christians
believe that Jesus died and in doing so
performed a perfect and unique sacrifice
for the sins of the human race. Jesus was
God in the world reconciling his creation
to himself and conquering death so that
we might believe and be redeemed but
the scandal of particularity tells us that
the second person of the Trinity had to
come to earth at a particular time and to
a particular place. We cannot know the
mind of God as to why Christ was born
where and when he was but we should
nevertheless know that God was more
than aware of what he was doing and the
consequences of it. After all, the Jews had
been the first to understand that he was
6 The Church Observer
the one true God, they chose life over
death, maintained, by the time of Jesus,
a grip on monotheism and believed that
salvation was near. So let’s look at the
political and social conditions from an
historical perspective.
Firstly, we can look at the politics of
the day to see whether Jesus’ execution
was inevitable, bearing in mind what he
said and preached. Under this topic fall
the fact of the Roman occupation and the
contemporary religious teachings of the
Jews. Secondly, and theologically, we need
to remember our understanding of the
messianic expectation at the time of Jesus
and his own self-understanding and aims.
If Jesus was God, he could conceivably
have avoided the cross and, so, in con-
clusion, I will attempt to draw together
the tension of the Divinity suffering a hu-
miliating physical death and, in particular,
what contribution this may have lent to
Jesus’ earthly ministry and enhance our
understanding of the reason, or indeed
need, for it all to have happened as it did.
In terms of Jesus’ actual trial and le-
gal conviction, the gospels attest that
he was arrested by order of the high
priest who delivered him to the Roman
procurator and that he was crucified
for being, or asserting that he was, King
of the Jews. The Scribes, the Pharisees,
the crowd and the Sanhedrin all played
a part. In this complex case, it is diffi-
cult to know whom to blame, or indeed
whether to blame Jesus himself. While
we can establish these events with rea-
sonable certainty, as statements of fact,
it seems less credible that Jesus of Naza-
reth was actually condemned on the
charge of being King of the Jews. Either
our picture of Jesus is distorted or the
charge unfounded. This difficulty might
be resolved if we consider the legal sys-
tem, or rather legal systems, for there
were two: the Jewish and the Roman.
The Jewish religious community com-
prised in essence three distinct parties:
the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the
Essenes. Such were the differences be-
tween these groups that it is hard to
see that charging Jesus with blasphemy
for claiming to be the Messiah or Son
of God would be sustainable. This is
because each of these groups believed
things which another group would also
find blasphemous. In terms of the law, for
example where the Sadducees held only
to the Torah while the Pharisees had de-
veloped the religious legal code further,
and so even between factions of con-
temporary Judaism, factionalism was rife
and there was no consensus on either
a codified or common set of principles;
the powers of the bet din of any of these
groups was only competent in matters
relating to their own members. A more
convincing reason why the Sanhedrin
with Caiaphas, a Sadducee, as the high
priest should seek the execution of Jesus
may be found when we consider the po-
litical, and not just the religious, climate.
Caiaphas as high priest– contrary to
the previous tradition which had pre-
dated Roman occupation – was appoint-
ed by the Roman procurator, Pontius
Pilate, in a country racked by violence.
Concerned for the advancement of his
career and therefore desperate to main-
tain law and order, Pilate needed to draw
a line between allowing Jews reason-
The Church Observer 7
able religious freedom and suppressing
insurrections. Here, we need not rely
only on biblical accounts but have docu-
mentation of a first-century historian,
Josephus, to corroborate the situation.
Josephus records incidents where both
Pilate relented at the protest by Jews
against the placing of statues of Caesar
(because graven images were an offence
to Jews, and Caesar knew this would
cause a revolt) and yet expended their
sacred treasure to finance the building of
an aqueduct, which may well have been
financial exploitation of the Jews and a
grievous affront but not one which was
perceived as sacrilegious enough, and
certainly not blasphe-
mous to have war- the Jews
ranted martyrdom
by those protesting, had been
since we know from the first to
Josephus that revolts
were dispersed un- understand
der attack from sol- that he was
diers. Caiaphas for
his part had been in the one true
office for ten years
by AD 26 when these
God, they
incidents took place chose life
and in order to have
remained in office for over death
so long and to preside
over the trial of Jesus, he must have been
a person of singular political acumen and
shrewdness, knowing how to spot trou-
ble, appease the Romans and maintain a
semblance of his own religious tradition.
Against this background of a harsh and
brutal judicial system, concerned more
with preservation of peace, the mainte-
nance of Roman rule and fearful of Jew-
ish rebellion appeared the figure of Jesus
of Nazareth.
We know from the gospels that the
Jews longed for a messiah. They consid-
 ered themselves to be disciples of Moses
(John 9.28) and that the law which was
given to them by Moses was not to be
broken (John 7.23). Moses had written of
an eschatological figure and Jesus is com-
pared to this expectation. For example,
Philip found Nathaniel and said to him ‘We
have found him about whom Moses in the
law and also the prophets wrote...’
Jesus was even to those around him
who no eyes of faith, a wonder worker,
had religious fervour and fevered fanta-
sies with messianic pretensions. He at-
tracted crowds in Jerusalem. Caiaphas
would have been provoked to decisive
action by Jesus’ actions in the Temple.
Caiaphas would have been prompted to
act lest his failure be mistaken as a sign of
permissiveness or fear. His office depend-
ed on his quashing any sparks of violence
before they burst into flames and Jesus
was an ominous threat to law and order.
The Sanhedrin would have charged him
with undermining Roman authority, viz
the kingdom of God being near at hand.
Just the word “kingdom” would have sent
shockwaves, whereas the Scribes and
Pharisees would not have charged him
successfully in a pan-Jewish legal context
because with other Jews they would also
have been able to agree a legally water-
tight consensus, or else they could have
charged their fellow Jewish Sadducees in
a similar manner: note that they did not
haul Sadducees to their bet din who did
not accept the oral law.
The emperor sought to govern, the
procurator sought to hold anarchy in
check, the high priest sought to hold on
to his office, the Sanhedrin sought to
spare the people of the dangerous con-
sequences of a charismatic’s visions of
the kingdom of God which they did not
believe was at hand.
8 The Church Observer
It is in this maelstrom of time, place
and circumstance in tandem with im-
pulse-ridden, tempest-tossed and blind-
ed sons of men that the tragedy of Jesus’
crucifixion is to be found. It was not the
Jewish people who crucified Jesus and it
was not the Roman people. If anything
of human power did it then the charge
might best be laid at the feet of the im-
perial system, a system which victimized
the Romans too and victimized the Spir-
it of God. Yet, this is only one half of the
story and it is the half of the story which
a neutral observer of the plain historical
facts would see. It does not take into
account what Jesus’ aims exactly were
in his ministry nor whether the crucifix-
ion was one of his intentions, or at least
contributed to his purpose.
Jesus’ early ministry contained strong
elements of a call to repentance in view
of the Kingdom of God (Matthew 3.2).
By this term we might presume that like
may Jews of his day he meant by this a
promised era of God’s universal rule
and relationship with God. Jesus speaks
with an urgency and conviction that the
Kingdom has come near (Mark 1.15) and
it becomes apparent that he sees his
own ministry as part of the dawning of
the new Kingdom. For example, Jesus
makes a contrast between the new-
ness of his message with the former
theology of the Scribes and tells para-
bles such as the new wine in old wine-
skins to illustrate this. Not only in his
teaching, but in his behaviour did Jesus
drawn attention to the new Kingdom, by
claiming the right to forgive sins (Mark
2.1-12), in demonstrating the power of
the Kingdom to drive out demons and
in “working” on the Sabbath by healing
in public and in synagogues. Indeed, in
his interpretation of the Sabbath law
and in declaring that life-saving restora-
tion was primary, he flouted established Jesus goes up to Jerusalem for the last
oral tradition and the conventions of time and it is possible that Jesus knew it
the Pharisaic religion. He declared that would be the last time. John tells us that
a human could be lord of the Sabbath he hid with is disciples in the hills before
(Mark 2.27), breached food laws and pri- the Passover (John 11.554-57) and Luke
oritized his disciples over his own family. tells us that the he went to Jerusalem
The lines were blurred between piety because it is impossible for prophet to be
and immorality and overstepped the killed outside of Jerusalem (Luke 13.33).
bounds of propriety more controver- Throughout the Syn-
sially and more blatantly than did those optic Gospel accounts the Scribes,
of other charismatic leaders of his day. of Matthew, Mark and the
Debating and taking issue with many Luke, Jesus’ behaviour
of the religious beliefs of the day, while became more deliber- Pharisees,
possibly receiving support of some Jews ate with a view to ap-
who themselves grappled with these is- proaching death and
the crowd
sues, would not have helped the impres- the teaching of the and the
sion he gave to those in positions of au- Kingdom is combined
thority. Even the disciples were not sure with judgement and Sanhedrin
who Jesus was and were astonished at restoration and the all played a
his miracles. coming of the Son of
Man in glory, in which part
Once John the Baptist had been ex- his own Passion would . . . in this
ecuted, we read in the gospels that Je- be instrumental, as we
sus withdrew away from cities, probably read in Luke’s seven- complex
sensing that this turn of events meant teenth chapter:
that his own ministry was in danger.
case, it is
That Jesus may have reflected on his Then he said to the difficult to
ministry at this mid-point is probable, disciples, “The days are
but at this point no meaning can be coming when you will know whom
found in his suffering, though he does long to see one of the to blame
begin to foresee a violent end: days of the Son of Man,
and you will not see it. They will say to
Jesus went on with his disciples to the you, ‘Look there!’ or ‘Look here!’ Do
villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way not go, do not set off in pursuit. For
he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say as the lightning flashes and lights up the
that I am?’ And they answered him,‘John the sky from one side to the other, so will
Baptist; and others Elijah; and still others the Son of Man be in his day. But first
one of the prophets.’ He asked them, ‘But he must endure much suffering and be
who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered rejected by this generation.
him, ‘You are the Messiah.’ And he sternly
ordered them not to tell anyone about him. And when he got to Jerusalem, Je-
Then he began to teach them that the Son sus’ demonstration in the Temple, vio-
of Man must undergo great suffering, and lently overturning tables and casting
be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, out money-changers, was symbolic of
and the scribes, and be killed, and after God’s judgement over corruption. All
three days rise again. (Mark 8.27-31). this would have made him odious in
The Church Observer 9
 the eyes of those who held power and
caused fear that his actions may result in
intervention by the Romans. Jesus’ con-
troversial convictions about the Temple
were integral to his aims and purposes
and the demonstration served to seal
his fate.
The Last Supper, possibly taking place
as the slaughter of Passover lambs in the
Temple was taking place, was an event
which provides us with Jesus’ most
profound reflection on the significance
of his impending death: his blood being
poured out on behalf of the redemp-
tion and forgiveness of God’s people.
The Christian interpretation of Jesus’
death as atoning was so immediate
that it seems highly likely that Jesus was
preparing his disciples not only for his
death, but for an interpretation of his
death. His aim seems to be to accept
his execution as a sacrificial act. Indeed
this has a strong resonance in the Old
Testament (Exodus 24.8). A similar res-
onance is also found in Zechariah (9.9-
11) where there is also reference to an
arrival on a donkey:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo,
your king comes to you; triumphant and
victorious is he, humble and riding on a
donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.
He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war-horse from Jerusalem; and
the battle bow shall be cut off, and he
shall command peace to the nations; his
dominion shall be from sea to sea, and
from the River to the ends of the earth.
As for you also, because of the blood
