Posts tagged Personal Ordinariates
Theologian Says Married Priests Will Always Be Exceptional
Mar 10th
Zenit is carrying an interview with Fr. Laurent Touze, spiritual theology professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, who spoke at a two-day conference held last week entitled, “Priestly Celibacy: Theology and Life,” and sponsored by the Congregation for the Clergy as an event for the Year for Priests.
The interview is especially interesting inasmuch as the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus and its Complementary Norms clearly foresee not only the reception of married Anglican bishops, priests, and deacons coming into full communion with the Catholic Church, but also the possibility of the promotion of married men (from within the personal ordinariates) as candidates for Holy Orders in the future (AC VI. § 2; CN 6. § 1.); far from the Church becoming more permissive of non-celibate clergy, Fr. Touze suggests that an ever-deepening understanding of priestly celibacy portends just the opposite. Most astonishingly, Fr. Touze claims that priestly celibacy ranks somewhere between a discipline and a dogma, intimating that what was once considered disciplinary could one day be regarded as revealed truth. According to Fr. Touze, the practice of a married parish clergy in the Eastern Churches is a corruption based on a manipulation of texts, is contrary to Holy Tradition, and is permitted only by way of exception to the universal norm.
ZENIT: Is celibacy a dogma of faith or a discipline?
Father Touze: Neither one nor the other. It isn’t a dogma of faith because we see married priests in the Church today such as, for example, some [priests] of the Eastern Catholic Church. Not all but some admit married priests. Or as has been reminded recently in the Holy Father’s motu propio “Anglicanorum coetibus,” published last Nov. 4: Among the ex-Anglicans who want to return to communion with the Catholic Church, there will be married priests admitted.
ZENIT: With this measure, do you think that one day, celibacy might become voluntary also for priests of the Latin rite?
Father Touze: No, because the Church is understanding more and more the relation between priesthood, episcopate and celibacy. It is something that could be likened to the revelation of a dogma, though it isn’t so at this time; one tends increasingly to understand that a practice must be promoted among all priests and also among Eastern Catholic priests which is truly similar to the one lived in the first centuries.
ZENIT: But in the first centuries there were many married priests, including the Apostles?
Father Touze: Studies have convincingly shown that this must be questioned: Celibacy of all clerics wasn’t lived, but from the moment of inclusion in the priestly order these men had to live continence with the permission of their wives, because this was a commitment of the couple.
ZENIT: Why, then, are exceptions made?
Father Touze: Historically because there has been a manipulation of texts and I believe a bad translation that the Eastern Church, which has separated from Rome and has recognized that what they had declared contrary to tradition, could be accepted. In this connection there truly are some exceptions. The Church discovered that she had the possibility of admitting exceptions but that these should be understood as such. Respectably, as the Second Vatican Council stressed, there are very holy married priests in the Eastern Catholic Churches who have contributed much to the history of the Church and to the faith in times of persecution, but they are truly exceptions and must be understood as such.
ZENIT: However, these exceptions are not made with bishops. Does episcopal celibacy have a special meaning?
Father Touze: Undoubtedly. It is very different, both theologically as well as historically. What’s more, with the constitution “Lumen Gentium,” Vatican II defined that the episcopate is the fullness of the sacrament of Holy Orders. It is necessary to discover the specificity of the episcopate and, hence, episcopal celibacy. And it can be demonstrated with the fact that for the celibacy or continence of a bishop an exception has never been made.
This is something studied by the Church on which the Roman pontificate has had to reflect more recently in contemporary history on two occasions: after the French Revolution, where some bishops, or better, former bishops, asked to marry.
This has been studied and it has been said that it is impossible, that this had never been done, that at stake was the dogmatic issue. Or still recently with the ordination of married men and married bishops that were effected in former Czechoslovakia by imposition or with the pressure of the Communist Party in power. There also the Church affirmed on the fact that the bishop must always be celibate or if he had married before his ordination because he would have to live continence from the moment of his episcopal ordination.
[Translation by ZENIT]
What do you think about Fr. Touze’s thinking and what ramifications might it have for the life of the personal ordinariates in the future?
Isolated Groups of Anglicans
Mar 9th
Most of the Anglican groups, in the Anglican Communion or the TAC, live in countries where their bishops have territorial dioceses. It would certainly be assumed that one or more Ordinariates would be established in those countries more or less corresponding with the formerly Anglican jurisdictions concerned.
There are some very small groups of Anglicans living in countries where there is no such jurisdiction that would provide the ‘material’ for an Ordinariate. In the TAC, there are certainly some communities that are far too insignificant. For example, other than my chaplaincy on the European Continent, there is a tiny community in Japan. There is a small community in New Zealand under the able leadership of Canon Ian Woodman. Unfortunately, one of their priests seems to have aligned with another Anglican body. There must be others dotted around the world.
In the Traditional Anglican Communion, there is a canonical entity called the Patrimony of the Primate, allowing priests to be under the Primate’s jurisdiction without residing in his territorial jurisdiction (Anglican Catholic Church of Australia). This is my own canonical title within the TAC. It would be interesting to see whether such a concept can continue to exist under the Ordinariates.
In the 1970’s and 80’s, there were Catholic priests in Rome who made it their business to help more traditionally-minded seminarians to find a canonical jurisdiction in which they could be ordained. They found that bishops in places like southern Italy and Eastern Europe were less weighed down by diocesan bureaucracy and were inclined to incardinate clerics without requiring them to reside in their dioceses. The seminarians then did their studies in Rome, were ordained and returned to their own countries as priests. It was then a relatively simple matter for one of these priests to go to the local diocesan bishop, show his papers and obtain permission for ministry in that jurisdiction. The diocesan bishop has no need to consult his Council for such a simple thing, as he would if it were a question of incardinating that priest.
This was a canonical anomaly that was tolerated for a time, since canon law was observed and there were no breaches of discipline. Eventually, it became necessary and possible to establish permanent institutes and societies for these priests to give them a canonical framework and a more normal priestly life. The same principle holds when it comes to pastoral ministries: they obtain permission from the local diocesan bishop. Some diocesan bishops are mean and stingy, and others are generous to the point of allowing a personal parish in application of Summorum Pontificum.
The Ordinariates will be different, as they will enjoy the canonical status described by the Pope in Anglicanorum Coetibus. Perhaps for an isolated cleric or a group that is too insignificant to be considered for being made into an Ordinariate, it will be possible to belong to an Ordinariate in another country. With such canonical status recognised in the Church, it may be possible to collaborate in some way with the local Catholic diocesan bishop, or at least obtain permission to minister to the faithful.
I was tempted to call this article Crumbs from the Master’s Table!
How many TAC folk are in this kind of situation? Have you any ideas about how these things can be organised?
Unofficial Text of Cardinal Levada’s Address
Mar 8th
The Salt + Light blog has an unofficial transcription of the talk (“Five Hundred Years After St. John Fisher: Benedict’s Ecumenical Initiatives to Anglicans”) which Cardinal Levada delivered on Saturday evening at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. Here are some excerpts. My emphases.
The recent Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus, establishing—I don’t need to translate this, I suppose, it won’t come out so well in translation: “groups of Anglicans”—establishing personal ordinariates for groups of Anglicans seeking full communion with the Catholic Church, was not created in a vacuum. For many Anglicans, the possibility opened by this initiative has seemed to be a logical development of the official dialogues between the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church during the 45 year period since the end of the Second Vatican Council. Any discussion of Pope Benedict’s initiatives regarding Anglicans might therefore begin with a glance at this important history.
Cardinal Levada presents the Apostolic Constitution as the natural outgrowth of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) dialogue, of which he proceeds to provide a general outline. He recounts the several stages of the ARCIC process, set against the backdrop of the collapse of Catholic Faith and Apostolic Order in the Anglican Communion, of which women’s ordination and the homosexual movement are perhaps the most notable symptoms.
