INTRODUCTION
From the 14 years I was an active member of the second Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC II), I cannot remember a single discussion of canon law, and especially not of the relation of canon law to ecumenism. Such a discussion would have been seen as running against the grain of the way we were working. We were trying to ‘re-imagine’ the Church as a communion and to break the mould which saw the Church primarily as an institution. Canon law would have been seen (in an unexamined prejudice) as too closely tied to notions of the Church as institution to be helpful.
I joined the Commission in 1992. By this stage in ARCIC's work, there was a strong, shared understanding amongst the members about our task and our method. Our task was to address only the issues we had been asked to consider, and to offer agreed statements to our respective authorities which, so far as possible, expressed a common understanding in areas where the level of manifest division or contradiction had been taken to be communion-dividing. ARCIC statements typically rehearse material from the Bible and the tradition which we hold in common, often expressing this in ways which circumvent the language of division. Only at the end of the document are remaining areas of division or outstanding questions laid side by side – for further work. On questions of authority in particular, what has emerged is an iterative method, whereby ARCIC has returned three times to consider these questions from different angles, and it may well return again in a third phase of its work. All ARCIC statements are made in common: there has never been a statement which is not signed by all the members.
Underlying the work of ARCIC is the theology, and especially the ecclesiology, of koinonia. It was the adoption of the theology of communion as a central motif in ecclesiology by the Roman Catholic Church at Vatican II which opened out exciting new possibilities in ecumenical discussion. An ever-deeper exploration of this theology can be seen in the statements of ARCIC I collected as The Final Report. It is named as a leitmotif in the introduction. It is thematised in Church as Communion, the second statement of ARCIC II.
RE-IMAGINING THE CHURCH
The importance of communion ecclesiology as a means of ‘re-imagining’ the Church cannot be overstated. In at least two ways it represented a fundamental shift in the conceptualisation of the Church. The first is that the outward, institutional structures were seen as sacramental of an inner, spiritual life. There was no question that Jesus founded or specifically intended the full-formed Church of the twentieth century. The Church had grown and changed and adapted itself to its many historical circumstances, but in its essence, in its inner reality, it had remained the same (Newman's ‘semper eadem’). That inner reality could best be spoken of as koinonia – ‘participation’ or ‘sharing’ in the divine life and so a participation shared in the life of all the Church's members. The Church was seen less as an institutional extension of the life of the incarnation, and more as a spiritual association, conformed to Christ in many different ways by the Holy Spirit according to the will of the Father. If the Church is a ‘koinonia’ (a recognisable society) or a ‘koinonia koinonon’ (a ‘communion of communions’) this is in the sense that the physical expressions of Church as a society or societies always exist to serve the spiritual reality of communion. This is not to say that any of the structures of the Church, such as bishops, synods or canon law, are unimportant – only that when they cease to serve their broad sacramental purpose they have become ossified.
With this, there is another important point. ‘The Spirit blows where it wills’ – and the Spirit cannot be contained within the structures of the Church. If the Church is a pneumatological reality, then it is appropriate to look for the signs of the Spirit's working outside formal church structures. At Vatican II, there was a new openness to discern the Spirit's working in ecclesial bodies other than the Roman Catholic Church, an enthusiasm to discern the signs of the times and to be open to new understandings of Church and world (hence the agenda of aggiornamento).
All of this laid the groundwork for a new approach to ecumenism. No longer was it adequate to see the identity of the Church or churches in terms of hard-edged exclusionFootnote 2 – but rather in terms of kinship and inclusion. The World Council of Churches already had considerable experience of what it was for one church to recognise a bond (koinonia) with another because of shared participation in the Spirit – but for the Roman Catholic Church this meant a new turning outwards, without in any way abandoning its claim to an unbroken continuity with (koinonia in) the fullness of the life of the early Church.Footnote 3
The key expression of this new understanding of the authenticity of the Roman Catholic Church is in the phrase that the one true Church subsists in the Roman Catholic Church.Footnote 4 There has been much discussion of the meaning ‘subsists’. I take it that it affirms a continuing and complete reality within the Roman Catholic Church but it does not make the expression of that reality coextensive with the Roman Catholic Church as we know it: aspects of this ecclesial reality can be found outside the Roman Catholic Church and aspects of the Roman Catholic Church can be changed better to express this continuing reality.Footnote 5
This, of course, is different from the way that Anglicans imagine the Church. According to the declaration of assent made by Church of England clergy on taking up a new post, ‘the Church of England is part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’.Footnote 6 What it means to be ‘part’ is not explained, but this has to be read against Article 19, ‘Of the Church’:
The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure word of God is preached and the sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.
