Preached at Pusey House on the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B: November 5th AD2006

The Perfect Sacrifice

Hebrews 7:23-28

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...

N 5th NOVEMBER 1605, as is well known, Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament. They were tried by Judge Popham, from Hungerford, who came up to London specially for the trial. Guy Fawkes was sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered and the custom began of burning a Guy on a bonfire. It is purely conjecture, on my part, but where, I imagine, the bonfire comes in is because, as well as a traitor, Fawkes was a heretic and, at the time, heretics were highly combustible.

It might have been more appropriate to have preached this sermon a year ago - the four hundredth anniversary - but this year too is an anniversary. In 1606 Lancelot Andrewes preached the first of the annual Gunpowder Plot sermons, ordered by the King and Parliament a year earlier, in thanksgiving for deliverance. The annual commemoration and the nursery rhyme - 'Remember, remember' - kept the memory alive. One of the consequences of all this is that anti-Catholicism was reinforced as the principle religion of the English people, a people who, in the Middle Ages, were known for their Catholic piety. The Pope of Rome was now seen as a rival potentate whose agents would not hesitate to destroy our government. That had been the fear of Elizabeth times, at least since 1570 when the Pope had excommunicated the Queen. Now, with the Gunpowder Plot, there was proof that the loyalty of Roman Catholics could never be trusted: their very religion was alien and a threat to our national life.

It may be tedious to trace this anti-Catholic feeling through to the reign of James II and through history. Here, after the Enlightenment, in Michael Burleigh's words, is:

'what is called 'cultural Protestantism', combining a Christianity reduced to a code of ethics and stripped of allegedly implausible elements.'

The anti-Catholic theme continues to surface in various ways - the horror that the Treaty of Rome and the European Union aroused in some, on-going press speculation that Mr Blair may be about to convert, the frisson when a minor royal, as has happened this weekend, betrays the Protestant Supremacy by becoming a Catholic or marrying a Catholic. Meanwhile, on our doorstep, there are Dr Paisley and the Ulster Unionists, the Celtic-Rangers rivalry and the recent fuss about one of the players making the sign of the cross at the beginning of a match.

In any theological discussion about the differences between Catholics and Protestants, it would not be long before those with English prejudices made reference to the Epistle to the Hebrews and this morning's Second Reading. Catholics would be caricatured as those who disobey Scripture, repeating the daily sacrifices of the old Jewish Priesthood, making anxious and constant propitiation for sins. They would be those who ignored, or did not know about, the Perfect Sacrifice of Christ, a sacrifice which has done away with altars and priests, temples and sacrifices for all time.

We Anglo-Catholics have been caught in the cross-fire of all this. We too have played a minor part in anti-papist polemic. It was customary in my youth to refer to Roman Catholics as 'the Romans'. They weren't the native Catholics in this country: we were. Much was made of Catholic excess: papal infallibility, the Marian dogmas, formalism and superstition. And yet we were as guilty as the Catholics: we do the 'hokey-cokey' with the best of them, with ceremonial movements of arms and legs and muttered words of consecration. Not, of course, hoc est… corpus meum - the origin of the phrase 'hokey-cokey' - but the words of the Institution Narrative in English: 'this is my body'.

Though, as we have seen, anti-Catholic prejudice remains, there are also signs of such prejudice diminishing - and not just because of the onslaught of secularism. The re-establishing of the Catholic Hierarchy in 1850, the abandoning of the annual Gunpowder Plot Prayer Book commemoration in 1859 and successive Catholic Relief Acts (the latest in 1926) have played their part. More recently the late Cardinal Hume, who was not of English parentage but thought to be quintessentially English, did quite a bit single-handedly to dispel prejudice. So, for many Anglicans, has the work of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) and significant convergence on liturgical matters. For our part, Anglo-Catholics, were encouraged by the visit of Pope John Paul II to England in 1982 and formed by the use, in whole or part, of the Breviary and Missal in English.

So what now of the Gunpowder Plot? The nursery rhyme says:

I see no reason why gunpowder, treason Should ever be forgot...

Historical memories of course should not 'be forgot' but they do sometimes need to be healed or mended. I see Catholicism in England as a precious vase shattered in pieces, rather like the Chinese vase in the Fitzwilliam Museum, accidentally broken last January by a visitor, who fell on the stairs. There are huge shards of pre-Reformation Catholicism still around: the writings of Anselm and Bede; the filigree of mediaeval cathedrals and churches; the persistence of canon law and ecclesiastical structures; the responsories of Tallis and Taverner. And there are more recent shards: the Latin masses of William Byrd; the Benedictine simplicity of Cranmer's Offices; the Catholic instincts of the Anglican Divines - not least the eucharistic doctrine of Lancelot Andrews, he who preached the first of the annual Gunpowder Plot sermons; the recovery by the Oxford Movement of a sense of the Church as a divine society; the recusants and their own history and tradition; the ecumenical consensus on faith and order in the last century. There are plenty of shards of the precious vase to be seen: what would an immigrant Pole, strolling into the Pusey House High Mass, make of it, particularly when Credo III is sung?

