RESOLUTION AND STATEMENT OF THEOLOGICAL CONVICTION AND NEEDS APPROVED BY ST GEORGE’S PCC ON 13th JULY 2016
RESOLUTION
This Parochial Church Council of St George’s, Headstone requests, on grounds of theological conviction set out in the Statement appended to this Resolution, that arrangements be made for St George’s, Headstone in accordance with the House of Bishops’ Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests.
STATEMENT OF THEOLOGICAL CONVICTION AND NEEDS
St George’s stands in the Catholic tradition of the Church of England, regarding Holy Order to be essential to the faith revealed in and through our Lord Jesus Christ.
This understanding of Holy Order was articulated in the 1947 Report Catholicity: a Study in the Conflict of Christian Traditions in the West, commissioned by Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher, and prepared by a group comprising the Church of England’s leading Anglo-Catholic scholars and churchmen:
The 'wholeness' of the visible Church manifests itself in its outward order. In more ways than one the apostolic theology indicates this. The modern tendency is to make a sharp distinction between the spiritual and the bodily: this is alien to Biblical thought. To receive the Spirit is to belong to the Body, whose several organs are a very part of it, representing diversities of office amongst its members. Further, the frequent emphasis laid by the apostolic writers upon the principle of subordination is significant: the mutual submission of the members of the Church one to another in respect of their diverse offices is a part of their submission to the rule of God in the pattern of the new Creation.
Among the diversities of office the apostolate is unique. The apostles were commissioned by our Lord, and had authority to rule, to teach and to ordain in the new Israel – representing Him who is King, Shepherd and High-priest. They were integral to the existence of the new Israel. They were the authorised eye-witnesses of the original events of the Gospel; but otherwise their functions remain in their successors – namely to teach, to rule, and to ordain in the name of Christ and of the whole Church. ...
Out of (the) complex of Christian life, lived and embodied in dogma, worship and institutions, proceeded the Scriptures of the New Testament, which presuppose and interpret the faith and 'the Way' from within which they are written. To abstract them from the setting
and life and belief which produced them (in other words, to oppose 'Scripture' and 'Tradition') is wholly artificial and arbitrary. ...
To be a Christian was to belong to the one Body, to hold the one apostolic faith, to share in the one visible series of sacramental rites, to be under the rule of one apostolate, to know the unity of the two covenants, and of God as Father, Saviour and Creator. The unity of the Church is a part of this greater 'wholeness', and cannot be understood apart from it. ...
Within the comprehensiveness laid down by the Elizabethan Settlement, the Church of England included those who learned their doctrine chiefly from the continental Reformers, those who gave greater value to the appeal to the 'Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops', and those whose outlook owed most to the learning of the Renaissance. ...
It is by a principle of constancy in Scriptures, Creeds, Sacraments and Apostolic Succession, that the Anglican Communion, for all the diversity within it, remains one. If this principle may be called, at the lowest, the historical condition of our unity in the Anglican Communion, we believe it to be at the highest the precondition of the task of theological synthesis to which the Anglican Communion is, in the Divine Providence, called. ...
Unfortunately the Quadrilateral has sometimes worn the aspect of four somewhat unrelated items or expedients. It is so used whenever the Episcopate is commended as an expedient ... which carries no necessary doctrinal meaning, although the Lambeth Report of 1930 gave the plain reminder: 'The Historic Episcopate, as we understand it, goes behind the perversions of history to the original conception of the Apostolic Ministry' (p. 115, italics ours).
Women have always exercised various ministries in the Church. However, those who are unable to receive the sacramental ministry of women as bishops and priests hold that neither Scripture, nor Apostolic tradition, nor the great majority of the Church throughout the world today endorse the ordination of women as bishops and priests.
Gender-specific language is necessary to a Catholic understanding of the economy of the Holy Trinity and the operation of divine grace within the life of the Church. This was succinctly expressed by C S Lewis (‘Priestesses in the Church?’ 1948):
Suppose the reformer ... says that we might just as well pray to ‘Our Mother which art in heaven’ as to ‘Our Father’. Suppose he suggests that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form, and the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called the Daughter as the Son. Suppose, finally, that the mystical marriage were reversed, that the Church were the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride. ... Now it is surely the case that if all these supposals were ever carried into effect we should be embarked on a different religion.
A sacramental apprehension of gender is inherent in the Catholic conception of Holy Order.
