Implementing a Patriarch.

I have been reflecting on the comment of Abu Daoud who posted a comment on my article The Limits of Anglican Ecclesiology. To be honest I had prior to being asked the question tried to avoid where, when and how such a thing as an Anglican Patriarch should be implemented. However I see that such a thing is unfair to those who would like to see an Anglican Patriarch as well as those who are opposed to the idea for various reasons. Abu makes a reasonable objection and so I think I will first address it.

Abu Daoud said...

So are you saying you would like one og the continuing churches to establish this right now? Or are you envisioning this after there is some union between, say, the ACC and TAC, or something like that?

I think there just aren't numbers for such a huge and developed hierarchy to be honest.

Putting into practice the idea of an Anglican Patriarch is certainly not going to be an easy thing, in truth I think it will be one of the hardest things we will do. We should begin by understanding that nothing happens overnight, to propose that something as large as this would simply just happen or would be simple is not only absurd but defies common sense. Instead this is going to require a great number of things to happen and here I hope to layout how such a move would have to occur.

The man for the job.
There seems to be an idea among those who read this blog as well as those that I talk to that what I propose is for a council to be called and a Patriarch to be elected. While that is true it is also an over simplification that cannot go uncorrected, the results if such an action of simply(not that it is simple) calling a council and electing a Patriarch would be disastrous to say the least. What is needed before the election of the Patriarch is first his establishment. Given the breath and scope of what will be required of him he should be unmarried as his duties will allow him little in the way of family time. He should be a man of great moral character who is loving and strong, a man who loves heretics but hates heresy, and a man who speaks plainly. He should be loved by both friend and foe alike, and should command a great deal of respect especially from his adversaries, he must be intolerant of practices which are an attempt to soften peoples hearts and minds to heresy(again he must speak plain and be clear). The man who would be Patriarch needs to establish himself in the communion to the point of being a very prominent and recognized face and name. He should be a man who is widely read and published, who is capable of speaking not only to the obscure theologian but also to the common and simple man bridging the gap between them. This man must be a man of the people, servant, slave, friend, brother, father; loving them with his whole being as he loves God. And he must be a strong leader. The development and establishment of this Moses would take no less than five to ten years(I understand that this is the fast food era but the Church knows not minutes or hours nor even months).

It is of great importance that when people say "Anglican" or "Anglicanism" they think of this man, and they think of him with great fondness.

The development

There is no better time than now for this man to come to the forefront, now when the communion is most in trouble and in threat of rupture. Speaking with kind and firm words rising in recognition and especially clear. He should be able to unite both Protestant and Catholic minded Anglicans for the common cause of expelling the Heterodox progressives. He should rally both the Protestant and the Catholic Anglicans into a council in which they establish what they can agree upon as Doctrine while they jointly condemn Heterodox ideals (priestesses, homosexual unions, etc). At the conclusion of this council the two bodies which at this present time Actually (though not formally) live in schism would agree to an informal separation, as a friend of mine once put it "separate marriage beds". The two Catholic and Protestant would then work together in common cause to reconcile their doctrinal and liturgical differences the former being more important with the latter following.

After the Anglican General council an Anglo-Catholic General council would be convened for the purpose of affirming doctrine, and establishing the polis of the Church, as well as to establish and define what would be the Anglo-Catholic point of unity. The government of a society either secular or Divine must be understood to be (and in truth is) the point of unity for all societies. If it is true as St. Aquinas and Augustine say that all legitimate governments share in the Divine right, then we must include Church government within this. It must also be established that a legitimate government is so only in as much as it shares in the Divine, thus the church being of God should share most in the Divine structure. This lays the groundwork for the proposing of a Patriarch. There will of course be some prideful men who leave because they fear the lose of power, this must not be feared as in time they will reconcile.

Who should be Patriarch will not be in question and the choice will be simple.

an alternative

There is of course another way which this could come about, many in fact but only one that I see as likely to occur. I will use Abu's proposal of the TAC/ACC as an example though it need not be these bodies. It could happen that the TAC and ACC create the body and establish a Patriarch. One objection Abu had however was the size. This I think however is a false argument; take for example a primate, there is not much size needed to establish a primate only a few bishops. The Patriarch is really an advanced Primate. So if you have established 3 or 4 primates you can establish from among them a Patriarch. The Patriarch will make up the head with the primates making up the skeleton of the body, the rest of the structure will through time and growth fill out.

Given that the Anglican communion (specifically the Anglo-Catholic body but also the Anglo-Protestant body by extension) has one visible head it will allow for strong and quick growth as Anglicanism will be able to be identified by more than just some ambiguous amorphic thing. It will also be able to evangelize more effectively as things can be more easily coordinated.

Now it should be noted that the principle of subsidiarity is at the heart of governance.