The final ten years of my parish ministry gave me a rare and very privilege ecumenical experience. It was a most wonderful and thoroughly enjoyable experience. This chapter with its two supplements tells that unforgettable story. Towards the end of this account I share with the reader my growing awareness of some serious errors of judgement I made towards the end of my time in the parish. I also express criticism of decisions made by my own Archbishop, Patrick Kelly, at that time. I felt I owed it to Archbishop Kelly to show him the text of what I had written. I was deeply impressed by his very generous reply (30 January 2009): ‘I think it is best if I simply leave it entirely to your judgment what you print since obviously it is very likely I would tell the story in a rather different way.’ This article is also due to appear in the ecumenical periodical, One In Christ.
The Gift and Challenge of Ecumenism
There had been no Roman Catholic priest at the shared Church of St Basil and All Saints, Widnes for over three months when I was appointed in 1998, after having been interviewed by the Joint Church Council (JCC) to assess my suitability. At the very same time the Anglican congregation were just ending an inter-regnum with the appointment of Guy Elsmore as vicar – also following a similar JCC interview. As well as giving the two of us a very valuable experience of receptive learning through our growing together into the shared life of the parish, it also meant that we were able to arrange a joint Induction by both area bishops. The planning of this joint Induction service was itself a rich experience of receptive learning for both congregations, as well as for Guy and myself, as was the shared Induction Service itself.
The two of us soon realised what a rich experience of ecumenical sharing we were being offered through different forms of liturgy, prayer, Church life and social involvement. Early in our programme of weekly planning meetings Guy and I made a commitment to exchange pulpits four or five times a year. It was a great blessing for both of us to be able to listen to how each of us interpreted the Sunday readings from the agreed Common Lectionary. It was also a great privilege to be able to break the Word of God with each other’s congregation and to experience how they responded to our preaching. This gave both of us and our congregations a further opportunity for receptive learning since we were sharing the privilege of experiencing and learning from the faith of each other’s congregation as it expressed itself in the liturgy. When Archbishop Kelly conducted his parish visitation in January 2007, I was due to preach at the Anglican Eucharist. The Archbishop was happy to preach instead of me, much to the delight of the Anglican congregation.
When I attended the 2006 First Durham International Ecumenical Consultation on Receptive Learning, Mary Tanner reminded us all of the key role of ‘grass-roots ecumenism’. Her very moving words made me even more aware that this was precisely what had been going on in St Basil and All Saints for nearly twenty-four years. Mary’s words made me much more conscious of how privileged I was to be serving as parish priest in this unique and graced situation. On the next occasion I preached to our shared community, I told them how deeply I had been affected by Mary Tanner’s words and went on to challenge them with the following words:
Do we really appreciate how gifted we are in our Shared Church? Do we cherish this gift – every single one of us here in our community? Or do some of us just put up with it and even hope that it might go away and we can get back to being like an ordinary ‘Roman Catholic’ or ‘Anglican’ parish? We hold this precious gift on trust. We have a shared responsibility for it. We cannot feel complacent about it or hide it away like buried treasure. Our prime responsibility is to let it live and grow in us. It is not for nothing that God’s Spirit, the driving force of Christian unity, the giver of all gifts and the life-principle of the Church, is often portrayed as a strong wind or burning fire. Jesus did not promise an easy life to those to whom he gave the gift of his Spirit.
Going back to the Beginning
The Shared Roman Catholic/Anglican Church of St Basil and All Saints, Hough Green, was formally opened by Archbishop Derek Worlock and Bishop David Sheppard on 22 March 1983. Although these two Liverpool bishops were internationally renowned for their deep ecumenical commitment and gave the shared Church their full and enthusiastic support, this far-seeing new venture was due to the initiative of the two local clergy, Pat Conefrey and Bill Broad, with the full support of both congregations. St Basil & All Saints was built on what was originally a green-field site. In the early eighties Hough Green was beginning to be developed to house people who were being moved out from the inner-city area of the Dingle in Liverpool and from parts of Widnes devastated by the chemical industry. The development plans had clearly marked sites for two separate Churches on opposite sides of the road. Fr Pat Conefrey was disturbed at such a prospect and went to see his Anglican opposite number, Revd Bill Broad. Bill’s response was an immediate ‘Pat, you are an answer to prayer!’ Both of them were convinced that to build two separate Churches facing each other would be completely contrary to the Gospel message of unity, especially as it was being understood in the developing ecumenical climate of the time. They initiated a consultation of the people and held several public meetings. By far the overwhelming majority were in favour of a shared Church. In fact, those attending the public meetings gave it unanimous support, while only thirty-two of the four hundred and thirty-two written replies were against it.
