Author Archives: Fr. John Fleming

About Fr. John Fleming

Fr. John Fleming, himself the son of an Anglican priest, was ordained for the Diocese of Adelaide in the Anglican Church in Australia in 1970. He served as President of the Union of Anglican Catholic Priests, an organization devoted to maintaining the Catholic tradition in the Anglican Church. In the early 1970s, Fr. Fleming served as University Chaplain and Rector of St. Paul’s Church, Adelaide ministering to university students and other young people. From 1977-1978, he was Assistant Curate at St. Nicholas Church, Chiswick in West London before returning to Adelaide where he became Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Plympton. He remained there until Easter 1987, when he and his wife Alison were received into the Catholic Church. Fr. Fleming was a member of the General Synod and the Social Responsibilities Commission of the Anglican Church of Australia. The story of his conversion, dealing with the intellectual and spiritual issues involved, will be found in a new book to be published in April, 2010. Fr. Fleming specializes in the development of public policy in bioethics. His Ph.D. (Griffith University, Queensland) is in philosophy and medical ethics. He was a founding member (1992-1996) of UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee which developed the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on November 11, 1997). Between 1998-2004, he was a member of the SA Council on Reproductive Technology (SA Parliament). Fr. Fleming is a Corresponding Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life (from 1996), Faculty Member of John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family (from 2001), and (from 2002) Member of the Gene Technology Ethics Committee (GTEC) set up under the Gene Technology Act 2000 (Commonwealth of Australia). He was the founding President of Campion College Australia (2004-2009), the country’s first Catholic liberal arts tertiary institution. He also served as the founding Director of Adelaide’s Southern Cross Bioethics Institute (1987-2004), where he currently teaches as Adjunct Professor of Bioethics. In addition to bioethics, Fr. Fleming has a longstanding interest in the Reformation history and liturgy.

The Limits to Legitimate Discussion by Catholic Bloggers

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I am more than surprised by Professor Tighe’s response to my recent offering.  There is nothing in the “tone” of that article which should have led to any concern.  I just happened to have disagreed with Christian Campbell, that’s all.  I continue to be complimentary of his outstanding contribution to public discussion on important matters, especially Anglicanorum coetibus and all that that involves.

Professor Tighe, who I also very much admire, makes far too much of his understanding of the word coetus which, in my opinion, he locates in too limited a context.  I have no doubt that individual conversions, chiefly from FiF, a loose alliance of individuals, meet his requirements.  But the TAC is another thing altogether.  It is a Communion of faithful Christians who have long wished to be in Communion with the Holy See and have, as a duly constituted entity, already accepted the Catechism of the Catholic Church with their faithful.  As a group, together with individuals they would join the new entity.  The process is for the Roman authorities to decide, not bloggers.  But I do draw his attention to Article 5 of the Complementary Norms.

The other matters raised by Professor Tighe need not, and should not, be discussed on a blog.  They are matters which only the Holy See can resolve.

I have never heard it suggested that Anglicans in the TAC would not need to be chrismated.

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Archbishop Hepworth’s Pastoral Statement: Another Perspective

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One of the many nice things about The Anglo-Catholic has been the ability of the blog to canvass a range of ideas and opinions about things Anglican.  I have personally enjoyed contributing to the discussions on Anglicanorum coetibus (and other issues), and the fact that the web master allows the free exchange of different views.  It is also to his great credit that he keeps us up to date about what is going on.  He now refers to the new Pastoral Statement from Archbishop Hepworth to members of the TAC.  His account of the “TAC narrative” is, I believe, not true to what I know to be the facts of the matter.

When I say “I know” it is because, although not a member of the TAC or any other Anglican group, I keep myself well informed from my sources in Australia, England (where I was once a Church of England priest), Rome, Canada, and to a lesser extent the US.  Recent developments in the implementation process of which Christian Campbell may be unaware has seen a significant shift in the implementation processes.  Moreover, I know that Father Christopher Phillips, fine priest as he is, is in touch with Archbishop Hepworth, and vice versa, to make sure they are working together for the common good.

The process of implementation has not been the same in all 4 countries where it is planned to set up an Ordinariate.  The US is in many ways sui generis precisely because of the Anglican Use parishes which exist there and nowhere else.

What Archbishop Hepworth’s Pastoral Statement exemplifies is the strong and continuing commitment of TAC bishops to cooperate with the Roman authorities to see Ordinariates implemented while at the same time being strong advocates for “corporate reunion” and being willing to argue for it.  Their concerns have been heard and acted upon.  For example, Bishop Elliott has been very open to hearing from Archbishop Hepworth and is working well with him and the TAC to bring about an Australian Ordinariate.  The same sort of strong cooperation between the excellent Catholic Bishop Delegates and the TAC is evident in Canada, the US, and England.

It is simply not fair to preempt a wider reading of this very important Pastoral Statement by sketching a partisan and hostile context within which it might be read.

As Archbishop Hepworth so wisely observes in his Pastoral Letter

"As we come to this moment of creating Ordinariates, we are bringing together groups of people who share the twin vision of achieving unity and of bringing the treasure of Anglicanism into the fullness of Catholic Communion.  Some groups have been hostile to others."

He later goes on to give this piece of pastoral advice which all concerned should exemplify if their Christianity is to be truly lived out:

The diversity of Anglican groups now preparing to join Ordinariates is a miracle of grace.  Charity and forgiveness are to be the hallmarks of the gathering of Anglican groups.  Every group that approaches this with integrity has an equal right to involvement in the formation and development of Ordinariates.  None of us owns an Ordinariate.  We are each its servant. [emphasis added]

So let us read this very fine Pastoral Statement in a spirit that is free of prejudice and pre-prepared political positions and be truly glad that all concerned are working to further the unity of the Church for which Christ prayed.  No pathway to unity has ever been free of difficulties.  Thank God that the difficulties experienced by many have now been overcome.

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Edmund Campion, English Priest and Martyr: A New Book

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In this post I give you a review of a very important new book which I was privileged to have launched on the 27th of October 2010.  I commend this book to all who would wish to understand the English Reformation as it was played out in the life and death of one of England's greatest martyrs for the Catholic Faith.  The book may be purchased through the publisher's website.

Book Review and Launch

Richard Simpson, Edmund Campion, Revised, edited & enlarged by Peter Joseph, Foreword by George Cardinal Pell, Gracewing, 2010, www.gracewing.co.uk

INTRODUCTION

Father Peter Joseph’s new book, Edmund Campion, deals in great detail with the life and death of one of England’s most outstanding martyrs to the Catholic Faith.  The political and religious context within which Saint Edmund Campion carried out his mission to England’s Catholics in the sixteenth century was hardly propitious, but he engaged in his appointed mission knowing that it was all likely to end in his death by execution.  The religious programme of Queen Elizabeth I had been carried out with ruthless efficiency and spectacular success from the time of her accession to the Throne in 1558 until Campion’s return to England in 1580.  In this review and launch of this splendid new volume I wish to draw attention to the significance of this Holy Man in the context of Elizabethan England of the sixteenth century.

