So why not leave?

In last year’s controversial decision on the admission of women to the priesthood, the Archdeacon of York, the Venerable George Austin, was one of the foremost opponents of women’s ordination. Now that women priests are to be admitted, the Archdeacon considers what must be done now…

For opponents of the ordination of women, whether supporters can understand it or not, on 11th November 1992, the Church of England we had known and loved, served, cared for, and suffered with, was taken from us, and out of its ashes a new Church was born. We belonged to the old for we believed it to be the Catholic Church of this land, its Archbishop of Canterbury the 103rd in a succession going back to St Augustine. I remain, I hope, in communion with my friends, George and Eileen Carey, but it is too early to determine whether or not I am in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

So why not leave? That is the question which many clergy and lay people are asking at this moment. I cannot tell them what to do, save ponder carefully and without haste, remembering that a time of bereavement is not the best time to make irrevocable decisions, though I believe that whatever those decisions are, they must be accepted with charity and without question. But I can tell you why I shall stay, though it is too early to be worked out in practical terms. When I was called to the priesthood more than forty years ago, God did not put any conditions or reservations on it. To be sure, I had always said that I was an Anglican because I believed the Church of England to be the Catholic Church of this land. Believing that no longer, logic would demand that I go. But to do so would be to satisfy my own desires. God pushed me into ordination against my wishes by making it clear that nothing else would do, and I have never had cause to complain. It has been a wonderful and happy and fulfilled life. If he wishes me to leave, I know that he will make it as crystal clear as it was to me then. Since he has not done so then of course I have no choice but to stay. And if there is a Cross in that staying, who am I to question him? For there is necessarily sacrifice in priesthood and he has asked little of me so far, and nothing I could not bear.

It seems now that for the remainder of my ministry, I must be outside the Church Catholic. Of course I shall not be alone for he will call many other priests to the same sacrifice , little enough though it is deserved to be called a cross, and we do not ask his purpose in bringing us to it. But when he called us in the first place, as priests or lay Christians, there was nothing in the contract which said we were in for an easy ride, but rather there was the promise of a Cross.

Two weeks before the vote, my wife and I worshipped in a Lutheran Church in Buffalo. It was Reformation Sunday, and inevitably we sang Luther’s great hymn, Ein feste burg

A safe stronghold is our God still,
A trusty shield and weapon;
Will help us clear from all the ill
That hath us now overtaken.

On that Sunday in that lovely white wooden church across the Atlantic, I thought of the vote we were to take and found the greatest comfort from Luther’s words, a comfort which stayed with me right through to the vote.

And though they take our life (or, we might say, the church which has been our life)
Yet is their profit small;
These things shall vanish all,
The city of God remaineth.

And in that City of God we shall in eternity understand, all of us hearing the Voice of God’s Holy Spirit unhindered by the sin which now obscures our ears from his Truth. When the mist clears and we no longer see him as through a glass, darkly, but instead face to face, at last knowing him as only he knows us, we shall be judged not on how clearly we have heard his voice, but on how faithful we have been to he Truth as we have seen it.