Tag Archives: Reformation

The Real Anglican Patrimony

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OLW 196x300 The Real Anglican PatrimonyThere has been much discussion of just what the "Anglican Patrimony" consists.  Is it the beautiful tradition of hymnody, the choral tradition, and the Book of Common Prayer?  Is it all the delightful English cultural traditions — Oxford and Cambridge and the country church, the crumbling, romantic monastic ruins, the magnificent cathedrals and "is there honey still for tea?"  Just what is the Anglican Patrimony?

I would not like to dismiss all the things I've mentioned above — and as a hopeless Anglophile, I could add a list of many more.  However, these things are not the only elements of the patrimony of Anglicanism.  Part of the patrimony lies in the spirit and sincerity of the Reformers.  It is true that they were the pawns of a wicked king.  It is true that they fell into heresy and schism.  It is true that the were sometimes unscrupulous and manipulative.

But there are some qualities there we can admire, and which remain part of the patrimony.  They loved Christ and his Church.  They loved the people of God and worked for the salvation of souls.  They had an evangelical spirit.  They were willing to risk all for Christ and his gospel.  When people are divided by polemical words and ideas it is easy to forget the goodness and graces of 'the other side.'  But Anglo-Catholics, if they are to embrace their Anglican Patrimony, must see that the good things they love within that patrimony have, as their starting point, these more indefinable qualities of Christian zeal, love of the Sacred Scriptures, love of the church, and love of truth. The martyrs on both sides of the conflict exhibited these traits.

If these qualities are at the heart of the Ordinariate, then it will succeed beyond everyone's wildest imaginings.  It will become a dynamic and lively force of reconciliation and unity in Christ's Church.  It will burgeon and spread throughout the whole of the Anglican world — bringing into unity Anglican brothers and sisters not only from the Anglo-Catholic wing of the church, but also from the Evangelical.  It will bring in not only those Anglicans in the Western church, but Anglicans in the developing world.

As I attend the inaugural Mass of the Ordinary here in Houston this morning, this is my prayer — that Anglicans coming into full communion will not only bring to the Catholic Church their beautiful language, liturgy and music, that they will not only bring their prayer books and poetry books and high culture — but that with all these things they will bring their love of Christ and his gospel — and a burning zeal to spread that gospel and renew Christ's Church with the fullness of their gifts of grace.

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Glimpses of Divine Humor

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Thank you to dedicated reader David Quatchak who recommended and secured permission to reprint this story of discovery and conversion.

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Glimpses of Divine Humor

By Andrew M. Seddon, M.D.

On the rare occasions when I attempt the impossible task of imagining what heaven might be like, I envision saints—but not the dour, stern, serious saints of so much artwork. I imagine smiling saints with a humorous twinkle in their eyes. Saints such as Aidan, Cuthbert, Columba, and Patrick; an eighth-century pilgrim to the Holy Land from Byzantium (more of him later); and closer in time and experience, Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman.

Why smiling saints? Because, looking back along my path to the Catholic Church, I can see the instances of humor that God used along the way, glinting like flecks of gold sprinkled in a vein of quartz.

Unlike the Celtic saints and the pilgrim who were Catholics in the undivided Church, I, like Cardinal Newman, was an unexpected convert from Anglicanism. Saints, circumstances, history, and my heritage—no doubt at God’s instigation—united to bring me not only across the Atlantic but the greater distance across the Tiber.

Early Years

I was born in England, the son of a Baptist minister. My parents emigrated to the U.S. when I was young, and my father pastored churches in upstate New York, New Brunswick, Maryland, and West Virginia. My sister and I grew up on his excellent, Bible-based preaching, and I will forever be grateful to my parents for the loving Christian home they provided.

My parents recall that my first profession of faith came at age 7, and baptism at 10, but I cannot remember a time when I was not a believer. Being a Christian has always been a natural part of me.

We moved often, and though the flavor of the churches varied, all were Baptist. We had little contact with other denominations. The Catholic Church was rarely mentioned.

If I ever thought of Catholics, it was as fellow Christians who had somehow gotten a little off-track, perhaps never having fully escaped the Middle Ages. Catholics weren’t bad or evil, just poor souls who had to work unduly hard to earn their salvation and who were overly attached to Mary. (She was never referred to in our home as the “Blessed Virgin.”)

