THE ANGLICAN INHERITANCE AND THE CHURCH CATHOLIC - BY CHERYL WHITE

The Anglican Inheritance and the Church Catholic

Cheryl H. White, Ph.D.

"We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church." We repeat those words every Sunday when we stand together to recite the Nicene Creed. What it means to be a part of the church catholic holds a renewed and special meaning for Anglicans today because of the crisis issues that face us. It is our unique Anglican heritage that allows us to lay claim to the historic faith we profess in that creed. So what does it really mean and why is it important?

The early Christian church, by the end of the first century A.D., was called catholic simply because the word means universal. It comes from the Greek, katas holos, which literally means according to the whole. The second bishop of Antioch, St. Ignatius, said at the end of the first century: wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church. Before the end of the fourth century, the church administration became centered in Rome; hence, the term developed Roman Catholic Church. However, when speaking of the historic universal church that has always existed since the time of Christ, the term catholic is correct. By the historic office of bishop that has been preserved through the centuries since the time of the Apostles, we are also able to claim the apostolic church.

When the Protestant Reformation emerged during the sixteenth century, scholars like Martin Luther and John Calvin sought to re-claim what early Christianity was like before corrupted during the Middle Ages at the hands of Rome. By the time of the late Middle Ages, the church in Rome was openly selling church offices, selling God's grace through "indulgences," and the legitimacy of the papacy was seriously in question. What reformers sought was a renewed catholicity; a return to the universal apostolic church of the first centuries. The word catholicity simply refers to unity and universality – the common bonds that tie Christians together.

The exact meaning of catholicity is something that has been hotly debated among theologians and historians. However, it is clear that during the Protestant Reformation, some believed that the best way to re-claim the early Church was to abolish many practices and doctrines that had been embraced by the Roman church for centuries. In varying degrees, mainstream Protestant churches distanced themselves from the historic catholic faith by abandoning the historic sacraments of the church and the traditional liturgy, eliminating the office of bishop, and even carrying out more symbolic acts like doing away with clerical vestments and removing altars from churches. These reformers saw catholicity as an invisible unity that was not necessarily found in the traditional practices of the Christian church. In the minds of many, the Roman Catholic Church was completely flawed and therefore, anything historically associated with that institution was also flawed. Therefore, some churches that emerged from the Protestant Reformation developed new models of administration and differing methods of worship.

However, some defined catholicity in more visible and tangible terms. When the Reformation came to England, it was much more rooted at the national level than it had been on the continent of Europe and conditions there dictated that church reform be more moderate to ensure a legitimate link to the past. In England in the sixteenth century, it was important that the historic elements of Christian unity be absolutely defined in concrete terms -- the consecrated office of bishop, the sacraments, the authority of Holy Scripture, the Creeds, the orthodoxy of the Church Fathers, the traditional liturgy – all of which were historic ties to the early Church. Therefore, when the Church of England broke away from Rome in 1534, it could still claim to be a part of the church catholic and apostolic by virtue of history. All of the historical elements of catholicity remained intact yet purged of the corrupt errors of Rome.

This is the unique Anglican identity – to be truly part of the one holy catholic and apostolic church. When the Episcopal Church of the United States broke away from the authority of Holy Scripture in consecrating Gene Robinson as bishop, it made the statement that our history is unimportant – that somehow, our tie to the rest of the Anglican Communion does not matter. Yet the Anglican Communion is our only tie to the historic past. Through our Anglican forebears of nearly five hundred years ago, we inherited a claim to the historic catholic church of the first century.

There has perhaps never been a better time in recent centuries to review and embrace our history and heritage. Our legitimacy is anchored firmly in the past, therefore eliminating the need for any discussions about new theologies for the modern world. Even amid the doctrinal squabbles of the Reformation period, all learned and scholarly men agreed that there was only one true authority – God's Holy Word. Holy Scripture and the Creeds have defined for us the limits of our inclusiveness; they are our signposts, fixed and true. To remain a part of the church catholic means to cling fast to the history we know – the orthodox faith of centuries of Christians who have gone before us.

Cheryl H. White, Ph.D. is a professor of history at Louisiana State University in Shreveport and she serves on the vestry of St. Paul's Episcopal Church. She is a frequent guest lecturer on topics related to church history and Reformation studies, and is a member of the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference. Her major fields of study and research are early Anglicanism and historical catholicity.

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