Fr. Dwight Longenecker has written to share his latest Ordinariate-themed post: two lists of opportunities and patrimonial tidbits both the Anglican Ordinariates and Holy Mother Church will receive or share as full communion between them comes to fruition. There are some interesting items on each list. What would you add to Fr. Longenecker's collections?
Father Holiday, thank for your very thoughtful reflection, Solus Anglicanus. I hope you will consider contributing to this forum more often. Thank you also for your kind words.
A challenge for us as a Christian community is to make sure that we are always speaking to each other with courtesy and yes, with precision. Elsewhere in this forum several of us have recently had a discussion about precise use of technical terms. I am humbled by my own errors and am well reminded to take the trouble to choose my words more carefully.
A couple of thoughts about conversion and nomenclature:
I.
I understand why many Christians who come into full communion bristle at the use of the term "convert." That word, used in that way, does not properly apply to them, as it denigrates the sincerity, the dignity and the grace of their prior faith practices as followers of Christ.
There are a couple of things that can be done to move away from a practice that is understandably offensive. First, we can all strive to use language more precisely. Don't say "convert" when it does not apply.
The second thing that could be done — and it would be a real service to those who are sincerely confused on this point — would be for our bishops and pastors to rethink the way people are received. Since the apostolic era, the Church has had a sense of a catechumate, persons of different cult who are discerning the Faith and contemplating requesting baptism. Since the Great Schism, the Church has understood that this is a very different situation from that of baptized faithful in impaired communion who are contemplating coming into full communion.
Then, at just the moment in history when many Church leaders decided that formal catechism instruction for its members had ceased to be "relevant," along came the instructional model of RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults), which in practice, and despite the transparently clear meaning of its name, is indiscriminately applied to a wide range of people whose faith and pastoral needs vary greatly.
Drop in to an RCIA class at your local parish and you are likely to find a lively mix of Episcopalians, Lutherans, Baptists, Mormons, Jews and others, all of them inquiring sincerely, and all of them entitled to respectful treatment of their present beliefs. And the fact is, the Episcopalians and the Lutherans are baptized Christians, the Baptists may or may not be baptized but are thoroughly and sincerely professed Christians, while the rest are genuine catechumens.
We correctly apply the term "convert" to the catechumens (if they go all the way). But we treat the inquiring Christians identically. In many parishes we exclude them all, Christian and pagan alike, from the greatest mystery of the Faith (even if they have been memorializing it in separation all of their lives), publicly dismissing them after the Gospel to go off to lay-led rap sessions at which they seek to "break open the Word."
Can we blame the people in the pews (John and Mary Catholic, as one bishop disparages us) if we think of all the newcomers as "converts," if we fail to recognize that some of the "converts" are our Christian brothers and sisters who in some cases may be better catechized than we are?
Better pastoral leadership would help us all better understand the true nature of the path that our returning brethren are walking, and would make us more likely to be sensitive toward them.
The parishes of the Pastoral Provision have, not surprisingly given their own histories, proven to be quite good at welcoming and instructing inquirers. (And quite good at instructing sincere but under-catechized cradle Catholics, too.)
What will the future practice of the Ordinariate be in this regard? Well, at the risk of being prideful for an institution that does not yet even exist, it is safe to predict that this may be another area in which returning Anglicans can provide a good example to the rest of the Church. (We can be certain from what he has written that Fr. Holiday will.) With a sensitivity that comes from their awareness of theirs and their people’s own journey, our Ordinariate clergy can provide pastorally sensitive and doctrinally sound instruction and reception that will properly serve the inquirers who come to them, and perhaps also provide an example to RCIA-administering parishes.
II.
The word conversion has a second meaning, as in "the lifelong journey of conversion." We cease to be candidates for technical conversion to Christianity when we are baptized. But, soon after baptism, our souls are again stained by personal sin, and from there we have a very long and difficult walk in our moral lives as Christians.
In the West we have the terms "conversion" and "sanctification;” in the East they have the more mysterious and perhaps more powerful term "deification" (Theosis). We sinners say "conversion" even though we never fully convert, we say "sanctification" even though we generally stop short of moral purity, and we say "deification" because we seek to become more like God (and certainly not because we think we can become God.)
When used in this sense, the term conversion is not an insult at all, but a tribute to our sincere resolution to do better. In this sense of the word, none of us are truly "converts," we are just well-intentioned works in progress.
I came across this quote in Andrew Rabel's report in Inside the Vatican Magazine on the recent Australian Ordinariate informational gathering:
Archbishop Hepworth said, “The Apostolic Constitution deliberately avoids the use of the word Roman, repeating a Vatican II ecclesiology of communion which resonates with Anglicans.”
This seems to correspond with a notion which, on numerous occasions, I have heard expounded by the TAC Primate and other proponents of a rather singular interpretation of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus and the meaning of the (all-important) word communion.