For Catholic Anglicans, he hits the nail squarely on the head.
The fundamental issue here, as many have noted, is the question of authority. This may be briefly summed up in the following two points. Does the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and in Scripture intend to let us know God’s will in a way that requires our obedience (for example, the imitation of Christ, the Ten Commandments)? And secondly, has God, in Christ, left His Church, founded on the Apostles, an authority by which it can assure that can know the correct meaning of the revelation, amidst sometimes varying human interpretations (for example, the sensus fidei, the ecumenical councils, the Magisterium of the Pope and bishops)?
The bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion have found the expression of the Church’s Magisterium in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “the most complete and authentic expression and application of the catholic faith in this moment of time” (as they put it in their original petition for corporate reunion).
Pope John Paul’s Apostolic Constitution Fidei depositum promulgating the Catechism, points out that, “It is meant to support ecumenical efforts that are moved by the holy desire for the unity of all Christians, showing carefully the content and wondrous harmony of the catholic faith.”
As we met with Anglican consultants in the preparation of Anglicanorum coetibus, these bishops and theologians themselves proposed the Catechism of the Catholic Church as the norm of faith for the corporate groups of Anglicans who might avail themselves this new instrument for full corporate union with the Catholic Church. Thus, I would also characterize the Catechism as an ecumenical initiative of Pope Benedict XVI and of his predecessor.
As Cardinal Levada notes, far from the Catholic Church imposing the Catechism on incoming Anglicans, it was the Anglican inquirers themselves, chief among them the bishops of the TAC, that suggested the text as a doctrinal standard for any future reunion. In Anglicanorum Coetibus, the Holy See is simply echoing the words of the Portsmouth Letter of the TAC College of Bishops.
Turning to the Anglican Communion, we can see the many elements that impel toward full unity: regard for the unifying role of the episcopate, an esteem for the sacramental life, a similar sense of catholicity as a mark of the Church, and a vibrant missionary impulse, to name but a few. These are by no means absent from the Catholic Church, but the particular manner in which they are found in Anglicanism adds to the Catholic understanding of a common gift. These considerations help us appreciate the Catholic Church’s insistence that there is no opposition between ecumenical action and the preparation of people for full reception into Catholic communion.
I like this! As Anglicanorum Coetibus itself states, the “liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion [soon to reside] within the Catholic Church” are “a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared.” The particular gift of the Anglican tradition will serve to enhance the common gift of revealed truth already subsisting in the Catholic Church– but imperfectly or incompletely expressed so long as brethren are separated from the One Fold.
Indeed, the first ecumenical action logically leads to the second: reception into full communion. Unitatis Redintegratio, that is, the decree on ecumenism, asserts that almost all people long for the one visible church of God, that truly Universal Church whose mission is to convert the whole world to the Gospel so that the world may be saved to the glory of God.
The Apostolic Constitution is the consummation of the Anglican-Roman Catholic conversation. The end of genuine ecumenical dialogue is reincorporation into the fullness of communion with the Successor of St. Peter and the bishops in communion with him.
This is the first time that the Catholic Church has reached out in response to men and women of Western Christianity who desire full communion and accorded them not just a place among many, but a distinctive place. This is not surprising. Twenty-eight years ago, the great historian of ecumenism, Fr. Yves Congar, wrote that if we take seriously that the Holy Spirit has been working among our fellow Christians, we have to take seriously the ways they express their beliefs. When their particular expression of faith adds harmony to ours, and ours add harmony to theirs, the logical step is to pass from talking longingly about unity to living in unity, a unity whose essence is revealed in harmonious diversity. The unity Christ desires is visible; it is not elusive or even unreachable. Likewise, the totality that Christ desires is visible. These assertions lie behind the famous teachings of Lumen gentium that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, but it is equally true to say that the unity Christ desires for His Church can always be added to, just as there is room for another instrument in the orchestra. The totality that Christ desires does exist in terms of the elements of sanctification and truth that the Church possesses, but the sharing of those elements, then the manner of celebrating them, is still far from complete. We sometimes do not know the value of what we possess and we need the spirit-filled insights of others to recognize the treasures we have.
While taking care to disabuse his audience of too strict a comparison between the Eastern Catholic Churches and the Anglican personal ordinariates (which are situated firmly in the tradition and law of the Latin Rite), Cardinal Levada makes it clear that the new structures are revolutionary in the life of the Catholic Church. The personal ordinariates facilitate the reunion of Anglican groups which will retain their distinctive gifts and corporate identity, sharing the elements of sanctification and truth in ways that will strengthen the witness of the Church in the world.
Ottawa Citizen Reports on Cardinal Levada’s Kingston Talk
Mar 8th
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.
National Catholic Register Reports on U.S. Ordinariate Request
Mar 7th
ORLANDO, Fla. — The bishops of the Anglican Church in America have voted to accept Pope Benedict XVI’s invitation to bring their 3,000 members into the Catholic Church.
The unanimous vote of eight members of the House of Bishops, who met in Orlando, Fla., brings 120 parishes in four dioceses across the country into the Church.
Also present at the March 3 vote and in support of it were representatives of “Anglican use” parishes admitted on a one-by-one basis to the Catholic Church in accordance with the Pastoral Provision of Pope John Paul II in 1980.
The move is seen as significant for both the “AngloCatholics” in the Anglican Church in America and the worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion — and the Catholic Church.
“We are returning to the Roman Catholic Church as community with a common past and a common future,” commented Christian Campbell, a Florida lay member of the Anglican Church in America and coordinator of a blog called theanglocatholic.com.
Reflections on Liturgy and Much More
Mar 6th
As some of the older clergy in both Anglican and Catholic traditions are what I would call ‘1970’s dinosaurs’, still thinking about what needs to be discarded in order to be relevant to modern man, some of the younger folk are labouring to recover what the older men spent their careers on destroying. We have recently discussed the language of the liturgy, namely archaic and modern English. Language is important, but not the only consideration in the liturgy.
One of the very first articles I wrote for The Anglo-Catholic was on the Eastward Position. There is also an extremely interesting article in The New Liturgical Movement on Bringing Verticality and Presence back to Free-standing Altars. In our pilgrimage to the Catholic Church, we are obviously concerned for our Anglican patrimony. We should also take Catholic patrimony to heart, the very patrimony that Pope Benedict XVI is trying to recover – and for which he needs the help of Anglicans. It is a task for which men of vision and energy are needed, men who are capable of seeing far beyond the confines of the ‘establishment’ box which perhaps nurtured them.
The concept of the ‘horizontal’ liturgy is hard to explain without an illustration. I have carefully avoided the caricatures many traditionalists choose of clown masses or other such extreme abuses. This is a run-of-the-mill concelebrated Mass one would find in the vast majority of Catholic churches in the world. The main celebrant is wearing a chasuble, and the concelebrants are wearing albs and stoles. What strikes me in this scene is the horizontality of everything. The altar table has nothing on it other than the cloth, the chalice, paten and ciborium (or a metal dish), a missal and perhaps a microphone. The candlesticks are free-standing and the crucifix is off to one side. Asymmetry is often a device for destroying verticality. One very often comes across a pair of stubby candles on one end of the altar (facing the people) and the crucifix on the other end, the microphone in the middle. Here in France, a common arrangement is the chalice and paten on a corporal on the side of the altar facing the people, and the missal in the centre of the altar between the priest and the corporal. Everything is symbolic.