Continue reading →

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The Truth about Anglicanorum Coetibus: 'Groups and Individuals' May Apply.

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There has been much discussion on this blog about what the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus (AC) means for groups of Anglicans and individual Anglicans.  A major contribution to this discussion has come from Brother Stephen Treat, O. Cist.  In my opinion much of what he has written is questionable.

Let me begin by saying that I, like Brother Stephen, write as a “Roman Catholic”.  I have an interest, though, but that interest has been limited to giving advice to the TAC on how best to proceed towards corporate reunion with the Holy See.  My limited role is there for all to see in my new book, “Convinced by the Truth”.

The Primate of the TAC, together with Bishop Chislett, asked for and received my advice on how to proceed.  They followed that advice and at the conclusion of the process the bishops and other leaders of the TAC were able to present to the Holy See their petition to “seek a communal and ecclesial way of being Anglican Catholics in communion with the Holy See”.  The bishops then asked the Holy See for “guidance as to the fulfillment of these our desires and those of the churches in which we have been called to serve”.  This petition was presented to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in October 2007.

In the meantime other groups of Anglicans and individual Anglican bishops were also having discussions with the Holy See to see what might be able to be done to assist Anglican Catholics to be in Full Communion with the Catholic Church.

On the 16th of December 2009 Cardinal Levada wrote to Archbishop Hepworth officially providing him with a copy of Anglicanorum coetibus and the accompanying Complementary Norms, together with a commentary on both of the documents by Father Gianfranco Ghirlanda SJ (which had been published in L’Osservatore Romano on the 9-10 November 2009).  In this letter the Cardinal said that the AC “constitutes the definitive response of the Holy See not only to your original request, but also to the many others of a similar nature which have been submitted over the last years”.

The Holy See, having responded, now awaits applications for ordinariates which do not appear ex nihilo as Brother Stephen suggests, but from real live groups of Anglicans as well as individual Anglicans asking for them.  To date seven national bodies which are members of the TAC have applied for ordinariates.

In his commentary, “The Significance of the Apostolic Constitution ‘Anglicanorum Coetibus’”, Father Ghirlanda SJ emphasises that the Personal Ordinariates are meant for those of the “Anglican faithful who wish to enter, either corporately or individually, into full communion with the Catholic Church”. (Emphasis added)

Throughout his musings on AC, Brother Stephen limits groups of Anglicans to parochial groupings.  There is no warrant for this.  The term could just as easily include a diocese, national bodies comprised of a number of dioceses, or even an international body.

Brother Stephen refers to the undeniable fact that the AC does not provide for a body of Ordinaries across the world.  This silence is said to be “instructive”.  Instructive in what way?  He then speculates that it is because the “ordinariates have not created a rite or sui juris church”.  That there is a lacuna here is true.  That it means what Brother Stephen says it means is conjecture.  We must wait and see.  This is simply not an issue before us.  When the ordinariates have been set up and are functioning, such a structure may commend itself to the Holy See.  Or it may not.

Brother Stephen goes on to make a number of assertions, none of which he substantiates.  He refers to statements from people from various levels of authority who have been making “strong statements” interpreting the documents in a way that “seem[s] to attempt to force the hand of the Holy See”.  He then says that the CDF and other structures have had to issue corrections.  Whether Brother’s assertions are true or not, I cannot say.  But we should not accept them as true absent any supporting documentation  The unfortunate thing about saying things like this about unnamed persons is that people will assume it refers to this or that bishop of their acquaintance.  And that is unfair.

And Cardinal Levada has left some things more open than Brother Stephen and others seem to allow.  For example, with regard to the possibility of admitting already married men into the seminary to train for priesthood the Cardinal said this:

With regard to future seminarians, the Cardinal explains that it was considered purely speculative whether there might be some cases in which a dispensation from the celibacy rule might be petitioned. Objective criteria about any such possibilities (e.g. married seminarians already in preparation) are to be developed jointly by the Personal Ordinariate and the Episcopal Conference, and submitted for approval of the Holy See.

Brother Stephen tells Anglicans they have to just wait and adjust their expectations.  He says, “the original petition to the Holy See essentially asked for a Uniate Church.”  If he is referring to the TAC petition he is just plain wrong.  As I have noted above, those TAC bishops confessed their faith and then asked Rome for guidance as to how their desire to find “a communal and ecclesial way of being Anglican Catholics in communion with the Holy See” could be achieved.  That petition specified nothing.  It asked for guidance.

If it is not the TAC petition, then to what petition does Brother Stephen refer?  I do not know and am waiting to be told.  Is there any other group whose bishops have signed the Catechism of the Catholic Church and are constitutionally organised as an ecclesial group?  I have not heard of one.

Brother Stephen compounds his errors by saying this: “the Holy Father did create individual structures within local Episcopal conferences where the Anglican Patrimony would be protected and nurtured.”  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The Ordinariates answer to the CDF and the other Dicasteries of the Roman Curia according to their competences, not to the local Episcopal conference.  Ordinaries have membership in the local Episcopal Conference, and everywhere the documents urge cooperation between the Ordinary and the local Latin bishop, and the bishops’ conference.  But as Father Ghirlanda points out,

The Ordinary, to whom the pastoral care of the faithful who belong to the Ordinariate is entrusted, exercises ordinary vicarious authority (potestas ordinaria vicaria) in the name of the Roman Pontiff (Ap. Cons. V.b). He enjoys legitimate autonomy with respect to the jurisdiction of the Diocesan Bishops in which the faithful of the Ordinariate have their domicile and is, therefore, better able to ensure that those faithful are not simply assimilated into the local Dioceses in a way which would lead to the loss of the richness of their Anglican tradition – which would be an entire impoverishment of the entire Church. On the other hand, the Ordinary in the exercise of his vicarious authority must ensure the full integration of the Ordinariate into the life of the Catholic Church, making sure that it does not evolve into an isolated community.

That is to say, the balance between being fully integrated into the life of the Church and the safeguarding and nourishing of the Anglican tradition (which AC guarantees) is well met in the AC.  Ordinariates are not a structure of bishops’ conferences (absorption).  They are something similar to dioceses.  Again Father Ghirlanda:

However, just as the Military Ordinariates are described in the Apostolic Constitution Spirituali militum cura as specific ecclesiastical jurisdictions which are similar to dioceses (Ap. Cons. I § 1), so also the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus describes Personal Ordinariates for the faithful coming from Anglicanism as juridically similar to dioceses (Ap. Cons. I § 3). (Emphasis added)

The right of an Ordinary of an Ordinariate to act while having regard for the views of the local Latin bishop is well described by Father Ghiranda:

Before establishing a personal parish the Ordinary must listen to the opinion of the Diocesan Bishop of the area (Ap. Cons. VIII § 1);

Brother Stephen says that the CDF will erect Ordinariates and people will make their profession of faith and enter.  The CDF will only erect an Ordinariate where there is an established need for one.  This will be done by the CDF by means of appointing an Ordinary and naming the place where the Ordinariate applies.  So the process of erecting an Ordinariate is not a “creation ex nihilo” but rather a creation responding to an established and recognised need by real people.

