Ottawa Citizen Reports on Cardinal Levada's Kingston Talk

My colleague at the Ottawa Citizen, Jennifer Green, has a report in today's paper on Cardinal William Levada's talk in Kingston, Ontario Saturday night, March 6.

I will be writing a longer version for Catholic papers that I hope to file about midday today.  Here's an excerpt of Jenny's piece, with my bolds.  I think she did a pretty good job of encapsulating some of the key points, though I have some minor quibbles (see below).

William Cardinal Levada, prefect the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told a dinner of about 300 in Kingston that "union with the Catholic Church is the goal of ecumenism (at least), we phrase it that way."

"Yet the very process of moving towards union works a change in churches …"

The Catholic Church is enriched when another group adds its means of worship, although he hastened to add it would not be any "essential elements of sanctification or truth." Those were already provided to the Church by Christ.

"Visible union with the Catholic Church does not mean absorption to the greater whole, as a teaspoon of sugar would be lost in a gallon of coffee."

Instead, he compared it to an orchestra with "… all instruments tuned to the piano, … all playing same notes of doctrinal clarity … the beautiful and inviting sound of the world of God."

The issue has become pertinent after Pope Benedict XVI made overtures to traditional Anglicans, particularly in Britain, who cannot agree with recent moves to ordain female bishops and accommodate gay clergy and "marriages" or unions of gay congregants.

In October, Levada announced that new rules would allow disaffected Anglicans to convert by parish or even by diocese. They would have their own governance within the Roman church, meaning they could keep traditions such as their liturgy.

Rome said it wasn't "poaching" Anglicans, just responding to requests from traditionalist bishops.

Just as I don't like the word "disaffected" as the adjective to describe us, I'm not crazy about "traditionalist" either.   "Traditional" is better and more accurate.   The "ist" smacks of ideology, as if our being traditional is some kind of fetish, or form of legalism, a focus on the externals of rites and rubrics without regard to the content of the Catholic faith.  We are capital "T" Traditional in that we believe in Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition as our authority. And interestingly, the bishops in the U.K. are not "traditionalist" in the sense of being Prayer Book traddies, while we in Canada can be accused of that.

Cardinal Levada did not (as I recall) mention the TAC in his talk.  I'll correct this if I discover in going over my notes this morning.  Were gay blessings on the horizon in the early 1990s, shortly after the TAC came together, and the first informal talk with Rome took place? I don't think so.

Our desire for unity has always been a positive desire, one of obedience to Christ's command and prayer that we be one in Him.

One picture shows Cardinal Levada greeting Traditional Anglican Primate Archbishop John Hepworth for the first time at the gathering.  The group shot shows the crowd at the Catholic Christian Outreach fundraiser.  Jenny Green is in the bottom right corner, wearing the blue/green dress.  The empty seat next to her is mine.  For more pictures of the event, go here.