An Inspector calls

After a couple of weeks, you might have thought I could conjure photographs of Rose Pink vestments to rival Fr Jones (qv). But alas, we are the 'Poor Man's Walsingham' (Thomas More said so) and do not possess such exoticisms.

The last few days have been consumed with an imminent Ofsted Inspection for the Parish School. At last Wednesday's Governing Body, we were relieved to hear that the proposed inspection had been deferred - thanks to an Inset Day for staff on Friday. We were assured by those who know about these things (and are paid to advise) that an inspection in the last week of term immediately after a deferral was very unlikely. How very wrong!

The inspectors arrive tomorrow morning and although it is 1030pm Sunday evening, I have just returned from school where most of the staff are fretting and ordering things in such a way as to make life easy for the inspectors. My refrain has been a constant 'bloody ridiculous' to the requirements of the new framework with only 48hours notice. I am confident in the Head and staff and that everything that is necessary has been in place for some time, but you can understand the tremendous anxiety of first-rate teachers who have spent themselves in a term's hard-work in a challenging community.

The inspectors are not coming to see a snap-shot of the school as it is - which must be the ideal inspection regime. Their appetite for forests of paper evidencing policies, tracking, development plans, risk assessments, safeguarding procedures - the list is endless - is voracious. The whole point of the new inspection framework was meant to be a much lighter touch and a less disprutive evaluation. But there is a real risk for every school of being condemned for less than perfect procedures or an inadequate community cohesion policy! No wonder volunteers are dissauded from being involved in the educational formation of children. No wonder schools have become fortresses against the very communities which they serve. No wonder good teachers would rather opt out.

The quality teaching and learning of a stimulating and appropriate curriculum and the distinctive nurturing, happy ethos of this particular Church school counts for little in the obsessive compulsive tick-box culture of contemporary education. Professionals, for whom I have the highest regard (and amongst whom I once was numbered) have for too long been functionaries of a centrally-driven, top-down prescriptive delivery structure.

But I have stamped my foot - the inspectors wish to begin 'observations' at 9am, but that is the time the school comes to Church on a Monday morning. So their observations will have to begin with the children and me in the place which gives the school its foundation in so many ways. On Tuesday they will also have to witness the Nativity play (dangerously counter-cultural) and the sheer pleasure of the end-of-Christmas-term indulgences which give (should that be gave?) primary education its distinctive delights.

Please remember S Mary's School in your prayers. They deserve better than to finish their term washed out by an intrusive, overbearing system which has little room for encouragement and celebration - all in the name of progress, allegedly.

ABC at the Greg

I await postings on the Archbishop's address. Fr Ivan has provided an initial view and Fr Ed has added some immediate reactions.

++Rowan's text is typically dense. So often with celebrities (not unlike the infamous +David Jenkins of Durham) I found myself hearing the voice behind the text, only in this instance, having to re-read section after section to trace the lines of argument. No disrespect to ++Rowan, but much sympathy for those who had to hear it live.

There is much that is deep and radical (in the proper sense of that word). But there also seems to me to be much that is muddy and petulant. If it is true that ++Rowan was making late-night telephone calls to demand clarification and explanation as to Anglicanorum Coetibus, then gently barbed remarks about how seriously ecumenical endeavour is regarded by the Vatican and the nature of primacy might indicate a certain archiepiscopal pissed-off-ness. Oh dear, please don't tell me that George Carey has his finger on the pulse!

The sections on the recovery of theogical ecclesiology is worthy of further reflection.

The statement that AC breaks no fresh ecclesiological ground needs to be heard by some of the more excitable Anglo-Catholics.

But the section on 'the' issue of the day confuses me. Curiously, the Archbishop seems to be suggesting that some Anglican provinces proceeded to ordain/justify the ordination of women on the basis of ARCIC. Such a theology of ministry in the agreed report I should like to read. He reprimands Rome for making recent determinations that do not accord with 'the general pattern of theological convergence'. What does that mean? Nothing ruled in, nothing ruled out? You didn't say no? We're just getting intimate, so I hope you won't mind if I introduce my wife/husband/civil partner/all three?

And there are two statements which bother me: 1) "in what way does the prohibition against ordaining women so 'enhance the life of communion'...that its breach would compromise the purposes of the Church as so defined (in scripture, tradition and ecumenical agreement)?" - but in what way does ordaining women enhance the life of communion etc. not least given the ABC's recognition of its 'undoubted impair[ment]' in the CofE?;
And 2) 'do the arguments...about the "essence" of male and female vocations and capacities stand on the same level as a theology derived more directly from scripture and the common theological heritage...in these ecumenical texts?' (my boldening). That's just naughty, Archbishop, and you know it!

I have to quote the penultimate sentence, 'cos its joyous:
'For many of us who are not Roman Catholics , the question we want to put, in a grateful and fraternal spirit (I particularly like that bit), is whether this unfinished business is as fundamentally church-dividing as our Roman Catholic friends generally assume and maintain.'

Clever! To whom could such a pathetic (best sense of the word) statement appeal? Not SSPX I'm sure.

Meanwhile back in the plain...

Have just returned from a long weekend in Walsingham with a group from the congregation. Genuinely refreshed, as ever, but perhaps in the wake of recent events profoundly appreciating the Shrine and what it represents: generations of Catholic Anglicans, not toddling off to Norfolk in search of 'exotic ritual, but to be changed' (Jim Wallis, God's Politics). +Lindsay on top form, not least in a masterly exposition of Psalm 23, so beloved of CofE folk. But what strikes me more than ever is the 'security' that Walsingham represents - a place to be ourselves as Catholic Anglicans without the need to justify and explain. A place of faith not apologetics.