Once the Ordinariate has been set up, the Ordinary then proceeds to incardinate clergy (according to the Constitution and the Complementary Norms) into the Ordinariate and receive the faithful either as groups or as individuals (Article 5 of the Complementary Norms).  Those who have been either validly baptized, or validly baptized and confirmed will not receive those sacraments again (cf Canon 845).  No doubt “groups” will make a corporate Profession of Faith and receive sacraments of initiation as appropriate.  No doubt also the forms to be used will be those authorized by the CDF.  Individuals coming as individuals will make an individual Profession of Faith.

The Holy Father has responded to requests and produced the AC.  Groups and individuals will now respond by asking for an Ordinariate.  Rome will respond to those requests as the Holy Father sees fit.  The TAC has already made its profession of faith.  But the reading down of the word “groups” to mean only “parochial groupings” or individuals without any greater corporate identity, and as if that identity will simply vanish into a new identity, is not warranted.  It does not do justice to the fact that the Ordinariates will be erected to receive the Anglican faithful “either corporately or individually”.

That this is the case is, again, well described by Father Ghirlanda in his official commentary on “The Significance of the Apostolic Constitution ‘Anglicanorum Coetibus’”.  In that commentary he says that “the safeguarding and nourishing of the Anglican Tradition is guaranteed” by, among other things,

… the fact that, out of respect for the synodal tradition of Anglicanism: a) the Ordinary will be appointed by the Roman Pontiff from a terna of names presented by the Governing Council (CN Art. 4 § 1); b) that the Pastoral Council will be obligatory (Ap. Cons. X § 2); c) that the Governing Council, composed of at least six priests, apart from fulfilling the duties established in the Code of Canon Law for the Presbyteral Council and the College of Consultors, will also exercise those duties specified in the Complementary Norms which include in some cases giving or withholding consent or of expressing a deliberative vote (Ap. Cons. X § 2; CN Art. 12). (Emphasis added)

And this is just one out seven different ways, identified by Father Ghirlanda, in which the Anglican identity will be safeguarded and nourished.

The same point was made by Father Andrew Cole SJ in his “Swimming the Tiber: The Background, Provisions and Eventual Implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus”, in the blog Thinking Faith: The Online Journal Of The British Jesuits.

Each Ordinariate will have a Governing Council, consisting of at least six priests, half of whom are elected by the priests of the Ordinariate, which will exercise within the Ordinariate the functions that the Council of Priests and the College of Consultors exercise in a Diocese (cf. canons 495-502), together with ‘those areas specified in the Complementary Norms’. Whereas the Council of Priests and the College of Consultors have only a consultative function, in that they advise the diocesan Bishop, the Governing Council will have a deliberative function in the Ordinariate; this is truly innovative, and is a reflection of the Anglican Communion’s tradition of synodal governance.  Hence, it is the Governing Council which will, among other things, prepare the terna of names for submission to the Pope for the appointment of an Ordinary, and the Ordinary must have the Governing Council’s consent to admit a candidate to holy orders, to erect or suppress a personal parish or house of formation, and to approve a programme of formation for those preparing for ordination.

To be insisting, against a fair reading of all of the documents, that Anglicans will come into Ordinariates as individuals disconnected from their former communities, their history and tradition, will almost certainly mean that the Dioceses and parishes concerned would be forced to leave their buildings, money and other property behind.  If Brother Stephen's advice were to be followed, there would be every risk of the Anglican people once again having to leave behind all their property, and just when they have labored so hard to start again.  I cannot think that the AC would in any way require that.  But a partial and restrictive reading of the documents might well force just such a melancholy outcome or worse, even make the establishing of Ordinariates even more difficult on the Anglican side.

To reiterate, the bishops of the TAC came to the Catholic Church as a group, Profession of Faith in hand, and asked the Church for guidance as to what they should do next.  Other had also made approaches to Rome but without having signed the Catechism of the Catholic Church as the TAC bishops had.  Rome responded and invited those who had approached them to make the next move.

As Cardinal Levada put it in his interview on Salt & Light:

We're in a phase now of discernment, I would say.  The Anglicans that have come to us are discerning whether this seems to be right for them.  This is a spiritual commitment that I think we have all looked forward to through the 45 years of ecumenical dialogue after the Second Vatican Council.  I think the underlying idea is that, if people are ready, even in groups, not only as individuals, to celebrate and experience the unity that Christ wanted for His Church, that we should not create any obstacles for them, but rather try to open the doors as best we can.

In his address to the bishops of England and Wales at their ad limina visit earlier this year, Pope Benedict said:

Ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue assume great importance in England and Wales, given the varied demographic profile of the population. As well as encouraging you in your important work in these areas, I would ask you to be generous in implementing the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, so as to assist those groups of Anglicans who wish to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. I am convinced that, if given a warm and open-hearted welcome, such groups will be a blessing for the entire Church.

And finally, interested Anglicans do not need to be lectured on “waiting”.  They have waited many, many years, and are still waiting patiently.  And they have suffered much and continue to suffer.  The end is in sight.  But I would say to Brother Stephen and other Catholic commentators that we must all read the documents more carefully, more accurately, and more generously.  Moreover, we must treat Anglicans seeking full communion with the Church as equals, not as children to be chided.  I am also of the opinion that the criticism of Deborah Gyapong’s piece by Brother Stephen was quite unfair.

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The Remarkable Gift of the Anglican Patrimony

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I have been away on holidays for a little while.  During that time I finished reading Bishop Andrew Burnham's new book on liturgy.  Reading and reviewing this book it is not hard to appreciate the wonderful contributions to the wider Church which can come from the Anglican Patrimony.  Here is my review of this excellent tome.

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Andrew Burnham, Heaven & Earth in Little Space: The Re-enchantment of Liturgy, Canterbury Press, Norwich, 2010

andrew burnham The Remarkable Gift of the Anglican PatrimonyThere are many books on the development of liturgy in which the discussion is principally about what is happening within one liturgical tradition while taking into account influences from other traditions.  This is not one of them.  What we have here is an absorbing discussion on contemporary developments in liturgy and their interplay between the Catholic Church and the Church of England.

