The Gathering
A report to the Bench of Bishops from the Standing Doctrinal Commission, Church in Wales
- The standing doctrinal commission of the Church in Wales discussed the proposals from The Gathering at two day meetings on 5 July and 15 November 2013. We were grateful to be addressed in November both by Rev Gethin Abraham Williams, Chair of the Commission of Covenanted Churches in Wales, and by Revd Gwyn Ap Gwilym, Church in Wales’ ecumenical officer and a member of the Commission. During the day in November we celebrated the Eucharist according to the liturgy produced originally by the Commission in 1981, which was then revised and used in its new form at The Gathering in 2012. We also considered two letters on the proposals. One (dated 13 August 2013) was from the Bishop of St. Asaph, and a second (dated 9 July 2013) was from Canon Dr Sarah Rowland Jones, who is convenor of the ecumenical working group of IASCUFO (the Inter-Anglican Standing Commission on Unity Faith and Order), which advises the Provinces on matters of ecumenical engagement. Both letters were very useful.
2. Mr. Abraham Williams spoke movingly of the proposals as being about renewal and mission, and the need to receive them in a spirit of generosity. This is the third attempt to bring about a scheme of unity in Wales. The 1975 Covenant remains in force, but efforts to implement paragraph four have not been successful. That paragraph says:
“We recognise the ordained ministries of all our churches as true ministries of the word and sacraments, through which God's love is proclaimed, his grace mediated, and his Fatherly care exercised. b. We intend to seek an agreed pattern of ordained ministry which will serve the gospel in unity, manifest its continuity throughout the ages, and be accepted as far as may be by the Church throughout the world.
3. Mr Abraham Williams also referred to the 1986 decision by the Governing Body to defer a decision on the proposal Ministry in a Uniting Church in Wales, which led to its abandonment. Secondly, there was the failure to get a two-thirds majority in each house of the Governing Body on the 1998 proposal Towards the Making of an Ecumenical Bishop in Wales. He felt that humility is now required from all denominations at this time, as this will probably be the last attempt to bring about organic unity. We would agree with his remarks. The proposals are a time of opportunity, and an invitation to take risks. The inherited structures of all churches in Wales are in our view both contingent and changeable, although Anglicans would always wish to assert the importance of the three- fold ministry in their ecclesiology.
4. It is also the case that there is much duplication both of structures, and of buildings, which could be pruned. However the experience of recent decades is that local experiments need facilitation from higher structures in order to flourish. The legal structures set out in these proposals could address the decline by providing for greater sharing and participation with one another beyond the current (1991) Church in Wales’ ecumenical canons, helpful though these are. There are opportunities for uniting in non-sacramental ways which could be explored more, as well as participation in sacramental worship. We do not see the proposals as establishing a culture of uniformity, but rather affirming and enabling a variety of Christian traditions to flourish.
5. In the succeeding paragraphs we present our report under the heading of the three most important areas, which are those of episcopal ministry and apostolic succession, taking account of the Porvoo Common Statement; secondly, ordained and lay ministry; and thirdly, governance. After mentioning a few other matters in a fourth section, we then move to a conclusion, which is affirmative of the proposals in The Gathering.
I: Episcopal Ministry
- The central recommendation is laid out in Pastoral Oversight: a Discussion Paper 2012 in paragraph 10. The doctrine commission applauds the affirmation of the threefold ministry in 10.1.2, and the model of the bishop-in-council at 9.1.3 and 9.3 is also consonant with Anglican ecclesiology in recent decades. We therefore commend these paragraphs as helpful, especially in addressing Anglican concerns. We would caution, however, that the observation in Pastoral Oversight paragraph 9.4 on the separate nature of each of the six dioceses should not be overplayed. Each diocese in the Church in Wales may feel culturally and sociologically very different, but Cyprian’s emphasis remains valid that every bishop (and their diocese) shares in the fullness of the Church. (Cyprian, De Catholicae Ecclesiae Unitate, 5: episcopatus unus est, cuius a singulis in solidum pars tenetur/ E.T. The episcopate is one, of which a part is held by bishops in solidarity). There is a college of bishops, each in their own jurisdiction exercising the full authority of the episcopate. Cultural diversity is not relevant here.
7. The affirmation of episcopacy in paragraph 10 of Pastoral Oversight draws of course on the doctrine of apostolic succession. Apostolic succession was well stated by the World Council of Churches in their document Baptism Ministry and Eucharist (henceforward BEM 1982). They argued that “the primary manifestation of apostolic succession is to be found in the apostolic tradition of the Church as a whole…. Under the particular historical circumstances of the growing Church in the early centuries, the succession of bishops became one of the ways, together with the transmission of the Gospel and the life of the community, in which the apostolic tradition of the Church was expressed” (BEM 35-6). It spoke of episcopal succession as something that churches that do not have bishops can see "as a sign, though not a guarantee, of the continuity and unity of the Church" and that many churches “are expressing willingness to accept episcopal succession as a sign of the apostolicity of the life of the whole church" (BEM 38). The Porvoo Common Statement (1996), agreed to by the Anglican churches of the British Isles and most of the Lutheran churches of Scandinavia and the Baltic, also stated that:
the continuity signified in the consecration of a bishop to episcopal ministry cannot be divorced from the continuity of life and witness of the diocese to which he is called. In the particular circumstances of our churches, the continuity represented by the occupation of the historic sees is more than personal. The care to maintain a diocesan and parochial pattern of pastoral life and ministry reflects an intention of the churches to continue to exercise the apostolic ministry of word and sacrament of the universal Church. (Porvoo Common Statement, paragraph 49).