Thus The Book of Common Prayer’s Form of the Solemnization of Holy Matrimony, quoting Holy Scripture, understands the relationship between loving husband (as head) and reverent wife (who is one flesh with her husband) to signify ‘the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church’.
A gender-specific episcopacy is intrinsic to, and its sacramental significance dependent upon, its prescribed marital status. Just as the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is One, the Ordinal appended to The Book of Common Prayer, quoting Holy Scripture, specifies that a bishop must be ‘the husband of (no more than) one wife’.
Consistent with this sacramental view, the Catholic tradition understands the bishop, in Apostolic succession, and in the celebration of the Liturgy, to act ‘eis topon kai typon Christou’ (in the place and as a type of Christ), ‘in persona Christi’ (in the person of Christ) and ‘in persona Christi capitis’ (in the person of Christ the head).
A significant proportion of the regular congregation of St George’s, Headstone comprises those unable to accept, and those who doubt, that the roles of bishop or priest are, sacramentally speaking, roles that women can exercise. This Parochial Church Council believes that the episcopal and priestly sacramental and pastoral ministry exercised in this parish should be such that it may be received with integrity by all who worship here.
We affirm our desire to flourish within the life and structures of the Church of England, in accordance with the Five Guiding Principles set out in the House of Bishops’ Declaration, and our commitment to Christ’s mission in the Diocese of London. However, we can only flourish if we are in full communion with a bishop and with all those whom that bishop ordains to the priesthood.
Therefore we request that episcopal sacramental and pastoral ministry in this parish be entrusted
We also ask that episcopal and priestly sacramental and pastoral ministry in this parish be exercised
We recognise the diocesan bishop and other bishops of this diocese as the true and lawful holders of their offices, and wish to maintain the highest degree of communion with them that is consistent with the theological convictions that underlie our Resolution.
Our Resolution contributes to the Church of England’s ‘wider commitment to sustaining diversity’.
This Parochial Church Council of St George’s, Headstone requests, on grounds of theological conviction set out in the Statement appended to this Resolution, that arrangements be made for St George’s, Headstone in accordance with the House of Bishops’ Declaration on the Ministry of Bishops and Priests.
STATEMENT OF THEOLOGICAL CONVICTION AND NEEDS
St George’s stands in the Catholic tradition of the Church of England, regarding Holy Order to be essential to the faith revealed in and through our Lord Jesus Christ.
This understanding of Holy Order was articulated in the 1947 Report Catholicity: a Study in the Conflict of Christian Traditions in the West, commissioned by Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher, and prepared by a group comprising the Church of England’s leading Anglo-Catholic scholars and churchmen:
The 'wholeness' of the visible Church manifests itself in its outward order. In more ways than one the apostolic theology indicates this. The modern tendency is to make a sharp distinction between the spiritual and the bodily: this is alien to Biblical thought. To receive the Spirit is to belong to the Body, whose several organs are a very part of it, representing diversities of office amongst its members. Further, the frequent emphasis laid by the apostolic writers upon the principle of subordination is significant: the mutual submission of the members of the Church one to another in respect of their diverse offices is a part of their submission to the rule of God in the pattern of the new Creation.
Among the diversities of office the apostolate is unique. The apostles were commissioned by our Lord, and had authority to rule, to teach and to ordain in the new Israel – representing Him who is King, Shepherd and High-priest. They were integral to the existence of the new Israel. They were the authorised eye-witnesses of the original events of the Gospel; but otherwise their functions remain in their successors – namely to teach, to rule, and to ordain in the name of Christ and of the whole Church. ...
Out of (the) complex of Christian life, lived and embodied in dogma, worship and institutions, proceeded the Scriptures of the New Testament, which presuppose and interpret the faith and 'the Way' from within which they are written. To abstract them from the setting
and life and belief which produced them (in other words, to oppose 'Scripture' and 'Tradition') is wholly artificial and arbitrary. ...
To be a Christian was to belong to the one Body, to hold the one apostolic faith, to share in the one visible series of sacramental rites, to be under the rule of one apostolate, to know the unity of the two covenants, and of God as Father, Saviour and Creator. The unity of the Church is a part of this greater 'wholeness', and cannot be understood apart from it. ...
Within the comprehensiveness laid down by the Elizabethan Settlement, the Church of England included those who learned their doctrine chiefly from the continental Reformers, those who gave greater value to the appeal to the 'Catholic Fathers and ancient Bishops', and those whose outlook owed most to the learning of the Renaissance. ...