To do this, the author Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Ebbsfleet (Anglican), takes us back to the way in which liturgy developed in England during the Reformation and why.  With all of the objectivity of the scholar that he is, and employing an engaging literary style, Burnham is able to navigate the reader through the turbulent waters of the English Reformation, the troubled waters of post Vatican II liturgy, and onward into the exciting possibilities opened up by Pope Benedict’s Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum coetibus. This is a book which will appeal to both scholars and laypersons.

Critics in both the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church complain about the coarsening of much of modern liturgy, its banality, the over emphasis upon the ‘community’ at the expense of a sense of participation in the transcendent worship in the heavenly sanctuary, and its slavery to now dated 1970s experiments in ‘creative’ liturgy.  Many have voted with their feet and refuse to attend liturgical celebrations, especially those that have been ‘manufactured’ to attract the people.

In subtitling his book, “The Re-enchantment of Liturgy”, Andrew Burnham signals his purpose which is no less than to sketch out newer approaches to liturgical renewal which, drawing upon the best of the Church’s liturgical treasury, may assist worshippers to engage more fully in the transforming worship of heaven.  There is a pressing need, he argues, to find the way out of contemporary liturgical banality in order to rediscover “something of the mysterium tremens et fascinans” of what the sacred liturgy, at its best, can truly express.  Traumatic ruptures in the liturgical tradition, as distinct from organic development, has not served the Spiritual interests and needs of the People of God.

Burnham begins his task with a scrupulously honest evaluation of what happened to the liturgy in the Church of England at the Reformation.  He freely acknowledges that the traditional Anglican formularies of the Book of Common Prayer of 1662 (and to a greater and lesser extent the Prayer books of 1549, 1552, and 1559) seem patient of either a more Catholic interpretation or a more Protestant interpretation.  The rupture in the Catholic liturgical tradition engineered by Thomas Cranmer resulted in “a maddening ambiguity at the heart of Anglican Eucharistic theology.”

The differing Anglican Eucharistic theologies have become institutionalised in the Book of Common Worship which provides a variety of Eucharistic Prayers to meet the differing theological beliefs of different congregations.

Next Burnham turns his attention to what happened in the Catholic Church following the introduction of the Novus Ordo of Paul VI, and what is happening in the Church following the promulgation of the Motu Proprio of Pope Benedict XVI, Summorum pontificum (2007).  And, of course, full account is taken of Liturgicam authenticam (2001) with the resulting and soon to be published new English translation of the Mass.  Questions here are raised about the Catholic Church’s relative inexperience with vernacular liturgy as compared to the 500 years experience of the Church of England which allowed a sacral vernacular language to emerge.  Burnham takes seriously the possibility of how one Form of the Mass, the Ordinary Form or the Extraordinary Form, may influence the other.  As an example he suggests the replacement of the Offertory Prayers in the Novus Ordo with those from the Missal of Blessed John XXIII thereby recovering in its fullest expression the true doctrine of the Sacrifice of the Mass for the Novus Ordo.

In his lengthy discussion of Church music Burnham displays all of the acumen of one who has authority to speak in this important area of liturgical worship.  He correctly points out that hymnody has had a powerful influence on Anglican consciousness, with hymns providing a teaching modality as well as beauty in the worship of God.  Much Catholic Eucharistic theology is disclosed in well known and well loved traditional Anglican hymns.  The practical loss of these traditional hymns with their replacement by often very unworthy contemporary alternatives has eviscerated much of the Anglo-Catholic legacy of traditional Eucharistic understanding and worship.  In many ways, what was in Anglican hymns made up for what was, from a Catholic point of view, lacking in the Service of Holy Communion in the BCP of 1662.

Burnham’s discussion on the liturgical forms of Morning and Evening Prayer, and other Offices, is carried out in its dialectical relationship between the Catholic breviaries in their various amended forms, and the forms devised by Thomas Cranmer.  He carries that kind of discussion on into the contemporary revisions of the Church of England and the new Breviary now in use in the Catholic Church.

In this book Burnham does both Anglicans and Catholics a major service in explaining the ways in which Church of England liturgies changed at the Reformation, what were the factors at play which influenced the radical rupture the Eucharistic liturgy, and the importance of the ongoing process of change in the twentieth and twenty first centuries.  Burnham, while clearly Catholic in his understanding of liturgy, is nevertheless able to present in an objective and dispassionate way alternative views which are more widely accepted by Anglicans.

Importantly, Bishop Burnham also makes clear what is meant by the classic Anglican Patrimony which can suitably be retained and incorporated into the Catholic liturgical tradition, thereby enriching the tradition.

This book provides readers with a profound understanding of liturgical developments in both the Church of England and the Catholic Church, and the manifest shortcomings of much contemporary liturgical worship both Eucharistic and non-Eucharistic.  Usefully, the book goes on to suggest ways in which liturgy may not only be renewed in the light of tradition, but also re-enchanted such that active participation in the Eucharist will enable the believer to really experiences something of the sublime reality of heaven.

In concluding with a chapter on St Mary the Virgin Mother of God, the Bishop makes the traditional Catholic link between the meeting of heaven and earth in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and the meeting of heaven and earth on our altars as bread and wine are transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of Christ.

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Heaven and Earth in Little Space is published by Canterbury Press with a Foreword by Fr Aidan Nichols OP and an introduction by Fr Jonathan Baker SSC, Principal of Pusey House, Oxford and also a member of the Council of Forward in Faith.  Full details of how to order it, and how to take advantage of a generous discount on the recommended price, can be found here.

TO ORDER with a 20% discount please quote code Space 2010.
UK orders please add £2.50 for P&P (orders over £50 postage free).
International orders please call for details.  Offer price expires 31st Dec 2010.
Post: Send a cheque payable to Norwich Books and Music to
Norwich Books and Music, St Mary’s Works, St Mary’s Plain, Norwich NR3 3BH.
Tel: 01603 612614  Fax: 01603 624483  Email: orders@norwichbooksandmusic.co.uk

Copies of Heaven and Earth in Little Space may also be had through Amazon.com.

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Newman, Clifford Longley, Conscience and Contraception

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The forthcoming Beatification of John Henry Newman has provided an excellent opportunity for various liberal writers to claim him as their very own, the one whose doctrine of conscience provided opportunity for dissenters from Catholic moral teaching to claim him as their champion.  This has always seemed to me to have been based upon a misreading of Newman’s contribution to the Catholic understanding of conscience, an understanding which would no doubt have surprised the great man himself.

Well known writer on Catholic affairs and doyen of the liberal party in the Catholic Church, Clifford Longley, seems to have recognised the foolishness of calling John Henry Newman as a witness to the liberal account of ‘conscience’ where contraception is concerned (The Tablet, 29 May 2010).  He acknowledges the obvious, that no one knows “what Newman [died 1890] would have said about Humanae vitae [published 1968]”.  But his assertion that no one knows what Newman would have said about the standing of Catholics who dissent from long-standing authentic Church teaching on contraception is by no means so obvious.