In every legal sense of the term, Ordinariate Anglicans will be Roman Catholic — members of the Latin Rite and subject to law of this Church in everything not superseded by the Apostolic Constitution. Rather than embracing this fact, some have gone so far as to describe the personal ordinariates as somehow being distinct churches sui juris in everything but name.
I fully understand the nuances of encouraging reticent Anglican congregations to accept the idea of becoming Roman Catholic; it is this "new ecclesiology" — now attributed to Vatican II — that troubles me.
In what way does the Apostolic Constitution represent a new ecclesiology? If it does, what are its ramifications for the Universal Church and where does it stand in the light of Tradition? Does the absence of the term "Roman" from Anglicanorum Coetibus signify anything at all? I think that this needs to be unpacked.
[I also think that the mindset brought about by this new ecclesiology underlies the deep hurt and anxiety now being felt in a number of jurisdictions of the TAC. Perhaps discussion here can, in charity, be an encouragement to our brethren who now find themselves bewildered.]
Today as we rejoice in the Communion of the Saints of God, we might do well also to consider what Bishop Peter Elliott, Australian delegate for Anglicanorum Coetibus has to say in The Messenger about Communion, and our options as Catholic Anglicans.
Bishop Peter Elliott celebrates Mass in the Extraordinary Form.
…it is a matter of some urgency to clarify the options that confront traditional Anglo-Catholics at this time. At first sight there seem to be four options: 1. Rome, via the Ordinariate or by personal reconciliation; 2. Eastern Orthodoxy; 3. the Continuing Anglicans; and, 4. remaining in communion with Canterbury.
However these options fall into two groups. If you take either of the first two options, you are entering communion with traditional apostolic Churches which understand the Church in terms of communion. In the second two options you are either joining some form of independent association of continuing Anglicans or you are choosing to remain part of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
The key word is “communion”. On that we can all agree. Across the four options, in varying degrees, this is a shared understanding of what it means to be a member of the Church. But communion as a visible reality depends on bishops.
He turns his searchlight on the option of hanging on at all costs; the option being encouraged, it seems, by the Society of SS Hilda and Wilfrid:
An ecclesiology of communion also throws light on the last option, that is, when some Anglo-Catholics choose, even reluctantly, to remain in communion with Canterbury, “come what may” as they say. Note that I only refer to convinced traditional Anglo-Catholics. I do not include those Anglicans who, in conscience, do not hold to the necessity of apostolic order as taught by the Tractarians and their successors, that is, that bishops are of the esse of the Church.
Hard questions can be asked. Could it be said that Anglo-Catholics who choose “to remain” have embraced congregationalism? Do they contradict their own Tractarian insistence on “our apostolic descent”? Are they now saying that the Church is a collection of local congregations of those who maintain Catholic doctrine and sacramental practices? In this perspective, each parish becomes a Church in itself. But how can that be? What would St Paul, St Ignatius of Antioch and all the Fathers of East and West, say about this?
The vicar and parishioners can dig in and hold on, but others may ask whether they are in “the trenches” — or just down a bunker? They can ignore the bishop and persistently regard their parish as a Church in itself, but whether they like it or not, official Anglicanism carefully maintains the forms of apostolic order. Inevitably the day will come when empirical reality conquers. The vicar will retire or die and. because this is pretend congregationalism, the parishioners know that they have no authority to provide a successor. Then the bishop they pretended did not exist, will act. He or she will send them a vicar not of their choosing or even close their church. Do not these sad projections expose the unreality of the fourth option –when chosen by traditional Anglo-Catholics?
I would encourage you to read Bishop Peter's entire piece: but here is how he speaks towards the end of it about the practical steps needed for those considering the Ordinariate:
The steps towards establishing Ordinariates in the United Kingdom, the US, Canada and Australia are well under way. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has recently approved programs of preparation for the laity and formation for the clergy who intend to be reconciled through the Ordinariate. Here the key resource is the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Clergy will also need to familiarise themselves with the magisterial sources for systematic and moral theology and the Code of Canon Law. The “magisterium at your finger tips” may be found in an excellent series of paperback volumes, Precis of Official Catholic Teaching, obtainable from the United States. These handy books take us into the living teaching voice of the Popes and Councils. I also recommend the new United States Catholic Catechism for Adults.
To establish the Ordinariates, two stages are envisaged next year: 1. the reconciliation and ordination of clergy who have applied for Orders in the Ordinariate and been accepted, then 2. at a later date, the first reconciliations of the lay faithful. The clergy will therefore be in place to welcome and minister to former Anglicans in a community that maintains the familiar Anglican patrimony of worship, spirituality, scholarship and pastoral care. We saw how that patrimony has enriched English Catholicism during the magnificent papal visit to Scotland and England, particularly during the beatification of Blessed John Henry Newman.
More concrete details will appear soon. I believe the model will be set by what proceeds in the United Kingdom in terms of a clear time line built around the two stages. However, at present it is important to keep informed, for example through circles such as the Friends of the Ordinariate.
Read the entire essay at The Messenger.