We affirm paragraph 10 as being consistent both with this statement and with an Anglican understanding of apostolic succession. Indeed, the Bishop of St Asaph comments on paragraph 10.3 that, as part of involving bishops from other traditions in the consecration of bishops, an invitation could be made to the Porvoo bishops. This seems a helpful suggestion. We appreciate the sensitivity of paragraphs 10.3.1 and 10.3.2 to both the concerns of non Anglicans (“a consecration be presided over by a bishop from their own tradition”) but also to Anglican concerns (“great care would have to be taken to ensure that the presiding bishop was himself part of the historic episcopate”).
8. The relationship of bishop to council goes of course to the heart of much Anglican discussion on collaborative ministry, and is referred to in the Church in Wales Review of July 2012 at paragraph 4. This describes the downside of the high authority of the bishop, which is “a culture of deference and dependence”. The review speaks of the need for bishops in the Church in Wales to model “a new, more collaborative style of leadership.” Anglicans will of course want to follow their tradition in seeing bishops as guardians of faith and order in the Church, and so will want to nuance the sentence from Pastoral Oversight in paragraph 9.3 that “the bishop will not act or teach apart from his college of presbyters and the elected lay representatives.” While affirming the desire for collaborative leadership, Anglicans will also want to agree with Irenaeus in Adv Haer IV, XXVI, 2 that “the succession of the episcopate” is a grace which includes “the gift of truth.” The Church in Wales’ ordinal for the consecration of bishops speaks of “their duty to maintain the unity of the Church, speaking in the name of God, and interpreting the gospel of salvation.” So a balance needs to be struck at this point. Both the Church in Wales review and The Gathering point to an emphasis on collaborative ministry, and there is much in the culture of the Church in Wales which sadly militates against this. However the other side of the balance is the importance of the episcopate in being a guardian of faith and order. We feel that so long as this paragraph preserves the right of the episcopate to have a controlling say in statements to do with faith and order, all will be well. For the sake of clarity, then, we would like an additional sentence on this issue added to the sentence quoted above from paragraph 9.3.
9. It is surprising in Annex One of the Pastoral Oversight proposals on the role of a bishop in a united church that the issue of appointing and licensing clergy is not mentioned. This is an integral part of episcopal jurisdiction, even if such appointments can be delegated to other bodies, and it would be helpful to have further discussion on this sensitive point. Equally point 10 in the role of a bishop on the possibility of the delegation of confirmation needs further elucidation. We feel that Annex One makes a good start, but there is more work to be done here. We encourage the Commission to engage in further dialogue with the churches on this matter, although this could go alongside steps towards unity.
II: Ordained and lay ministry
10 Anglicans will want to affirm the three-fold nature of ministry, and to argue that ordained ministry is in continuity with a pre-existing tradition given by the Spirit, which establishes the authority and validity of its orders. Any pragmatic solution would put at risk the nature of Anglican ministry, and the unity of the Body of Christ. However what is of great value in The Gathering is precisely the way in which the act of reconciliation of ministries (referred to in our report on Paragraph 11) can be seen as an enriching of Anglican order, and not a pragmatic fudging of the issues.
11 At the heart of The Gathering’s proposals is paragraph 11.4 in Pastoral Oversight. If “all ministers agree to the laying on of hands by at least one Anglican bishop and at least one other bishop representing the other traditions within the Church Uniting in Wales”, then as the report says it must be seen not as “an episcopal ordination but as a step forward to full covenanted ministry.” What matters here is the future-looking orientation of the report. In Acts 20:28, which is a crucial passage in the New Testament on ministry (presbyteros and episcopos in verses 17 and 28), the context is Paul’s charge to the elders at Ephesus for their future ministry. Mission and ministry are not only bound up together in this passage, but equally so too is the future work of the church in Ephesus (verse 31, “be alert”; verse 28, “take heed to yourselves and to all the flock”). As Paul departs from Ephesus for the final time, he gives authority to the elders for their future work. Something of this is found in the Pastoral Oversight report. The current leadership is not departing but it is being enhanced by something richer, for the sake of future (united) ministry. There is an allusion to this in paragraph 4.3.3 of the Pastoral Oversight report.
12 The Bishop of St Asaph suggests that such laying on of hands should be seen as an “adding and complementing”, and not a correcting, although for Anglicans it would mean that we were able to say that all such ministries are recognisable as being grafted into the historic and visible apostolic succession. This requires a new language of the reconciliation of ministries, and a mutual receiving and commissioning in communion for the future. Paragraph 11.3 of Pastoral Oversight uses the language of “an act of reconciliation”, and of “covenanted ministry as wider ministry.” This is something we would like to explore much more. These constructive suggestions lead into the question of how the Pauline language in 2 Corinthians of Christian ministry being seen as itself a ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18-19) could be reflected on more deeply. If Christian ministry can itself be enhanced by a formal act of reconciliation between the ministries of each denomination, much might be achieved. David Ford and Frances Young in their commentary on 2 Corinthians 5: 18 speak of the costliness of reconciliation, katallage, and yet reconciliation is possible through the gift of the Spirit in spending oneself for the sake of others (Meaning and Truth in 2 Corinthians, p. 175, SPCK, 1987). For each Anglican minister it is important that they see their ministry as being received and authorised into each of the jurisdictions of the different denominations. At the same time Anglican bishops would receive the ordained minister into communion with the ministry of the Church in Wales. Representatives of the non-conformist jurisdictions should also be active in this laying on of hands.
13 Anglicans will want to see ministry as being involved with the whole community, and not just with the gathered congregation. We understand the desire in the Church Governance paper, paragraph 5:1, that “the aim would be that each parish will be cared for by a minister”. However, both the move in the Church in Wales review to establish geographically wide Ministry Areas and the need to see ministry as not simply caring for a parish (which presumably means congregation) but also being involved in ministry to the wider community, mean that we raise some questions about the wholesale adoption of a “parochial system.”