I will return to Longley’s treatment of Newman later.  For the moment let us concentrate on the logic of his article where contraception is concerned.  In essence he is saying this:

  1. There was widespread rebellion in the Church among priests and “prominent lay people” against Humanae vitae.
  2. The bishops responded reflexively with the heavy hand of discipline.  Some priests were suspended for “criticising the encyclical”, and a doctor was “refused Communion for having prescribed contraceptives”.
  3. The bishops felt “uncomfortable” and looked for an easy way out, a way out provided by what Longley now knows to have been a mistaken appeal to Newman and conscience. People were to be left free to follow their own “conscience” in the matter.
  4. But the dissenters didn’t want to be left in peace.  They wanted the Pope to admit he got it wrong and to change the teaching.
  5. We know the Pope got it wrong because the Pope had been “advised that a natural law argument was untenable”.
  6. The Pope rejected this advice, not so much because the advice was wrong, but because he wanted to “avoid discrediting church authority”.
  7. The result of the Pope’s misguided desire to protect church authority was that church authority became even more discredited.

In the US in the 1950s and 1960s there were Catholic dissenters from the Church’s teaching about the moral wrongfulness of legally enforced racial segregation.  In 1962 85-year-old Archbishop Francis Rummel ordered full desegregation of New Orleans parochial schools for the following autumn.  That decision occasioned widespread dissent from “prominent lay people” including leading Catholic politicians.  Letters of "paternal admonition" were sent to the dissenters.  One of those dissenters, Mrs. Gaillot, mother of two children in Catholic schools, received a letter which was a "fatherly warning" of automatic excommunication if she continued promoting "flagrant disobedience to the decision to open our schools to ALL."  Her response: "If they can show me from the Bible where I am wrong, I will get down on my knees before Archbishop Rummel and beg his forgiveness."

The point here is that “prominent laypeople” do not always get it right, that the appeal to private judgment (interpretation of the Bible, the natural law) is not the prerogative of journalists, priests, laity, and others, and that the bishops of the Church do well when they, with courage, defend the Church’s teachings.

Of course I am not suggesting a moral equivalence between segregation and the use of the contraceptive pill.  They are very different moral issues.  This is a nuanced argument to show that the authorities to which Longley appeals (personal opinion, “conscience” of individuals, high placed individuals) have often been wrong.  But where the interpretation of the teachings of Christ and the natural moral law are concerned, the Pope (and the Bishops teaching in unity with the Pope) teaches with the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord and God.  Moreover, in specific circumstances he enjoys the charism of infallibility.

But perhaps the most egregious error in the Longley piece, egregious because of its extraordinary arrogance, is the attribution of base motives to the Pope and the idea that he, the Pope, had been corrected (“advised that a natural law argument was untenable”) but stubbornly went his own way.  The suggestion here that the Pope was motivated not so much by the truth in the exercise of his Holy Office as Supreme Teacher, but by a political imperative to protect the Church’s reputation as the authority where Catholic teaching is concerned.  They had advised the Pope that he was wrong and that should have been the end of the matter.  Here the opinions of the dissenters on the advisory committee are raised to the level of Holy Writ, of infallible teaching.  This probably would have come as a surprise to some of those persons because, while they were asked by the Pope for an opinion and gave it, I have no reason to believe that they all thought by virtue of being in a majority on an advisory committee they had the guarantee of truth.

The Pope was faced with the need to consider traditional Catholic teaching in the light of new developments in contraceptives, specifically the oral contraceptive pill.  In the light of the Church’s constant moral tradition the Pope provided that teaching having first sought and taken advice.  To suggest, as Longley does, that the Pope was governed by a desire to protect the Church’s teaching authority even though he knew better, represents detraction at its worst.  And it is none the better for it having been so self-righteously asserted without a skerrick of evidence cited in support of it.

What lies behind the Longley piece is the ineffable sense of the infallibility of the liberal ‘intelligentsia’.  “We are right and the Successor of St Peter has got it wrong!”  And this in 2010 when we have abundant evidence that the prophecies of social misery that Pope Paul VI (Humanae vitae n 17) warned about have come to pass!

Indeed contemporary attempts in the UK to impose contraception and abortion based sex education on the young are a graphic reminder of the Pope’s warnings:

Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by married people in the solution of a particular family difficulty? Who will prevent public authorities from favouring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.

At the beginning of his article, Longley indulges in a remarkable piece of intellectual sophistry.  Both progressives and conservatives are guilty of what he calls the “fundamentalist fallacy”.  This “fallacy” he describes as “an assumption that a sort of infallible magic belongs to the words on the page”.  But nowhere does Longley provide any evidence at all that the various interpretations of Newman are based on any such assumption.  Both sides are attempting to understand what Newman meant when he said what he said.  But Longley smugly positions himself as intellectually above all the “others”, although he singularly fails to tell us what is his preferred hermeneutic and why it is better than everyone else’s.  Is it that Longley believes that since the author is dead his words can be made to mean whatever we would like them to mean in our present time?  He doesn’t say.

So why not let Newman be allowed to speak for himself on the matter of conscience:

Conscience has rights because it has duties; but in this age, with a large portion of the public, it is the very right and freedom of conscience to dispense with conscience, to ignore a Lawgiver and Judge, to be independent of unseen obligations. It becomes a licence to take up any or no religion, to take up this or that and let it go again, to go to church, to go to chapel, to boast of being above all religions and to be an impartial critic of each of them. Conscience is a stern monitor, but in this century it has been superseded by a counterfeit, which the eighteen centuries prior to it never heard of, and could not have mistaken for it, if they had. It is the right of self-will. (Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, section 5 on Conscience)

Newman may well have been writing in the nineteenth century, but his words are even more apt in the twentieth century.  Humanae vitae may not have been around for Newman to have been able to consider it.  But the fundamental teaching of the Church on contraception certainly was, and was widely accepted throughout the Christian world.  It was not until 1930 when the Anglicans proposed a weakening of that teaching that the Catholic moral position on contraception was seriously challenged.  So Newman would undoubtedly have supported the Catholic moral teaching and would have been surprised that anyone would have thought to associate his name with dissent from it.

Finally, Longley attributes cowardice to the English bishops who settled, he says, for an easy life by allowing people to make their own decisions in the matter.  He sort of excuses their alleged moral cowardice by saying they really didn’t have much choice.  “Sackings of hundreds of dissenting priests and the excommunication of thousands of dissenting laity would have been a disaster for the Church.”  A disaster?  Really?  Why so?  Did not hundreds of dissenting priests and thousands of dissenting laity leave anyway?  And despite the moral failings of Mediaeval Christians at the time of the Reformation, the Church still continues her faithful witness to the truth.