of my covenant with you, I will set your
prisoners free from the waterless pit.
Jesus aims seem have evolved and
been clarified over the course of his
10 The Church Observer
career. He saw death and suffering as
compatible with his messianic role and
seems to have believed that he would
be vindicated. Is there a sense here in
which he even orchestrated events or
at least fell into plan knowingly. Which
of his two natures, human and divine,
is foremost in any or each of these ac-
tions? Jesus epitomized his life and his
message of love by giving his life, free-
ing those whom he loved by his blood.
The expression of Jesus’ aims through
his words is totally congruent with the
deed of crucifixion.
As a way of converting the Greek and
Roman world, the message of crucifix-
ion clearly posed problems, not least for
Paul. In some ways, Jesus’ death was a
real paradox in the teaching that Jesus
was from and of God. It is little wonder
that the Corinthians had tried to escape
the cross and concentrate on the life of
the Spirit and the assurance of salvation.
Paul’s confession that the cross was a
stumbling block to the Jews and mad-
ness for the Greeks, are the words of a
man who was mocked for years in try-
ing to present a God who had suffered
a shameful death. But separated from
the cross, the Christian message would
become vague and incomprehensible, it
would slip into a theology of kerygma
with no historical roots and the Incarna-
tion would start to lose its significance.
Rather than seek to blame, we should
seek to give thanks, not least to thank
God.
Fr Robert Wilkinson is also the author
of Rite Answers-Volume I: Questions
which churchgoers would like
answering but never got round to
asking published under the Church
Union’s imprint of Tufton Books
ISBN 978-0-85191-321-6
Believing in
the power of prayer
What follows is an expanded version of
a talk given to my brothers in the Saint
Justus and Saint John Fisher Chapter
of the Society of the Holy Cross. It was
written as a memorandum for myself,
but is presented here at the request of
the Editor in the hope that it might be of
wider interest.
O ur local Churches Together
ended the Week of Prayer
for Christian Unity at one of our
Baptist churches. It’s a flourishing
church, whose Sunday attendance
would be the envy of many
Catholic-minded parishes in our
diocese, but I couldn’t help asking
myself, why do people come to
this church? Listening carefully
to the lay introduction of praise,
the extended singing with the
words on a screen, the prayers
and exhortation of the minister,
this was not a fresh expression
of church. In fact, it was almost
identical to the beach missions
I’d been to as a boy. Even the use
of an overhead projector for the
music was really no different from
the placards with words on them
which I’d sung from on windswept
Norfolk beaches. So they weren’t
packing them in with anything
new, other than some slightly
updated technology.
As a child I’d found this type of wor-
The Church Observer 11
ship missed something of the Christian
Faith. Indeed, as another of our lo-
cal ministers put it, ‘this is Christianity
lite.’ And in many ways I think that is
fair comment. Yet I have immense time
for the local Baptist minister who is a
very genuine and decent Christian and
who certainly isn’t himself Christianity
lite. And that must be one good reason
why people come to his church. Hav-
ing a minister who is likable and speaks
simply and directly must help the spread
of the Gospel. The people to are com-
mitted to living the Christian life with
their giving and involvement in the lo-
cal community. I think it probably also
helps that church that they are a group
of people who are obviously enjoying
themselves – most of us can point to
Catholic-minded congregations who ex-
press the power of the Holy Spirit with
a very long face.
But there is more to it than that.What
the Baptists and the Anglican charismat-
ics up the road – and they really pack
them in - clearly believe in is the power
of prayer. They’re always praying at the
beginning and end of all we do. They pray
for their brother clergy, even to their
face. Contrast that with a chance meeting
with some contemporaries from semi-
nary. Amongst us was a man then on his
way, literally, to becoming an Archdeacon.
And the Archdeacon to-be quite casually
said, ‘Of course, prayer doesn’t work’ –
he is quite an influential Aff-Cath. Unfor-
 tunately none of us traditional Catholics
felt like contradicting him.
Now we can rationalise this as I saw
it done in the February 2009 Expository
Times. That month’s edition ended up
with an article on the poet, clergyman
and wannabe Welshman, R.S. Thomas.
Thomas, as Archbishop Barrie Morgan
was quoted as saying, had as one for his
recurring themes hiddenness, if not the
actual absence of God. And the article
was buttressed by quotes from Donald
Allchin and Brother Lawrence and
Pierre de Caussade, all of whom gave
very sane and moderate expression of
why spirituality is at heart an attentive-
ness to God.
Now as I suggest below, I suspect
that the article was misleading in effect
even if it was not misleading in fact – it
seems to confuse liberal doubt with the
underlying affirmation of the traditional
via negativa. Nevertheless, the article
was right when it says R. S.Thomas had a
hard time of it as a parish priest and that
his flock were perhaps none of the easi-
est, though reading between the lines
he probably gave as good as he got. But
just taking the comparison with Brother
Lawrence and the two are really not in
the same camp.
So Thomas can write,
‘We never catch
him a work but can only say,
coming suddenly upon an amendment
that he has been here.’
And surely that is not written by a
man who has much faith in interces-
sory prayer. Come to church with that
in your heart and the folk will know
the vicar doesn’t expect intercession to
work.
12 The Church Observer
By contrast, Brother Lawrence begins
his words on Faith, ‘All things are pos-
sible to him who believes.’ And in case
we miss the point, he says that when
we recollect God’s presence we should
‘worship Him inwardly, praise Him, peti-
tion Him, offer Him our hearts and thank
Him.’ Brother Lawrence was known and
loved throughout Paris. Certainly he
practised the presence of God and knew
God in His presence (the absence of God
is not a theme in the brother’s writings),
but this was founded on a simple faith
which amongst other things thought it
right to petition God in prayer. Brother
Lawrence doesn’t say this but it is part of
his whole attitude that he should ask for
things in prayer in the expectation that
God will hear and grant the petition –
in his simplicity Lawrence would not ask
for something of God in the expectation
nothing would happen.
There’s quite a big difference be-
tween someone like Brother Lawrence
whose deep faith in God, founded on
Jesus’ own teaching about prayer, led
him to have confidence in whatever
came his way so that he didn’t need to
have prayer answered, and R. S. Thomas’
tendency to doubt prayer could be an-
swered since God was so hidden, absent
and an almost pagan law unto Himself.
In fact, Brother Lawrence in his simple
way is doing what St Thomas Aquinas
did more technically when he described
prayer in the Summa Theologiae (Fr
Tugwell’s Introduction to ‘Albert and
Thomas Selected Writings’ provides
a good, short exposition of this). St
Thomas, we should remember, was like
R. S.Thomas in that not only did he write
poetry, describe God in a negative way
and refer to the traces of God’s work
in Creation (‘the amendment where he
has been’), but, unlike the Anglo-Welsh
bard, St Thomas also spoke of God in
affirmation and was a popular preacher.
A banner in our church sums up his at-
titude with his line ‘Adoro te devote lat-
ens deitas’ – ‘I love you with devotion
hidden godhead’ - which adorn a large
picture of a sunburst monstrance.
So, intentionally or otherwise, the
article was misleading in its easy asso-
ciation of the Biblical/Catholic tradition
which maintains both the mystic pres-
ence of God and the importance of in-
tercession, with the more modern tra-
dition which doesn’t really expect too
much from a God who looks as though
He’s been tried and has failed. But the
article was right to say that there’s a
good tradition of prayer which says
there is more to prayer than the hard-
sell of power evangelism.
And yet there’s a question which
bothers me. It’s not, do our Evangelical
brothers and sisters have a naïve under-
standing of prayer? – they might though
they’re not stupid and quite possibly
they’re no more naïve than the Liberal
nay-sayers. The question which bothers
me is, can people tell whether tradition-
al Catholics believe in prayer or not? Do
people fill my local Baptist Church not
just because they cannot appreciate the
splendour of my religion, but because
they can sense that the folk there do
believe, however crudely, in the basics of
the Christian Faith?
Or put it another way, have we as
Catholics been for so long punch drunk
with a Church which seems to turn
against us, that, for all the depth of our
Faith, we don’t really believe that God’s
going to hear us? Would we lose face
in front of our more sharp-tongued
brethren if we behaved like people who
The Church Observer 13
believed in plain honest asking God for
things? Have we even fallen into that de-
spondency, the accidie or noonday devil
which is the great enemy of prayer, and
which creates the impassiveness which
is really an indifference born of spiritual
sickness? Or are we just tired with the
constant struggle to raise money and
increase congregations? It’s surely sig-
nificant that Pope Benedict has said that
one of the greatest burdens placed upon
the priesthood, and by extension on
parishes, is the requirement to grow and
raise money to keep the show (diocesan
and parochial) on the road. He writes
that trusting God will provide is essen-
tial for a healthy Christian life, and that
is not the same thing as the hidden God
who we don’t really expect much of. I
wish our own powers-that-be showed
they understood this more often.
Thankfully the hard-pressed priest
can often find the help in his problems
from the laity. I’m always moved when
the laity do believe in prayer and do talk
about answered prayer and the comfort
of prayer. It’s surely a sign of healthy
church, to use the current jargon, when
the people take intercession seriously.
And there are good Catholic parishes
where there are candles burning at the
shrines, where the intercession board is
covered with post-its asking for prayer,
and giving thanks for prayer answered.
And even in the more restrained parish-
es whose people wouldn’t be seen dead
writing out a prayer for the neighbours
to see, even there people do come and
shyly ask the priest if it would be all right
if he said a prayer for them.
All of which is a roundabout aide-
memoire to myself to believe that he
who asks will receive and perhaps to be
a little less reticent about saying so.
 I believe . . .
in the holy, catholic church
Fr John Twisleton
Fr. Twisleton continues his series on the Creed,
this time with an examination of ecclesiology
“I hold in veneration for the love
of him alone, holy church as
his creation” runs the hymn. Out
of love for Jesus there grows a love
for the church. When the hymn
writer said he held the church
in veneration it was “for the love
of Jesus alone”. He knew what
is written in Ephesians Chapter
5 verse 25 that “Christ loved the
church and gave himself up for
her that he might make her holy”.
Through all the events of human
history there is a divine agenda
revealed in scripture centred upon
the church. Jesus the heavenly
bridegroom is preparing his church
as a bride and the whole history of
the world is the servant of this task.
What is catholic?
2000 years on there is holiness in the
church even if it is still filled with sin-
ful people! The church is God’s never
ending family filling space and time. It is
catholic by which we do not mean Ro-
man Catholic alone. The Greek word
in the creed, used by reformed and or-
thodox churches as well, means “whole”.
To be catholic means to teach what Paul
calls, in one translation, “the whole coun-
sel of God” (Acts 20v27). The church
is catholic because she proclaims the
whole faith to the whole world.
14 The Church Observer
One opposite of catholic therefore is
partial or sectarian, believing less than
the whole. Despite the claims of some
denominations no one section of the
church can claim the fullness of catho-
lic truth. Every branch of the church is
by definition partial in its existence and
inevitably somewhat local in its teaching.
One nineteenth century Archbishop of
Canterbury contended bravely that the
Anglican Church has “no doctrine of its
own but only that of the catholic church”.
Since then the sanctioning by some
Anglican Provinces of the ordination
of women and same sex partnerships
have weakened that claim. However
compelling the arguments for change in
the church the Canon of St Vincent that
holds to what has been believed “always,
everywhere and by all” is a conservative
principle honoured by many Christians.
Another opposite of catholic is ex-
clusive.The visible church can be seen as
part of the gospel and as such instituted
to include all people. It is this percep-
tion that has motivated evangelisation
and the growth of the church to include
people from every nation upon the
earth. It is natural for people to push this
logic, as in the so-called inclusive church
movement, to support the ordination
of women even though the creation of
ministries that break the communion of
 The Church Union
Daily Intercessions
May - August

