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U p F r o n t
By Karl Keating
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This Rock
Volume 4, Number 10
 October 1993 
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ALPHONSE de Valk, a Basilian priest from Canada,
has written in a British publication that the decision of the Church
of England to ordain women "ends once and for all, and for everybody
to see, the Anglican claim to be Protestant yet Catholic, to be a
continuation of the Church before 1534, to be a branch, together with
the Catholics of Rome and the Orthodox of Constantinople, of the One
Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church." The problem is not so much
women as priests, says Fr. de Valk, but the more basic problem of
the "collapse of authority within the Anglican community."
While agreeing with him, I would phrase it somewhat
differently: The women's ordination issue--another issue would
have done as well--brought to the surface, for all but the willfully
blind to see, that separation from Rome ultimately means separation
not just from doctrinal, but from corporate stability.
For some years British Catholics, a small minority,
have outnumbered Anglicans in the pews on Sunday. The Anglican numbers
now will dwindle further. Some Anglicans will come over to Rome, and
others will leave for churches that all along have called themselves
Protestant.
It's a sad thing to witness, this auto-destruction
of a church, but there's no stopping it. Once unity in doctrine and
authority is broken, a collapse is inevitable, even if long in coming.
We won't be able to read Lancelot Andrewes or Edward Pusey or T. S.
Eliot in quite the same way any longer, now that we can see how the
story will turn out.
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