It was curious, then—and perhaps the first incident of divine humor—when, after I completed my freshman year at the University of New Brunswick, my parents moved to Maryland, and I transferred to Mount St. Mary’s College (now University) in Emmittsburg—a Catholic college! I didn’t choose “The Mount” for religious reasons, however, but because of its academic reputation and its modest size.

Although I was a pre-med student, my course of study included several required theology classes. My term papers, unsurprisingly, evidenced my Protestant viewpoint. One was returned covered in comments: “See me,” “Ask me about this,” “Talk to me.”

Continue reading →

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Forming a Queue for the Lifeboat?

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Fr. Ed Tomlinson has started a useful discussion earlier on this blog about the nature of the new Missionary Society of SS Wilfrid and Hilda in the U.K. He certainly raises questions which will need to be answered sooner rather than later. Is the new Society intended to provide a temporary safe-haven for those intending, when circumstances allow, to join the Ordinariates, or is it envisaged as a more permanent home for those Anglo-Catholics who have a problem with the acceptance of papal authority?

To my mind at least, one of the stark and unsettling lessons of the last twenty years or more has been the dawning recognition of the need for definite doctrinal and disciplinary authority amid the disintegration of the Chalcedonian doctrinal consensus in those churches separated from Rome. In addition, there is the (related) ending of a common approach to the central issues of moral theology (even where, as for example in Anglicanism itself) that approach has been traditionally more pastoral than juridical.

We live amidst the wreckage of post-reformation Christendom, where ecclesial bodies themselves have been the victims of doctrinal and moral relativism, and where internal battles for 'orthodoxy' within these churches have been raging for at least a couple of generations, if not many more. The battle, however, for the Catholic orientation of Anglicanism has now been lost, the opportunity has come and gone. We have to face that fact squarely and not take refuge in the delusion that the situation can be reversed. If there is a future for orthodox belief within Anglicanism (and I tend to doubt that increasingly, at least in the long run) it is with the provinces of the Global South and with a theology owing more and more to the sixteenth century reformers (who, many of us would agree, began the process which has led us to our present crisis). Whatever else we might say about such a grouping, there is no place for Catholics within it.

G.K. Chesterton said that the one self-evident belief of Christianity was that of Original Sin; you only had to look about you to see the truth of it. It seems to me that the one self- evident truth of ecclesiology is an infallible Church; the alternative is no church at all, only the maze of private judgement and the ludicrous and falsely compassionate inconsistencies of situation ethics, coupled with a cafeteria approach to the credal statements of the Christian faith. If our recent experience as Anglo-Catholics has taught us anything it is the need for the office of the Papacy, and the Papacy as it now functions and not some looser and less authoritative 'primus inter pares' role. We know exactly where that leads.

The appeal to apostolic tradition, to the Fathers and the consensus of the Undivided Church means little (as we have seen) to those who cannot accept the infallibility of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit down through the ages. To argue now for a kind of 'Western Catholicism without the Pope' (the 'Northern Catholicism' myth) seems to fly in the face not only of the evidence but of sanity itself. We can't turn the clock back, we can't pretend to live in a more ordered, less aggressively secularist world, and we are not, for the most part, capable of the deep, consensual and unshakable veneration of tradition of the Eastern Orthodox (who perhaps have yet to face the full onslaught of secularism in the societies where they are strongest and who, in any case, seem to be in the process of recognising the need for Catholic unity and a concerted approach in the face of the attacks of modern secularism).

This leaves those who have problems with papal authority, or with the definition of the Marian dogmas or whatever, between a rock and a hard place. I completely agree with Fr. Tomlinson that the Society of St. Wilfrid and St. Hilda has to make up its mind as to what it is intended to be. Is it an organisation equipped to ensure a safe, if gradual, embarkation onto the barque of St Peter — however long it takes (and that could be an interesting ecumenical venture in itself) — or an exercise in hospice care under the aegis of our most implacable opponents? Ambiguity on this issue may seem to be expedient now, but it will only be a recipe for disaster as time goes on.