This is based upon Article 7 of the Confessio Augustana with its famous ‘satis est’.Footnote 7 Here the Church of England follows Lutheran understanding: what is necessary for the presence of the true Church is the preaching of the pure word of God and the due administration of the sacraments. In the Preface to the Ordinal, it is recognised that the norm for the realisation of these conditions has been recognition of the threefold orders of ministry (‘It is evident unto all men diligently reading holy Scripture and ancient Authors, that from the Apostles' time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church; Bishops, Priests, and Deacons …’).Footnote 8 Nevertheless, according to the Book of Common Prayer, the door is left open for church life to spring up afresh (through the action of the Holy Spirit) without a direct, structural line of succession. The visible church can cease to be truly ChurchFootnote 9 but it can be reconstituted under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. So, the re-formation principle is enshrined within the foundation documents of Anglicanism. On this basis, Anglicans have never seen their national churches, or their Communion, as self-sufficient, but as one expression of authentic church life. Anglicans have always remained open to authentic expressions of church life in other traditions, but have never been prepared to grant that such expressions are authentic solely by virtue of the continuity of church structures.
For Anglicans, the challenge has been not so much to re-imagine the visible Church as sacrament as to rediscover the pneumatology that underlies Anglican ecclesiology. It is the Spirit that ensures the preaching of ‘the pure word of God’ and the efficacy of the administration of the sacraments as instruments of grace. Three of the aspects of the Second Vatican Council that enabled Anglicans better to discern in the Roman Catholic tradition authentic church life were the renewed emphasis on liturgy in the vernacular, and on study and preaching of the Scriptures, together with structural reforms to the eucharistic liturgy that brought Catholic and Anglican worship much more closely together.Footnote 10
All in all, the ecclesiology of koinonia made both for an understanding of the structures of the visible Church as sacramental and of the life of the Church as dynamicFootnote 11 – as looking outwards to include relations with other Christians and mission towards the world.
CANON LAW ENABLING THE CHURCH TO BE THE CHURCH
Theologians involved in recent ecumenical discussions have often presupposed that medieval western canon law, like medieval theology, was developed under the influence of Aristotelian ontology. In the received Aristotelian-Thomist tradition, the language of ‘substance’ and ‘accidents’ enabled things to be analysed according to their inner (‘spiritual’) and their outer (‘physical’) reality. If there was a deficiency of accidents then there could be no guarantee of the substance. This suited an approach to canon law that analysed actions (for example the celebration of sacraments) as though they were ‘things’, and which was preoccupied with questions of validity. Canon law answered the sort of questions in which the schoolmen had been particularly interested; questions which sought to meet the spiritual anxieties of the late Middle Ages with a guarantee of correctness of form. The canon law of both the Roman Catholic and the Anglican traditions was well placed to answer questions like, ‘When is the Church not the Church?’ or ‘When is a sacrament not a sacrament?’ It was strong on necessary conditions, but not well placed to answer new questions asked by the Reformers in terms of sufficiency. In Aristotelian terms, this was due to a neglect of teleology. For Aristotle, if you want to know what something is you need to know what it is intended to do: a knife is intended for cutting, so a good knife cuts well. Within a thoroughgoing Aristotelian framework, one has to ask, what is the Church for? In the light of the answer to that question, one can then answer whether the Church is, as we might say, ‘fit for purpose’.
The ecclesiology of koinonia faced received canon law with new questions. The presupposition of the Reformers and of contemporary Roman Catholics had been that there is ‘one true Church’ and that there is a need amongst Christians to define, as far as possible, this mysterious reality. Limits can be set to the boundaries of the Church by defining authentic Christian teaching and practice.Footnote 12 The Reformers, of course, drew limits that differed from those of Catholics. Before the mid-twentieth century, there was, for a variety of historical, sociological and doctrinal reasons, a reluctance to recognise the huge areas of overlap. What the theology and ecclesiology of koinonia gave was grounds for the recognition of overlap, and even of differentiated consensus. Roman Catholics and non-Catholics saw afresh how much we share in common: Scriptures, common tradition (including creeds), common sacraments (especially baptism), common ways of praying (like the Lord's Prayer), common ethical approaches and so on. This raises what is perhaps a new question for canon law: to what extent can canon law facilitate a process of discernment, whereby Christians discover and foster areas of koinonia which may in the end prove sufficient for the expression of visible unity?