Over the years parishioners of the shared Church have enjoyed the privilege of being able to share together in exploring their Faith, caring for the sick and housebound, remembering their dead (both at funerals and also at a major full-to-capacity non-Eucharist shared service in November), showing commitment to their brothers and sisters in the developing world (support for CAFOD, Christian Aid and especially for the Home-Care HIV/AIDS project in Livingstone, Zambia, which is so dear to all their hearts), jointly caring for their beautiful Church building and their inspirational Garden of Hope, and in celebrating socially all the major human events of life (weddings, birthdays, anniversaries for example). On top of that they have helped care for the young people of the area through the usual uniformed and other groups (Guides, Brownies, Boys Brigade and ‘Ignite’) and through their involvement in and support for their local Church schools, especially St Basil’s and All Saints Primary Schools and Sts Peter & Paul’s Roman Catholic High School (cf. Appendix for full list of areas of shared life, worship, ministry and service). Sadly the separate primary schools were built prior to the shared Church but every effort has been made to draw them closer together.
St Basil & All Saints Shared Church celebrated its 25th Birthday in 2008. The parishioners decided to extend the celebration over the full twelve months in the form of a 25th Anniversary Year, thus focussing attention on the ecumenical dimension which they see as a treasure entrusted to the Church today.
On the base of the shared baptismal font in St Basil and All Saints are inscribed the words of the well-known text from Ephesians 4:5, ‘One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism.’ This is surely saying that ‘communicating Faith ecumenically’ is not a pastime for a few ecumenical enthusiasts. It is about a passionate commitment, implanted by the Spirit deep in the heart of every Christian. It is an essential dimension of our very being.
Cardinal Kasper made this point very forcefully in his address to the opening session of the 3rd European Ecumenical Assembly (5 September 2007) held in Sibiu Romania:
For us, ecumenism is a task given us by Jesus Christ, who prayed ‘that all might be one’. It is set in motion by the Holy Spirit and answers a need of our time. We have stretched out our hands to each other and do not want to let them go again.
We ought not to take the divisions between us as something normal, get used to them or gloss over them. They go against the will of Jesus and as such are an expression of sin.
There is no responsible alternative to ecumenism. Anything else would contradict our responsibility to God and the world. The question of unity ought to disturb us; it needs to burn within us.
Despite their commitment to the shared Church ethos, parishioners in St Basil’s and All Saints’ communities retain their specific identities with their wider Anglican and Roman Catholic Church communities. Nevertheless, their distinctiveness becomes a much richer reality through being coloured by their shared life. In addition to their daily weekday Mass, each weekend, St Basil’s parishioners have their own 6.00 pm Saturday vigil Mass and 11.15 am Sunday morning Mass. All Saints have their Sunday Eucharist at 9.45 am and also a Tuesday evening Eucharist at 7.30 pm. There is a Parish Council for each congregation and a Joint Church Council, consisting of the membership of both Parish Councils. Each meets alternately about four times a year.
Simultaneous Eucharist – an early development
One challenge they had to face early in their shared story was how the two communities celebrate the Eucharist on the occasion of the Church’s major feasts when both needed to use the shared Church at the same time, especially at Christmas, Holy Week and Easter. For the first couple of years both communities attended each other’s Eucharists which were held back to back. This did not lend itself to good liturgy and was experienced as very uninspiring.
It was soon realised that there was no problem about fully sharing in the Liturgy of the Word –which, on occasions like Holy Week, is very extensive. The actual celebration of the Eucharist presented much more of a problem since ecumenical concelebration is forbidden in Roman Catholic Church law. Paul Crowe, a former Parish Priest of St Basil’s, tells how they were supported by Archbishop Worlock and Bishop Sheppard in working out an acceptable form of simultaneous celebration of the Eucharist, quite distinct from concelebration.
The following pattern of simultaneous celebration was used on shared major feasts. The Liturgy of the Word is shared completely in common. The prayers for the celebrant are shared between both ministers. The readings likewise are shared between readers from both Churches. This is facilitated by the fact that both Anglicans and Roman Catholics now share the same cycle of Readings over the Church’s Liturgical Year. The homily would be preached by one other celebrant and the Prayers of Intercession were shared between readers of both communities.
The Offerings are brought up by members of both congregations and are received by their own Minister. Both celebrants then stand side by side at the altar, each with their respective offerings of bread and wine in front of them. Parts of the Preface and certain sections of the Eucharistic Prayer are shared between the two celebrants. The Epiclesis and the Words of Institution are said by both celebrants in unison, but quite explicitly with reference only to their respective bread and wine.
For the distribution of Holy Communion, the two congregations come up to receive from their own Ministers. Out of respect for the discipline of the Roman Catholic Church, parishioners have always adhered faithfully to this practice. This experience of ‘divided communion’ is obviously an occasion for shared pain which is felt very deeply by the members of both congregations. Nevertheless, such ecumenical pain can be healthy and even healing. This is true in a special way when parishioners experience it together at the same time and in the course of the same liturgy.