When Jesus taught about the graphic reality of the Eucharist, that we would be eating his flesh and drinking his blood, “many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him” (John 6:66).  And when in 1968 the Vicar of Christ reiterated the Church’s moral teaching on contraception, many Christians drew back and no longer went to Church.  To be sure in a sex obsessed, hedonistic, and selfish culture the words of the Church seemed to many to be “hard”, just as the words of our Lord on divorce (Matthew 19:10) and the Eucharist were seen as “hard” sayings.  When Jesus noticed that many drew back from him he asked the Twelve whether they wished to go as well.  Simon Peter, who it could be reasonably said speaks for faithful Catholics now as then, said: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Clifford Longley’s contribution to muddled thinking notwithstanding, Newman remains an intellectual giant whose teaching on conscience continues to challenge us all.  And if Newman reminds us that not every opinion of every Pope is right and to be followed, he does not dissent from the need for a person’s conscience to be informed by the Gospel as it is presented to us in the authentic and universal Magisterium of the Catholic Church.  And if “infallibility” does not attach to every opinion of a Pope, then a fortiori neither does it attach to Clifford Longley’s opinions when he dissents from authentic Church teaching.  For which, Laus Deo!

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Patience and Confident Trust Are Needed

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It is understandable that there should be some nervous discussion about what the new Ordinariates will look like and which countries will be involved first.  After all, people are looking at the way their religious future will work out in the context of their understandable attachment to the Anglican Patrimony which is to be treasured for its theological richness, its liturgical beauty, and its pastoral sensitivity.  At the same time it seems to me that some of the discussion in Anglican circles about Ordinariates proceeds upon a number of misunderstandings.  The Apostolic Constitution is a response to a request for corporate reunion of groups of Anglicans.  The TAC is just such a group because it is organised as a proper ecclesial communion and, most importantly, has signed off on the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  This is as true in England as it is in other parts of the world.  The problem with Forward in Faith is that it is a loose alliance of people who agree on many things, but also disagree on other things.  It is not organised as an ecclesial communion with authority structures and is in no condition to apply for an Ordinariate.  This is a fortiori the case because FIF has not the constitutional structure, to enable it to sign off on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the sine qua non of applying for an Ordinariate.  And so of course it hasn't.  That being the case I would imagine that the application by the TAC in England for an Ordinariate will be considered on its merits in the same way as other TAC applications.  The situation of FIF is another matter altogether.

The second issue is that not everything in the Anglican Patrimony is consistent with union with Rome.  For example, the interminable liturgical variations among Anglicans even within the same Diocese, and the pontifications by self-appointed liturgical experts, understandable and all as it is in the context of Anglican history, must in the end give way to the acceptance of authority.  Put another way, Anglican liturgical congregationalism is not a part of the Patrimony that should be or could be brought into an Ordinariate.  Already the Holy See has made it clear that the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Mass used in the Latin Rite or Rites will be authorised for use in Ordinariates.  A further Rite drawing upon the Anglican Patrimony will also be authorised.  In the end these Rites must be accepted with docility.  The freedom here is that Christians can then get on with the business of offering beautiful Masses to the glory of God, pursuing personal holiness, evangelising non-Believers, and contributing to the furtherance of a more just and peaceful world.

Finally, I note that the TAC already uses the Catechism of the Catholic Church to catechise its own members, even more evidence of its ongoing sincere commitment to corporate reunion with the Holy See.  This is excellent.  But perhaps there could also be more patience.  It is important for members of the TAC to exhibit the same patience admirably demonstrated by TAC Primate Archbishop Hepworth.  In such an atmosphere the TAC and the CDF will more easily be enabled to carefully and calmly work through the process for the implementation of the Apostolic Constitution.  The docile acceptance of authority which should be the hallmark of faithful Catholics carries with it also confidence that the Holy Spirit will guide the Church to make wise decisions for the good order of the Ordinariates.  And the Ordinariates will happen for which laus Deo.

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Anglican Catholic and Roman Catholic Mutual Liturgical Enrichment

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I was ordained an Anglican priest in Adelaide, South Australia in 1970.  I served as an Anglican priest in Australia and the UK for 17 years before being received into Full Communion with the Catholic Church.  I know what it is to have celebrated the Anglican liturgy in its various forms.  The official form, when I was ordained, was that of the Book of Common Prayer of 1662.  As far as I know, almost nobody celebrated Holy Communion according to the text and rubrics of the Prayer Book.

The variations included something like the Prayer Book, the interim Rite (the Prayer Book service rearranged so that it expressed the Sacrifice of the Mass and so that it looked more like the Roman Rite), the English Missal (the Roman rite of the time, mostly in English), and the service from the 1928 Prayer Book.  By and large these liturgies were celebrated with dignity and reverence.

In the 1970s new Eucharistic liturgies began to be used in the ‘experimental phase’ that went on for many years.  These new liturgies were as protestant as the Book of Common Prayer, and accompanied by the usual liberal political correctness (eg so-called ‘inclusive’ language).

Many Anglo-Catholics were completely blind-sided by the advent of the Missal of Paul VI.  It was not what they were expecting from Rome and challenged liturgical developments in Anglicanism which, since the late nineteenth century, they had fought hard to reclaim from England's Catholic past.  Some celebrated the new Roman Rite, some stayed with the English Missal in one of its many possible variations, some stayed with the Prayer Book in one of its many variations, while others adapted to the new liturgies celebrating them using the rubrical directions of the new Roman Rite.

There was not, as far as I am aware, the same extent of liturgical madness as in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church.  Nevertheless one Anglican priest I knew had barbecue Masses, bikies’ Masses, animal Masses and so on.

The liturgical chaos in Anglicanism from the 1970s onwards was a problem.  But the problem was more to do with the text of the liturgy and women priest celebrants than the way in which those liturgies were celebrated.

Anglicanism, with its rich tradition of hymnody and its deeply ingrained sense of dignified worship, continued to enjoy beautiful music in most places while Catholic liturgy in Australia was too often accompanied by hymns or songs which were musically inferior and whose words were often trite beyond measure.  Even worse the music set to the Mass texts was trivial, superficial pop.  The effect of this was a debasement, a desacrilisation of the Eucharistic liturgy in many if not most Catholic parishes in Australia.  This in turn led to a lack of reverence at Mass with the emphasis more on people celebrating themselves as a community than the offering of the Sacrifice of the Mass as the actual liturgical texts clearly indicate.  Reverence to the Blessed Sacrament waned, with the tabernacle often banished to far away corners of the Church building.

Given a (forced) choice between sound liturgical texts and better music, many Anglo-Catholics preferred style to substance, while others did their best to retain both.  For some Anglicans it was a sad case of “salvation by good taste alone”!  Yet protestantised liturgical texts are not corrected merely because the rite is beautifully celebrated.