My objective here is not to raise polemics against the modern Roman rite, but to highlight the fact of an emerging tendency within our journey to Rome. Most of us in the TAC are somewhat more ‘traditionalist’ in our liturgical orientations and geared to contributing towards a revival of traditional forms of the liturgy. I think most of us are much more tolerant in regard to the other emerging ‘tendency’ among us that is more inclined to melt into the landscape of contemporary English Catholicism. We should be tolerant and engage in dialogue, that progress be made in our learning and our spirituality. At the same time, I am convinced of the necessity for us to have clear and lucid minds. The world to which we are walking – the Catholic Church – is a difficult one, and we must proceed without romantic ideas of a ‘perfect’ Church as was often dreamt of in the nineteenth century. The Catholic Church (or at least her Pope and the more lucid bishops and clergy) is seeking to recover her own identity and sacredness in the liturgy.
I respect Anglicans who have opted for the modern Roman rite, knowing that they frequently celebrate it in a reform of the reform spirit using traditional music and celebrating with a profound sense of the sacred. I have already said that I am prepared to celebrate the modern Roman rite in situations where it would be the right response to a specific pastoral need. Like the good priests presently in the Church of England, I would interpret the texts and ceremonies in the light of Tradition. It can be done. However, I am convinced that the liturgical spirit can be fully recovered in the Church by the mutual inter-influence of a number of rites, as the Pope has allowed through Summorum Pontificum.
So it should be in the future Ordinariates. How it will all work out is not up to me, but up to men with authority and much more wisdom and experience than I. However, I am positive and hopeful that everything will continue to be impregnated with a spirit of generosity and pastoral welcome. I certainly await the day when it will be possible to minister alongside the many heroic priests here in France who have suffered everything but dungeon, fire and sword for their priestly vocations and pastoral charges.
We must work to understand each other, and walk forward in our long Lent of 2010, perhaps the most historic Lent of our lives, and remembering those who died before seeing the wonders we see today.
“Be Not Afraid!” As We Embark on This Historic Venture
Mar 4th
Back when I was a television producer at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, I used to receive a lot of free books from publishers hoping I would book the author for a TV interview.
I was attending a seeker-friendly Baptist Church at the time, and adhered to the “It’s just me and Jesus, baby” guide to the Christian faith. I had to understand before I could believe; I had a personal relationship with Jesus and I trusted my conscience to guide me, but would not accept any external authority to guide me except Scripture, which I interpreted with solemn eisegesis.
My exposure to the intellectual tradition of the Catholic Church was only just beginning. One of the few journalists in town who was a practicing Christian was a Catholic convert, and I used to meet him and a group of conservative Catholics for lunch once a week. It was where I found out there was such a chap as G.K. Chesterton. But I staunchly defended my “Solas” which, of course, I interpreted my own way too.
One day a package arrived in the mail at work. It was “Crossing the Threshold of Hope” by John Paul II. I confess that I had a little flicker of derision as I opened up the book. Aside from that, I had been indifferent to the man, and I can kick myself now that I was working in Halifax when he visited in 1984 and I didn’t even bother using my press credentials to get close enough to see him.
I opened the book, and I remember reading “Be not afraid,” that he repeated as a refrain, echoing what he had said in his first homily in St. Peter’s Square. The book’s open pages seemed to glow with a warm light and the room got a little brighter.
That was only one of the many little epiphanies, the step by step “clicks” into place of understanding and spiritual growth that have led me to a place where I say “Yes!” to becoming Catholic. It’s been a gradual process over more than 15 years.
All of us are not at the same stage yet. There are “fightings and fears, within, without,” to borrow from a lovely hymn. We are leaping into an unknown, but what is clear, is this: we cannot remain the same. We have been offered a choice and some of us will say “Yes!,” others have not made up their minds, and others seem to have dug in their heels and say they will never fall under the pope’s authority.
I am thankful for the refining fires ahead and I choose to “Be not afraid!” I exhort all of us to “Be not afraid!”
I believe God will richly bless us for our obedience and I look forward to the flow of graces that are bound to come when we are in official communion with the See of Peter.
John Paul II said:
“In the Church–built on the rock that is Christ–Peter, the apostles, and their successors are witnesses of God crucified and risen in Christ. They are witnesses of the life that is stronger than death. They are witnesses of God who gives life becauase He is Love. They are witnesses because they saw, heard, and touched with their hands the eyes and ears of Peter, John, and many others. . . .
You rightly assert that the Pope is a mystery. You right assert that he is a sign that will be contradicted, that he is a challenge. The old man Simeon said of Christ Himself that He would be “a sign that will be contradicted.”
You also contend that, confronted with such a truth–that is, confronted with the Pope–one must choose; and for many the choice is not easy. But was it so easy for Peter? Was it easy for any of his successors? Is it easy for the present Pope? To choose requires man’s initiative. Christ says: “For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.”
He then goes on to explain the Petrine Ministry in terms of service, Servant of the Servants of God.
I have experienced such love and generosity from so many of the Catholic bishops and priests I have come to know in my work for the Catholic Church. We can expect kindness and prayers.
We need not fear. It is Jesus who is calling us home. “Be not afraid.”
TAC Formally Requests Personal Ordinariate for USA
Mar 3rd
The House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America, the American Province of the Traditional Anglican Communion, have issued the following press release.
Orlando, FL – 1 pm EST – Bp. George Langberg
Released by the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America, Traditional Anglican Communion 3 March 2010
We, the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America of the Traditional Anglican Communion have met in Orlando, Florida, together with our Primate and the Reverend Christopher Phillips of the “Anglican Use” Parish of Our Lady of the Atonement (San Antonio, Texas) and others.
At this meeting, the decision was made formally to request the implementation of the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum cœtibus in the United States of America by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
ACA House of Bishops Meeting Begins Today
Mar 1st
Beginning later today, the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America (TAC) will assemble in Orlando, Florida for discussions expected to last several days. The ACA HOB is to be joined by Archbishop John Hepworth, Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, along with representatives of Forward in Faith UK and the Anglican Use/Pastoral Provision in the USA. This House of Bishops meeting is an important step toward the implementation of Anglicanorum Coetibus in the USA. Please pray the the Holy Spirit will guide the bishops in everything they do!
Legal and Moral – a Vital Distinction
Feb 27th
I began to write a comment under the recent article dealing with the objection by the Church of Wales against the use of its logo by the Friends of the Ordinariate website. It suddenly dawned on me that this little controversy hinged around something very simple (Occam’s Razor has a very sharp blade!). It is distinguishing between morality and legality.
In legal terms, the institutional organisation bearing the name is the owner of the logo.
In moral terms good Christian clergy and lay people in the Church of Wales have been marginalised by the liberal powers-that-be and it is understandable that the former object to the latter appropriating what should belong to all.
Now this little distinction brings me to a much bigger and important subject. We English can be very rigid in our interpretation of law. The law is what the words say. Were it so simple! We have to have lawyers and judges, not just to apply the law and make wrongdoers pay the price for their misdeeds – but also to interpret the law. As Roger Scruton said in his lecture (see my previous article), the role of the judge is to discover the law.
Now, we come to what I’m really on about. I read a definition by an intelligent young gentleman living in Pennsylvania and running a fascinating blog, defining the Anglican as “one whose Bishop is invited to the Lambeth Conference”. The notion is totally legal and in no way takes subjective factors into account. Legally, he is right. Continuing Anglicans like the TAC or the Anglican Province in America or the APCK are not Anglicans but distinct denominations. Legally, the parent Churches (TEC under the direction of Ms. Schori, the Church of England, etc.) have the right to accuse Continuing Anglicans of abusively using the name Anglican and sue them in consequence.
I have heard that German law forbids the use of the word Catholic by any group not in formal communion with the Episcopal Conference itself in communion with Rome. Of course, being in communion with the Bishops is being recognised by them as being in communion with them. This law does not take the orthodoxy or continuity of internal principles of the parent Church into consideration. Under the law, the Church is a legal entity and a moral person.
Of course, we can then find that a Church has deviated so far from orthodoxy that its activity as a human corporation no longer conforms to the definition and purpose given in the organisation’s constitution or statutes. That is another problem, one on which I am incompetent to judge.