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Σφραγὶς δωρεᾶς Πνεύματος Ἁγίου

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Joshua of the blog Psallite Sapienter (who writes online under his Christian name only) has kindly provided the following piece on the question of ("re-")confirmation for those entering the anticipated personal ordinariates.  The Complementary Norms to the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus provide in Article 5, §1. that,

The lay faithful originally of the Anglican tradition who wish to belong to the Ordinariate, after having made their Profession of Faith and received the Sacraments of Initiation, with due regard for Canon 845, are to be entered in the apposite register of the Ordinariate.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the Sacraments of Initiation as: Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Communion.  Of course, the baptisms of incoming Anglicans, conducted as they were with water and the invocation of the Holy Trinity, will be accounted unquestionably valid, but this section of the Complementary Norms suggests that those received will required to undergo the administration of the Sacrament of Confirmation, which notion, like the question of (conditional) ordination for Anglican clergy, has been difficult for some to accept.

As on the issue of Holy Orders, Joshua rightly argues that the Church is concerned only with the integrity of the sacramental system, that all doubt should be dispelled, both on the part of the Catholic Church and those to be received into her communion.  Rather than a stumbling-block, this should ultimately prove a comfort.

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In the Byzantine Rite, the words at the anointing of the confirmandi with chrism are "The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Sphragis dōreas Pneumatos Hagiou). By an ancient tradition, when the Apostles could no longer confirm in person by the laying on of hands, they instead consecrated the first chrism, or perfumed olive oil (myron, as the Greeks call it by metonymy, after one of the odorific additives, myrrh), and distributed this to the bishops and priests they appointed in every place, that henceforth confirmation be by anointing with chrism. Thus far the Holy Eastern Church…

According to the Beloved Disciple, we all receive an anointing (chrisma) from the Holy One (I John ii, 20), and very fittingly, since as Christians we are in sober truth christs, very members of Christ, Who lives in us, and by His Spirit gives us true life. The application of the sacred unction symbolizes and reminds us of this, which is the fulfilment in us, in Christ, of all the Old Testament types and prophecies made concerning the Lord's Anointed.

Firmung 1679 Σφραγὶς δωρεᾶς Πνεύματος ἉγίουAmusingly, while the word "chrism" has this high and pure connotation, the word itself is cognate with a native English word of precisely opposite nature: grime! We who are besmirched and besmeared with the muck of this world, the scum of sinners, fallen sons of the man of earth, are chrismated to become perfect men in Christ. We are confirmed, anointed, and sealed (sphragisamenos) – cf. II Cor. i, 20f.

Confirmation is a perfecting and completing of baptimal grace, a strengthening, a setting fast, a making sure: it seals us and marks us with an indelible character; it is effected by the laying on of hands and chrismation, accompanied by the words of prayer. In the not inconsequential phrase of old, it establishes us Christians as soldiers of Christ, to fight the good fight of the faith against the world, the flesh and the devil. It is the gift of the Gift, a most special imprint of the Holy Ghost.

Confirmation, however, is at present for some a stumbling block set in the path of those wavering between hope and fear, those at Tiber's bank wondering whether to cross…

As a consequence of the Church's well-known doubts as to the validity of Anglican orders in general, as well as for the very good reason that Anglicans do not in general anoint at their rite of confirmation, but only lay on hands, Anglican laymen who come into full communion with the Catholic Church are directed to be confirmed as part of their reception. Their previous Anglican confirmation is adjudged insufficient, not merely by by reason of concern about the orders of those who carried out that rite, but since that rite usually did not include an anointing with any chrism at all, let alone some duly consecrated in solemn rites, since any shadow of doubt in the matter of the sacraments must be treated as a most serious concern.

Whatever of the undoubted fact that, in the Apostolic age, confirmation was at first carried out by the laying on of hands by the Apostles, very early on – Tertullian is among the first to explicitly testify to this – the anointing of candidates with oil became the central rite of confirmation, or chrismation as the East terms it. Certainly, by the time of the unhappy break of England with Rome, the Western Church had for a millennium and more used chrism for confirmation. While to this day theologians are divided as to the absolute necessity of chrismation as part of the sacrament, and the Church has made no final decision on the subject, it is certain that in all recognized churches, retaining Apostolic orders, anointing is the central ceremony of confirmation, and has been for well over a thousand years. The Orthodox are if anything more insistent upon this point, it is well to note.