These simultaneous celebrations on major feasts of the Church’s year (especially Holy Week and Christmas) have been a very important experience of receptive learning , helping parishioners of both St Basil’s and All Saints to see each other not simply as Catholics and Anglicans sharing the one Church building but also as one united, though still divided, community of Christian disciples.
A few years ago Guy Elsmore and I gave the Archdiocesan Ecumenism Commission a presentation on all aspects of life at St Basil & All Saints. We included a full account of our practice of simultaneous celebration of the Eucharist on key festivals. Subsequent to this, the Commission named St Basil & All Saints as a ‘sample of good practice’ in its ‘Ecumenical Review 2005-06’ sent out to all parishes with the approval and support of Archbishop Patrick Kelly. Presumably this was meant to give the message to other parishes in the Archdiocese that the vision and dedication of the pioneers of St Basil and All Saints shared Church should be an inspiration to help them grow in faithfulness to the movement of the Spirit today, especially as found in the ecumenical thrust of Vatican II and given momentum in so many ways since then. Certainly, the people of St Basil and All Saints see their shared Church as a symbol of their desire and commitment to live and share their faith as closely as possible while respecting the disciplines of their two Churches.
The ongoing story – an unhappy conclusion to its present chapter
The story of St Basil and All Saints continues – and, please God, will continue for many years to come. However, what follows describes how the current chapter ends on an unhappy note.
Eventually, the Anglican vicar, Guy Elsmore, moved on to be Team Vican of a group of parishes in central Liverpool. He was succeeded by Peter Dawkin, appointed after the usual process of being interviewed and approved by the JCC. Meanwhile, I was due for retirement at the end of May, 2008, when I reached the age of seventy-five. Because Vatican II had instilled in me the importance of collaborative ministry, I had told parishioners in 2003 that I would be retiring in five years time and so they would need to prepare for that event by taking on even more parish responsibility. As the time approached for my retirement, I wrote a number of letters to the Archbishop stressing the importance of someone suitable being made available to succeed me.
The selection of my successor had been made more complicated by the fact that in recent years Liverpool Archdiocese had been (and still is) going through a process called ‘Leaving Safe Harbours’. This is about developing a stronger base for being a truly missionary Church in the modern-day world. Some of the process involves rethinking the way individual parishes relate to each other within the one deanery (now renamed ‘pastoral areas’). Many neighbouring parishes are having to share their resources – and their priest – and are even merging into one new community.
There is one major weakness in the whole ‘Leaving Safe Harbours’ process. It has been an exclusively Roman Catholic process within the Liverpool Archdiocese. This seems alien to any commitment to receptive ecumenism. Perhaps part of the learning experience provided by St Basil and All Saints could have been to alert our two dioceses – and the wider Church – to the fact that renewal processes like ‘Leaving Safe Harbours’, if they are initiated and implemented in isolation without shared consultation and planning between the Churches, might be contrary to the basic principles of ecumenism and so risk running counter to the flow of the movement of the Spirit.
Obviously, when it comes to the selection of a new parish priest for a shared Church like St Basil and All Saints, the ‘Leaving Safe Harbours’ process presents some problems. One temptation would be to abandon its almost unique ecumenical experience. I felt deeply that that would be a sin against the Spirit. It would be rejecting the special gift the parish has been given, a gift to be treasured and shared, not discarded as though dead and lifeless. The other temptation would be to ring-fence what is going on in the shared Church, as though it was a kind of museum piece or an oddity which has no relevance for the wider Church. In the light of my ten years ministry there, I had come to believe that the presence of St Basil and All Saints in the local Pastoral Area and in the Archdiocese could be a kind of two-way ‘receptive learning experience’. The parish as a shared Church could learn from their changed situation; and the Pastoral Area and Archdiocese, in their turn, could learn from the gift of St Basil and All Saints’ experience of being a shared Church. If both could be receptive to each other and truly open to learning, together they could both grow in pastoral experience by accepting the mutual gifts they have to share.
As the time for my retirement approached and no names for a possible successor were forthcoming, I wrote a number of letters to the Archbishop stressing the need for urgent action. Early in 2008 the Auxiliary Bishop, Vincent Malone, called a meeting with the clergy of the Pastoral Area at which we were told that a concrete suggestion would be made. After outlining the various administrative issues confronting the Pastoral Area, the bishop came up with a suggestion that the Roman Catholic pastoral oversight of St Basil & All Saints be taken over by the St Bede’s team ministry of three young priests, under the leadership of Fr Matthew Nunes. Already, over the previous year or so this team had taken on shared responsibility for three of the parishes in Widnes, St Bede, St Pius X and St Raphael, all in the process of forming one overall community. Moreover, in January 2008 this team had also accepted pastoral responsibility for the parish of Holy Family, Cronton, which is a close neighbour of St Basil & All Saints.