There is another category, that of morality. Morality is not law, but a consideration of principles seen from a more complete perspective. It considers human acts in accordance not only to laws, but also in terms of the finality and the subjective dispositions of the person (physical or moral) concerned. I would strongly recommend reading the works of one of the greatest moral theologians of our times, Fr Servais Pinckaers OP, whom I was lucky and highly privileged to have had as my moral theology professor at Fribourg.
In moral terms, extra-mural Anglicans (and extra-mural Catholics) are those who are defined by their characteristics: doctrine, liturgical tradition, self-identity and others. Morally, extra-mural Anglicans are Anglicans. There are always problems when law becomes detached from morality, and becomes a means for the strong to exploit and oppress the weak. I am brought to think of that fascinating article from a few years ago by our own Bishop Robert Mercer on Extramural Anglicans. Fundamentally, if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. An Anglican is one who does Anglican things and identifies as an Anglican. This happens because a community is forced by motivation of conscience to leave the original Church for a serious reason (typically because the parent Church has introduced unacceptable changes and attempted to impose them on all, tolerating no diversity in the matter).
This happened in Anglicanism, and also happened in Catholicism. I think particularly of the Society of Saint Pius X in spite of their having received severe canonical sanctions from Rome, including excommunication of their bishops (the excommunication was lifted in January 2009, but the clergy concerned have no canonical mission for their ministry). They insist on being considered as Catholics. In spite of their legal separation from Rome (which separation is now blurred), they do Catholic things, believe in Catholic doctrine and have valid priests and bishops. There were other schisms in history, where the dissidents were the conservatives, the so-called Jansenist Old Catholics of Utrecht (1725) and the Petite Eglise (1801). There was also the schism of the Old Believers from the Russian Orthodox Church under Czar Peter the Great in the seventeenth century.
Where is the line drawn? Since about the end of the nineteenth century, there has been the phenomenon of men like Joseph René Vilatte and Arnold Harris Mathew, called episcopi vagantes by authors like Peter Anson and Henry Brandreth. This ecclesiastical subculture features hundreds of men claiming a valid Episcopate by virtue of a line of succession (which is no guarantee of validity in most cases). Episcopi vagantes tend to confuse people (or do they?) and draw discredit on the Church every time one of these bishops gets involved in fraud or sexual abuse, or worse. So, Churches get very nervous about who is the real thing and who are the impostors. This problem is more widespread in America, but there are a few in England and Continental Europe. Some of them build up communities that can be seen and visited, and prove to be devout and pious men – and so the question can be asked whether they are genuine “extra-mural” churches rather than frauds and quacks.
We do hope all these issues will become academic and moot as we move into official, formal and canonical communion with Rome. We will not only be praying una cum the Pope in the Canon of the Mass, but we will also have bits of paper signed by the Pope to say that he recognises us to be real Catholics! The years of wandering in the desert will be at an end, and legal and moral will be reunited in their happy marriage.
I hope, that once this happens, we will not be tempted to sneer upon others from our ivory towers of canonicity, but rather reach out to all Christians with compassion and understanding for why they are in that particular situation. The Pope could have sneered at the TAC, saying that we were vagante quacks. He did not, and has opened his arms to us in our poverty and the humility of our bishops being ready to lay their own necks on the block. Let us read the Parable of the Two Debtors – many times, and meditate upon it!
We have understood a vital distinction. Many others have not and continue to cause confusion and heartbreak to the simple. Let us get to work!
WSJ Article Asks if Reformation Is Beginning Its End
Feb 26th
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about a recent Catholic celebration of Evensong and Benediction according to Anglican Use in Washington, D.C., including a prediction that the Personal Ordinariate will begin a mass movement towards Rome and the beginning of the end of the Reformation. Here’s an excerpt:
The recent liturgical evening in Washington was arranged by Eric Wilson, a 24-year-old layman and former Episcopalian. “I believe the Anglican Use is a model for meaningful ecumenism—insisting on the fundamentals of faith while providing charity in other areas,” he said.
The service was conducted by Father Eric Bergman, a Yale Divinity School-educated former Episcopal clergyman who was ordained a Catholic priest in 2007. Father Bergman stresses that this is not an overture to effete Episcopalians who are angry about changes in their church and want to sneak into the Catholic Church bringing nothing more than their pretty music. Being “angry about Gene Robinson,” he says of the openly homosexual bishop of New Hampshire, isn’t enough reason to become a Catholic. There must be a real conversion to the tenets of Catholicism.
Father Bergman says he began his journey to the Catholic Church by thinking about something that has taken many liberal Catholics out of the church: contraception. He regards Anglicanism’s 1930 embrace of contraception as a mistake: “Out of that came a confusion about the roles of men and women, a theology of androgyny,” he says.
Father Bergman and his wife, Kristina, have six children. They and more than 60 members of his Episcopal parish came into the Catholic Church in 2005. He is now chaplain of the St. Thomas More Society in Scranton, Pa., which seeks to establish Anglican Use parishes.
Naturally, many liberal Catholics are less than thrilled at the prospect of stodgy former Episcopalians importing traditional opinions along with their non-Catholic thou’s and thy’s. In a Nov. 23, 2009, story “Where Hype Meets Reality,” the liberal National Catholic Reporter pooh-poohed the idea of large numbers of Anglicans coming in under the pope’s new rules.
But Father Bergman not only predicts a mass movement toward Rome. He believes Anglican Use may mark the beginning of the end of the Reformation. There will be “a flourishing of this throughout the world,” he says. “Wherever there are Anglicans, there will be people who want to enter Holy Mother Church.” As he told a rapt audience at St. Mary’s, “If we look at histories, heresies run themselves out after about 500 years. I believe we are seeing the last gasp of the Reformation in the mainline Protestant groups.”
Invigorating Words from the Holy Father
Feb 26th
I was reading an address given by His Holiness to the 23rd World Youth Day held in Sydney, Australia in July of 2008. In this address our Pope is speaking broadly concerning the world at large, but I could not help but to contextualize his remarks to our present quest for unity. When he speaks of relativism I could not but think of the “catholicity” claimed by those who seek to maintain the status quo of separation, or the gross misunderstanding that by virtue of claiming the title Christian there exists a “spiritual unity” as opposed to the objective unity demanded by our Savior and His Apostles. However, it is the Pope’s emphasis on the Divine that struck a chord for me, particularly in light of the temptation to focus on the temporal nature of the process toward our goal of the establishment of the Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans, i.e. its seemingly protracted progress, the mixed signals concerning the process, the varying human dynamic, etc. I pray that these abbreviated remarks by the Successor of Peter may be a source of strength.
You are already aware that our Christian witness is offered to a world which in many ways is fragile. The unity of God’s creation is weakened by wounds which run particularly deep… Indeed, society today is being fragmented by a way of thinking that is inherently short-sighted, because it disregards the full horizon of truth–the truth about God and about us. By its nature, relativism fails to see the whole picture. It ignores the very principles which enable us to live and flourish in unity, order, and harmony.
What is our response…? Unity and reconciliation cannot be achieved through our efforts alone. God has made us for one another and only in God and His Church can we find the unity that we seek. Yet in the face of imperfections and disappointments–both individual and institutional–we are sometimes tempted to construct artificially a “perfect” community. That temptation is not new. The history of the Church includes many examples of attempts to bypass or override human weaknesses or failures in order to create a perfect unity, a spiritual utopia.
Such attempts to construct unity in fact undermine it! To separate the Holy Spirit from Christ present in the Church’s institutional structure would compromise the unity of the Christian community, which is precisely the Spirit’s gift! It would betray the nature of the Church as the living temple of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit, in fact, who guides the Church in the way of all truth and unifies her in communion and the works of ministry. Unfortunately the temptation to “go it alone” persists. Some today portray their local community as somehow separate from the so-called institutional Church, by speaking of the former as flexible and open to the Spirit and the latter as rigid and devoid of the Spirit.
