The Roman Option

by William Oddie

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0006280641
• ISBN13: 9780006280644
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: FOUNT
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.87 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.7" x 0.9" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

A collective - not an individual - route from Canterbury to Rome?

Friday, 28 December 2007 For years I put off reading William Oddie's "The Roman Option", misled by a back cover blurb suggesting that here might be an account of one individual's journey from Canterbury to Rome - likely, a more pedestrian Apologia Pro Vita Sua updated to the last decade of the twentieth century and given its motive by the Church of England's decision, in 1992, to ordain women. The book actually has quite a different object: to discuss the circumstances in which bodies of Anglo-Catholics might move collectively to Rome rather than having to convert one by one. In Oddie's view there were serious possibilities of such collective conversions following 1992 but the opportunity was lost, mainly through the timidity of English Roman Catholics. The great appeal of this book is the nuanced way in which Oddie sketches the many and various versions of, and perspectives on, the so-called "Roman Option"; he keeps all the balls in play with considerable skill, using them to form a narrative that gradually builds (as the Roman Option appears more and more likely) before reaching an impasse that the reader knows from the start will eventually block further progress. To maintain our interest in a somewhat arcane subject matter when the denouement is thus predetermined would be impossible were Oddie's writing not commendably precise and energetic at the same time. It helps, of course, that his real story moves quickly away from the specific issue of women's ordination to embrace such central issues as authority within the church and such questions as the meaning of Catholicism itself. That Oddie is so helpful on these huge topics, whilst keeping their coverage within bounds as a framework for his main narrative, is another tribute to his skills. I have described the story of this book as being that of the Roman Option following the decision of 1992, but Oddie is at pains to place this story within the context of a broader "realignment of English-speaking Christianity": one in which those of Catholic mind enter into full communion with Rome, but also one in which mainstream English non-conformism reunites with a Church of England that, in Oddie's view, is now irreconcilably Protestant (if, for the moment, reluctant to see itself in such terms). One can't help but wonder, of course, how Oddie might evaluate the situation today within the Anglican Communion. I'm not sure how to understand the concept that authority rests with such bodies as the Primates' Council (insofar as it does, and insofar as this is a Good Thing): would allowing the primates collectively to determine practice and doctrine be an example of "catholic" centralisation or, alternatively, of a "protestant" dispersal of authority into a competing jumble of synodical majorities? I am myself deeply conflicted as to where I stand on this issue, but one virtue of Oddie's book is that it gives me something of a vocabulary to use in considering such matters. Thus, although "The Roman