Jonathan Goodall

The Church of England, which in origin is two separated provinces of the Western Latin Church, became formative of the Anglican Communion worldwide. However, it has never in those years of separation considered itself wholly separated in the sense that it has always asserted its connectedness and incompleteness as ‘part of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church’, independent in polity, interdependent with other Anglicans and other churches, especially those ordered in the historic episcopate. More recently, asserting its legitimate patrimony, it has sought ecclesial unity without simply being absorbed into the polity of those with a more exclusive claim to identity with the Una Sancta, causing Anglicans to wrestle with the legitimate terms of communion in the Una Sancta. This journey has been at its most complex and rewarding with the Roman Catholic Church, especially in relation to the terms of communion focused on the papal office.

‘Those who do not smart from the wounds of Christ’s body are not nourished by the Spirit of Christ’

Non vegetate Spiritu Christi
qui non sentit vulnerabilis corporis Christi

Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny

A part not the whole

‘The Church of England is part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, worshipping the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’ Thus begins the preface to the Declaration of Assent, approved through a process involving the Lambeth Conference of 1968, which all deacons, priests, and bishops in the Church of England have for nearly fifty years had to affirm publicly at their oath-taking either when they are ordained and on every new appointment. It is increasingly used in ecumenical discussion as the definition of the Church of England’s position. For example, in the English bishops’ response to the papal encyclical Ut unum sint, it was quoted in relation to the use of the verb ‘subsistere in’ at the Second Vatican Council: not only in Lumen gentium (to affirm that all the elements of sanctification and truth can be found in the Catholic Church), but also in Unitatis redintegratio to say