Unity is the essence of the Church; it is a gift we must recognize and cherish. Tonight, let us pray for resolve to nurture unity: contribute to it! resist any temptation to walk away! For it is precisely the comprehensiveness, the vast vision, of our faith–solid yet open, consistent yet dynamic, true yet constantly growing in insight–that we can offer the world… Who satisfies that essential human yearning to be one, to be immersed in communion, to be built up, to be led to truth? The Holy Spirit! This is the Spirit’s role: to bring Christ’s work to fulfillment. Enriched with the Spirit’s gifts, you will have the power to move beyond the piece-meal, the hollow utopia, the fleeting, to offer the consistency and certainty of Christian witness!
My dear…friends, receive the Holy Spirit in order to be the Church. Being the Church means being all united as one body which receives its vital force from the Risen Jesus. This gift is greater than our hearts, for it flows forth from the inner life of the Blessed Trinity. It will enable you to live united to one another, to live in communion. Therefore…take up within you the power of Jesus’ life. Let Him enter into your hearts. Let yourselves be molded by the Holy Spirit.
Sarum Code
Feb 26th
The story is doing the rounds that a wall memorial in Salisbury Cathedral had been removed for cleaning or repairs, or something of the like.
Experts in medieval texts are invited to interpret the fragments of writing on the wall, dating from the fifteenth century. Perhaps it will turn out to be a rota for those responsible for changing the candles and cleaning the pricket stands.
The bright red lettering is not on the wall but superimposed on the photo.
Now, let imagination run wild and think of what Dan Brown would have made of this, presumably after finding the Faith through some kind of revelation. Could this be a prophecy of the conversion of England through the Ordinariates and the revival of the venerable Use of Sarum?
Wishful thinking or an intention for our prayers?
Active Engagement
Feb 20th
Given the primary subject matter of The Anglo-Catholic, presenting the endeavors toward reestablishment of communion between faithful Anglicans and Mother Church, it is quite easy to get caught up in the theoretical, abstract, and esoteric elements of ecclesiology. These discussions are absolutely necessary and beneficial for our growth in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in broadening our understanding of the means by which our ultimate end, reunion with the Holy Father, will come to fruition. However, as we begin our Lenten journey, let us take pause and place emphasis upon our active engagement with the Catholic spirituality to which the Holy Spirit has called us. I am moved to believe that our work here is well pleasing to Almighty God, but I am persuaded even more so that He will be much more pleased if we demonstrate a genuine humility and contrition before Him. A humility and contrition that pours forth toward heaven an understanding of the grace He has shown us by calling us to such a time as this.
We find ourselves at present in a dangerous situation of temptation. Temptations such as to exhibit pride in our abilities and understanding, temptation toward anger at those who calumniate against us, temptation to sin against hope, that is ceasing to hope in God’s ability to bring to fulfillment that which He so obviously desires, the unity of His people. As our Savior was tempted in the desert for forty days, let us unite ourselves with Him in His temptations during these solemn forty days of Lent, beseeching the mercies of God that we persevere through this our wilderness.
It is good that we reflect upon the familiar, but oft taken for granted, purpose of Lent. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1438) teaches:
The seasons and days of penance in the course of the liturgical year (Lent and each Friday in memory of the death of the Lord) are intense moments of the Church’s penitential practice. These times are particularly appropriate for spiritual exercises, penitential liturgies, pilgrimages as signs of penance, voluntary self-denial such as fasting and almsgiving, and fraternal sharing (charitable and missionary works).
As we relive the the glorious event of salvation history that was and is our Lord’s Passion, may we actively engage in uniting our own present glorious event of salvation history, the reunion of His Body, to His finished work on the Cross.
I would beg of your Christian charity that you would specifically offer at least some (if not all) of your Lenten discipline(s) for the specific intention of the expeditious establishment of the Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans. Priests, please offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass often for this intention. Laity, I implore you to assist in some additional Masses, say a novena, or pray the Penitential Office for our aspiration. Those who are already in communion with the Holy Father, please spread the word among your brethren that we are in dire need of their prayers for our cause. Additionally, may we all avail ourselves of the intercession of our most Holy Mother through the mysteries of the Rosary for the necessities of faithful Anglicans throughout the world.
Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genetrix. Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi.
“Doc”+
They Still Don’t Get It!
Feb 20th
I got the heads-up from Canon Kendall Harmon’s site to a newspaper article, Romeward Anglicans: a case of too much politics – of the kind that influences the thinking of most people of a fairly high intellectual level.
What do I read?
It was confirmed this week that no group has yet applied to the Catholic bishops of England and Wales for an ordinariate.
I don’t believe this!!! If that journalist had done his homework, he would have read and would know that applications will not be made to the local Episcopal Conferences, but to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Then perhaps, the local Catholic bishops will be asked by Rome to provide infrastructures and harmonise the Ordinariates with normal Catholic life, but that is another matter.
This is why I am so anxious to maintain the high quality of The Anglo-Catholic, so that at least there is one source of objective – and true – information.
Realistic Expectations
Feb 18th
On another post, we recently received a comment bemoaning the fact that, despite media reports that his “conversion” was imminent, a certain Church of England bishop (i.e. The Right Rev. John Hind, Bishop of Chichester, whose remarks at the time were misconstrued) had not yet swum the Tiber. ”It never came to pass,” the commenter lamented. What a remarkably myopic perspective some people have!
I shouldn’t have to point out that it’s only been three and a half months since the Apostolic Constitution and its Complementary Norms were released (and there is evidence to suggest that their announcement several weeks earlier was premature). The personal ordinariates proposed in these documents do not yet exist. The Holy See has defined only the contours of the scheme; the details of its implementation must still be negotiated by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the various Anglican constituencies involved. Basic practical questions remain unanswered. Specific legal norms and statutes must be drawn-up for each new personal ordinariate. And, it should also go without saying that, as Anglicans, we have our own synodical processes with which to contend.
But things are happening. Yesterday, I provided an abridged timeline:
Just this past Saturday, Forward in Faith Australia directed its National Council “to foster by every means the establishing of an Ordinariate in Australia.” In just a few days, on February 22, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, Anglicans in Forward in Faith UK, led by the provincial episcopal visitors, will be praying for discernment. Beginning on March 1, the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America (TAC) will convene in Orlando, Florida; the ACA bishops, together with Primate John Hepworth, will be joined on March 2 by representatives of FiF UK (the Bishop of Fulham) and the Anglican Use/Pastoral Provision in the USA. This conference will be an important step in formulating our response to Anglicanorum Coetibus. In mid-March, bishops of the TAC and Forward in Faith will be in Rome to consult with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and to seek clarification on a number of important points. In Low Week, the College of Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion will meet in Rome. And it is expected that the first personal ordinariates will be erected as soon as the end of June 2010.
Anglicanorum Coetibus was primarily aimed at the Traditional Anglican Communion, which formally petitioned the Holy See in October of 2007 for such a mechanism to effect corporate reunion with the Catholic Church. After prayer and reflection, this historic appeal on the part of the bishops and vicars-general of the TAC was unanimous and ultimately expressed in the solemn act of signing the Catechism of the Catholic Church, its Compendium, and the Petition to the Holy See in the context of Holy Mass. In the intervening two years, there have been minor changes in the makeup of the TAC College of Bishops, and, of course, the bishops now have the Holy Father’s offer in hand, but the commitment of the Communion remains solid. As Archbishop Hepworth stated in a letter to members of the College of Bishops only yesterday:
…it is the policy of our College, and therefore of the whole Traditional Anglican Communion, to seek unity with the Holy See in the terms of the Petition.