MAY
1 SS Philip & James Chairman of the CU Mr David Morgan
2 S Athanasius Bp Andrew Bishop of Ebbsfleet
3 4th Sunday in Eastertide For Vocations to the Priesthood
4 The English Martyrs Ss Peter & Paul, Teddington
5 The Sacred Ministry
6 Deacon members of the Church Union
7 Church Union members Overseas
8 Julian of Norwich Your own Priest and Parish
9 The Council
10 5th Sunday in Eastertide That we may be one in Christ
11 S Mary the Virgin Tottenham
12 Bp David Thomas
13 All Religious
14 S Matthias, Apostle Bp Keith Bishop of Richborough
15 The Provincial Episcopal Visitors
16 The Society of the Holy Cross
17 6th Sunday in Eastertide Sacrificial love of Christ
18 S Mary the Virgin, Kenton
19 S Dunstan Christian Formation and Education
20 Catholic Societies
21 ASCENSION of the LORD That we may draw all to Christ
22 Priest members of the Church Union
23 The departed
24 7th Sunday in Eastertide Consecrate our lives to Christ
25 S Bede the Venerable S Mary Magdalene, Munster Square
26 Philip Neri The CU Editorial Team
27 Augustine Our Lady of Walsingham
28 The sick and the dying
29 Bp Maternus Kapinga of Ruvuma,Tanzania
30 S Joan of Arc Parishes preparing for Missions