How sad, then, to return to read text of and comment on the latest Revision Committee pronouncement. I share Fr Ed's deep disappointment. But I also feel a sense of 'I told you so'. Some time ago I commented here that the first morsel from the Revision Committee might have been a testing of the water, a weather balloon, with the desired effect of infuriating one side of the debate. This latest appears to be testing the opposite side. First investing by statute, now delegating. Enough harrumphing from the latter group - a wicked betrayal and all the rest. But could this not simply be the two extremes, in the middle of which the Revision Committee will finally settle, just, equitable and moderate? Synodically induced cataracts.

Let the Revision Committee do its best. Let them decide on a single-clause measure. Let them do us ast least this one favour of clear vision so that we do not, to quote John de Satge, miss the moment of our own Nunc Dimittis.

Anglicanorum Coetibus

Just an initial reaction - which is probably ill-considered - and at the risk of incurring the wrath of brother priests:

Being a visual kind of person, I am struggling to picture the Ordinariate.

Do not think me ungrateful but what is the 'generosity of the Holy Father' to which many have referred?

'Many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside [the Catholic Church's] visible confines' (preamble).

What are they in Rome's view?

If I sign up, I am to be laicised (Fr Ghirlanda's explanation pulls no punches about Apostolicae Curae). If I seek ordination, I must be re-formed alongside other seminarians. In my particular circumstances, I shall have to be considered 'on a case by case basis' against unspecified objective criteria. If accepted and ordained (absolutely), I shall encounter the 'safeguarding and nourishing of the Anglican tradition' expressed in synodical government (eek!) and a posse of men whom at present I look to as my Fathers in God sitting alongside me but with hats and rings. My wife and family who as RCs would not 'ordinarily [be] eligible for membership' of the Ordinariate will nevertheless be able to choose the lifeboat rather than the mother-ship. And the best chance of maintaining the security of my family will be to seek secular employment.

As one of my respondents put it, what is to stop me going anyway, without the staging post?

I have no wish to diminish the significance of the HF's initiative and I am reminded of that story of God (S Peter in some versions) sending a boat then a helicopter to save a drowning man. In the fulness of time I might begin to understand his generosity. But I am inclined to think that the HF has (as the Americans say) pitched a curve ball back into our court.

Amusement

Having read Richard Dawkins in the Washington Post (thanks to the tip from Fr Hunwicke), I clutched my aching sides for an early reading of the online Church Times - those bits which are available free in the early hours of Friday morning - only to find this pearl:

'The Society of Catholic Priests, which has 500 members in England, said that the majority of Catholics within the C of E were in favour of women’s ministry and would remain loyal to the Anglican Communion.'

Priceless.

Consider Fr Davage's 'suppurant oxymoron' (address to FiF) and then ponder the many different levels at which the statement above is so gloriously absurd. A doff of the biretta for each ludicrosity.

Pondering

Some have commented that the Pope's proposal has been badly timed. The consensus is that it will certainly not have no effect on discussions in the Church of England as to provision. A couple of postings on this blog have suggested from a Roman perspective that the proposed Ap. Con. changes nothing. Individually maybe. But not corporately.

But whether by accident or design the timing is interesting in the light of the Gospels for the 29th and 30th Sundays of the Year.

Last week, like James and John, some were continuing to seek a 'place of honour' and security. This week, like Bartimaeus, the possibility of the anablepsis (Mk 10:51) of unity seems to be within shouting distance. Like James and John, we have travelled a long way and feel ourselves to be deserving of certain guarantees. But like Bartimaeus, maybe we are being invited to 'throw away the cloak' (his only possession and therefore rather a foolish thing for a blind beggar to do in a crowd), get up out of the gutter and follow.

We know these two incidents are linked. Jesus asks the same question of both the brothers and Bartimaeus: 'What do you want me to do for you?' (Mk 10:36 and 51). The contrasting answers - one self-serving, the other self-abandoning - produce different results: on the one hand, a committee of ten indignant fellow-travellers (which being translated is synod!); on the other an invigorated discipleship.

I offer this thought not to suggest a particular course of action in response to recent events, after all James and John proved themselves in the end to be faithful and foundational. But, perhaps simply because in preparing for Sunday, as ever, Scripture speaks afresh about the discernment of God's will not being a negotiated settlement as union to employer, but as invitation, prayer and gift.

Just makes you want to spit

Perhaps someone could explain to me why it is that George Carey feels he has the clout to weigh into the discussion of the Vatican's proposed Apostolic Constitution and the discomfort of the Archbishop of Canterbury, or that anyone should take the blindest bit of notice?

In today's Times, Carey is 'appalled' at the announcement from Rome and calls on Archbishop Rowan to complain in person. He goes on to claim that the Ap.Con. might provide help for those who are unable to contribute constructively to a Church of England with women in the episcopate, a group for whom he says he had a pastoral concern during his time as Archbishop!

This is the same man who described Catholics as heretics, told us there were 'too many Eucharists' and presided over a decade of stagnation, paralysis, schism and deepening bitterness. This is the same man who it is alleged took exception to the appointment of ++Rowan to Canterbury and has spent his retirement griping from the sidelines.

He had nothing to contribute constructively in his disastrous time as ABofC. He has nothing to contribute constructively now - with one exception. His interventions only serve to prove how fortunate we are to have ++Rowan as our Archbishop, a man of holiness, depth and charity with an understanding of Church.