But while the TAC is committed to moving forward — and as expeditiously as possible — the practical considerations which derive from the corporate nature of this transition must not be underestimated. Apart from concerns about liturgy, ordination, and the process for the reception of laity which must be referred to the Holy See, there are complex legal and organizational questions peculiar to the present configuration of TAC entities which must be addressed. How do we migrate our existing legal structures, property, trusts, &c. into the new personal ordinariates? How will we maintain the bonds of communion with — and honor our commitments to — those who remain behind or have yet to make the transition?
And, of course, FiF UK (the other significant group to whom the Apostolic Constitution was addressed) has unique problems of its own…
I want to reassure the readers of The Anglo-Catholic that there is a tremendous amount of work going on behind the scenes to answer these challenging questions to which I have alluded. Much depends on next month’s meeting of Anglican bishops with the CDF; only in the aftermath of this consultation will we have received clarification on a number of key issues. Having established the foundational points, things will finally begin to proceed apace. The bishops of the TAC and Forward in Faith have much work ahead of them — curial consultations, episcopal conferences, presbyteral councils, standing committee meetings, synods must all be conducted — and the next several months will, no doubt, be stressful for the faithful shepherds who have brought us thus far. Please pray for them!
It is understandable that many people are anxious. After all, we have seen human pride — both on the part of Anglicans and Roman Catholics — scuttle many a scheme for reunion. But those to whom the Apostolic Constitution is addressed are pressing ahead. I would simply caution folks to have realistic expectations. It has taken faithful Anglican Catholics over four hundred years to reach this point — another six months or so is not that much more to ask! To despair of the fact that hundreds of thousands of Anglicans have not yet been received into the Catholic Church via the (non-existant) personal ordinariates is extraordinarily naïve and such an attitude can not help but mislead people who are not well-informed. By all reasonable standards, this process is moving at an extremely rapid pace.
Don’t Think Big
Feb 18th
I recommend Why it doesn’t matter if the Pope’s Ordinariate for ex-Anglicans is small at first by Damian Thompson, because his lucid realism is to be admired.
Indeed, some Anglican and Catholic would-be commenters are sceptical about the Ordinariates because they think they have to be big, on a scale comparable with regular Catholic dioceses and parishes in England and America. Time and time again, we have read Archbishop Hepworth’s commentaries on the Apostolic Constitution saying how flexible it all is, and how it can be adapted to the complex practical issues of receiving groups of Anglicans. We’re going to be small and intimate to begin with.
I have always liked smallness and the idea of a diocese of just fifteen to twenty parishes like in the south of Italy. The stability of priests in their parishes and the Bishop in his See provide the best setting for an in-depth pastoral ministry where clergy and laity can grow together in God’s love, and also become attached to each other. This is the beauty of the TTAC in England, compared with the barren desert of so-called pastoral sectors in France in which priests are so rare that Christianity has passed into history in most rural areas.
This discernment period coincides exactly with Lent, and we can expect the first real beams of light to be seen shortly after Easter. Indeed Lent is for every Christian a spiritual renewal of our Catechumenate and Baptism. As I have read here and there, and heartily agree, we need to avoid the temptation to develop and “us and them” mentality like the generations of besieged traditional Catholics, some of whom are telling us to “convert properly”.
We are under pressure from all sides: conservative and traditional Catholics, “old guard” liberal Catholics and Anglicans, groups of Anglicans who do not wish to avail of the offer and think all should agree with them – and so forth. It is all so tiring, and we are going to need this Lent for prayer and conversion, and meditation on the Scripture readings the liturgy offers us.
Damian Thompson has the English situation uppermost in his mind, as he speaks of Ordinariate in the singular. The TAC, having voted for the offer even before the ink on the Apostolic Constitution was dry, is chafing at the bit. What about Forward in Faith? We will have to wait and read what their various bishops and parishes say. However, I would almost wager my Faith that they won’t all move at once. If I were the vicar of a lovely medieval or Victorian church, an adequate salary for my wife and children and an assured pension, would I want to give all that up for the incertitude of looking for a job in my 50’s and living on a shoestring? Also, such a move would often introduce a strain in a priest’s marriage – for wives are usually more interested in down-to-earth things, security at home, rather than “dreams” and intellectual luxuries! I can imagine it.
Damian Thompson expresses the idea that the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is puzzled by the small numbers of members of the Church of England planning to join the Ordinariate, and are worried that elements in the Bishops’ Conference are pouring cold water on the project”. I would hope that the CDF is well informed and would not be disappointed in the beginning with relatively small Ordinariates. If everything has to be big with lots of money, expensive cars and perks, well – it won’t work. The Apostolic Constitution and Complementary Norms seem to take into account the situation of the average TAC priest running a business to live or being in full-time employment. We English should be reassured that Archbishop Bernard Longley, Bishop Malcolm McMahon and Bishop Alan Hopes seem to be sympathetic to the Holy Father’s scheme.
We may be very small to begin with. We in the TAC do not view Anglicanorum Coetibus as a last resort if women bishops go ahead in the Church of England. We have been out of the loop for decades and trying to survive on our own with precious little money and little other than our faith!
The kind of Church of England people who will come will be those who have already weaned themselves from their churches, rectories, stipends and pensions. The retirement age for Anglican clerics is much lower than in the Catholic Church. I am sure many retired bishops and priests will come along, because they are free.
In the end, however, the Catholic Church has to face the fact that, in England more than any other country, history has bequeathed us an almighty ecclesiastical mess. Anglo-Catholicism is part of the established religion of England; it is here that a movement of clergy and their patrons adopted a Catholic (sometimes ultra-Catholic) style of worship that developed in opposition to the Church of England hierarchy, and has always been embraced more readily by priests than by lay people.
Oh! How true. Throughout my time in churches, I have met few lay people who were “bitten” by the “liturgy bug”. Generally, lay people are not interested in liturgy and ritual. Protestantism is religion for lay people who are disgusted with priests! (I say that tongue-in-cheek with a big “smiley”). I know this sounds cynical, but it is one argument to finish with the “pastoral liturgy” experiment and return to clerical liturgies behind a solid stone choir screen (ooh, I’ll be kind and just have one of those wooden see-through rood screens) leaving the laity to their devotions. It works in the Orthodox Church! The laity tend to be attached to their parishes for cultural rather than theological reasons, and thus more easily accept changes like “polyester” liturgies and female clergy. The TAC laity have already made the step, mostly to follow a priest they liked before becoming convinced by more theological considerations.
The Ordinariates will attract young priests and seminarians as the seminaries of Wigratzbad and Gricigliano did for continental traditional Catholics. But, I see this as the vitality the Holy Father is looking for like the fresh faces of Benedictine novices at Fontgombault. Lay people do move when they find an episcopal padlock on the door of their beloved parish church!
Anglicanorum Coetibus has no expiry date, as Mr Thompson reminds us. It may take years to develop even if the TAC dioceses and parishes form the first Ordinariates and get canonical approval this year. We are going to have to make a good go of it. It’s in our hands – and God helps those who help themselves. I am not expecting our structures to be any grander than they are. Perhaps some Catholic parishes may allow us a slot in their Sunday morning schedule – or an almost disused non-parochial chapel. Continuing churches have been renting cemetery chapels for years.
Like Damian Thompson, I don’t believe the English Ordinariate will have the use of one single Anglican parish church, any more than Catholic traditionalists. Remember, Kasper-style ecumenism is over. This is realism. The medieval cathedrals and parish churches are lost forever, and we have had nearly 500 years to get used to it. Catholics in the nineteenth century built their own churches, in some cases copies of the old medieval English heritage. We can too, even if our buildings must be less grandiose.
