2. The Episcopal Church and Its Position in the Process of Religious Centralization. The Inadequacy of Its Inner Principles and Search for Outer Support. Ritualism and Its Inner Significance. “The Bankruptcy of Protestantism.” The Search for Catholicity and the Location of True Uncorrupted Catholicity. The Inclination of the Episcopal Church Toward the Orthodox East (Cont.) (2)

Episcopalism, as we have said above and as it is defined by Ewer, is “a Catholic Church worked out on Protestant principles.”[1] As founded on a compromise of two opposite principles—Roman Catholicism and Protestantism—it contains within itself an inner contradiction which manifests itself whenever there is any more or less profound ecclesiastical-religious movement. In ordinary times it still appears to show a coherent and organic vitality, but as soon as some period arrives with a new strong demand from the side of ecclesiastical-religious life, its inner inadequacy is at once revealed. The opposite elements composing it show their irreconcilable discord and the whole ecclesiastical organism is exposed to the danger of falling apart. Its heterogeneous parts cease their organic activity and at this plainly show an inclination toward assimilation with whole organisms standing outside Episcopalism. Thus many Episcopal priests go over to Roman Catholicism, and many laypeople turn to extreme Protestantism. In the general direction of the community the same discord is evident, and while one party gravitates toward Roman Catholicism, the other shows no less inclination toward Protestantism. Ritualism serves as the expression of the former, while the latter finds its expression in the so-called “Reformed Episcopal Church,” which according to its principles is nothing other than Protestantism carried further than ordinary Episcopalism.[2] In view of such a state of Episcopalism, some justification is given to the words of a Roman Catholic publicist, who says: “The Episcopal Church must work either for us or for Protestantism. It has no field of its own for harvest, and no middle ground for an honest spirit. It has already sent forth many gifted and pure souls into the house of truth and purity, and we Catholics daily receive those whom it has led to our gates.”[3] But an organism, though suffering from discord in its essential elements and principles of life, still possesses within itself an instinct of self-preservation, and therefore Episcopalism, feeling its own inner inadequacy, seeks support from without. If individual members of it, unable to bear the contradiction of the principles constituting the Episcopal Church, seek internal reconciliation and peace in receiving these principles in their separate existence and complete expression, and therefore adopt either Protestantism or Roman Catholicism, then for the whole organism such an outcome is of course impossible and would be equivalent to self-denial or suicide, against which there rises that faint spark of organic life that still glows within it. Not having beneath it sufficiently firm ground, Episcopalism seeks it outside, and in doing so it could naturally turn only to where it could find positive principles without the extremes of Protestantism or Roman Catholicism. And it turned to the Orthodox East. While in Protestantism the flickering deceptive lights of religious animation gradually yield place to the darkness of rationalism, and in Roman Catholicism the progressive development of extreme papacy increasingly Latinizes Catholic Christianity, in the east there continues to shine unchangingly the bright sun of pure, Catholic Christianity, and its rays invitingly beckon and caress all those seeking light. Only for this reason did Episcopalism turn its eyes to the east, so it immediately understood that if light of Catholicity can come to fractured Christendom, it can come only from the east. Ex Oriente lax. In this life-giving light the Episcopal Church saw hope both for its own existence, and in it was born a passionate desire to draw closer to the source of this light. Hence the series of attempts on the part of Episcopalism to enter into closer communion with the Orthodox Church of the East.