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THE ACNA

Micah 6:8 What does the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to
love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God.

CATHOLIC ANGLICAN THEOLOGY

What do Catholic Anglicans believe?

We advocate and defend the ancient doctrine, ethics and morality that agree with the original teachings of Jesus Christ. We encourage personal piety, pastoral devotion, missionary zeal, and recovery of the beauty of worship.

We believe and confess Jesus Christ to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no one comes to the Father but by Him. Therefore, the Anglican Church in North America identifies the following seven elements as characteristic of the Anglican Way, and essential for membership:

1. We confess the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God, containing all things necessary for salvation, and to be the final authority, infallible and unchangeable standard for Christian faith and life.

2. We confess Baptism and the Supper of the Lord to be Sacraments ordained by Christ Himself in the Gospel, and thus to be ministered with unfailing use of His words of institution and of the elements ordained by Him.

3. We confess the historic Episcopate as an inherent part of the apostolic faith and practice, and as integral to the fullness and unity of the Body of Christ.

4. We confess as proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture the historic faith of the undivided church as declared in the Catholic Creeds: the Apostles', and the Nicene.

5. Concerning the seven Councils of the undivided Church, we affirm the teaching of the first four Councils and the Christological clarifications of the fifth, sixth and seventh Councils, in so far as they are agreeable to the Holy Scriptures.

6. We receive The Book of Common Prayer as set forth by the Church of England in 1662, and as ratified by the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America in 1789, together with the Ordinal attached to the same, as a standard for Anglican doctrine and discipline, and, with the Books which preceded it, as the standard for the Anglican tradition of worship.

7. We receive the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, taken in their literal and grammatical sense, as expressing the Anglican response to certain doctrinal issues controverted at that time, and as expressing the fundamental principles of authentic Anglican belief.

8. We affirm and confess that marriage is between one man and one woman.

9. We affirm that how we behave in thought, word, and deed effects our personal relationship with God.

HISTORY: What IS Anglicanism? Where did it come from?

It is neither Roman Catholic nor your typical Protestant denomination.

Christianity was present in the British Isles since at least the 3rd century. The British church produced great missionaries such as St. Patrick and St. Columba. It was not until 664 AD that the Church in Britain consolidated and submitted to the bishop of Rome (the Pope) at the Synod of Whitby. The Church of England and the Church of Rome separated in the 1500s during the Protestant Reformations, but the English Reformation was a fairly conservative reformation.

The purpose of the Reformation was to bring the Church in England back to the apostolic roots and Christian foundations. Rather than leaving behind the catholic faith and becoming only protestant, the Anglican reformation ended up reforming the existing catholic church in England. This is why bishops were retained, and priests, along with sacramental theology and liturgy. Anglicanism kept more features and practices from the past than other types of Protestantism, such as vestments, the historic church calendar, and robust liturgical worship.

Although the Church of England has some continuity with the Roman Catholic church, the foundations of Anglicanism can be traced back to approximately the 1^st century AD, as attested to by records from bishops from the British Isles who were present at the Ecumenical Councils, and from instructions given to Saint Augustine of Canterbury that acknowledge the “Ecclesia Anglicana:” the pre-existing Church in England, which flourished for perhaps 1300 years before the events of the Reformation created what is now called Anglicanism.

Therefore, the Anglican Church is a reformed catholic church, a continuation of the Church, the Ecclesia, in those early days in which the Christian Church was undivided and universal.

The Anglican Church is in the mainstream of Christianity, globally and historically, practicing the biblical way of following Jesus Christ and being part of the “One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.”