The theology of koinonia has raised an even deeper question, especially for the Roman Catholic Church. We have seen that the Catholic Church has expressed its own sense of sufficiency by using the term ‘subsistit in’; it lacks nothing either necessary or sufficient to be a complete expression of the ‘one true Church’. But are there still gifts it can receive from other Christian traditions with which it shares varying degrees and dimensions of koinonia? It is in the conviction that all Christian traditions have gifts to receive from one another (and need to uncover what they are) that the project ‘Receptive Ecumenism’ has now been launched and is beginning to contribute creatively to ecumenical experience and reflection.Footnote 13
If this is a correct approach, the role of canon law must be reassessed. Canon law must facilitate the continuing identity of the Church – but this cannot be done by identifying certain invariant characteristics and ensuring these are present in the appropriate actions of the Church. Canon law must also identify the characteristics of structures and practices in which learning and change can take place, in which the Church can be receptive to new ideas and practices which enable it better to realise its identity as an institution open to the promptings of the Spirit; it must also provide for appropriate diversity and flexibility in the very structures and practices themselves.Footnote 14
Whilst canon law may set limits to activities in common with other Christians, it must provide for occasions and structures in which ecumenical encounter and learning can take place. This is precisely the function of the ecumenical canons of the Church of England.Footnote 15 Canon law must, for example, be as much concerned for the synodality of the Church as for the authentic membership of those who attend its synods. Perhaps the major change to the role of canon law in the second half of the twentieth century is that it should now provide for the regulation of the Church as an institution in which there will be authentic change and development in interaction with other Christian bodies under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
SOME TEST AREAS
Some of the areas in which canon law must make appropriate provision are obvious and have been thoroughly discussed by the Colloquium of Anglican and Roman Catholic Canon Lawyers:Footnote 16 initiation, participation in the eucharist, marriage, authority and so on. In addition to these, I would like to suggest three where newer ecclesial presuppositions have influenced canon law, and where there could be further ecumenical convergence.
The first is reception of a member of one tradition into the other. According to the report, ‘An already baptised person is made a member of the Roman Catholic Church through the profession of faith and rite of reception carried out by an authorised minister.’Footnote 17 By contrast, the Church of England does not insist on such a rite, though it now provides one for optional use. If a person has been baptised but is not yet ready to be confirmed, ‘he shall be received by the parish priest with appropriate prayers’. If they have been baptised and confirmed, ‘they shall receive instruction and can than be received into the Church of England according to the Form of Reception approved by General Synod, or with appropriate prayers – though a priest is to be received only by a Bishop or by his commissary’.Footnote 18
In both cases, there is no requirement of re-baptism (though conditional baptism is available). In the case of those becoming Anglicans, both confirmation and ordination by a Roman Catholic minister may be recognised. This constitutes a very substantial recognition of the activity of the Holy Spirit outside the boundaries of the specific church tradition. Perhaps there is a significant straw in the wind in the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus. This lays out the provision for a Personal Ordinariate in which former Anglicans can be in communion with the Bishop of Rome. For Anglicans, there is much about the provision, and especially about the way it was introduced, that presents difficulties,Footnote 19 but there is in the paragraph providing for the continuing use of Anglican liturgy an important phrase:
Without excluding liturgical celebrations according to the Roman Rite, the Ordinariate has the faculty to celebrate the Holy Eucharist and the other Sacraments, the Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical celebrations according to the liturgical books proper to the Anglican tradition, which have been approved by the Holy See, so as to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church, as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared. Footnote 20
The notion that former Anglicans might bring with them a treasure which can enrich the Roman Catholic Church as a whole is very significant for the whole project of ‘receptive ecumenism’.
A second area which brings new challenges to canon law is that of ethics. Amongst those areas named in the Colloquium Report where there are canonical similarities is investment. We are told that ‘Prudent investment is a common requirement and duty, imposed often by the formal constitutional laws of the Anglican churches and in their various Canons.’Footnote 21 In the Code of Canon Law (Canon 1284), by comparison, all administrators must invest surplus money profitably with the consent of the diocesan bishop. The question raised is that of the appropriate use of the Church's money – use which reflects the identity of the Church. Nothing is said here of the ethical constraints on the church's investment, something with which the Church of England has struggled greatly. With that, we might point out the importance of lay expertise in determining appropriate investments for the Church. What is needed is a much more nuanced statement of canon law: ‘prudence’ and ‘profit’ are wholly inadequate criteria for the Church's investments – and in determining adequate criteria the churches would have a great deal to learn from one another.