Bishop Malone’s suggestion was a possibility that had never entered my mind. Clearly, the addition of St Basil & All Saints to their pastoral care would present the team with an additional challenge of how to integrate a shared RC-Anglican Church into a Roman Catholic team ministry serving a number of other Churches. In particular, how could the Vicar of All Saints, Revd Peter Dawkin, be fully involved in the Roman Catholic team ministry set-up. A top priority would need to be making sure that he was not left feeling on his own and isolated from the team.
While being taken aback by Bishop Malone’s suggestion, at the same time I found myself being attracted by it. I could see how it might offer some creative possibilities for the ecumenical future in Widnes. For instance, it could provide an opportunity to bring the ecumenical experience of St Basil & All Saints more into the mainstream of Church life in Widnes. The parishioners of St Basil & All Saints had always wanted their shared Church life to be more integrated into Widnes as a whole. If the priests making up the team ministry were really fired by the flame of a true ecumenical spirit, they would be able to bring the ecumenical dimension into the whole of their ministry. The positive and negative aspects of the suggestion was discussed.
It was this point that I made the first of a series of mistakes which I can see now, with hindsight, were to have serious negative repercussions for the shared Church.
My first mistake was in asking the St Bede’s team for an ecumenical commitment there and then at the meeting. That was very unwise, since what such an ecumenical commitment involved was completely vague and I did not spell out all the implications of being the RC priests serving the shared Church of SBAS. Moreover, it was unfair on the St Bede’s team since it put them on the spot and did not give them time to look into all the implications involved in undertaking pastoral care of a shared Church in coalition with the Vicar. I should have asked Vin Malone to put his proposal on hold until I had had time to explore in depth how the St Bede’s team felt about the Simultaneous Eucharist and the overall shared Church arrangement at SBAS and whether they would be committed to maintaining it and enabling it to have a wider impact on the Pastoral Area.
My second mistake lay in not consulting Fr Bill Redmond, the Pastoral Area Leader, after the meeting. It was only much later that I learned that Bill had very strong reservations about the proposed arrangement. Since I respected Bill’s judgement, if I had realised that at the time, I might have been less positive myself.
In the course of the team meeting mentioned above, I told Bishop Malone that the appointment of the St Bede’s team would need to be approved by the Joint Church Council (JCC) at St Basil & All Saints. That meant that the team would need to be interviewed by the JCC and their approval given. The Bishop agreed to this, though he insisted that this should be done as quickly as possible since the appointment of my successor had been dragging on for too long.
Soon after this meeting, at all three SBAS Eucharists (RC and Anglican) one weekend, I explained the proposal and spoke in favour of it. My third mistake lay in expressing publicly in this way my personal support for this proposal on the grounds that it would widen out the ecumenical impact of SBAS. I should have simply put forward the pros and cons of this arrangement, leaving it up to the parishioners to discuss among themselves and draw their own conclusions as to how far such an arrangement would be in keeping with their life and worship as a shared Church.
Soon after this, on 3 March Fr Matthew Nunes rang to tell me that the Archbishop had asked him not to continue the Simultaneous Eucharist at SBAS. I was appalled at this news and I insisted that Matthew and I should meet as soon as possible with the vicar, Peter Dawkin, to discuss this development. I felt that if this news was made public in the parish it would provoke a massive negative reaction among the parishioners of both communities. So I suggested to Peter and Matthew that, for the time being, we should hold it in confidence between ourselves to give us time to put as much pressure as we could on the Archbishop to rescind this decision. My thinking was that the parishioners might launch a public protest and that this would almost certainly strengthen the Archbishop in his resolve to stop the Simultaneous Eucharist. I thought there was more chance of getting him to rethink through quiet diplomacy behind the scenes.
This was my fourth mistake. The parishioners had every right to know what was going on. Moreover, I am sure they would quickly have pointed out to me something I only adverted to a couple of years later. The Archbishop was jumping the gun since Matthew and the team and not yet been interviewed by the JCC and so no appointment had yet been agreed.
I had originally intended not to interfere in what would happen in St Basil & All Saints after my retirement. However, the Archbishop’s 3 March request to Matthew Nunes not to continue the Simultaneous Eucharist made it impossible for me not to get involved. So I wrote a series of very long letters and memoranda to the Archbishop, expressing very strongly my conviction that his decision was theologically unjustified, pastorally misguided, based on an unnecessarily rigid canonical interpretation of Church law and running counter to the direction in which the Spirit seemed to have leading the parish over the past twenty-five years. I was careful to run each of these letters and memoranda through Peter Dawkin and Matthew Nunes before sending them to the Archbishop. If the three of us had not agreed to keep the Archbishop’s request confidential, my natural instinct would have been to have shared with parishioners, or at least with the JCC, all the points I was making to the Archbishop. That would have been a good learning experience for all of us. The same would have been true of the excellent and very supportive letters written to the Archbishop by Paul Crowe and Ray Bridson, respectively former Parish priest and Vicar at SBAS.
