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Originally Posted by orange Thanks for your comments Morganite. I appreciate it!  But, the Church of England doesn't have a celibate priesthood. My friend's dad is an Anglican priest. I've never heard it called Anglican Catholicism, I'll have to ask him about that. I know that he says it's called Anglican here in Canada and Episcopalian in the US. But basically it's the Church of England (or Scotland or Ireland, haha, depending on where you're living!) Anyways thanks this is a cool discussion. |
Orange,
Anglican priests,
per se, are not celibate. The celbate priests withing Anglicanism that I mentioned are High Church, or Anglican-Catholics. This will help clear the confusion.
The terms Anglo-Catholic and Anglo-Catholicism describe people, groups, ideas, customs and practices within Anglicanism that emphasise continuity with Catholic tradition. Since the English Reformation there have always been Anglicans who identify themselves closely with traditional Catholic thought and practice.
The concept of Anglo-Catholicism as a distinct sub-group or branch of Anglicanism, however, began to come to prominence in the Church of England during the Victorian era under the influence of the Oxford Movement or "Tractarians".
Anglo-Catholic people and churches are usually identified by their liturgical practices and ornaments. Anglo-Catholics use many traditional Catholic practices in their liturgical ceremonies such as vestments, incense and candles and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Anglo-Catholic liturgical practices (incorrectly called 'Ritualism') were a particular source of controversy in the nineteenth century, especially in England where Parliament was asked to legislate against certain practices.
Many Anglo-Catholic "innovations," which were revivals of dormant Catholic practices eventually became accepted by most mainstream Anglicans.
What Anglo-Catholics believe is highly debated even among people who identify themselves as such. The Thirty-Nine Articles make distinctions between Anglican and Roman Catholic doctrine; but the Articles have never been regarded with much favour by Anglo-Catholics, and because they were purposely written in such a way as to be open to a wide range of interpretation, some Anglo-Catholics have defended Catholic practices and beliefs as being consistent with the Articles.
Anglo-Catholic priests often hear private confessions and anoint the sick, regarding these practices (as do Roman Catholics) as sacraments; whereas more Protestant-minded Anglicans generally think of them as merely optional sacramental rites. (The classic Anglican aphorism regarding confession is "All may, none must, some should").
Anglo-Catholics share with Roman Catholics a belief in the sacramental nature of the priesthood and the sacrificial character of the Mass;
many encourage priestly celibacy, and until the 1970s almost all rejected the possibility of women receiving Holy Orders.
In recent years, though, some Anglo-Catholics have accepted the ordination of women and other aspects of "liberalism" such as the use of modern and inclusive language in Bible translations and the liturgy, although many have not and have set up as an opposiiton.
While the nineteenth-century Anglo-Catholic movement began partly as a reaction to liberalism (in the theological sense), secularism (in the Darwiniam sense), and Evangelicalism (in tghe "enthusiastic" sense) in the Church of England, the movement's heirs in the modern church are far more diverse and in some respects more inclusive. The movement
Affirming Catholicism is an example of a more liberal approach to Anglo-Catholic theology and practice.
Most of the groups making up the Continuing Anglican Movement are regarded, and regard themselves, as Anglo-Catholic.
In the Anglican Communion three terms are frequently — but not always correctly — used to denote the parish's style of worship: High Church, Low Church, and Broad Church (or Latitudinarian).
"High Church" is generally used to describe moderate to advanced Anglo-Catholicism, and a heavy leaning towards Rome, including the Papacy.
"Low Church" is used for Anglicans of a more Evangelical or Protestant theology who emphasise the primacy of scripture, salvation by grace through faith alone and worship based on the official prayer books but with much less ceremonial.
The term "Broad Church" is sometimes used for those "middle-of-the-road" Anglicans who are somewhere between the "high" and "low" traditions, or those who stress that there is room for diverse traditions in the Anglican Communion.
Some Anglo-Catholics (sometimes called Anglo-Papalists) consider themselves under Papal supremacy even though they are not in full communion with Rome. Many Anglo-Catholics seek for reunion with Roman Catholic Church. In fact a significant portion of Britain's Roman Catholics are former Anglicans or their descendants.
What has come to be called "Anglo-Catholicism" has a long history within the Anglican Church. From the time of the founding of the first monasteries at Glastonbury in Britain, around the fourth decade C.E., there has been an apostolic line of bishops in the British Isles. Indeed, the first group of missionaries to the Celts of the British Isles are documented as having been compatriots of St. Joseph of Arimathea, and to have been commissioned for their evangelism by the Apostle Philip (who then held the Ephesian See at Hieropolis), sometime around A.D. 47. King Arviragus of Somerset and his sons, Coillus and Marius, deeded the first lands for the Christian monastic communes around Yniswitrin (Glastonbury).
Abbot-bishops continued to lead Christians within commune-settlements in the British Isles, peacefully co-existing with local pagans, until the Bishops of Rome (Popes) sent St. Patrick and St. Augustine of Canterbury to the Isles as missionaries, specifically to get the Celtic Chrisians -- whose practice, having derived from St. Philip the Apostle, was more akin to that of the pre-Chalcedonian Christian East (Middle East) than to that of Rome and the Christian Church of Continental Western Europe, which used Latin rites -- under the authority and rites of the Apostolic See of Rome. Some of their ancient liturgies can be found in the remnant of the Stowe (Lorrha) Missal.
In A.D. 664, the Abess of Whitby, St. Hilda, convened a synod of Celtic bishops that began the process of placing the bishops in the British Isles under the Patriarchal jurisdiction of Rome. By the end of the reign of English King Richard II, in A.D. 1400, the popular right of appointment of Archbishops to their Sees, held by the King, had been ceded to the Roman Pope. British bishops were under direct Roman authority for several more centuries.
Noted should be however, that from the start of Christianity in Britain until the reign of Henry VIII, papal authority was - theoretically - accepted, even though the authority of the pope was far less due to communication difficulties in the first centuries after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.
When the Reformation broke out on the European Continent, the tide swept up England as well. Nevertheless, King Henry VIII remained staunchly a Catholic in theology and liturgy, while some reformers (such as Bishops Ridley and Latimer) wanted to follow the radical reforms of Geneva.
Henry said he restored the right of the Sovereign to appoint the Archbishops to their Sees and repudiated Roman usurpations of that right; yet he did this less for the pleas of his bishops than for his own self-interest in obtaining an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. After a brief re-imposition of Roman control during the reign of "Bloody" Mary Tudor, King Edward VI restored royal supremacy. Under his reign the English Church was radically reformed with a new liturgy and new theological positions.
When Queen Elizabeth I took the English throne, she sought to steer a via media between the "excesses" of Rome, on the one hand, and those of Geneva, on the other. Thus was born the Elizabethan Settlement, and the promulgation of a single Book of Common Prayer, for whatever theological party was to use it within the Anglican Church.
From that time, through Archbishop Laud and the Caroline divines, up to the time of the Oxford Movement Tractarians, and the Anglo-Catholic Congesses, to the present day of Affirming Catholicism, there has always been a strong theological party within Anglicanism which has sought to stress apostolic continuity all the way back to the apostle Philip. Despite Roman claims to the contrary in pope Leo XIII's Apostolicae curae (1893), the Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury and York have consistently made clear, starting with their official response,
"Saepius officio", that there is an unbroken apostolic succession in the Anglican priesthood, and that the Historic Episcopate has been in the British Isles from the earliest days of the Church.
The Church of England in Scotland is "The Church
of Scotland," but the Irish Anglican Church is "The Church
in Ireland."
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