Therefore, whatever of the original simple ritual of the Primitive Church, Cranmer and his associated Reformers had no power whatsoever to break with the age-old consensus of the Fathers, of the whole Church, and to cast away anointing with chrism at confirmation. It is to be feared that, in doing so, they consciously attempted to strip it of all sacramental significance. The Church having determined to chrismate, to break with this is to introduce a most serious doubt as to the efficacy of the rite, even if, for the sake of argument, Anglican orders were unquestionably valid.

As the Ecumenical Council of Trent, lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, decreed in its 7th Session, in 1547, when treating of the sacraments:

CANON XIII. If any one saith, that the received and approved rites of the Catholic Church, wont to be used in the solemn administration of the sacraments, may be contemned, or without sin be omitted at pleasure by the ministers, or be changed, by every pastor of the churches, into other new ones; let him be anathema.

Therefore, for Cranmer et al. to change the "received and approved rites… used in the solemn administration of the sacraments" – as by removing the use of chrism from confirmation – was a most gravely sinful act; to say that such proud pastors had the power to do so, in defiance of the wider Church, would throw all the sacraments and their essential rites into complete uncertainty. They had no such authority.

Rogier van der Weyden Seven Sacraments Altarpiece Baptism Confirmation and Penance detail left wing 1024x889 Σφραγὶς δωρεᾶς Πνεύματος ἉγίουThe fact that the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, followed by all its successors, did away with chrismation as the essential sacramental rite of confirmation, proves that Anglican confirmation is radically defective, and in the eyes of the Catholic Church inherently suspect of invalidity, whatever of the status of the orders of a particular Anglican bishop.

The spiritual forefathers of Continuing Anglicans, the Nonjurors of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, early attempted to restore the use of chrism in confirmation, since these devoted students of Christian antiquity saw that chrismation is an essential element of the rite, as the Preface of their liturgical compilation of 1718 attests:

…the Chrism [is] restored in the Confirmation-Office. …as for Chrism, it is an Emblem of Spiritual Unction, of Grace conferr'd by the Holy Ghost; and with this Reference and Allusion it has been practis'd by the Primitive and Universal Church.

To this end, they added to the rite in the Prayer Book, not only restoring certain forms included in 1549, but deleted in 1552, but most significantly restoring (from the Sarum Pontifical) the chrismation, with rubricks directing that the Bishop

shall anoint every one of them with the Chrism or Ointment, making the sign of the Cross upon their forehead, and saying,

N., I sign thee with the sign of the Cross, I anoint thee with Holy Ointment,

Then the Bishop shall lay his hand upon the head of the Person he is confirming, and say,

And I lay my hand upon thee: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

(The Sarum formula, identical with the traditional Roman form, was N., Signo te signo crucis et confirmo te chrismate salutis, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti – "N., I sign thee with the sign of the Cross and I confirm thee with the chrism of salvation, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost". It is evident that the Nonjurors adjusted and reinserted the words relative to the chrism into the 1549 rendering of the rest of the formula.)

The same small book goes on to supply a form for consecrating the chrism, noting that it is compounded of "sweet Oil of Olives, and precious Balsam commonly called Balm of Gilead"; the short prayer appointed aptly summarizes the purposes of confirmation:

The Lord be with you.

And with thy spirit.

Let us pray.

O Lord of mercies, and Father of lights, from whom every good and perfect gift proceedeth; Send down, we beseech thee, thine Holy Spirit to sanctify this Ointment: And grant, that all those who after Baptism shall be anointed therewith, may be cleansed and purified both in body and soul, be confirmed in godliness, and obtain the blessings of the Holy Ghost; who, with the Father and the Son, liveth and reigneth ever one God, world without end.

(Source: A Communion Office, Taken Partly from Primitive Liturgies, And Partly from the First English Reformed Common-Prayer-Book: Together with Offices for Confirmation, and the Visitation of the Sick. London: 1718.)

While this rite died with the Nonjurors as they successively split, faded, failed and died out, the fact that those pious men of old time were moved to restore chrismation as part of their ceremony of confirmation is highly instructive.

In the case of modern-day Anglicans seriously considering taking up Pope Benedict's most generous offer of welcoming them into the unity of the Catholic Church, I would urge them, in all honesty and concern for their spiritual well-being, not to be angered, driven away nor scandalized at the Roman insistence upon reception into full communion by confirmation. The fact that most if not all of them will not have been confirmed in a rite using consecrated chrism, but by a laying on of hands alone, should give them pause: such a confirmation, wanting a most central and important rite – a rite viewed as essential by the Orthodox even more so than by the Papacy – is unfortunately questionable.

