Goddard v Avis and a few other things

Introduction

A few days ago, Mark posted this - thank you - in a comment which is worth posting as introduction to this week's post, assisting us in keeping perspective on the importance of the church ... the kingdom may be more important ... and also, brilliantly, connecting the Jesus of history with the Christ of faith:

"One of the great works of the Spirit has been not allowing Jesus’ dream of the reign of God to die. It was the Spirit who enlivened the apostles desolated by the failure of Jesus…[pouring] into them an unexpected and surprising energy for continuing to proclaim what Jesus proclaimed and did. The church as community of the faithful as we have it today is as much fruit of the Spirit as of Jesus. Jesus was seeking the reign and did not intend the church, but with his death a vacuum was created…It is the Spirit who comes to fill this vacuum, generating communities that propose to follow Jesus and attempt to make real his dream of the reign…

Without the Spirit there would be no way to understand the resonance achieved by Jesus in subsequent history. It was the Spirit who led communities to discover that beneath that weak man of working-class stock, itinerant prophet, was indeed hidden the incarnate Son of God. This discovery is still being made today by each generation.‍ ‍

- Leonardo Boff, Christianity in a Nutshell (2013)"

Once again into the NCP foray

Continuing to think about Anglican Communion present and future, with particular reference to the "NCPs", I see that Andrew Goddard's article titled, "The Wisdom of the Nairobi-Cairo Proposals: A Response to Paul Avis" has been re-published on Psephizo. A couple of further reflections by me:

First, I note that a commenter there offers these figures re attendance at ++Sarah's installation as Archbishop of Canterbury: 26 of the 42 global Anglican primates did attend Mullally’s enthronement and a further 6 sent representatives and indeed five African female Anglican bishops were there supporting our new Archbishop of Canterbury. This underscores at least a question if not a rejoinder to the NCPs, do they give too much credence to minority views about the future of global Anglicanism?

Secondly, while I appreciate both Avis (in sum: the proposals are seriously deficient) and Goddard (in sum: the NCPs make the best of a bad situation), I continue to be concerned that the NCPs do give way too much - far too much - by allowing for "historic connection" to the See of Canterbury to have priority ahead of "communion with the See of Canterbury", and prioritzing "baptism" ahead of "communion" as bedrock to being our label on our tin "Anglican COMMUNION" (caps mine!). Ultimately my views do not matter much, but it will be for the forthcoming Belfast meeting of the ACC to carefully consider where we head on this critical issue of communion for the Communion.

Again, into the True Church foray

Then thinking more generally about church life on this planet, not solely about Anglicanism ... the question of 'true church' figures on X again which draws attention to the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer (a Catholic order with presence in the Canterbury region in which I live). According to this article, these Redemptorists "have issued a strident statement condemning the teaching of Vatican II, and rejecting the legitimacy of the popes since the council." (This "strident statement" is a 21 page letter issued on 2 May 2026 which may be found here.)

Within the 2 May 2026 letter is this stirring paragraph:

"The problem is, as St Pius X warned, that the structures of the Catholic Church have been infiltrated by men of a different non-Catholic religion. They use the Catholic name, they occupy the Catholic buildings, they know the Catholic culture. From the outside they look to be Catholics, but they do not profess the Catholic Faith as taught through the centuries. In reality, they have been formed as revolutionaries committed to the condemned Freemasonic heresies of Religious Liberty, Religious Indifference and False Ecumenism. Their infiltration has struck a lethal wound to the Catholic religion; they have brought about a major schism from the Mystical Body. We must stand firmly with the Catholic Church and move well away from the camouflage of its counterfeit."

I leave to the Catholic Church their engagement - if they choose - with this particular critique (save for one observation I make below). But what is of Anglican interest is that the above paragraph could be re-written for a certain kind of Anglican perspective (and no doubt, turn and turn about, Baptist ... Lutheran ... Presbyterian ... perspectives), thus:

"The problem is, as St Someone warned, that the structures of the Anglican world have been infiltrated by men and women of a different non-Anglican religion. They use the Anglican name, they occupy the Anglican buildings, they know the Anglican culture. From the outside they look to be Anglicans, but they do not profess the Anglican Faith as taught through the centuries. In reality, they have been formed as revolutionaries committed to the the following heresies ...* Their infiltration has struck a lethal wound to the Anglican religion; they have brought about a major schism from the Mystical Body. We must stand firmly with the authentic form of the global Anglican Church and move well away from the camouflage of its counterfeit."

*From one Anglican perspective, the warmly inclusive, broad Anglicanism of the accommodating Church of England-spread-unto-the-world has been infiltrated by a calculating exclusive, narrow Anglicanism reminiscent of the Puritanism that Richard Hooker so adroitly steered Elizabethan Anglicanism away from. From another Anglican perspective, the doctrinally sound Church of England spread large upon the world, disseminating the Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles around the globe has been infiltrated by a cadre of theologians, clever lay synodspersons and errant epsicopoi preaching a message of liberal progressivism which would have Cranmer turning in his grave.

I am reminded, as I write, of an astute observation of St. Augustine (incidentally, formationally significant for Pope Leo XIV) which is noted on the side column of this blog:

"“The clouds of heaven thunder forth throughout the world that God’s house is being built. But these frogs sit in their pond and croak: ‘We’re the only Christians’!”"

Somehow I think Leonardo Boff would heartily endorse St. Augustine on this observation.