The Church Union Daily Intercessions i

31 PENTECOST Lives gifted by the Holy Spirit
JUNE
1 S Justin S Michael, Wood Green
2 Deacon members of the Church Union
3 Ss Charles Lwanga & Comp Those persecuted for their Faith
4 S Petroc The Council
5 S Boniface All Religious
6 Bishop Members – Bp Paul Richardson
7 TRINITY SUNDAY Unity of the Church
8 S Stephen, Gloucester Road
9 S Ephraim, S Columba Federation of Catholic Priests
10 Bishop Members – Bp Lindsay Urwin
11 CORPUS CHRISTI Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament
12 S Barnabas Tr Lay members of the Church Union
13 All whose faith has lapsed
14 Trinity 1 / 11th Sunday For the coming of God’s Kingdom
15 S Peter, Acton Green
16 S Richard The Departed
17 Clergy Families
18 Repentance & renewal in the Catholic Faith
19 Church Union members Overseas
20 Provincial Episcopal Visitors
21 Trinity 2 / 12th Sunday Increase of our Faith
22 S Alban S Mary Magdalene, Paddington
23 S Etheldreda Our Lady of Walsingham
24 Birth of S John Baptist Faith to witness to Christ
25 Society of the Faith
26 Bp Martyn, Bishop of Beverley
27 The Iona Community
28 SS Peter & Paul Tr Those being Ordained
29 S Paul the Apostle, Tottenham
30 Additional Curates Society
JULY
1 Tufton Books Committee
2 Priest members of the Church Union
3 S Thomas Lay members of the Church Union
4 The sick and the dying
5 Trinity 4/ 14th Sunday The Prophetic Ministry of the Church
6 Ss John Fisher, Thomas More S Mary de Castro, Leicester
7 All Religious
8 General Synod
9 Vice-Chairman CU Bp John Broadhurst

ii The Church Union Daily Intercessions

 10 Deacon members of the Church Union
11 S Benedict The Benedictine Order
12 Trinity 5/ 15th Sunday The Missionary Work of the Church
13 Ss Peter & Paul, Syston
14 All who are seeking vocations in the Church
15 S Bonaventura All Missionaries
16 S Osmund Bishop Members – Bp James Johnson
17 College of Readers, warden Fr Roger
Gilbert
18 The Departed

19 Trinity 6/ 16th Sunday The Pastoral Care of Christ’s Flock

20 S Margaret S Stephen, Wolverhampton
21 The marginalised in Society
22 S Mary Magdalene The Provincial Episcopal Visitors
23 S Bridget All religious
24 Forward in Faith
25 S James Apostle The Catholic League
26 Trinity 7/ 17th Sunday That we may be fed by Christ
27 S Michael, Cross Heath
28 All young people
29 Ss Martha, Mary & Lazarus Theologians and teachers of the Faith
30 Priest members of the Church Union
31 S Ignatius of Loyola All who are seeking vocations in the Church
AUGUST
1 Our Lady of Walsingham
2 Trinity 8/18th Sunday That we may feed on Christ
3 S Francis of Assisi, Friar Park
4 S John Mary Vianney President of the CU, Bp Edwin Barnes
5 S Oswald Lay members of the Church Union
6 Transfiguration of the Lord The sick and the dying
7 Mission Task Force (Fan the Flame)
8 S Dominic Deacon members of the Church Union
9 Trinity 9/ 19th Sunday The Gift of Eternal Life
10 S Laurence S John the Divine. Horninglow
11 S Clare Evangelisation and the spread of the Gospel
12 Bishop Members – Bp Nicholas Reade
13 All Religious
14 S Maximillian Kolbe Bishop Members, Bp Eric Kemp
15 The healing ministry of the Church
16 Assumption of the BVM Tr Mary, Queen of Heaven
17 Holy Family, Failsworth