If one received but the laying on of hands alone, and yet the churches of East and West have for many ages required one to be anointed with holy chrism, ought not one then prudently accept chrismation?

Giuseppe Maria Crespi 001 756x1024 Σφραγὶς δωρεᾶς Πνεύματος ἉγίουSince the deletion of anointing with chrism was a most serious and unparalleled omission made by the Reformers in defiance of Apostolic order, it is only prudent to assume that the Anglican rite of confirmation is, sadly, imperfect; and the only prudent course therefore is to submit to confirmation, with true chrism, at the hands of an undoubtedly consecrated bishop in the Apostolic succession, or of a priest as his licensed delegate.

I recall what Bishop Elliott once told us, of how he had been most carefully prepared for his confirmation by his father, an Anglo-Catholic priest holding to a high doctrine of confirmation as a true sacrament. Great was his father's wrath when the bishop who administered confirmation to young Peter – an ultra-low-church creature, "lower than a snake's belly" – went out of his way to deny that confirmation was a sacrament at all! Having had such an unpleasant and confusing Anglican experience, I daresay he was only too glad, when received into the Catholic Church, to be confirmed properly and without ambiguity.

What of those who, like Elliott, taught by pious men of Anglo-Catholic churchmanship, still shrink honestly from the prospect of being confirmed "again"? The experience, by no means unusual, of the good bishop ought give them pause for thought.

They would have been taught, and rightly so – if only their actual confirmation had been unquestionably valid! – that confirmation is unrepeatable, and that it were a sacrilege to be confirmed again. But this is the crux of the whole issue: the Catholic Church, on the twofold grounds of lack of anointing with chrism in the ceremony, and lack of certain orders on the part of the minister of Anglican confirmation, cannot affirm that such rite is a valid sacrament. Therefore, concerned and rightly so for the good of the souls of those who would enter into full communion, she would they were confirmed absolutely, for the avoidance of all danger.

The uncertainty of spotty Anglican practice – apparently involving, in some continuing jurisdictions, even the use of anointing, I am informed, but also including such resolute denials of the sacrament as that just mentioned, by those who never chrismate –compounded with concerns over the doubtfulness of Anglican orders (their "apocryphal" or cryptic, uncertain nature), makes all too understandable the wise provision of the Catholic Church in appointing confirmation as part of the rite of reception of incomers into full communion.

It is horrible to think, placing myself for the moment in the position of a good Anglo-Catholic, that what I so carefully prepared for and so valued — my confirmation in the Anglican communion — is not considered at all safe and sure by the Catholic Church, and that in joining her fellowship and communion, I will perforce be confirmed "again". This is indeed a stumbling block.

But this does not mean that such a person is viewed as lacking the Holy Spirit, nor as the dupe of a false offer of grace! God ever pours forth His Holy Spirit and grace, and indeed were it not for such supernatural elevation no Anglican would be moved in his heart to seek for Christian unity, fleeing what he once thought to be the true church, but now revealed in its doctrinal and moral confusion to be anything but. There is pain and tragedy in this; there is greater joy and hope in the surer promise, founded on the rock of Peter's faith.

Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift! How magnificent, not only to be received into full communion with the Catholic Church, fulfilling the hopes of generations of Anglo-Catholics, but at that reception to be guaranteed, in the prudent ministration of confirmation, the anointing of the Holy One, the seal of the gift of the Holy Ghost.

