Author Description

Product Description This book explores one aspect of the ongoing validity of orders debate within the Anglican Communion. While exploring the nature of Holy Orders, it asks why the Communion or elements within the Communion continues to regard the recognition of its Holy Orders by other Churches, and especially by the Roman Catholic Church, as important. The understanding of ordination and the nature of Holy Orders differed somewhat between the Anglican Communion and the other major historical sections of the universal church especially the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches despite a degree of continuity and consistency. It may even have differed within the Communion. But the question of the external recognition of this validity and the definition of validity in this context turned upon the emphasis one placed upon the importance of the Communion's claim to catholicity, as part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. The continued emphasis upon the universality of Holy Orders is the case study through which the wider catholicity of the Anglican Communion is explored. From the Author The twentieth century saw the development of ecumenism - and the tensions of modernism in the church. In this book I have tried to explain the underlying reasons why Anglicanism - or some parst of the church - aspire to recognition by the Roman Catholic Church. Since the book was written these questions have become ever more significant, with the looming consecration of women bishops in England, practising homosexuals in single-sex marriages in New Zealand, and the growth of conservative Anglicanism in parts of Africa in particular. All of these present serious challenges to the unity of the Anglican communion, and threaten to destroy - or delay for generations - any prospects of reunion with Rome. About the Author Noel Cox was born in Auckland, New Zealand. After attending grammar school in Takapuna, he took up the study of law at the Univer