A third area in which canon law may need better to reflect the identity of the Church is that of suitability for ministry, which is listed under ‘canonical similarities’. According to the Colloquium Report, ‘Ordination is to be conferred only on those who, in the prudent judgement of the proper bishop or competent major superior, have sound faith, are motivated by the right intention, are endowed with the requisite knowledge, enjoy a good reputation and have moral probity, proven virtue and the other physical and psychological qualities appropriate to the order to be received.’ As a principle this is unquestionably right, but I want to ask how it translates into practice.
A well-known and much respected Anglican priest has no hands. He was a prominent opponent of apartheid: his hands were blown off by a letter bomb. He now has prostheses. At the time of the attack, he was already ordained, but for a layman would the lack of hands be an impediment to ordination? Would this be an impediment to this priest becoming a bishop? The question to be pressed here is, what underlying ecclesiology is presupposed in the way such questions are determined? Within an ecclesiology of koinonia, what is the role of a priest? Should canon law preclude the ordination as a priest or a bishop of someone who has no hands or who has some other specific physical characteristic? Footnote 22
NEW OPPORTUNITIES
The report of the Colloquium of Anglican and Roman Catholic Lawyers notes the importance of International Anglican – Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM).Footnote 23 It quotes the challenge there to ‘develop those channels and practical expressions of co-operation by which a common life and mission may be generated and sustained’. This is exactly the thrust of a koinonia ecclesiology as it has been understood and practised within the ecumenical movement: the words quoted are preceded by an affirmation that ‘discerning a common faith challenges our churches to recognise that elements of sanctification and truth exist in each other's ecclesial lives’.Footnote 24 The IARCCUM initiative represents an attempt to move forward from the expressions of common doctrine in the reports of ARCIC towards practical action based on that koinonia. There is nothing in the suggested areas of visible expressions of the shared faith, joint study in order to deepen the shared faith or expressions of co-operation in ministry and shared witness in the world, which need obviously run counter to canon law, but an expression of such shared aspirations again poses the question as to whether current canon law reflects commitment to joint activity and to mission as integral to the life of both communions.Footnote 25 The proposal for a covenant amongst Anglicans worldwide does represent a challenge to the systems of canon law developed within particular Anglican Churches.Footnote 26 It is stressed within the draft covenant text that ‘Nothing in this Covenant of itself shall be deemed to alter any provision of the Constitution and Canons of any Church of the Communion, or to limit its autonomy of governance.’Footnote 27 Nevertheless, it also expected that ‘Each Church undertakes to put into place such mechanisms, agencies or institutions, consistent with its own Constitutions and Canons, as can undertake to oversee the maintenance of the affirmations and commitments of the Covenant in the life of that Church, and to relate to the Instruments of Communion on matters pertinent to the Covenant.’Footnote 28 In other words, commitment to the covenant will necessitate the creation of ecclesial structures or procedures for the enactment of that commitment. In practice, if the covenant is to be effective, these structures and procedures must open the covenanting churches to an element of mutual interdependence – to the moderation of their autonomy.
It is tragic that the Churches of the Anglican Communion should need to spell out so explicitly their commitment to one another. But this is not unredeemed tragedy. The draft covenant text, occasioned by a very real threat of breakdown in relations and carefully re-drafted three times, now lays out clearly the foundations of contemporary Anglicanism. It remains doubtful that the mechanisms it suggests will be strong enough to prevent splits under the pressures of conflict, but they express very strongly the commitment of Anglicans to remain together in a worldwide communion. There may be a model here for the commitment of churches in differing church traditions to one another: the covenant between the Church of England and the Methodist Church of Great Britain provides an ecumenical instance of such mutual commitment.Footnote 29
Within such a covenant, when a serious conflict arises, neither party can compel the other to remain within the covenant, but the initial commitment has been made. It is a commitment to work out differences together rather than apart. It represents a deep koinonia, which may within the covenant become yet deeper.
With Anglicans and Methodists there is a degree of Eucharistic sharing: we may receive at one another's tables, though there is not yet full interchangeability of ministries. There clearly could be a degree of covenanted commitment without eucharistic sharing. Where the practical aspirations of IARCCUM are formally adopted by the local authorities of the two communions, this represents a degree of covenanted commitment.
If any such covenant were adopted between Roman Catholics and Anglicans at an international level, it would be necessary to put in place structures and procedures to support its implementation and to negotiate a way forward when conflicts arose. The development of such structures and procedures is a matter for canon law. Out of the work towards an intra-Anglican covenant it may be that a new field of ecumenical canon law will emerge: not just the canon law which permits ecumenical engagement but canon law which further undergirds and promotes mutual commitment. A ‘covenant’ is, perhaps, something of a novelty in canon law. The work of canon lawyers in developing this and other new models for ecumenism is indispensable to a deeper and more extensive koinonia amongst the churches.