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Divorce and Remarriage in "Historic Anglicanism" (Part I)

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*** UPDATED 06/08/10 9:18 PM EST ***

Marital indiscipline seems to afflict all Western Christian churches and bodies to some degree or other, and even to an extent those in the East (the theory and practice of the Eastern Churches, which rested originally on a basis quite distinct form that of Western Catholics and Protestants, I will not discuss here) as well.  Suffice it to say that, on a theoretical level at least, no Christian church or “denomination,” Eastern or Western ever accepted the practice of “divorce” in the modern sense of the term (that is, the dissolution of a valid marriage with one or both of the parties to that dissolved marriage being free to marry again), however much “pastoral compassion” (or “overlooking, deliberately or otherwise, irregular marital unions”) may, especially in the East, have allowed for the toleration of “marriages” of individuals whose spouses had disappeared some considerable time in the past.  At the Reformation, however, all of the leading Protestant Reformers embraced the view of Erasmus that there were circumstances in which a valid marriage might be dissolved and the parties to it, or at least the “innocent” party, be allowed to remarry, which meant remarry in church, as in Catholic and Protestant countries alike there was no other form of marriage (beyond “common-law marriage” in a few countries such as Scotland — but this was a form of “marriage” of which the offspring were technically illegitimate, and so lacked clear inheritance rights).  Moreover, Protestant church bodies, both Lutheran and Reformed, quickly came to permit divorce, and remarriage after divorce (hereafter termed DaR for short), in a variety of circumstances, among them, for instance, Scotland, where divorce in the modern sense became legally available in 1560, and has remained so ever since.

In England, however, the position was different, despite some initial irregularities, and the Church of England adopted what can be described as the most severe position on DaR of any Western Christian tradition whatsoever. The historic Anglican position on "divorce and remarriage" is clear enough — a resolute “no, never.”

King Henry VIII was firmly and explicitly opposed to DaR; he never in his life had a "divorce" in the modern sense as defined above (although in the 16th Century the term was used to denote any separation of the parties to a marriage during the lifetimes of them both) as all of his four "divorces" were "annulments" (granted by his complaisant Archbishop Cranmer).  Cranmer himself, as a firm Protestant, came to favor DaR in a wide variety of circumstances, and shortly after Henry VIII's death in 1547 he granted a divorce (in the modern sense) to William Parr, then Earl of Essex, later Marquess of Northampton, who subsequently "remarried." (He also granted Sir Ralph Sadler permission to remain married to a woman whom he had married over a decade previously, some years after her husband had disappeared, when that first husband reappeared and tried to extort money from Sadler.)  Provision for DaR was embodied in Cranmer's proposed reformed Code of Canon Law, but that proposal was rejected by the House of Commons in 1553 (as it was again in 1571 when reform-minded MPs tried to pass it despite Elizabeth I's objections).  Under the Catholic Queen Mary, Parr was forced to separate from his wife under threat of excommunication and prosecution for bigamy — and while after Mary’s death in 1558 and the succession of her ambiguously Protestant half-sister Queen Elizabeth I he resumed living with his second wife, one of Elizabeth I's "Ladies in Waiting," the Queen more than once publicly reproached him for "bigamy" — and when he wished to marry again after his second wife died in 1565, she forbade the marriage and refused to permit it until after Parr's original wife died in 1571 (Parr survived his third marriage by only a couple of months).

Under Elizabeth DaR was non-existent and illegal in England under both Common and Canon Law.  Church courts continued to grant "separations from bed and board" to incompatible couples, but these did not allow, and in fact specifically and explicitly forbade, remarriage of either party during the life of the other.  Sometimes it happened regardless: John Thornborough, a clergyman, was granted such a separation from his wife in the 1580s, but went on to contract a remarriage shortly thereafter.  In 1592, when he was appointed Bishop of Limerick (in Ireland), seemingly as a reward for his Catholic-hunting activities, the (Calvinist) Archbishop of York, Matthew Hutton, objected violently to Thornborough's appointment, on the grounds that he was an open bigamist — another Elizabethan bishop, Marmaduke Middleton of St. David's, bishop there from 1582, was deprived of his bishopric for such bigamy just a year later in 1593 — but his letters of protest to the Queen seemingly did not reach her, and the consecration went forward (Thornborough died as Bishop of Worcester in 1641, a firm Calvinist and one of the most stalwart opponents of "Laudianism").

