Posts tagged Pastoral Provision

The article below appears in the current edition of Faith Magazine.  In 1997, Dr. William Oddie, a biographer of G. K. Chesterton and former editor of The Catholic Herald, wrote the then controversial book, The Roman Option: The Realignment of English Christianity, in which he described a possible future development whereby Anglicans abandoned by the Established Church might enter the Catholic Church en masse.  Here is an extract from the back cover of the book:

The Church of England’s historic decision to ordain women to the priesthood has forced a dramatic realignment of Christianity in the English speaking world. In the space of five years, it has brough irreversible change into the heart of Anglicanism, and transformed its relationship with the Roman Catholic Church.

In this radical book, William Oddie gives an insider’s account of the origins and possible future development of the ‘Roman Option’, in which disaffected Anglicans seek to move en masse to the Catholic Church, and argues that the Catholic bishops must be ready to respond boldly to the real crisis for Anglicanism which lies ahead…

Of course the Catholic bishops were not ready (and many are still not ready) to respond boldly to this crisis in Anglicanism, and it ultimately took the revolutionary thinking of Pope Benedict XVI to see such a “Roman Option” realized.

In this current article, Dr. Oddie reflects on how the Holy Father and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith boldly sidestepped the “unapostolic” English bishops to finally guarantee to Anglo-Catholics a place of refuge in an often unwelcoming Catholic Church.

My emphases and comments in blue.

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William Oddie FAITH Magazine January-February 2010

A Daring Decision Fulfils a Newman Prayer

I very much hope that Catholics in this country and elsewhere will warmly welcome into our communion the members of the new ordinariates. Nevertheless, in terms of the relations between Rome and the bishops’ conferences affected, the way in which these ordinariates have been invented is disgraceful.

The present Apostolic Constitution is indeed a godsend, but had the Catholic bishops been more receptive of dispossessed Anglo-Catholics, corporate reunion could have been achieved years ago — and reconciled far more Anglicans to the Church than may now be immediately possible.  Instead, ideology was allowed to triumph over apostolic mission and the Lord’s prayer for the unity of His Church was ignored.  This is a disgrace!

Thus, Nicholas Lash – in, of course, The Tablet - on the Apostolic constitution which has authorised and enabled the setting up of jurisdictions under which Anglicans may become Roman Catholics not individually but collectively. The Tabletatura, of course, hate the whole thing; and they object particularly to the reception of communities rather than individuals, quite simply because far more will come, numerically, under this dispensation than under what previously obtained: i.e., special fast-track arrangements for clergy wanting reordination (this has helped substantially with the shortage of priests) but the old business of “individual submission” for the laity, and off with them to some denatured liturgy at the ghastly concrete Catholic barracks down the road. Quite simply, the Spirit-of-Vatican-ll boys don’t want the converts at all, because they know that they are coming not for the English bishops, and certainly not for The Tablet, which they loathe and despise, but for the Pope. [Precisely.]The Tablet would like smaller numbers to come, one by one, in a way which provides the opportunity to acclimatise them into the kind of reductionist belief-system they favour. Thus The Tablet’s weaselly suggestion that

They do have an alternative …. they could, as countless converts to Roman Catholicism have done before them including many former Anglo-Catholics, apply to enter into full communion through the normal processes. Nowadays that usually means enrolling in the parish-based scheme called the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, or RCIA, which includes a rite for baptised Christians who want to become Catholic.

After a journey of faith involving instruction from a parish catechist, candidates follow a series of public steps leading to a ceremony of admission, with others who have made the same journey. … A simple formula of doctrinal assent is required … far less elaborate than adherence to every one of the Catholic catechism’s 2,865 paragraphs which the apostolic constitution envisages.

Why implicitly accept the entirety of Catholic teaching by joining a personal ordinariate (which defines the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a doctrinal standard) when you can recite a simple formula with mental reservations like the rest of your RCIA class?

Well, there you have it: what The Tablet wants for any convert is the half-cock reprocessed seventies Catholicism you get in RCIA (I speak from personal experience) rather than the full-blooded total Catholicism of The Catechism of the Catholic Church (which many of them already know far better than most cradle Catholics).

We’ve recently had a bit of controversy about the appropriateness of RCIA for the reception of Anglicans — indeed any Christians — into full communion.  Even when applied appropriately, RCIA is very often deficient — and there appears to be a good deal of defensiveness of the part of some commenters when this fact is observed.  Are there good RCIA programs out there?  Of course there are.  Have Anglicans (or others) being received into the full communion of the Catholic Church had positive experiences in RCIA?  No doubt they have.  But I would caution our Roman Catholic readers not to form their impression of the state of Church from web sites like the New Liturgical Movement or What Does the Prayer Really Say? These sites often focus on a few — and there still only a few — “showcase” churches.  Most parish churches in North America and the UK are a liturgical and catechetical wasteland.  If you are in a conservative parish with an orthodox priest where the Faith is taught in its integrity and experienced “in the beauty of holiness,” then you are most assuredly in the minority.  Of course the times are changing, and there is a reform of the Reform afoot, but as Fr. Z says, “brick by brick.”  There is a very long way to go.  There is a reason that The Tablet is keen on subjecting Anglo-Catholics to RCIA: they are fairly certain that it will destroy their faith.

But you can understand The Tablet’s hostility and confusion. The fact is that the whole thing has been an enormous shock: not only to those who hate it all but to those who are still glowing with delight, for whom the words “personal ordinariate” induce not the slightest irritation at the usual graceless Vaticanese but on the contrary, sheer joy at the generous fulfilment the Pope has granted of their deepest hopes : these include many former Anglicans like myself and many more now preparing for the journey they have always longed to make, together with their whole ecclesial community. Of that, more in a while: but first, we need to get back to that extraordinary announcement: extraordinary both in its content and in its timing, as well as in its modus operandi. Why so very unexpected?

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