From Dispensing with the Branch Theory:

Without the branch theory to support us, we were left without any ecclesiology at all, and those Anglo-Catholics who loved all the ceremonial accidents of Catholicism without its theological substance soon moved in to fill the gap. Many “affirmed their Catholicism” simply by turning ECUSA into a small imitation of the Roman Catholic behemoth. General Convention became an ecumenical council, 815 the new Vatican, and the executive council the new curia. Only in ECUSA was to be found the fullness of Catholic truth; The Presiding Bishop who, at his enthronement threw holy water from the great Catholic river onto the congregation and occasionally sneaked off to a Roman mass to reassure himself of his own position, tried to be the infallible voice of the whole church by learning how to be all things to all men – and women, and vote with the majority of bishops on episcopal appointments.
We now need a model of the church which preserves all the essential Catholic doctrines and practices we once defended through the branch theory and which can restore our self-confidence as a legitimate province of the whole Catholic Church. We do not need to invent a new model but resurrect an old one, a truly biblical model which has always been a part of our Anglican tradition but which, I think, has never been allowed to transform our thinking sufficiently to meet the demands of the present moment. We need to rediscover the church as the Mystical Body of Christ.

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