It is by a principle of constancy in Scriptures, Creeds, Sacraments and Apostolic Succession, that the Anglican Communion, for all the diversity within it, remains one. If this principle may be called, at the lowest, the historical condition of our unity in the Anglican Communion, we believe it to be at the highest the precondition of the task of theological synthesis to which the Anglican Communion is, in the Divine Providence, called. ...
Unfortunately the Quadrilateral has sometimes worn the aspect of four somewhat unrelated items or expedients. It is so used whenever the Episcopate is commended as an expedient ... which carries no necessary doctrinal meaning, although the Lambeth Report of 1930 gave the plain reminder: 'The Historic Episcopate, as we understand it, goes behind the perversions of history to the original conception of the Apostolic Ministry' (p. 115, italics ours).
Women have always exercised various ministries in the Church. However, those who are unable to receive the sacramental ministry of women as bishops and priests hold that neither Scripture, nor Apostolic tradition, nor the great majority of the Church throughout the world today endorse the ordination of women as bishops and priests.
Gender-specific language is necessary to a Catholic understanding of the economy of the Holy Trinity and the operation of divine grace within the life of the Church. This was succinctly expressed by C S Lewis (‘Priestesses in the Church?’ 1948):
Suppose the reformer ... says that we might just as well pray to ‘Our Mother which art in heaven’ as to ‘Our Father’. Suppose he suggests that the Incarnation might just as well have taken a female as a male form, and the Second Person of the Trinity be as well called the Daughter as the Son. Suppose, finally, that the mystical marriage were reversed, that the Church were the Bridegroom and Christ the Bride. ... Now it is surely the case that if all these supposals were ever carried into effect we should be embarked on a different religion.
A sacramental apprehension of gender is inherent in the Catholic conception of Holy Order.
Thus The Book of Common Prayer’s Form of the Solemnization of Holy Matrimony, quoting Holy Scripture, understands the relationship between loving husband (as head) and reverent wife (who is one flesh with her husband) to signify ‘the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church’.
A gender-specific episcopacy is intrinsic to, and its sacramental significance dependent upon, its prescribed marital status. Just as the Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church is One, the Ordinal appended to The Book of Common Prayer, quoting Holy Scripture, specifies that a bishop must be ‘the husband of (no more than) one wife’.
Consistent with this sacramental view, the Catholic tradition understands the bishop, in Apostolic succession, and in the celebration of the Liturgy, to act ‘eis topon kai typon Christou’ (in the place and as a type of Christ), ‘in persona Christi’ (in the person of Christ) and ‘in persona Christi capitis’ (in the person of Christ the head).
A significant proportion of the regular congregation of St George’s, Headstone comprises those unable to accept, and those who doubt, that the roles of bishop or priest are, sacramentally speaking, roles that women can exercise. This Parochial Church Council believes that the episcopal and priestly sacramental and pastoral ministry exercised in this parish should be such that it may be received with integrity by all who worship here.
We affirm our desire to flourish within the life and structures of the Church of England, in accordance with the Five Guiding Principles set out in the House of Bishops’ Declaration, and our commitment to Christ’s mission in the Diocese of London. However, we can only flourish if we are in full communion with a bishop and with all those whom that bishop ordains to the priesthood.
Therefore we request that episcopal sacramental and pastoral ministry in this parish be entrusted
- to a male bishop who stands in the historic, Apostolic, and sacramental succession of bishops so ordained,
- at whose consecration a male bishop who had not consecrated a woman as a bishop presided,
- whose marital status conforms with Apostolic teaching and practice expressed in the historic teaching and practice of the Church of England, and
- who ordains only men to the priesthood.
We also ask that episcopal and priestly sacramental and pastoral ministry in this parish be exercised
- by male bishops who stand in the historic, Apostolic, and sacramental succession of bishops so ordained,
- at whose consecrations a male bishop who had not consecrated a woman as a bishop presided,
- whose marital status conforms with Apostolic teaching and practice expressed in the historic teaching and practice of the Church of England,
- who ordain only men to the priesthood, and
- by male priests ordained by such bishops.
We recognise the diocesan bishop and other bishops of this diocese as the true and lawful holders of their offices, and wish to maintain the highest degree of communion with them that is consistent with the theological convictions that underlie our Resolution.
Our Resolution contributes to the Church of England’s ‘wider commitment to sustaining diversity’.