From the Rector's Desk:

Many of you will have read that we hosted the national gathering of the Anglo-Catholic Rectors Conference here a few weeks ago.  It was a very helpful, encouraging and rewarding experience.  It was good to meet new friends, and to reconnect with acquaintances of long standing.  And of course, one of the best things about such gatherings is the opportunity to hear and share stories.  Fr. Reid, the Rector of St. Clement's, Philadelphia, for example, is a regular raconteur, and he kept me in stitches the entire time.  He shared with us regarding his parish, We are the "highest" Church in the World.  We use the Roman Missal (in Latin) and pray for Benedict our Pontiff and Charles our Bishop, neither of which is actuallytrue! On hearing that, I was reminded of an old quip I once heard from the rector of Ascension and St. Agnes Church in Washington.  He said something along these lines, We Anglo-Catholics have the highest regard for episcopacy...it's the bishops themselves we can't stand!  Of course, that rather tongue-in-cheek comment was received as outrageously funny... Funny in the way that certain macabre jokes make us laugh.  And we laugh because it would be ever so easy to cry.

The truth of the matter is that Anglo-Catholicism- even with its very real, incarnate flesh and blood, Gospel preaching, mass saying, soul saving,  the hungry feeding parishes and ministries– must nonetheless content itself with living somewhat in the realm of the theoretical or hypothetical... We believe in Episcopacy per se...  but the Bishops...  That's another story!

And that, of course, is because all too often, the rector of the one, "tolerated" Anglo-Catholic parish stuck in the corner of the diocese somewhere often had to fight, claw, bleed (and sometimes go to jail) in order to preserve the faith that he and his people held most dear.  Even in my own day, I well remember Fr. Fleming sneaking up behind Bishop Temple to toss on the red cope moments before the procession began, to which invariably the response from the good bishop was,  Sam, must I wear these papist rags?  In that particular case, the disagreements all passed with the twinkle of an eye and honest affection and good will.  Oh, that we could have a little of that good will today!  I bet you are just as tired as I am of a world that is so terribly polarized.  Red States and Blue States.  Liberals and Conservatives.  Fox people and MSNBC people.   And  far from witnessing to the world, the Church has adopted the world's strategy.  We have everything divided up neatly into little categories and camps.  And every person, every motive, every relationship seems to be run through the filter of which ever "camp" we happen to belong to.  In short, we are high on suspicion and short on trust., I don't mean among our own parishioners, of course. Nor even particularly among our own Diocese (as different and multi-faceted as we are).  But clearly, the Episcopal Church itself is in a state of extreme dysfunction and decline...It is simply not possibly for a rational person to look at the plain facts and draw any other conclusion. And the conflicts we experience in the United States have been successfully exported to every nook and cranny of the Anglican Communion.  Such a gift!

It would be easy, with the Church in such a state, for us to lose heart, to become discouraged and distracted from our ministries.  We all want clarity.  We all want a healthy thriving Church. But we must remember... Anglo-Catholicism knows all too well that we must sometimes "make do" when the theoretical is all that we can get our hands on. But  isn't it interesting to you that we think that "clarity" and "peace" are somehow normative?  And that, at least tacitly, we imply that we are deserving of such a blissful state?

When the great orthodox bishop Athanasius was banished in the Second Century from his See by the Heretical majority, when indeed, it was Athanasius Contra Mundum, where was peace?  Where was clarity?

During the crisis of the Fourteenth Century, when there was a Pope in Rome and one in Avignon (and ultimately a third contender before it was all settled), where was peace?  Where was clarity?

When the Communist revolution came to China, cutting off the small Catholic community there from all contact and interaction with the Vatican, where was peace and clarity? (Amazingly, when things "thawed" some fifty years later, a little vestige of that community was discovered, still worshipping in Latin, keeping all the old traditions, unaware of the changes brought by Vatican II).

And so you see my friends, as much as we might long for them, and much as we might desire them, peace and clarity are not always a part of the bargain!  Do you marvel, as I do, when you read passages in the Acts of the Apostles that tell us...and they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer on behalf of Christ.   We have been through many experiences as Episcopalians in these last decades, but may I gently suggest to you that suffering isn't actually among them!  Maybe, just maybe, this is our time to stand in solidarity with all those Saints in ages past.  We may want clarity.  God wants Fidelity.  I know which of the two is more immediately within my ability to accomplish, don't you!?

May God bless each of us with Faithful and Steadfast hearts in this Lenten Season.

With prayers and love,

Fr. Sanderson