The best of Anglicanism has been retained in the conservative Anglo-Catholic parishes where substance and style are both respected.  The Ordinary Form is celebrated beautifully.  So is the Extraordinary Form via the English Missal.  A reconstituted Book of Common Prayer Mass (using the insights of the interim rite and perhaps also the Coverdale translation of the Roman Canon) has also been laudably retained and celebrated with dignity and beauty.

There is, though, nothing to be gained by Anglo-Catholics imagining a cultural superiority to Latin Rite Catholics.  That Traditional Anglicans have much culturally, religiously, and spiritually that is distinctive and that ought to be retained in the new Ordinariates is clear and Rome has recognised that.  But priests in the Ordinariates will also be able to celebrate both the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms.  And who can doubt the beauty of the new translation of the Ordinary Form soon to be universally available for English speaking people.

My point is that we should all abandon the unfair generalisations that have often got in the way of mutual respect.  Anglicans need a liturgy that is fully Catholic and fully Anglican.  It is the first bit which has always been a problem for Anglicans as evidenced by the various Prayer Books of 1549, 1552, 1559 and 1662.  Anglo-Catholics always knew they had to find ways to Catholicise their liturgy and it was to the Roman Use they typically looked.  In the aftermath of the liturgical madness that gripped many priests and religious communities following the Second Vatican Council, many Catholics have looked back into their Old Tradition to find liturgical renewal.  The Pope has encouraged this with his liberation of the Extraordinary Form. And the example of Traditional Anglicans in their liturgical celebrations should be appreciated and welcomed by all Catholics as the Ordinariates come into existence.

Now a Latin Rite priest I happily celebrate both the Ordinary form and the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.  And if I were to be asked to celebrate whatever is decided to be the form of the Anglican Rite in the Ordinariate I would happily and proudly do that as well.  And I certainly look forward to being reunited with my Anglican brothers and sisters at the altar of God and to once again experience the beauty and solemnity of Anglican Catholic worship.

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Mr. Goebbels, Sex Abuse, the Nazis and the Catholic Church

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This article by John L Allen Jr appeared on Apr. 17, 2010 in NCR Today.  It is of more than passing interest.

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Perhaps the most remarkable defense of Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church vis-à-vis the sexual abuse crisis to appear in recent weeks ironically never mentions the current pope, and it comes not from a senior Vatican official but a lay Italian sociologist of religion. In a nutshell, the suggestion – never made explicit, but clear nonetheless – is that today’s drumbeat of criticism of the church over “pedophile priests” amounts to a replay of a Nazi smear campaign.

Massimo Introvigne, who directs the international Center for Studies on New Religions, published an essay in the April 16 edition of L’Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian bishops, about a Nazi campaign in 1937 led by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels to discredit the Catholic Church following Pope Pius XI’s anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge. Introvigne argues that Goebbels created what sociologists would later call a “moral panic,” based on real facts, but facts which are distorted and amplified.

In the end, Introvigne says, the plan backfired – Goebbels’ attempt to smear the church generated more outrage than actual cases of sexual abuse in 1930s-era German Catholicism, which were reported in the German media and tried in German courts.

The following is an NCR translation of Introvigne’s essay, the Italian original of which may be found here: http://www.avvenire.it

Goebbels and the pedophile priests operation

In 1937 the Nazi propaganda minister organized a campaign to discredit the Catholic Church in response to the encyclical ‘Mit brennender Sorge.’ The head of the German military’s counter-espionage unit, Wilhelm Canaris, passed the documents to Pius XII.

By MASSIMO INTROVIGNE

“There are cases of sexual abuse that come to light every day against a large number of members of the Catholic clergy. Unfortunately it’s not a matter of individual cases, but a collective moral crisis that perhaps the cultural history of humanity has never before known with such a frightening and disconcerting dimension. Numerous priests and religious have confessed. There’s no doubt that the thousands of cases which have come to the attention of the justice system represent only a small fraction of the true total, given that many molesters have been covered and hidden by the hierarchy.”

An editorial from a great secular newspaper in 2010? No: It’s a speech of May 28, 1937, by Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), Minister of Propaganda for the Third Reich. This speech, which had a large international echo, was the apex of a campaign launched by the Nazi regime to discredit the Catholic Church by involving it in a scandal of pedophile priests.

Two hundred and seventy-six religious and forty-nine diocesan priests were arrested in 1937. The arrests took place in all the German dioceses, in order to keep the scandals on the front pages of the newspapers.

On March 10, 1937, with the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, Pope Pius XI (1857-1939) condemned the Nazi ideology. At the end of the same month, the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda headed by Goebbels launched a campaign against the sexual abuses of priests. The design and administration of this campaign are known to historians thanks to documents which tell a story worthy of the best spy novels.

In 1937, the head of the counter-espionage service of the German military was Admiral Wilhelm Canaris (1887-1945). He became gradually anti-Nazi, and at the time was maturing the convictions which led him to organize the failed assassination attempt against Hitler in 1944, following which he was hanged in 1945. Canaris disapproved of Goebbels’ maneuver against the Church, and instructed a Catholic lawyer named Josef Müller (1878-1979) to carry to Rome a series of highly secret documents on the subject.

In different phases, Müller – before he was arrested and sent to the Dachau extermination camp, where he survived, and later became the post-war Minister of Justice in Bavaria – carried the secret documents to Pius XII (1876-1958), who asked the Society of Jesus to study them.

With the approval of the Secretary of State, the study of the Nazi plot against the Church was entrusted to the German Jesuit Walter Mariaux (1894-1963), who had inspired an anti-Nazi organization in Germany called “Pauluskreis.” He was later prudently sent as a missionary in Brazil and in Argentina. There, as leader of the Marian Congregation, he exercised his influence over an entire generation of lay Catholics, among whom was the noted Brazilian Catholic thinker Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira (1908-1995), who attended his group in São Paulo. In 1940, in London in English and in Argentina in Spanish, Mariaux published two volumes on anti-Catholic persecution by the Third Reich under the pseudonym “Testis Fidelis.” They contained over seven hundred pages of documents with comments, which aroused great emotion in the entire world.

The expression “moral panic” was only coined by sociologists in the 1970s to identify a social alarm created as a kind of art, accomplished by amplifying real facts and exaggerating their numbers through statistical folklore, as well as “discovering” and presenting as “new” events which in reality are already known and which date to the past. There are real events at the base of the panic, but their number is systematically distorted.

Even without the benefit of modern sociology, Goebbels responded to the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge in 1937 with a textbook case of the creation of a moral panic.