Looking back now, I can see how my suggesting to Peter and Matthew that we keep the Archbishop’s request secret for the moment was a blatant instance of my collusion with the Church’s inbuilt lack of openness and accountability – its habit of making key decisions behind closed doors. I cannot speak for Matthew and Peter, but I feel it was a serious mistake and was responsible for much of the terrible pain experienced later in the process – and which is still felt by many.
The meeting between the JCC and the St Bede’s Team Ministry on 16 April went very badly. My fifth mistake was in failing to ensure that this meeting was properly thought out and planned by the JCC Chair and Steering Committee (myself and Peter included). At the meeting itself, because no one knew about what the Archbishop had said apart from Matthew, Peter and myself, Matthew (who spoke most on behalf of the St Bede’s team) was unable to give any clear answer to JCC’s urgent desire to know whether the team would be willing to continue with the Simultaneous Eucharist. As a result, people picked up the impression that the St Bede’s team were not in favour of Simultaneous Eucharist. That made it a very difficult meeting for everyone involved.
When the meeting ended, I felt sorry for the St Bede’s team since they had been under a lot of pressure and clearly did not feel able to speak freely to the JCC. So I brought them into the Presbytery for a drink to give them time to recover. That was my sixth mistake – and an extremely serious mistake. If the meeting had been properly planned, what should have happened at the end of the meeting was that the St Bede’s team should have retired to the Presbytery and the whole JCC (myself included) should have discussed (and even voted on) whether we were happy to accept their appointment. When I had undergone a similar interview by the JCC prior to my own appointment, I had made it clear to the JCC that, if they did not think I was suitable, I would not accept the appointment. That discussion and vote did not take place in the case of the St Bede’s Tam. I can honestly say that it was only a couple of years later that this terrible omission dawned on me. I fail to understand how it was overlooked at the time. My feeling for the St Bede’s priests must have distracted me. I think I have to accept most of the responsibility for this serious omission.
In June 2008 the Archbishop met with Matthew Nunes, Peter Dawkin and myself. His starting point was strongly against simultaneous Eucharist. However, as we talked he seemed to modify his opposition somewhat, so much so that it was finally agreed that he would come to the parish on the evening of 24 September 2008 to continue the conversation with the JCC and Matthew and Peter. Since I would be retired by then I felt confident enough to leave the ongoing conversation in the capable hands of the JCC and the two clergymen.
The Archbishop began the September meeting by stating categorically that he had decided to call a halt to the simultaneous Eucharist celebrations in the parish. This announcement came as a shock and caused considerable hurt and distress among all parishioners present. They had understood that the meeting was to continue the conversation. They had even held a series of meetings to prepare for this. They had come in a ‘receptive listening’ frame of mind and were expecting the same from the Archbishop. They were totally dismayed by his decision, even though they had known it was a possible outcome of the meeting. It seemed to call into question the integrity of their experience of simultaneous Eucharist over the years. What they found especially disconcerting was the fact that he announced it at the very beginning of a meeting which they were expecting to have a consultative flavour and at which they were hoping to be able to present their views for consideration. It is possible, of course, that in the time since June, with so many other important issues on his mind, the Archbishop had overlooked the fact that he agreed to a ‘continuing the conversation’ meeting.
There is one final mistake, my seventh, which I need to highlight. At no stage did I suggest or even entertain the possibility of having recourse to any of the Liverpool Ecumenical bodies which exercise oversight over the various ecumenical projects in Liverpool. Again, I can now see that as a symptom of the clerical culture I had absorbed and not yet been fully liberated from. In other words, I considered that the Archbishop had the last word and there was no point in appealing to a higher level. If the parishioners, Anglican and Catholic, had known what was happening from the beginning, they might well have decided to make an appeal against the Archbishop’s decision to some alternative or even higher seat of authority, whether Anglican or Roman Catholic or ecumenical.
There are probably other mistakes I have made over this whole sad saga and of which I am unaware, though others may be very conscious of them. I realise that I have to accept personal responsibility for all the mistakes I made. I am not proud of them. I apologise for my share in causing so much pain to parishioners and for mishandling the affair so badly. However, life is a learning process and I hope others in ecumenical tension points might be able to learn from my mistakes. I realise, too, that I was not the only person involved in the events mentioned above. The others involved may see things very differently. Clearly, I can only speak about my own personal mistakes and misjudgements.
Though we need to learn from our mistakes, there is no point in crying over spilt milk. The clock cannot be turned back. The important thing now is for the people of SBAS to continue move forward with faith in God’s Spirit at work in them as a shared (Pilgrim) Church. As I said in my retirement Mass homily (text in Appendix Three), ‘We cannot tie the hands of God’s Spirit. Our God of Surprises may well have other and even better tricks up his sleeve!’