* * *
PS. Please don’t think I’m complaining about lay people. Newman was once in a conversation with some other priests, and one priest said “Oh! These lay people!“. Newman replied, “Don’t you think the Church would look a little silly without them?“. If I have exaggerated in this article, it is rhetorical.
The Dangers of Standing Still
Feb 17th
This article was submitted to The Anglo-Catholic by Fr. Michael Gray of The Traditional Anglican Church, the English province of the TAC.
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It is good practice, in considering all the available alternatives, to include “do nothing”. But it is not always the case that “do nothing” is available. My analysis of the practical choices available after Anglicanorum coetibus is based on legal developments in England and Wales. It might be of wider application.
It is certain that whatever a continuing body does as a whole, some people will respond to the situation in one of two ways. One is personally to use the provision (assuming that the local hierarchy sets up an Ordinariate, whatever else happens). The other is to go elsewhere, perhaps in disgust at the “envy, hatred, malice and all uncharitableness” which has marred these last months. It hardly matters what “elsewhere” is; it could be the abandonment of corporate Christian practice, it could be Orthodoxy, or a house church, or a reversion to the state religion. What all responses have in common is that the continuing body is left weakened in numbers, yet with all its previous problems except, perhaps, slightly less internal disagreement.
Now this is in a context where we are not likely to have gained new members, though it just might be the case that there is no such thing as bad publicity and we should be thanking God that the dispute has brought us above the threshold of visibility. However, visibility brings fresh dangers with it.
It has been our fortune, in England and Wales, that we have not had to engage hitherto with the state bureaucracy. The Traditional Anglican Church (TTAC) is not a registered charity. Nor has it any other legal corporate existence, such as a company limited by guarantee. The same is true of almost all of its parishes. It does not require Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks of its members (not because these are inherently wrong, but because we have known each other far too long for these to give any useful reassurance). Because we do not pay clergy, we are not caught by equality and anti-discrimination law in relation to employment. Because we do not own buildings, we avoid all manner of associated obligations. Because the clergy are not (for the most part) Assistant Registrars, there is no question of them being required (or even able) to conduct “marriage” or “civil partnership” ceremonies repugnant to moral law.
It has been our fortune, and it comes with costs, both financial and legal. But it is not certain that this fortune will continue, and any continuing body, not just TTAC, must consider this. TTAC has in the past considered registering as a charity. But recent changes in charity law imposed for the first time a test that charities for the advancement of religion must also demonstrate “public benefit”, of which the Charity Commission is arbiter, and there could be no security but that at some future date the Charity Commission might require us to conform to the secular equality agenda (for instance, consider seriously as a candidate for the episcopate a lesbian atheist). This “public benefit” weapon has already led to the destruction of the Catholic adoption agencies. For a time, TTAC has avoided the issue by not seeking registration. But a recent document from the Charity Commission indicates that if a religious body has charitable characteristics then it must register – it does not have the option of not doing so.
This is only one instance of the future threats to small continuing bodies. We have also in this country only recently escaped from a secular equality law incompatible with the gospel. But for how long? There seem to be two choices. Either be part of an organisation large enough to resist, or be so small as to be invisible. Such resistance may indeed have to be on a world-wide basis, since the threats come in part from the secularism of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights. It is those in communion with the Pope who have the numbers, the world-wide extent and the determination to resist who may succeed in open resistance. I do not despise the alternative choice. For a time my own assumption had been that the future might lie with the underground church, and that the continuing bodies were better placed than many to prepare for this. But it is not easy to evangelise from underground, and for all Christian bodies the choice is to evangelise or die.
The Smoke of Satan
Feb 17th
Damian Thompson has commented on the despicable report by The Guardian blogger Andrew Brown of a “leaked” email from the Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Andrew Burnham, to Melbourne auxiliary (and the Australian bishops’ delegate for Anglicanorum Coetibus), Bishop Peter Elliott. This whole episode is reprehensible, but I am moved to offer a few observations and a short reflection on the matter. My emphases and comments.
* * *
The cloak and dagger Catholics
An email from an Anglican ‘flying bishop’ to a Catholic bishop in Australia sheds light on the machinations of the Anglo-Catholics
An extraordinary correspondence has fallen into my hands showing some of the detail of the Anglo-Catholic intrigues about their departure from the Church of England. [I think that it's the other way around.] It shows the Anglican “flying bishop” of Ebbsfleet, Andrew Burnham, conspiring with a sympathetic Roman Catholic bishop in Australia to work behind the back of the Catholic bishops here. He talks about his “cloak and dagger” correspondence with a sympathiser in the Vatican, and suggests that he can write personally to Pope Benedict XVI to smooth things over if his correspondent is caught. This may come as news to the pope.
Firstly, we have to assume that the email is genuine (did Mr. Brown confirm its authenticity with either the sender or the recipient?). And why is it that Mr. Brown has not seen fit to publish the message in its entirety? Certainly quoted passages such as “clearly a charming man … but not everything he says … synchronises fully with what we know from other sources” are open to interpretation (and look as if their sense has been manipulated).
And does Mr. Brown really think it surprising that FiF UK might be working directly with the Roman authorities, bypassing a bishops’ conference which, even now, is working to undermine Anglicanorum Coetibus? I am happy to independently confirm from my TAC sources, for what it’s worth, that no one in Rome trusts the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales to deal charitably with incoming Anglicans!
The Australian bishop, Peter Elliott, is himself an Anglican convert [Boo, hiss!], and is in charge of the pope’s outreach to Anglican opponents of women priests in Australia [Yeah, we're "disaffected" too.]. Most of these are grouped in a body called the Traditional Anglican Communion, which claims to have half a million members world wide: Burnham warns Bishop Elliott against complete confidence in their leader, Archbishop Hepworth (“clearly a charming man … but not everything he says … synchronises fully with what we know from other sources”).
I’d like to see the full quotation in context. Still, it seems quite a stretch to characterize this as a warning that Bishop Elliott should not have confidence in the TAC Primate. I have the opportunity to consult with (extremely well-placed) TAC and FiF UK sources almost daily and I can personally vouch for the fact that there is a lack of “synchronicity” all around. There is a good deal about the future of the personal ordinariate scheme that is, for the moment, uncertain. Mr. Brown obviously desires to interpret this uncertainty as division or suspicion.
I would also point out that, much to the chagrin of the pundits, history has shown (so far) Archbishop Hepworth to have been correct at every turn. Today we take the revolution of Anglicanorum Coetibus for granted, but before October 20, 2009, it was merely the fantastic dream of the TAC Primate, a dream which certainly failed to synchronize fully with what the experts thought they knew from other sources.
But the passage which will cause discomfort in this country is this:
“I am taking the liberty of mentioning, in confidence and with his permission, that we are in touch with Mgr Patrick Burke at the CDF [the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith]. It has all felt a little bit like Elizabethan espionage but, truly, the informal contact with the CDF has been invaluable, and, if ever Mgr Burke got into trouble, I should write to the pope and say how splendidly helpful he has been.
This is not known about fully in England and Wales because we are trying to ensure that the whole Anglicanorum Coetibus project, which will begin in small ways, is not smothered by the management anxieties of a hierarchy, some of whom think that Anglicans are best off doing what they are presently doing and some of whom think the project would impact adversely on the Catholic Church in England. Needless to say Fr Pat’s help, and the support of Archbishop DiNoia, need, to a lesser extent, to be protected from disapproval at higher levels of the dicastery [Vatican department]. Hence the cloak and dagger.”
Anglicanorum Coetibus is the pope’s plan to allow disaffected Anglicans to convert as a group, and to keep their own bishops. As Bishop Burnham says, the Catholic hierarchy in this country is not enthusiastic about the prospect. The plan was sprung on Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the head of the Catholic church in England and Wales, with very little notice and although attention at the time was concentrated on the obvious discomfort of Rowan Williams, the Catholic archbishop had known no more than him.