The Church Union Daily Intercessions iii

18 Society of the Holy Cross
19 Protection from false teaching
20 S Bernard Society of Jesus
21 All places of retreat
22 The sick and the dying
23 Trinity 11/21st Sunday Grace to submit to Christ in all things
24 S Bartholomew S Margaret, Hollinwood
25 Tufton Books Authors
26 Vocations to the Priesthood
27 S Monica The Council
28 S Augustine The Provincial Episcopal Visitors
29 Beheading of John Baptist All victims of violence
30 Trinity 12/ 22nd Sunday Faithful to Christ
31 S Aidan S James the Great, Oldham

Have no anxiety about anything,

but in everything
by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known to God.
Philippians 4v6

iv The Church Union Daily Intercessions

the church is profoundly un-catholic.
At the foot of the Cross
If the church is holy why is she so di-
vided? Because of sin - because some
people throughout history have said they
know better than the whole church in its
folly and have set themselves apart from
it. Archbishop Michael Ramsey expresses
the paradox in these words: “the church is
the body of Christ and yet there exist Chris-
tians who crucify the Son of God afresh and
put him to perpetual shame. We should ac-
cept the paradox not with complaisance nor
with a sense of grievance but in the light of
the cross…the man who knows, from the
cross, his own need is not ashamed to put
himself beside the other members of the
church whose need is like his own; and he dis-
covers amid the contradictions of the church’s
members the risen life of Christ which is the
divine answer to his need as to theirs”.
Over the last century there has been
a powerful movement of the Holy Spir-
it reminding the separate parts of the
holy, catholic church of what they hold
in common. Sacramental churches have
been rediscovering the Holy Spirit and
the bible. Evangelical churches have
been rediscovering the Holy Spirit and
the sacraments. In all of this, historical
examination of the origin of Christian
divisions and the recovery of liturgical
and other texts from the earliest days of
the church have helped generate a com-
mon sense of the things that Christians
should value most.
The church is visible and invisible
Believing in the church has two main
emphases that can be labelled catholic
and reformed. Among the larger bodies,
Roman Catholic and Orthodox, there is
belief in the visible church as both part
of the gospel and closely allied to the
The Church Observer 15
extension of God’s kingdom. Among the
more reformed bodies, Protestant and
Pentecostal, there is belief in the church
more as invisible and ideal. Here there
is greater indifference about the visible
order of the church and her sacramen-
tal continuity eg. through the apostolic
succession of bishops. It is probably the
indifference of these bodies to the vis-
ible ordering of the church that lies be-
hind their readiness to ordain women
and risk the divisions that follow.
“No one can have God for his Father who
does not have the church as his mother” is
a refrain throughout Christian history.
How else do people learn to pray as
Christians except through the fellowship
and traditions of believers? “The beliefs of
the Church are like photographs in a fam-
ily album. What is most real is the family,
not the album” writes Fr. George Guiver
CR. Nevertheless doctrine - like the
photograph album - is a vital help to the
Church in preserving her memory and
keeping her true to herself and her Lord.
Is it not the case that the church is
failing today? Not in Africa, China or
South America. In Britain we are not so
much failing as shrinking back from the
task he gave us of spreading the faith. It
does not help to live in a particularly
sceptical culture in reaction against its
long Christian tradition. Even if the
catholic or universal church may fail in
one time and place it always seems to
spring up somewhere else.
Christ cannot fail, Christians believe.
Even if sinful humanity fails repeatedly in
his church we have Christ’s own great
promise to Peter that has been fulfilled
over 20 centuries: “I will build my church
he says and the gates of hell shall not pre-
vail against it” (Matthew 16v18).
 And the Life Everlasting
Francis Gardom
considers our Salvation and wonders whether
new imagery and language might help us grasp a
better understanding of heaven and hell and the
eternal consequence of our decisions on earth

