When I arrived in Fountain Hills Az., it was clear that the priest who had founded the Church of the Atonement was rather self-styled, and flew a few of his ideas under the radar. One of the results of his ministry was that he left behind a group of people who wanted to be Low Church. The problem is, the APCK simply does not do Low Church. Upon dropping the Gloria on Septuagesima in 2006, I thought it best to mention it, so that they would know that nothing was forgotten (in recent years the ECUSA has stopped doing the Pre-Lenten season in any significant way, and these people had left the new and thoroughly morphed ECUSA a few years before).
ROOM FOR LOW AND HIGH CHURCH?
In the year since, I have not been teaching my people all the fine points of High Church rubrics, but rather the depth of Catholic Theology, without which High Churchmanship is just a show. Now that they appreciate the Catholic Theology of the Anglican Province of Christ the King, High Churchmanship is simply expected- expected as a result of understanding, not as a result of mere taste, or legalism. We still have a bit of travelling to do, but the progress is obvious.
As I said, the APCK does not do Low Church. This may sound like a scandalous thing to say, as far as some people are concerned. But, we all need to ask how practical, how honest and how peaceful it is to attempt to fit two churches (at least) with two theologies, under the same roof. Has it ever really worked? Archbishop Morse has been quite clear from the start, that the Elizabethan Settlement is a failed experiment. This is quite true.
In the early to mid Twentieth Century, Anglo-Catholicism had made such a strong mark that the Church of England, on behalf of the Anglican Communion everywhere, was engaged in serious efforts at reunion with Rome, and at becoming one Church with the Orthodox, both at the same time. But, when the forces of revisionist Theology began to prevail, a Protestant paradigm had to become dominant, effectively killing the meaning of those earlier efforts. This was necessary in order to allow women's "ordination" and everything else that followed. A strict belief in the Church as an extension of Christ's Incarnation, guided into all truth by the Holy Spirit, gives authority (as it must) to Tradition. But, Protestantism has no fixed interpretations, no authoritatve doctrine, except whatever I think the Bible says, and whatever I feel led by the Spirit to do.
The Affirmation of St. Louis calls us to the Catholic Faith. To live by it, we cannot try to be a house divided, even one divided with good manners. It simply does not work.
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