Christendom College welcomed well-known author and professor Dr. Clint Brand to campus on October 30 for the college’s latest event in its Collegiate Lecture Series. In a profound address titled “Anglican Patrimony in Catholic Communion: Problem, Gift, Challenge, Mission,” Dr. Brand explored the historical and theological details of the complex Anglican-Catholic relationship and the path to unity provided by Pope Benedict XVI in his apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.
An Associate Professor of English at the University of Saint Thomas in Houston, Dr. Brand began his talk by delving into the four terms suggested in his title, explaining how each was significant in describing the Anglican patrimony in relation to Catholic communion. He next gave a brief overview of the Anglican church’s history, beginning with the Reformation in England and its effects on King Henry VIII and St. John Henry Newman, noting also its character both in Elizabethan England and in the Oxford academic revival. Dr. Brand also explored the details and extent of the constitution, outlining the complexity of the situation.
“The concept of Anglican patrimony poses a problem of definition and discernment,” explained Dr. Brand. “The Anglican identity worthy of maintaining in the Catholic Church is multifaceted and defies easy formulation. It resides not so much in the institutional structures, nor in the abstraction called Anglicanism, whatever that may be, but rather it inheres in the gifts, sensibilities, the ethos—indeed, the stories of those Anglicans who lived through heterodoxy, ambiguity, and compromise, yet found themselves carried along by way of the scattered elements of sanctification and truth in their own tradition, drawing them toward Catholic unity from its beginnings in the 16th century.”
Dr. Brand then shifted to the primary focus of his lecture—the Anglican church in America—explaining how it had developed uniquely away from England.
“For good and for ill, American Anglicans have been in the vanguard. It was the American Episcopal Church that was the first in the Anglican Communion to fully manifest the disintegrative effects of the original Anglican schism from the Catholic Church by forsaking magisterial authority in favor of democratic revisions of doctrine and discipline while sanctioning wholesale departures from the substantive content of Christian teaching,” explained Dr. Brand.
“But at the same time, the American ethos of individualism, pluralism, congregationalism also afforded a certain space and a certain freedom for other Episcopalians to move in another direction and to recover their Catholic inheritance, both from resources within the Anglican tradition, principally the vestigial Catholicism preserved in the Book of Common Prayer, but also from the wider Catholic patrimony of theology, liturgy, music, architecture, and popular devotion. Theirs is a story of mavericks and forerunners of creative minorities.”
He continued to expound on this theme, citing examples from early American religious history and comparing American changes in liturgy to the English standard.
Dr. Brand concluded by sharing noteworthy figures such as St. John Henry Newman and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, who were significantly affected by what he calls “this Anglican experience.” He went on to describe the Anglican movement as “so fraught in its native English context and hobbled by establishment, [it] was, I believe, serendipitously, perhaps even providentially, funneled into America, where it underwent its own winnowing, cleansing, and clarifying by Anglicans themselves in conditions of relative freedom.”
The whole event finished with a lively Q&A session, in which students, faculty, staff, and members of the local community asked questions regarding the conversion rates of Anglicans to Catholicism following Anglicanorum Coetibus, the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission, the patrimony in relation to America versus England, and other related topics.
Earlier this semester, Christendom welcomed acclaimed poet James Matthew Wilson as the first Collegiate Lecture Series speaker of the fall, with his talk “The Part the Muses Give Us: Poetry as First Art.” Like Wilson’s, Brand’s lecture offered students and guests an opportunity for deep intellectual and spiritual engagement with the enduring truths of the Catholic tradition.
Expanding upon the college’s original Major Speaker Series, the Collegiate Lecture Series provides students, faculty, staff, and members of the community an opportunity to hear from regional and national speakers on topics relevant to Christendom’s mission of “Restoring All Things in Christ.” For students, especially, these events allow them to connect classroom learning with the broader ideas and questions posed by the speakers. The series also honors those who have pursued wisdom in their lives and share it generously with the Christendom community.