O ne often hears people today

(even some Christians)
claim they’re ‘not interested’ in
what will happen to them when
they die. Such people seldom
claim to be uninterested in their
health or happiness. But these
claims are similar.The only
difference is that the state of our
health and happiness affect us
immediately, whereas our death
lies somewhere in the future. But
everybody inhabiting the Real
World rather than Cloud-Cuckoo
Land inevitably ‘has an interest’,
whether they acknowledge it or
not, in any matter which affects
their life, its length or its quality
or what happens to them after
they are dead. Ignoring a lump in
our neck, or an overdraft at the
bank, or the Life Everlasting, won’t
make them go away or become
less important as a result of our
neglecting them.
Anyone who says ‘I’m not interested
in life after death’ should ask himself the
following question: ‘whose life are you
so unconcerned about? Are you say-
ing you would stand beside the death-
bed of somebody you love and say to
them, “Well, my dear, I don’t know will
happen to you next and frankly I’m not
interested”?’ We would feel nothing but
16 The Church Observer
contempt for anyone who showed a
total indifference to the eternal welfare
of someone especially if he or she were
someone we professed to love. Let us
agree, then, that we have a moral duty to
interest ourselves in the eternal welfare
of others. But a little thought suggests
that we ought to have a degree of con-
cern about ourselves as well. Ignoring
my own wellbeing temporal or eternal
is no less self-centred, and the cause of
as much grief to my friends and family as
having too little concern for their welfare.
Given, then, that a proper interest in
our life-after-death is everyone’s duty,
let us next ask the question how the
general loss of such interest has come
to pass. Why has contemporary thought
been subjected to such a volte-face over
a relatively short period? There are, I be-
lieve two major causes.
The first can be summed up by what
Heinrich Heim (1797–1856) said on his
deathbed in response to his friends’ ur-
gent plea to prepare himself to meet his
Maker: ‘Dieu me pardonnera – c’est son
métier’‘(God will pardon me, that is His
business/job)’. People like Heim are un-
willing (or unable) to conceive of a God
Who has revealed Himself as allowing
human beings the option to separate
themselves from Him, however strongly
they wish to do so. At one stroke this
denies both God’s sovereignty over His
creation and His gift of free-will to man-
kind. God, is therefore not free to judge
His own creation righteously; and Man is
not free to exercise his free-will in the
one critical area, namely whether to ac-
cept or reject God’s love. Such free-will
and sovereignty would be illusory.
However, there is second reason why
people find the reality such as Eternal
Life, Heaven and Hell difficult to imagine,
let alone take a serious interest in them.
This is the lack of images which speak
to, and resonate with the contempo-
rary mindset of most people today. As
finite beings we can only begin to un-
derstand things eternal analogically: that
is to say, by comparing them with the
sort of things we already know in our
contemporary world. But the more rap-
idly and extensively that world develops
and changes, the more certainly will the
ideas and images which resonated inside
the minds of people living a thousand,
a hundred, or even as recently as fifty
years ago, will fail to resonate in the
minds of people today.
Think, for instance, of how the scrip-
tural images of Heaven in terms of
‘white clothes’, ‘a banquet’ and ‘golden
crowns’ must have sounded to the ma-
jority of the earth’s inhabitants who, till
quite recently anyway, had to live a life
which was ‘nasty, brutish and short’. Dirt
and disease were prevalent. Poverty and
hunger were their everyday experience.
Having considered that it is not difficult
to imagine how images of heaven based
on cleanliness, wealth and plenty, ap-
pealed to their minds; but which in to-
day’s world where cleanliness, security,
cheap food and long life are taken for
granted, they don’t resonate in anything
like the same way. In order to give such
The Church Observer 17
images a comparable significance for
people living in today’s western world
as such images had (and still have!) for
those who are suffering from the threat
of cholera, typhoid, famine or a life-
time of slavery, requires two substantial
stretches of the imagination.
Firstly we must picture in our minds
what it must feel like, then or nowadays,
to experience a shortage of such basic
necessities as food, water and sanitation.
The second stretch of imagination is
how under such circumstances the very
ideas of plenty, good health and cleanli-
ness would appear to us. They would be
seen as things so wonderful, unimagina-
ble even, that we might easily suppose
(as sometimes they did) that heaven it-
self consists of such things and little else
beside. For the benefit of the modern
Western world, where much that we
take for granted would have beggared
the imaginations of people living a hun-
dred years ago, we need to develop a
complementary set of images in order to
motivate and sustain people’s interest in
the life eternal. Such images are needed,
not to replace the old images, because
for many of us they still continue to res-
onate; but the new images would serve
to supplement and enhance the older
images, enabling the men and women of
today to relate to them.
Such complementary images would
need to be grounded in familiar feelings
and experiences rather than on material
objects like robes, food and gold. Terms
such as security, fulfilment frustration and
alienation (and the feelings associated
with them) are the major preoccupation
of today, replacing as they have done
those images based on cleanliness, plenty,
disease and hunger which came naturally
to the minds of people in the past.
 So let us try and apply these contem-
porary terms as being analogous to the
reality of Heaven and Hell. Let us begin
by considering Heaven to represent ful-
filment in the way they describe God’s
destiny for us:
“The chief end of man is to glorify God
and enjoy him for ever”
“[God] has made us for himself and our
hearts are restless till they rest in him”
“The glory of God is the living man; the
end of man is the vision of God”.
All three have ‘God’ at the centre.
Without God, nothing either in this life
or the next can offers us lasting or com-
plete fulfilment or security. Such earthly
joys as we experience in this life have
been designed by God to be appetisers
or foretastes of what we can expect to
enjoy in their fullness in the life hereafter.
Let us next encourage people to
think about what gives them pleasure
and satisfaction in this world. For one
person that might be passing an exami-
nation; for another, winning a prize in an
athletic competition; for yet another it
may be writing the last page of a book;
for yet another, taking part in an orches-
tral performance or a play in which eve-
rything “just goes right”.
If such experiences (and many oth-
ers beside) are accompanied by the
sense of fulfilment or achievement dur-
ing our earthly lives, then it follows that
Heavenly bliss or satisfaction will differ
chiefly from their earthly counterparts
in degree and permanence, rather than
differing in kind from our earthly ones.
They will be, in other words, small but
real foretastes of what we shall experi-
ence in eternity. There is no earthly joy
which will not find its fulfilment in a cor-
responding heavenly one.
18 The Church Observer
God’s will is that these foretastes
demand our co-operation, not just in-
dividually but collectively, in working His
purpose out. Amongst other things, this
includes discovering, belonging to, and
being God’s Church on earth, with all
the frustrations and embarrassments
that our involvement with that imper-
fect and unruly organism entails. Once
we have developed a taste for heaven,
based on our earthly experiences, it
then becomes easier to describe what
Hell must be like. If Heaven represents
our fulfilment, then Hell must result in
our eternal frustration.
Hell involves eternal frustration, not
as God’s punishment for infidelity or
disobedience, but because we have cho-
sen to dissociate ourselves from Him
and His saving work. Either we say to
God ‘Thy will be done’… and do it, or
God says to us ‘Your will be done!’ Hell
is populated people eternally trying to
fulfil their own will rather than God’s.
For the truth is that if people want to
shut God out of their lives they are per-
fectly free to do so. God will not stop
them.Those who do so will find eternity
an experience of everlasting boredom.
Loneliness, failure and isolation will be
its keynotes, and enmity and uncharita-
bleness its currency. And if you ask why
anyone would choose this way of life,
just remember that, like all bad things,
hell is a creeping up of reality – like that
potentially cancerous lump we chose to
ignore which we considered earlier.
Apparently we have only till the end
of our earthly life to learn to appreci-
ate the goodness God has prepared for
us to enjoy hereafter. Today, whilst it is
still called today, we should be prepar-
ing ourselves for ‘the life of the world to
come’. Amen!
Book Review
Restoring the Anglican Mind
by Arthur Middleton
2008, Gracewing £7.99 Paperback,
104pp, ISBN 978 0 85244 695 9
Review by The Revd
William Davage
Priest Librarian of
Pusey House, Oxford
A nthony Kilmister, the President
of the Anglican Association,
hits the nail on the head in his
short Foreword to this short but
richly layered and articulated
book when he says that the
contemporary Church of England
“gives far more thought to
policies than principles.” Canon
Arthur Middleton, an example
of that rare and disappearing
breed, the parson-scholar, writes
to redress the balance and
to re-assert the virtues of the
traditional Anglican mind and
temper. Few could be better
placed to present such a case,
although as we survey the barren
landscape, the topless towers,
the roofless ruins of the Anglican
Communion (whatever that is), it
seems a lost cause.
Rooted in his parish in Boldon, Canon
Middleton opens his case with a moving
evocation of the vision of wholeness of
the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic
Church which he sees in his church in
its architecture, its continuous tradition
The Church Observer 19
of worship, as he celebrates the sacra-
ment of man’s salvation. This informs
his aim that “we must discover again
that fundamental synthesis of perspec-
tive that characterizes the ancient, un-