Conclusion: Keeping hope and commitment alive
Despite the demoralising impact of no longer being able to enjoy simultaneous celebration of the Eucharist at key times in the Church’s year, there is a great determination among most of the parishioners to continue sharing everything they can together. That means that all the activities in the list given in Appendix One will continue, apart from the Simultaneous Eucharists marked with *. I am consoled by the fact that, among a very committed core group there seems to be a deep commitment to grow even more closely together ecumenically as a shared Church community. Readers with a special interest in ecumenical theology and practice might be interested in Appendix Two which brings together some of the points I submitted to Archbishop Kelly in my memoranda to him.
Shared Services & Simultaneous Eucharist Services during the Year
Advent & Christmas
Lent
Rest of Year
Asterisk (*) denotes simultaneous Eucharist which can no longer be continued.
APPENDIX TWO
Canonical and Theological Reflections on the
Decision to discontinue the Simultaneous Eucharist.
One objection raised by the Archbishop to simultaneous Eucharist was that it is forbidden by canon 908 of the Code of Canon Law which states: ‘It is forbidden for Catholic priests to concelebrate the Eucharist with priests or ministers of Churches or ecclesial communities which are not in full communion with the Catholic Church.’ This ruling is repeated in the 1993 Ecumenical Directory, no. 104, (e).
However, a very important principle of canonical interpretation which has been accepted over many centuries is Odiosa restringenda sunt. That means that restrictions and prohibitions should be interpreted as narrowly as possible. Consequently, canon 908 should not be interpreted as forbidding the kind of simultaneous celebration practised in St Basil and All Saints. That is essentially different to concelebration. As one who has been involved in this practice for the last ten years never once did I understand what I was doing to be concelebrating with my Anglican confrere. The elements over which I had prayed the epikesis and spoken the words of Institution were the bread and wine presented to me by the members of the Roman Catholic community. In no way did I see myself as praying these words over the bread and wine of the Anglican Eucharist. Any objection raised to the practice cannot be on the grounds that it is concelebration. It most certainly is not. To maintain that it is runs counter to a hallowed principle of canonical interpretation.
The Archbishop argued very strongly that he really believed in the decision he had made. In conscience, he could not let simultaneous Eucharist continue. He was not just hiding behind the law. He was convinced that it was not in line with sound Eucharistic theology. For him the words of the approved Eucharistic Prayers are sacrosanct, a sign that the Eucharist is being celebrated in union with the Pope and the whole Catholic Church. Hence, he could not accept any inclusion of praying for the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Anglican Bishop of Liverpool within the Canon nor could he countenance any shared ‘Amen’ at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer. In my final 30 September 2008 letter to the Archbishop I wrote: ‘I find the theology of the Eucharist on which you seem to be basing your decision does not do full justice to my own Eucharistic faith and that of many people I know and respect.’
The Archbishop also insisted that simultaneous Eucharist was contrary to the mind of the Church. He said that the Vatican had urged bishops, though not in writing, to put a halt to it. In the case of St Basil and All Saints, people have always believed that the evolution of this practice took place with the implicit approval of the former Archbishop of Liverpool, Derek Worlock, whose credibility as an ecumenical witness along with his Anglican counterpart, Bishop David Sheppard, is renowned in the city of Liverpool and far beyond.
Archbishop Kelly in an earlier letter to me had quoted from two letters of Archbishop Worlock (to Paul Crowe) which seem to suggest something very different to ‘implicit approval’:
I have no power to give you authority to celebrate a joint Eucharist. Even a shared simultaneous Eucharist does not have the approval of the Holy See. Even though it may occur in certain places, to judge by Bishop Cormac’s assertion, it is not with a ‘doctrinal’ Eucharistic prayer and should never be for a normal parish celebration. I have had to make it plain that had you sought my permission for this before Christmas, I would have declined to grant permission, just as by agreement with Bishop David, we have withheld permission for a simultaneous Eucharist or joint Eucharist in other places. You will know our views that there is no way forward through breaking rules (29 January 1988).
As a matter of principle I must now discuss your request with Bishop David as our stand with regard to the simultaneous Eucharist is a position mutually agreed and upheld (28 March 1991).
Though seeming to be the last word on the issue, these letters need to be read in the light of the wider context. Paul Crowe, then Parish Priest at St Basil and All Saints, explains that the 1988 letter was written after the Papal Nuncio had contacted Archbishop Worlock following some complaints made to Rome. These complaints were based on misinformation as became clear when Paul Crowe and his Anglican counterpart, Ray Bridson, met with the Archbishop and were able to explain exactly what they had been doing and why. Thereafter they were able to go ahead with an agreed format of simultaneous Eucharist, knowing they had the support, rather than permission, of both Archbishop Worlock and Bishop Sheppard.
Three years after the 1991 letter, when he succeeded Paul Crowe as Parish Priest, Fr Peter McGrail tells how Archbishop Worlock invited him to Archbishop’s House to discuss his appointment and asked him to continue the practice of simultaneous Eucharist within the established liturgical parameters which he explained. Dr McGrail, now an eminent priest-theologian at Liverpool Hope University, is quite clear about this. Furthermore, Claire Davidson, Chair of Liverpool’s Archdiocesan Ecumenism Commission, assures me that a simultaneous Eucharist was certainly celebrated at the Grail Centre in Pinner by Archbishop Worlock and Bishop Sheppard.
