Churches and Denominations A ‘Church’ is a body of Christians gathered around a bishop in the Apostolic Succession and faith in a given geographical area. A true Church requires a true bishop, Christians, and a particular territory. ‘Churches’ are simply a multiplicity of these individual, local Churches. In the course of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, almost all of the Protestants lost the Apostolic Succession. Even in Protestant bodies that have officials called ‘bishops’, such as the United Methodists and Evangelical Lutherans in the United States, there is no historic Succession of bishops but only the name or title. There is no doubt that they contain many good and devout Christians and that they believe much that is good and true. However, since they have abandoned or lost the Apostolic Succession and much else that characterizes the Catholic faith in its fullness, these bodies are not Churches in the full sense, but more properly called ‘denominations.’ ...

The Nature of the Church The Anglican Catholic Church is a Church. The Church is the Body of Christ, his sacramental extension and presence in human history in the world. As the Body of Christ the Church does what Jesus Christ originally did in his incarnate Person: it teaches and heals the world, it reveals the Father’s will and his nature of love, and it gathers a company of disciples to worship the glorious Trinity. The Church as the gathered company of all faithful people is centered in the revealed word of God, in prayer and the sacramental system, and in her bishops, whose ministry is the constitutive element that makes a mere human organization be the organic, sacramental, transcending, saving Presence of God in the world. ...

The Four Last Things ‘Eschatology’, from the Greek word eschaton (‘end’, ‘final thing’, ‘last thing’), is the branch of theology which considers the final things. The Four Last things are death, judgement, heaven, and hell. Death and judgement are the lot of all human beings. Heaven or hell is the final destiny of every individual. The relation of the judgement of the individual soul to Christ’s return in glory is not entirely clear. It appears from Scripture that the Second Coming of Christ (the parousia) precedes the judgement. Most the­ologians, however, distinguish the particular judgement of the individ­ual at death from the general resurrection and judgement of the dead at the end. A few theologians (‘full preterists’) argue that all biblical texts about the end were fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century. It is, however, neither necessary nor wise to attempt to settle finally all of these matters in one particular manner. ...

Origins of the Church The Christian Church began with the Holy Apostles. The word apostle means 「one who is sent forth」, and is the name used in the Church for those twelve disciples specially chosen by Christ Himself. They are called apostles because Our Lord instructed them to go forth and proclaim the Gospel and to establish the Church in all the world. ...

The Revisionist Impact One of the more important trends of late in anti-Anglican apologetics by Roman Catholics has been to utilise recent 「revisionist」 historical scholarship on the English Reformation. The immediate aim has been to show that the Church of England that emerged from the Elizabethan Settlement was utterly Protestant and not in theological continuity with either any pre-Reformation Catholicism or the Caroline Divines and the succeeding 「High Church」 tradition. ...

The Influence of Modernism In the course of the Eighteenth Century the Protestant and Catholic tendencies within the Church of England were joined by a third force that flowed from the skepticism of the Enlightenment. At first the Enlightenment produced English Latitudinarianism, a movement that accepted some clear Biblical fundamentals in doctrine but that argued for latitude and liberty in most matters. Gradually, as Biblical authority was subjected to a corrosive influence by the Broad Church and Modernist movements, the accepted fundamentals grew fewer and fewer in number. The result was a theological minimalism which sapped the strength of the Church of England and its daughter churches throughout the world. By the 1970s global Anglicanism was in crisis, as it moved away from the catholic and apostolic faith and towards a kind of liberal theism that was heavily influenced by secular culture. ...

A Question of Identity To ask about the Catholic identity of 「Anglicanism」 or 「Anglo-Catholicism」, as is often done, is to ask the wrong question. These two words correspond to abstractions, strictly speaking. What matters primarily is whether Anglican Churches are or have been Catholic, and to what extent. A secondary question is whether those persons known as Anglo-Catholics are in fact faithful Catholics. The answer to the first will give the answer to the second. ...

The Denver Consecrations The first bishops of the Anglican Church of North America, later named the Anglican Catholic Church (with ACNA kept as an alternate name), were consecrated on 28 January 1978 in Denver, Colorado. In Denver Charles Dale David Doren, sometime Archdeacon of the Diocese of Taejon in South Korea, was consecrated by the Rt Rev’d Albert Arthur Chambers, sometime Bishop of Springfield (Illinois) in the Episcopal Church and Acting Metropolitan of the ACNA. Joining Bishop Chambers in the consecration of Doren was the Rt Rev’d Francisco de Jesus Pagtakhan of the Philippine Independent Catholic Church. Letters of Consent and Desire for the Doren consecration were in hand from the Rt Rev’d Mark Pae (Taejon, Korea). ...

The Norman Conquest Before the coming of St. Augustine in 597, the churches in Britain had little contact with Rome. The Church of England, in fact, was left largely undisturbed until the Norman Conquest in the year 1066. A that time, William, Duke of Normandy (William the Conqueror), had his banners blessed by the Pope before he invaded England and the assumption seems to have been that William would bring the English church further within the sphere of Roman influence. Even so, the new king went on to resist papal claims of world-wide jurisdiction. When Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) demanded that King William pay homage to him as superior authority, he refused on the grounds that none of his predecessors had ever rendered homage to a pope, and that he himself had never promised to do so. In so doing, William set a precedent of independence that would expanded by later English kings. ...

The King’s Great Matter As a boy of eighteen, Henry VIII married the Spanish princess Catherine, the widow of his elder brother. It was a 「Marriage of State,」 arranged to establish a political alliance with Spain and was quite in line with the traditions of royal marriages in most countries. These were not looked upon as private matters, but instead were to be decided according to national interests. Today there is no legal or moral objection to a man marrying his brother’s widow, but in Henry’s time such a marriage was held by the Church to be within the circle of forbidden relationships: in Henry’s case the marriage was allowed by Papal dispensation – it was nothing extraordinary, for exceptions to rules could always be managed for reasons of state. ...