divided Church.” He acknowledges that
this synthesis is no longer part of the
experience of many (if not most) An-
glicans. Not even most of the House of
Bishops, if the stories are true. Cardinal
Kasper’s paper on the concerns about
the ordination of women to the epis-
copate was dismissed as irrelevant, as
“Roman Catholic, nothing to do with
us.” Yet, it is (or was once upon a time)
a classic statement of an Anglican posi-
tion, that fusion of Scripture, tradition
and reason. Canon Middleton rightly
sees Anglicanism rooted in the Tradition
and in patristic scholarship and witness.
Anglicanism, as classically understood, is
more about patristics than protestant-
ism, more patristic than papal. But the
Cardinal’s words, and this book, will
come up against the mendacious theo-
logical illiteracy of those to whom the
safety of the deposit of faith has been
entrusted. They may pray for unity but
they legislate for disunity and expose
their ecumenical hypocrisy. Humpty
Dumpty seems to be their guiding light:
words mean what I say they mean: doc-
trine is what I say it is: ministerial or-
der is what I want it to be. The standard
against which matters are to be judged
is not Scripture, not the Tradition, not
even reason, but against the contem-
 porary mores of a debased society and
culture.
Those of us who see much of the
crop of recent bishops (with a number
of honourable exceptions) as a sad
mixture of middle managers and petti-
fogging martinets long for Dr Williams
to assume the persona of Sir Alan
Sugar (they both have beards) and say:
“You’re fired!”
Canon Middleton’s lan-
guage is more measured
than mine and should,
therefore, be more con-
vincing. He revisits the in-
famous Crockford preface
written by the late Gareth
Bennett and shows what
a prophetic and significant
document it was. He does
not rake over the most
controversial passages
but points out the sig-
nificance of a section Ben-
nett entitled “A Theology in Retreat”
which should send us back to read it
again. Bennett identified the decline in
the distinctive theological method of
Anglicanism, and presages the ills that
would flow from such an abandonment.
Canon Middleton is immensely well-
read and takes us with masterly assur-
ance through Alexander Schmemann,
Eric Mascall, Richard Hooker, Michael
Ramsey, Charles Gore, Lancelot An-
drewes, the Tractarians ... the list goes
on. All these authorities are woven
into a forceful argument in defence of
a great tradition. There is a measured
passion in the writing that commands
respect and needs to be taken seriously
and requires engagement from those
who seek to pursue a different course
20 The Church Observer
of action. But I suspect that pigs will fly
before we see that.
Canon Middleton would not want us
to see this admirable book as only a la-
ment for the past, so he provides, in an
Appendix, “An Agenda for Us All to Fol-
low. It is a cri de coeur before it is too
late. It is rooted in the Anglican method
but does not shy away from the political
realities of the day: “...assert the authori-
tative doctrinal character
of our Anglican Formular-
ies as against the liberal-
ism so often evident in the
deliberations and policies
of the General Synod.”
But he is up against it.
Only recently I was told
of a young parish priest
defending the ordination
of women as priests and
bishops to an unconvinced
member of his congrega-
tion by recourse to “the
infallibility of the General
Synod.” Whatever our view on this con-
tentious issue (and there is a wide varie-
ty of views within the English Clergy As-
sociation) few of us would seek to stand
on this quagmire of an assertion. But, I
fear, that is the level of argument, this
reductio ad absurdum to which we have
come. Canon Middleton’s age has given
him wisdom and depth of insight: mine
has brought only increased cynicism: so,
thank God for Arthur Middleton.
On 5th March 1864 writing to the lib-
eral Dean of Westminster to decline an
invitation to preach, Dr Pusey wrote, “I
think that one of the great dangers of the
present day is to conceive of matters of
faith as if they were matters of opinion,
to think all have an equal chance of being
right ... [then] there is no faith at all.”
Second Review
Arthur Middleton,
Restoring the Anglican Mind
Gracewing, Leominster, 2008,
paperback, pp. 102,
ISBN 9780852446959, RRP $20.00.
Review by Henry Speagle
in St Mark’s Review
November 2008
A theological College
Review in Australia
Apologia Pro Ecclesia Sua*
I n the state of fluidity which
now characterizes our church,
it is refreshing to hear a voice of
conviction that is both scholarly
and pastorally perceptive. Canon
Arthur Middleton of Durham
Cathedral is a leading Anglican
orthodox theologian (he prefers
to call himself a liberal [~
generous] conservative), parish
priest, author, lecturer, conductor
of retreats and academic teacher
at St Chad’s College, Durham.
His visit to Australia in 2001
encouraged orthodox clergy and
laity, not least the lovers (and
users) of The Book of Common
Prayer (BCP).
A short sentence on page 8 indi-
cates the theme of this, his latest, book:
Anglicanism has lost direction because
it has ceased to be Anglicanism.’ He
then explains why this has happened.
If the reader entertains strong revi-
sionist views about faith and order, the
book will provide some surprises from
Middleton’s carefully weighed conclu-
sions about what constitutes orthodox
The Church Observer 21
Anglicanism (and what doesn’t). This is
one reason, among others, why first-
year ordinands should read, mark, learn
and inwardly digest it.
The narrative begins with the late
Canon Gareth Bennett’s (supposedly
anonymous) Preface to the 1987-88 edi-
tion of Crockford’s Clerical Directory. In a
short essay, Bennett let rip. Dissecting the
malaise of the contemporary church with
the deft assurance of an anatomist, he was
rewarded with ferocious abuse as well
as a pack-hunt by the media to discover
his identity. It finally ended in tears, with
Bennett’s suicide.The Church, Chichester
Cathedral and New College, Oxford lost
a fine priest, historian. The cause cele-
bre then evinced much contrition and
remorse. One of Bennett’s strongest ac-
cusations was that ‘the most significanl
change in contemporary Anglicanism has
been the decline of a distinctive Anglican
theological method’ (p. 7), which Canon
Middleton then proceeds to explain in
detail for the rest of the book.
Readers who find themselves out of
sympathy with its thrust will probably
find his second chapter controversial.
His survey of our church pre- and post-
Bennett, reviews some well known (but
still scary) facts: a PhD thesis on Eng-
land’s Regional Theological Colleges
which highlights some glaring deficien-
cies in courses as well as a lack of re-
spect for the views of orthodox catho-
lic and evangelical students; a Christian
Research Report in 2002 on the beliefs
of the clergy, which found quite insolu-
ble divisions; varying views about trans-
gender order and gender ethics; and the
 present breakdown of relations with
the Roman Catholic Church and Or-
thodoxy. Perhaps most contentious for
Anglicans is his view - based on his read-
ing of the history of the early church -
that the decision by African and Global
South (orthodox) Primates to ordain
and consecrate outside their dioceses
does appear to have historical warrant.
So he has doubts about some of The
Windsor Report recommendations.
If, as Canon Middleton claims, ‘the
authority of experience [is] the basis
of liberalism ... and the divine author-
ity of revelation [is] funda mental to
orthodoxy’ (p. 26), then at least three
consequences follow for \nglicans. First,
our patristic heritage undergirds the
Anglican theological method, which is
to seek God in Scripture, the Fathers
and the endowed gift of reason. In seek-
ing to know and worship God, we see
theology always linked to the quest for
holiness. In Michael Ramsay’s memorable
phrase: \nglicans do their theology to the
sound of church bells.’ Our orthodoxy is
a ‘marked and avowed adherence to the
Catholic faith as received in the primitive
and purest ages of Christianity’ (p. 42,
quotation from Henry Cary’s 1835 Tes-
timonies). For Canon Middleton, such an
understanding is dynamic, not static (as in
looking back on a past ‘golden age’); living
not abstract; personal, not mechanical;
and it sits in the church’s living continuity,
where thought and prayer are fused.
Second is the place of the BCP, which
embodies the very property and spirit
of Anglicanism. The author reminds us
that Cranmer was a reformer not an in-
novator. Quite apart from his liturgical
reformation, where he used the best of
the old, he revived the practice of the
early church in enabling congregations
22 The Church Observer
to hear and read the Scriptures regularly
through the lectionary and the special
readings for Holy Communion. The BCP,
together with the Psalter, the Ordinal
and the Articles, is a theological totality
greater than the sum of its parts; ‘it has
been central in the development of An-
glican church life’ (p. 55).
Arising from these two consequences
is the third, our very own Anglican dis-
tinctiveness, rooted historically in the
sixteenth century and developed through
the next four. The combination of our
patristic heritage and the spirit and doc-
trine of the BCP opens the way to our
distinctive theological method, which the
author describes in a phrase he uses fre-
quently - the mind of the Fathers. For him
this is not an intellectual fundamentalism
set in concrete nor an arbitrary liberalism
(which I prefer to call revisionism) root-
ed in ephemeral political correctness. It
is, in effect, a holy way of life - the faith
which was once and for all delivered to
the saints - the faith of the early church,
which understood that holiness was its
litmus test. ‘The final goal of all theology
is union with God’ (p. 68). And thus from
Hooker to Michael Ramsay.
Today’s revisionist theology has
seeped so deeply into the life of the
church that some - especially the laity
- consider it as the new norm, almost
the new orthodoxy. Canon Middleton’s
book, though short in length (100 pages,
and regrettably without an index), is
long in content and deep in scholarship.
It will leave no one in any doubt that
the new is a long way removed from our
prescriptive old.
*Apologies are due to John Henry
Newman, the title of whose classical
autobiography was Apologia Pro Vita Sua.
Resurrection
During this Easter season,
Father Robert Mackley helps us to
explore the full meaning and implications
of the ‘ physical’ resurrection of Christ.
Every ‘body’ is wise to take note!

