Full Disclosure: As a Charismatic-Evangelical-Eucharistic-Countercultural-Catholic, Fleckinstein is flamingly Ecumenical in his love for Pentecostalism in the zeal, Evangelicals in the love for Jesus Christ and his Word, Eastern Orthodox in the liturgical and spiritual riches, and Anabaptistism like the Bruderhoff in the concrete Gospel Radicality. He has little use for Anglicanism.
To be clear: this is not about persons who are Anglican. I have dear cousins who have embraced that faith. A good friend from high school was 25 years a Roman Catholic priest, and now 25 years an Episcopalian priest; we get together for lunch and I thoroughly enjoy and respect him; we don't go into theology. As always: hate the sin, love the sinner. I hate alcoholism but love alcoholics; most of the people I love are Democrats, I despise the party. My wife, a registered Democrat, reminds me several times a week, when we see Trump actions, especially treatment of immigrants, "I am a Democrat." As annoying as this is, do I love her less? You get the point!
What's Wrong with the Anglican (non)Communion?
Don't get me started!
1. With a (probably fine) woman as Archbishop of Canterbury, the Church is a single-mother family, desecrating the nature of orders and the genius of femininity, bereft of virility-paternity-authority as iconic of the divine Father.
2. It is the institutionalization of theological progressivism as the unchaste union of effeminate, impotent masculinity and resentful, jealous, grasping femininity that maintains sterility by killing the unintended child as it embraces every perverse cultural fad (abortion, gay marriage, women archbishops.)
3. It' s origin is the adultery of Henry VIII.
4. It tortured and killed our martyrs, especially Jesuits. (Although in fairness we Catholics did the same to them.)
5. It destroyed the rich, historic English Catholicism in its monasteries, pilgrimages, iconography, indulgences, and other.
6. It participated in persecution of the Irish, including the Famine which was arguably quasi-genocidal.
7. It continues to uphold a kingship that we Americans had to fight against to be free.
8. It lacks a centering authority and so is a clowder of cats with everyone doing their own thing: high and low Churches, evangelicals and liberals, traditional Africans and progressive West, etc.
9. As a "middle way" between Catholicism and Protestantism it lacks clear identity, structure, interior form; neither this nor that.
10. It's head is not an ordained bishop, descended from Peter or the apostles, but a king. This is obscene! Under Elizabeth there was at least a style of dignity, but the person of Charles, his history (Diana) and personal faith makes things worse; it recalls Henry.
11. It is a bureaucratic pillar of the bourgeois status quo.
12. Worst of all, it is sacramentally confused and befuddled. The strong, clear forms of Protestantism reject the sacramental economy entirely and present a worship form in Word, song and witness that has its own integrity and value. As an ecumenical Catholic I happily participate in such, listening to often inspired preaching and lifting my hands in shared praise of our Lord and Savior. Anglicans present a bogus version of our sacraments, a "knock off" imitation. They claim to continue our sacramental tradition. In the higher Church expression their form is arguably more traditional and reverent in style than our Vatican II mass. So, we might profitably join them in non-Eucharistic praise with their rich musical heritage. Pope Leo XIII declared their orders (and so all their sacraments except baptism) invalid because there was a break with the apostolic succession of bishops. There was also a change in their understanding of Eucharist as they denied its nature as sacrifice. But the apostolic succession issue troubles me. What of their priests who were ordained within that line? How would we know the valid (however illicit) from the invalid? How about my high school friend and many Roman priests who have joined that Church. Their celebration of the mass is valid. So, some Anglican masses present a piece of bread, others the body of our Lord. To confuse things further, they allow a variety of theological views: some recipients believe in the Real Presence but are deceived as they receive a piece of bread and so are (if unintentionally) practicing idolatry ;others blaspheme (if unintentionally) by receiving Christ himself, physically, but consider it merely symbolic. This is sacramentally a horrific, sacrilegious, despicable situation: I am running away from the Anglican "faux-mass!"
Pope Leo's Anglican Temptation
Under Pope Francis, our Church already drifted toward the unfortunate, scattered-cat condition of Anglicanism. Blessing of gay unions is strictly forbidden in all of Africa; it is widely, publicly celebrated in German and across the West. Divorced-without-annulment-remarried Catholic can receive communion in Germany but not across the border in Poland. Francis has said that women cannot be ordained deacons, and then said that maybe they can, and then that they cannot???
Recent papal gestures suggest that Pope Leo is temperamentally inclined to just such a use of authority. He highly values the unity of the Church; which is a good thing of course. But he shows signs of being a "people pleaser"...wanting to keep everyone happy, disinclined to decisive action. He allowed Cardinal's Burke to celebrate the Latin Mass in St. Peter's Basilica even as a number of American bishops are basically eliminating that practice, with the implicit acceptance of the Vatican. When Cardinal Cupich sundered the unity of the American episcopate by violating their policy on honoring prochoice politicians he favored Cupich and then gave him a prominent position in the Vatican. His clear anti-Trump bias is hardly helpful to an American Catholicism split almost exactly 50-50 on the politics.
In these few months, he has mostly kicked the ball down the road on the important things. He cannot do this for the remainder of what will likely be a prolonged pontificate. He is the primary protagonist on a number of battle fronts: cultural and theological progressivism, the Communist takeover of the Chinese Church, the Latin Mass, financial-sexual-theological corruption in the Vatican. Neutrality is not an option in any of these fronts. Like his mentor, he would prefer to engage in synodal meanderings about climate, immigrants, and the poor. A moderate, mediating approach to the contested issues will in effect enable the revolutionaries and debilitate the Church at her core.
We do well to pray for Pope Leo: that in his tenderness he find a toughness in the defense of the Truth; that as a canon lawyer and institutionalist he strenghen the Church in her defining structures; that he manifest the courage and clarity of the apostles, martyrs, fathers and doctors in his love for Christ and his Church.
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