There have been signs of the gathering together of these shards of the precious vase: ARCIC Statements and the visit of successive Archbishops of Canterbury to the Holy See; ecumenical liturgical texts and joint witness on moral and social issues. All of that, I fear, has gone cold. The church press recently reported the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, returning from an audience with the Pope, as saying that unity between the Church of England and the Catholic Church now seemed 'very far distant'. There were echoes of the Gunpowder Plot - or at least anti-Catholicism - in the debate on women bishops in the July General Synod of the Church of England. The ecumenical imperative - the response to Christ's High-Priestly Prayer that his disciples may be one - has ceased to be taken seriously as a theological argument for doing this or not doing that. We find some of the same indifference in the approach of Anglican spokesmen on bioethics and partnerships of the unmarried.

The path ahead seems uncertain: the ARCIC process is 'on hold'; the new English translation of the Latin Mass, a year or two off, seems likely to mark the end of ecumenically-common liturgical texts; the ordination of women bishops, though a few years' off in England, will finally dash the claims and hopes of Anglo-Papalists. What do we Anglo-Catholics do? For some it will be business as usual: just as Anglicans struck out on their own with a married priesthood, the Bible in English, a vernacular liturgy, and the rest of it, so we shall strike out now on our own with our own varieties of moral teaching and our own rules and procedures about ordination and the celebration of the sacraments. This is the agenda of some but where does it lead?

For other Anglo-Catholics - for me, for instance - the call to Catholic Unity remains insistent and pre-eminent. Christians are united in their belief in the Perfect Sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross for us and for the whole world. It is the particular insight of Catholics that this Perfect Sacrifice is not merely commemorated but experienced effectually for healing and salvation in the celebration of Mass within the Catholic sacramental framework: not only the right words, the right actions and the right intention but celebrated by a priest in persona Christi, within the apostolic succession. Without that - however comely our celebration - it is 'but like a Christmas game', as the West Country rebels described the Reformed service foisted upon them in 1549.

So, where do we go from here? There are those for whom the Pilgrimage to Catholic Unity, the mending of the broken vessel of English Catholicism, is a series of personal and individual journeys. They would hope to contribute, from their own DNA, as it were, some of the particular qualities of reformed religion, faith and practice, as found in Anglicanism. Preferring the pastoral to the juridical; practising what the present Archbishop of Canterbury has called 'contemplative pragmatism'; relating to the whole community and not just to the gathered; balancing Scripture, Tradition and Reason; exploring an Augustinian theology within a Benedictine liturgical practice; showing a genius for the missa cantata, the missa solemnis and the singing of the Office: these are some of the treasures of our broken shard of the vessel. And they are very godly and precious treasures too.

For others it is not sufficient to make personal pilgrimage with these things, so to speak, part of our DNA. Something more corporate is needed and, in the meantime, a maintaining of our common life. Here there are risks of uprootedness and discontinuity; the uprootedness of those who separate themselves from the branch or the Vine itself; the discontinuity of so-called Continuing Anglicanism. And there is a real risk of withering on the Vine, for which the eventual fate is to be pruned away by the heavenly Vinedresser.

In short, the way ahead may be clear for some of those on personal pilgrimage but, for the rest, we must walk in the midst of uncertainty. The way ahead is not presently plain. The need to preserve our common Catholic life remains, the need to celebrate the Perfect Sacrifice and experience its fruits in the life of the Church and the healing and salvation of the world. The imperative for unity with the Catholic Church remains. Whilst we are in the body 'we walk by faith and not by sight'. In this respect our pilgrimage as a movement is no different from our earthly pilgrimage.

I learnt something very important recently about walking in the midst of uncertainty. A woman - a senior citizen - thanked me for something I had said about depending totally upon God. The stuff about the lilies of the field and the birds of the air. Next year, she told me, she is off on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Eight days walking and only a sleeping bag and a change of knickers. She was nervous but excited: she thought she would learn a great deal about depending on God. This is surely the essence and meaning of pilgrimage for walking in the midst of uncertainty is integral to the exercise. The Exodus from Egypt, the journeys of St Paul, the journeys to the Indies and Japan of St Francis Xavier, the evangelization of the British Empire by Church of England missionary societies: all of these were journeys of faith, journeys amidst uncertainty. So it is for you and me. Neither our own journey nor our journey together are mapped out for us.

Whatever the future, the chances of step-by-step ecumenism, the modus operandi of twentieth century ecclesiology, seems exhausted: divergence means incompatibility. Someone somewhere must leap imaginatively. We need our own restorer, our own Penny Bendall, to bring together the shards and repair the precious vase: when the Fitzwilliam Museum vase was put back on display on 4th August, what had become 400 pieces was once again one vase, though, of course, some of the cracks remain visible.

Meanwhile, there may be those who would still put barrels of gunpowder in the cellars under Parliament, but it would not be a Popish Plot and it is time we let the Fifth of November fires die out. Far better to celebrate the glory of All Saints - the saints, lights of the world in their several generations - with fireworks and bonfire toffee, beer and barbecues. Such feasting truly honours him whose death brings justice, peace and wholeness to us and to all who accept the gift of his friendship, to all, that is, who put their trust in the Perfect Sacrifice which takes away the sins of the world.

The Bishop of Ebbsfleet
Bishop's House, Dry Sandford, Abingdon, OXON OX13 6JP
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