As always in moral panics, the facts are not totally invented. Prior to the encyclical there were some cases in Germany of abuse of minors. Mariaux himself considered a religious in the school of Bad Reichenall guilty, as well as a lay teacher, a gardener and a janitor, who were condemned in 1936, although he believed that the sanction imposed by the Ministry of Public Instruction in Bavaria – revoking the authorization to run scholastic institutes of four religious orders – to be entirely disproportionate, and he linked it to the desire of the regime to undercut Catholic schools. Also in the case of the Franciscans of Waldbreitbach, in Rhineland, Mariaux was open to the hypothesis that the accused were guilty, although later historians have not excluded the possibility that they were framed by the Nazis.

The cases, which were few, but real, produced a very strong reaction from the episcopate. On June 2, 1936, the Bishop of Münster – Blessed Clemens August von Galen (1878-1946), who was the soul of Catholic resistance to Nazism, and who was beatified in 2005 by Benedict XVI – had a declaration read at all the Sunday Masses in which he expressed “pain and sadness” for these “abominable crimes” that “cover our Holy Church with ignominy.” On August 20, 1936, after the events at Waldbreitbach, the German episcopate published a joint pastoral letter in which they “several condemned” those responsible and underlined the cooperation of the Church with the tribunals of the state.

By the end of 1936, the severe measures taken by the German bishops in reaction to these very few cases, some of which were doubtful, seemed to have resolved the real problems. Submissively, the bishops also pointed out that among teachers in the state schools and in the very youth organization of the regime, the Hitler Youth, the cases of condemnations for sexual abuses were much more numerous than among the Catholic clergy.

It was the anti-Nazi encyclical of Pius XI that led to the great campaign of 1937. Mariaux proved it publishing highly detailed instructions sent by Goebbels to the Gestapo, the political police of the Third Reich, and above all to journalists, just a few days after the publication of Mit brennender Sorge, inviting them to “reopen” the cases from 1936 and also older cases, constantly recalling them to public opinion. Goebbels also ordered the Gestapo to find witnesses willing to accuse a certain number of priests, threatening them with immediate arrest if they didn’t collaborate, even if they were children.

The proverbial phrase “there’s a judge in Berlin,” which in German tradition indicates trust in the independence of the court system from the political power of the moment, applied – within certain limits – even in the Third Reich. Of the 325 priests and religious arrested after the encyclical, only 21 were condemned, and it’s all but certain that among them some were falsely accused. Virtually all of them ended up in extermination camps, where many died.

The effort to discredit the Catholic Church on an international scale through accusations of immorality and pedophilia among priests, however, did not succeed.

Thanks to the courage of Canaris and his friends, and to the persistence of the Jesuit detective Mariaux, the truth was already out during the war. The perfidy of the campaign of Goebbels aroused more indignation than the eventual guilt of some religious. The father of all moral panics in the area of pedophile priests blew up in the hands of the Nazi propagandists who had tried to organize it.
[John Allen is NCR senior correspondent. His e-mail address is jallen@ncronline.org.]

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Anglicans Reclaiming Lost Patrimony?

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Anglicanorum coetibus, in the minds of it staunchest critics, is just a Roman takeover at the expense of the Anglican patrimony.  Indeed the Anglican patrimony, according to its various critics, either does not exist or, if it does, the TAC and others are forsaking that patrimony as they surrender to the Roman obedience.

The word patrimony refers of course to what one has inherited from one’s father.  And since the Church of England inherited the Christian Faith from the Catholic Church then part of the Anglican or English patrimony is the Catholic Faith.  Anglo-Catholics sought to recover access to that patrimony in the Oxford Movement.  But in the pre-Reformation Church in England, there was always an English way of ‘doing the Catholic Faith’.

Over the coming months I will be looking at various aspects of this Anglican patrimony which should not, in my opinion, be read down only to include Reformation influences which, in any case, have continued to be disputed questions to the present day.

In terms of regaining what has been lost, I want to say something about the moral teaching of the Church.  The Reformation was largely about doctrinal and organisational matters.  Moral teachings were really not at issue.  And so part of the Anglican patrimony is the Church’s rejection of contraception as morally licit.

It is a fact that until the early part of the last century, no Church gave moral approval to contraception.

That this was the case is well exemplified by Resolution 68 of the 1920 Lambeth Conference which dealt with “Problems of Marriage and Sexual Morality”:

The Conference, while declining to lay down rules which will meet the needs of every abnormal case, regards with grave concern the spread in modern society of theories and practices hostile to the family. We utter an emphatic warning against the use of unnatural means for the avoidance of conception, together with the grave dangers – physical, moral and religious – thereby incurred, and against the evils with which the extension of such use threatens the race. In opposition to the teaching which, under the name of science and religion, encourages married people in the deliberate cultivation of sexual union as an end in itself, we steadfastly uphold what must always be regarded as the governing considerations of Christian marriage. One is the primary purpose for which marriage exists, namely the continuation of the race through the gift and heritage of children; the other is the paramount importance in married life of deliberate and thoughtful self-control.

We desire solemnly to commend what we have said to Christian people and to all who will hear.

However, a mere ten years later, the Anglican Bishops at the 1930 Lambeth Conference abandoned Catholic teaching albeit in a limited number of cases.  The decision of the 1930 Lambeth Conference to allow the use of contraception in certain circumstances amounted to a rejection of the Anglican patrimony, what the Anglicans had inherited from the pre-Reformation Church.

Charles Gore the then Bishop of Oxford described what had happened in these terms:

Here [1920 Lambeth Conference] we have a refusal to go into detail about abnormal 'hard cases,' but a quite general condemnation of contraceptive methods. The recent Conference [1930 Lambeth Conference], on the contrary, has given a restricted approval of them. … Resolution 15 (carried, it is noted, by a majority of 193 votes over 67, which would seem to imply that there must have been some forty bishops who did not vote), which contemplates cases where 'there is a clearly felt obligation to limit or avoid parenthood,' while giving the preference to the self-discipline and self-control which makes abstinence from intercourse possible, and recording the 'strong condemnation' by the Conference 'of the use of methods of conception-control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience,' yet admits the legitimacy of these methods 'where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence.'

This is no doubt a restricted admission, but it is a definite withdrawal of the quite general condemnation expressed in the Resolution of 1920, and I fear it will be the only part of the contribution of the recent Conference to the question of sexual relations which will be seriously effective.

History has proved Gore’s fears to have been well-founded.  Today it is a commonplace among Anglicans to accept heterodox teaching on contraception.

The decision of groups of Anglicans to accept the opportunity provided by Anglicanorum coetibus is a decision to regain parts of the Anglican patrimony disregarded, indeed reprobated, by many mainstream Anglican bishops.  The moral teaching of the Church, part of the Anglican patrimony, has been disowned by ecclesial communities which have approved de facto relationships, same-sex unions, and contraception and abortion.  Indeed, as Pope Paul VI pointed out in Humanae vitae, the contraceptive mentality leads inexorably to the justification of the sex-for-pleasure only mentality, and therefore a justification for non-marital sexual intercourse.

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