W e Christians love seasons and

giving names and labels to
times – May is the Month of Mary,
lives on. Yet that is not what happened.
The watered down message one often
hears at funerals of the deceased living
November is the Month of the on ‘within us’ and
Holy Souls, the Orthodox even in their ‘legacy’ and it would have
give the days before Our Lady’s ‘children’, while not been easy
Assumption in August a name: necessarily untrue
‘lesser Lent’. So what might or uncomforting, is for God to
we call Eastertide, this fifty day very much Christi-
Queen of the Feasts? Surely, a anity-lite.
leave his Son’s
good title is the ‘Season of the body in the
Body’? What if they
have no children tomb and for
Contemporary society is very nerv- or their lives were Christ’s Spirit
ous of the body. Stunning physiques ap- a failure, leaving
pear on every billboard and liberation no visible record? instead…
and freedom are proclaimed, yet com- Moreover, if their to say that
mercial radio stations broadcast adverts continuing semi-
for discount weight-loss surgery, and existence depends even though
anorexia and bulimia are on the rise. In on their living
the face of this confusing paralysis con- ‘within us’ then we
the body
cerning the flesh, is it any wonder, there- are saddled with an is rotting,
fore, that religions and sects advocating oppressive semi-
escape and flight from all things bodily Pelagianism that Jesus lives
should be popular? requires our con- on... yet that
tinuous work at
Easter has something rather extraor- remembering and is not what
dinary to say to all this. At the heart conjuring up their happened
of the Christian faith is God renewing activities in our
the flesh. May be it would have been minds – for other-
easy for God to leave his Son’s body in wise they die.
the tomb and for Christ’s Spirit instead
to speak to his disciples and say that The Resurrection of the Body is the
even though the body is rotting, Jesus sine qua non of Christianity. It is the scan-
The Church Observer 23
 dal at which Jew and Gentile stumble and by making the sign of the cross or genu-
which at times unnerves even the most flecting, by eating and drinking together,
devout Christian. We are promised, in by having sex or by being burned alive
highly physical terms, a new heaven and for the faith! As Tertullian, the second
a new earth, a city with trees and leaves century Father of Latin Theology, put it:
and water (Revelation 22:1-3). caro cardo salutis, ‘the flesh is the hinge
of salvation’.
Jesus, when he rises, offers his body
to be touched by But the Resurrection of the Body
Our bodies St Thomas (John also tells us that the body is complex.
20:27); eats fish Mary Magdalene is not allowed to touch
are not (Luke 24:43); cooks Jesus’ body; he walks through the locked
tombs from breakfast on the doors of the upper room; he disappears
beach for his disci- from the disciples’ sight on the road to
which our ples (John 21:12); Emmaus; he ascends into heaven. The
souls need and before he as- resurrection body is definitely a body –
cends his disciples but not quite as we know it.
to escape, grab hold of his feet
nor are they (Matthew 28:9). For the body is changed by the res-
urrection. Yes, God meets us where we
things about The night before are, but then he takes us somewhere.
his death he offers The resurrection body of Jesus is not
which we his apostles his body just the old body resuscitated – and we
should be and tells them that it should remember that the garden of
is his body they are paradise before the Fall described in the
indifferent – to put back togeth- Book of Genesis is not restored at the
they are, as er (‘re-member’) af- end of time in the Book of Revelation
ter he is gone (Mark but becomes a city, a ‘new Jerusalem’.
St Paul 14:22) and it is his
reminds us, command to ‘chew’ No one is given or received in mar-
on his body that riage in the kingdom of heaven (Mat-
‘temples chases some of his thew 22:30) and St Paul tells the church
disciples away (John in Corinth that we are raised as ‘spir-
of the Holy 6: 53, 66). itual bodies’ (I Corinthians 15:44). In a
Spirit’ startling theological work of the mid-
Matter, therefore, dle fourth century, Saints Gregory and
matters. Our bodies are not tombs from Macrina suggest that their bodies and
which our souls need to escape, nor are appearance physically change even in
they things about which we should be this world as they participate more in
indifferent – they are, as St Paul reminds the life of God through prayer and good
us, ‘temples of the Holy Spirit’. works.

The temple is where God is known After the Ascension, the Body of
and glorified, and so it is with our body: Christ becomes changed yet further: it
we know God through our bodies and is present on every altar at every Eucha-
we glorify him with them – whether it is rist; it is the church and each of we the
24 The Church Observer
baptised are an instantiation of that
body; and it is also present glorified with
its wounds in heaven at the right hand of
the Father – and yet exhausted by none
of these manifestations.
All of these are ‘bodies’ but we could
be forgiven for echoing the disciples at
the end of Matthew’s Gospel as his risen
body ascends before them: ‘they wor-
shipped him, but some doubted’.
If the disciples can doubt, after the
wonder of the resurrection and seeing
him entering into his glory before them,
we ought not to be too hard on our-
selves for not always discerning his body
around us, in ourselves or at the altar
rail.
How very complicated this body
thing is!

after the Ascension,

the Body of Christ becomes changed yet further:
it is present
on every altar at every Eucharist

The Church Observer 25

 THE COUNCIL OF THE CATHOLIC SOCIETIES

EVENTS
April 2009
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Sat 25 12 noon: ACS Welsh Festival, St Mary’s Priory Church Abergavenny
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May 2009
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www.societyofmary.net
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www.walsingham.org.uk
June 2009
Sat 6 12 noon: CBS National Festival & AGM, St Alban’s Holborn EC1N
www.confraternity.org.uk
Sat 6 12 noon: Bishop of Beverley’s Fortieth Anniversary of Priesthood
at Worksop Priory - www.bishopofbeverley.co.uk
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at Brean Sands - www.ebbsfleet.org.uk
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www.forwardinfaith.info/London
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26 The Church Observer

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