How do we explain such an apparent discrepancy? It could be that, through his personal experience of receptive ecumenism, Archbishop Worlock came to appreciate that in certain particular situations some form of simultaneous Eucharist was liturgically appropriate and pastorally acceptable. After all, his unique ecumenical relationship with his Anglican colleague, Bishop Sheppard, was itself an ongoing experience of receptive ecumenism. It should also be noted that Archbishop Worlock was renowned for being very careful about anything he committed to writing. In his 1988 letter it is noteworthy that he insists that he “has no power to give you authority to celebrate a ‘joint Eucharist’. That need not be interpreted as his prohibiting simultaneous celebration since there is no actual law explicitly forbidding it although he admits that ‘shared simultaneous Eucharist does not have the approval of the Holy See’. In his later 1991 letter, Archbishop Worlock speaks of ‘discussing’ the request for ‘simultaneous eucharist’ with Bishop David. Worlock’s very precise use of words could be interpreted as his taking care to put nothing in writing that could disturb the Vatican, while leaving the then parish priest free to exercise his own responsible pastoral judgement.
The 2007 International Anglican/RC Agreed Statement, Growing Together in Unity and Mission, in its practical second section, challenges all Christians, but especially bishops, to develop ‘strategies’ for the appropriate expression of our shared faith. To my mind that is exactly what has happened in St Basil and All Saints. Over the years, there has never been the slightest suggestion that what the clergy were involved in was any kind of surreptitious concelebration. If anything, the pain of separation came out even more strikingly in the simultaneous consecration of separate bread and wine and in the scrupulous way the parishioners always received Communion from their own clergy.
The practice that has evolved at St Basil & All Saints has been a natural growth in that particular situation rather than a model for other parishes to follow. It is difficult to imagine any other solution which, on major feasts in the liturgical calendar, would satisfactorily hold in creative tension the integrity of sharing one Church for worship while still acknowledging the fact of the community’s dividedness. It has managed to express at one and the same time both unity and dividedness. The feelings of the parishioners of St Basil and All Saints are aptly expressed in the words of Cardinal Kasper quoted earlier: “We have stretched out our hands to each other and do not want to let them go again.”
To my mind our ecumenical responsibility demands that we value such a precious gift and do everything possible to bring it to the attention of others to stimulate them to consider what might be appropriate in their particular situation. That is why, in my letter to Archbishop Kelly following his September meeting with parishioners, I wrote: ‘I am convinced that eventually something like our practice of simultaneous celebration of the Eucharist will be rediscovered by our two Churches and embraced as a gift enabling us to hold together both the grace of partial unity and the pain of partial disunity.’
APPENDIX THREE
My Retirement Homily preached at final simultaneous Eucharist
Sunday 29 June 2008
The ‘Sister Mary’ referred to at the beginning and end of this homily is Sister Mary Courtney. She is the Director of the St Francis HIV/AIDS Home Care Project in Livingstone, Zambia. To celebrate the Millennium a group from St Basil & All Saints set up a project to help support the wonderful work being done by Sister Mary and her volunteers. In September 2004 four of the group, Chris Lappine, Sue Shellien and Angela and Graham Kaye, representing both communities, went out for a two-week visit to the project. This had a massive impact on them and, through them, on the whole Shared Church Community. Sadly, Graham died totally unexpectedly in 2009. Since 2000 the parish ‘Gift of Life for Zambia’ team have sent out to them a total of nearly £135,000. Sister Mary Courtney was present for my retirement homily, since at the time she was visiting the parish en route to Ireland for her three-yearly break. She and her team of nearly one hundred carers, many of them living with HIV themselves, are an inspiration to the whole parish.
A preacher needs to be alert to the mood of his congregation – how they are feeling. I get the impression from what many have been saying or writing to me that they are feeling sad, anxious and fearful about the future of St Basil & All Saints. That is why the focus of this homily will not be on saying welcome to Sr Mary. We have all done that already and we will continue do that during her stay here. Nor do I intend to use this homily as an opportunity to say ‘good bye’. I don’t even want to wrestle with some of the problems which will undoubtedly lie ahead when St Basil’s will no longer have a resident parish priest and the Vicar of All Saints is living in the next parish.
What I feel will be most helpful to us all to focus on this morning is our shared belief that God’s Holy Spirit is present and active in our own parish community here.
The week before I first came here, I made a retreat in Chester. It was this same time of year, 22-27 June 1998. Let me read you part of my Retreat notes:-
With reference to my move to St Basil’s, what came into my mind was a kind of infra-red image showing the heaving mass of movement going on beneath the surface. That is like God’s activity in the situation into which I am moving. I am not going in as God’s agent into a lifeless, passive situation. God’s action is vibrant there already. I feel excited at the prospect of witnessing it, listening to and observing its signs, feeling wonderment at it and helping to be part of celebrating it in Eucharist and worship.