This is the whole point. The Apostolic Constitution was “sprung” on the Archbishop of Westminster and the other English bishops precisely because the CDF did not trust them to respond obediently and charitably to the will of the Holy Father. And they have not reformed since! ”Hence the cloak and dagger.”
It’s still not clear how much autonomy the Anglican “ordinariates” will have; but Bishop Elliott told an Australian audience they would be comparable to the Eastern churches in communion with Rome; the Maronite Christians of the Lebanon, and the formerly orthodox “Uniate” churches of the Ukraine. “The structure … is much closer to an Eastern Rite Church in its autonomy than some might imagine.”
Yes, Bishop Elliott said that the Anglican personal ordinariates would be similar to these Eastern structures in some respects. This is exactly what Archbishop Hepworth has said all along. To beat a long-dead horse:
There will be an Anglican leader who relates to the Holy See on behalf of the Anglican Catholics. Thus establishing a body that is Anglican Catholic as distinct from Roman Catholic, Ukrainian Catholic, Maronite Catholic, or whatever. It’s not a rite but it looks awfully like one… (Archbishop Hepworth at the 2009 National Assembly of FiF UK)
This kind of autonomy, a church within the church, has long been the dream of the former Anglicans who converted in the early 70s. But it is not what the Catholic hierarchy thinks it is getting in this country. Monsignor Andrew Faley, the assistant secretary to the Bishops’ conference here, said “He’s wrong – he’s not entirely right, would be more ecclesially correct … Uniate status is concerned with rite; but the Anglican liturgy is so close to ours that it’s not possible in this case. The Pope asked our bishops to ‘be generous’ and in asking this was recognising their generosity to be genuine. Their hospitality to former Anglicans is 100% assured and the authority of the Church in working this out rests with the bishops’ conferences and not with the CDF.”
Allow me be very blunt. I would not trust a single thing Msgr. Faley has to say about the matter. This spokesman for the obstructionists has already been sent out to spread disinformation about the Apostolic Constitution (and was smacked down by Rome for it, as I understand).
This nonsense about “uniate status” (and it is most assuredly nonsense) is simply a misdirection. The Apostolic Constitution and the Complementary Norms speak for themselves — and these documents do provide for an ordinary authority that will exist independently of — and in no way subject to — the local territorial dioceses or the national episcopal conference. The English Catholic hierarchy may not yet fully appreciate this — and they certainly won’t like it when they do — but it’s coming nonetheless.
And Msgr. Faley’s contention that the Holy Father recognizes the English bishops’ generosity is utterly laughable! Is he speaking of the same Joseph Ratzinger, who, just a few short years ago, asked, “Why are the English bishops so unapostolic?” Were the Holy Father to be assured of the genuine nature of the bishops’ generosity, he would hardly need to ask. In this request, Msgr. Faley would, no doubt, like to be assured that Rome intends the bishops’ conference to have a decisive role in the erection of the English ordinariate. I think he’s going to be sorely disappointed.
But no groups have yet actually approached the Roman Catholic authorities in this country, according to Mgr Faley.
Why should they? Applications for the erection of a personal ordinariate will go directly to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Do not pass the bishops’ conference. Do not collect $200. As I wrote a few days ago:
On the subject of bishops’ welcoming committees, I will also note that it is the understanding of the TAC bishops involved in discussions with Rome that the two principal parties to be involved in the erection of any future personal ordinariates are 1) the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; and 2) the interested Anglican group itself – and that all applications must originate from the Anglican group seeking full communion. Local episcopal conferences will be consulted in due course, but the notion that these bodies will be the originators (or even decisive factors in the erection) of the new structures (as the episcopal conferences in England and Wales and Australia seem to think and as Cardinal DiNardo has recently suggested) seems to run contrary to the intentions of the CDF.
There is plenty of work going on behind the scenes. And, I am proud to say, at the present moment, the readers of The Anglo-Catholic are just as informed as most English Catholic bishops.
The other intriguing admission in Bishop Burnham’s letter is that “the project … will start in small ways”. This suggests that enthusiasm for the ordinariates is still much greater among the priests and bishops who hope to lead it than among the ordinary Anglicans who are supposed to follow them and fill its churches.
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If the Holy Father’s offer in the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus is indeed a movement of the Holy Spirit, it should come as no surprise that the Enemy will stop at nothing to destroy it. Whoever leaked this message, and the one who published it, knowingly or unknowingly, are his instruments.
In the coming several months, Anglican groups around the world will request of the Holy See the erection of personal ordinariates and will begin to cross the threshold into the full communion and unity of the Catholic Church. The timing of this “leak” is not a coincidence. Just this past Saturday, Forward in Faith Australia directed its National Council “to foster by every means the establishing of an Ordinariate in Australia.” In just a few days, on February 22, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, Anglicans in Forward in Faith UK, led by the provincial episcopal visitors, will be praying for discernment. Beginning on March 1, the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America (TAC) will convene in Orlando, Florida; the ACA bishops, together with Primate John Hepworth, will be joined on March 2 by representatives of FiF UK (the Bishop of Fulham) and the Anglican Use/Pastoral Provision in the USA. This conference will be an important step in formulating our response to Anglicanorum Coetibus. In mid-March, bishops of the TAC and Forward in Faith will be in Rome to consult with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and to seek clarification on a number of important points. In Low Week, the College of Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion will meet in Rome. And it is expected that the first personal ordinariates will be erected as soon as the end of June 2010.
The Adversary who has thwarted our desire for corporate reunion with the rest of the Western Church for over 400 years now sees that our vindication is at hand! He despises our Holy Father and all who would cooperate with him. And as we move ever closer, we should expect that more manipulative reports like this one from Andrew Brown will surface.
I have had the opportunity to hear from so many readers of The Anglo-Catholic who are patiently waiting for news from Archbishop Hepworth, the PEVs, sources in Rome, or even the Holy Father himself. Many of you visit the site several times a day for the latest information (which I, of course, very much appreciate). And, no doubt, many of you feel like there is nothing that you can do to help. This ecclesiastical politics, after all, seems to be the exclusive province of insiders — priests, bishops, archbishops, and even popes! But there is something you can do to help. Pray! Pray for the Holy Father. Pray for the shepherds of the Anglican groups who will shortly be leading their people into full communion with the Holy See. Pray that God beat down Satan — and our many enemies — under our feet. And never for a moment underestimate the forces arrayed against us!
The Record of Anglicanism (Expanded)
Feb 15th
This is the second part of a paper sent to me by Fr. Michael Gray on behalf of Fr. Michael Silver, who is priest in charge of St. Alban and St. Henry, Letchworth, a provisional parish of the TTAC in England. He has a web site.
The first part was published here last December 31st.
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Not Anglicans but Angels?
There were once two pending possibilities that seemed remote: London getting the 2012 Olympic Games and the Pope making provision for the corporate reception of Anglicans. Ah well, applied-prophecy was not an option in my degree, no donkey-detection for us. Both prospects have struck alarm in some, whilst generating euphoria in others. Thus the Pope’s invitation was issued 20th October, 2009 whilst on the 8th February, 2010 the Archbishop of York was reported as saying that any such converts would not be “proper Roman Catholics.” This is excellent news because those Anglicans to whom this applies have no intention of becoming (whatever might be meant by) “proper Roman Catholics.” Traditional Anglicans are duty bound to seek the visible unity of Christ’s Church and the offer on the table is from Pope Benedict. One might have dared to hope that even an Anglican archbishop would have known the difference between a “Roman Catholic” and a separated, ethnic communion (and one cannot get much more ethnic than “Church of England”) reconciled to the Holy See. The Pope’s press-release has reopened that delicate topic of Anglican identity and purpose. The underlying irony is that it is we “continuers,” the upholders of Anglicanism, who were first to approach the Pope on this matter.