I am not going in principally to fill a management role. Rather it will much more a matter of enabling people to be aware of God’s presence and action in their everyday lives. What is of primary importance is what God is doing there - in the lives of individuals and families - and in the community as a whole. I am being invited to be part of that. But I will only be part of it, if I am open to it and am prepared to spend time listening to what is going on.
At the end of ten years, I am still just as convinced – in fact, even more so – that God’s Spirit is present and active in our shared parish community. It has been a great privilege to share life here over the past ten years, while recognising the shadow side of my own failures and also the shadow side of our shared failures in responding to God’s spirit. The life-principle of our shared Church is not the clergy but the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit dwells principally in the Community rather than in the clergy. Or rather, the Holy Spirit dwells in all of us together – as the Third Eucharistic Prayer says, ‘one body, one spirit in Christ’.
I have often heard people here saying “What is happening here is too important to be dependent on the clergy whoever they may be at any particular time”. We are a Spirit-led community, not a clergy-dominated Church. If we truly believe this in our heart of hearts, it should lead us to feel a great sense of confidence. If our shared Church community really is Spirit-inspired, it will not fail. In fact, it cannot fail, whatever difficulties and problems it might encounter. If we truly believe this, it should make us hopeful and confident in ourselves and our community. It should lead us to a deeper commitment and to greater mutual encouragement.
It is because I deeply believe this that I can feel peaceful – even happy – to retire. I know it won’t be easy for you. And I suspect it won’t be easy for me either. My leaving is no more a threat to our shared Church than would it be if I dropped dead tomorrow. Fr Conefrey’s sudden death was a terrible shock to everyone. You must all have felt utterly devastated. But in no way did it put a halt to the presence and action of God’s Spirit working in and through you all and in the community.
I’ve not mentioned Saints Peter and Paul, the feast we celebrate today. A good friend of mine, Fr Hugh Lavery, a most inspiring lecturer, had a great gift of looking into the deeper meaning of words. I once heard him do that with the word ‘polarisation’. To produce light and energy, he said, we need both poles – positive and negative. Without that there is no life, just apathy. One pole is not enough. Maybe that gives a clue to why Christians celebrate these two saints on the same day. On one of the few occasions when they met, the sparks were flying. Paul confronted Peter to his face – just as Jesus himself did, ‘Get behind me, Satan. The way you think is man’s way, not God’s.’ Both these confrontations turned out to be growth moments in the life of the Christian community.
Maybe, celebrating these two saints together reminds us of the need for tension in the Church – tension that gives off energy and new life, creative tension, which can even fuse divisions into unity. There are plenty of tensions at a wider level in both our Churches at present. It is hard to see how some of these can be creative and life-giving. There is also plenty of tension being felt in our own shared Church community – especially over the future of our simultaneous Eucharist. Some fear this might be our last one.
Who can tell what the future holds. Most certainly over the years we have experienced the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in our simultaneous Eucharistic celebrations. We are all grateful for that gift – I certainly am. Yet we cannot tie the hands of God’s Spirit. Our God of Surprises may well have other and even better tricks up his sleeve.
Maybe the in-built tension of today’s bi-polar feast of Sts Peter & Paul is a reminder to us that the Spirit is too big to be possessed by one side of a conversation. Last year I attended a remarkable ecumenical conference in Durham on ‘receptive learning’. Its basic theme was this. In any conversation where views are divided and opposed, it is not enough for both sides to shout louder. We need to think inside each other. We need to try to get inside the other person’s skin. For tension to be truly creative and life-producing, we need to listen deeply to each other. A closed mind and a closed heart prevents tension from being truly creative.
The presence of Sister Mary among us helps to put our problems and worries in perspective. She and her wonderful team of volunteers face massive life and death problems in their AIDS-related work of caring for the poor, the orphaned children and the sick and dying. Our parish project is called ‘Gift of Life to Zambia’. Maybe, Sister Mary’s visit is bringing the Gift of Life from Zambia to Hough Green, reminding us what our Christian Faith is all about.
The prophet Amos issued a dire warning against making religious practice the ultimate value rather than justice and integrity. Our simultaneous Eucharist has been a tremendous blessing to us over the years and we thank God for it. God’s Spirit has truly been in that experience. But if we make our simultaneous Eucharist the ‘be-all and end-all’ of our shared Church, we might run the risk of hearing a word from the Lord similar to that spoken by Amos (5:21), ‘I hate your simultaneous Eucharists’.
We are most truly a shared Church, when the heart of what we are lies not in our sharing one building, and not even in our sharing in one Eucharist, but in our sharing with those in need.
Perhaps that is the Gift of Life from Zambia that Sister Mary brings to us.