In 1604 new canons promulgated in the Church of England ruled out DaR in all circumstances whatsoever, making provision for "separation" and (in very restricted circumstances) "annulments."  This remained the formal position of the CofE down to (I think) the 1980s — although in Scotland, by contrast, DaR was available in a wide variety of circumstances from 1560 onwards.  From 1670 onwards there was in England there was the phenomenon of "Parliamentary divorce:" an Act of Parliament would grant a couple a divorce, give one (or sometimes both) of them legal permission to remarry, and exempt any clergyman performing the remarriage full exemption from the penalties of the law, both Common and Canon/Civil (the study of Canon Law in England had been abolished in the 1530s, and most of the officials who staffed English church courts thereafter were trained in Roman, or “Civil,” Law): almost 300 such divorces were granted between 1670 (Lord Roos's case) and 1821 (when the farcical public fiasco of George IV's attempt to get such a divorce from his estranged wife ended in failure).  Modern-style divorce became available in England only in 1857, and although after that date no legal penalties could be levied upon clergymen who performed such "remarriages," right down to the 1960s clergymen who did so were effectively "blacklisted" by just about every diocesan bishop, and denied all further preferment within the CofE.

Generally, "low church" or "evangelical" clergy tended to favor DaR in this period (in some circumstances), not least because all foreign Protestant churches, both Lutheran and Reformed, allowed it, and "high-church" (later "Anglo-Catholic") clergy to oppose it in almost all circumstances — but in 1670 it was the strenuous support of "Lord Roos's Bill" by the "Laudian" Bishop of Durham, John Cosin, in the face of the opposition of most of the other bishops, that persuaded the House of Lords to pass it.

I am, however, totally ignorant of the practice of PECUSA from 1785 onwards on this matter, although right down to the 1940s/50s divorce was strongly disapproved of in that church, especially for clergy, for whom , with rare exceptions like the notorious Bishop Pike, divorce alone, with or without remarriage, generally ended all hope of a “successful clerical career.”

We are not finished with this subject yet, but already certain implications have begun to emerge.  Above all, it is clear that a loose marital discipline, whether tricked out in the robes of alleged "pastoral care" or "meeting people where they are," is no part at all of that "Anglican patrimony" which is seeking to be resituated in and restored to Catholic communion.  Rather the contrary: the "Anglican patrimony" is one that has upheld the traditional marital discipline of the pre-Reformation Western Church to a degree that is unparalled among Reformation bodies, and one which was profoundly uncongenial to the Erastian powers-that-be in post-Reformation England — as witness the phenomenon of "Parliamentary divorce."  Another is that in the context of this resituated "Anglican patrimony" one of its functions will be to witness to and uphold the longaeval marriage discipline of the Church, as a counterpoint to those sad failings of Henry VIII that led to the original breach between England and Rome, and thus in a way vindicating the stand of Clement VII, Paul III and Cardinal Pole in opposition to that monarch.  And finally, although there is the hopeful possibility of the ordination of suitable married men to the diaconate and presbyterate in the soon-to-be-erected ordinariats, it has to be emphasized that there is little or no possibility of those in irregular marital situations, and certainly not in DaR situations, to be ordained or to serve in any clerical capacity in them.

(to be continued…)

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WSJ Article Asks if Reformation Is Beginning Its End

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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."

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A Royal Conquest of the Church

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THE REFORMATION AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND: NOT “A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE” BUT “A ROYAL CONQUEST OF THE CHURCH”

For some time I have been alternately bemused, puzzled and annoyed by the arguments and assertions of those Anglican writers and bloggers who try to defend one or other modern “official Anglican” innovations such as the ordination of women to the diaconate, priesthood, or episcopate. Some of the commentators are often generally "conservative" but somehow they seem compelled to dismiss the lack of any early church precedent for these innovations with remarks along the lines of, "the Church of England rejected papal jurisdiction in the Sixteenth Century, and so is free today to do what it will on its own authority." They usually also contend that the English Church "broke away from Rome" or "freed itself from papal control" or "declared itself independent" at that time. The purpose of these claims seems to be to assert that this act of 450 years ago was indeed a declaration of independence on the part of the "Anglican Church" and one which gives some degree of "historical precedent" for these modern innovations, if only by establishing the "authority" of Anglican churches to depart on their own initiative from Catholic belief and precedent hitherto held to be binding as constitutive of "catholicity."

There are interesting theological and ecclesiological questions underlying such an assertion, but my purpose here is not to discuss those, but, rather, what it was (if anything) that the Church of England "did" between the early 1530s and the mid 1560s to see if these assertions can be justified, or, indeed, whether they have any clear meaning at all.

At the beginning of the Sixteenth Century, and for a long time previously, the Church of England consisted of two church provinces: Canterbury, with nineteen dioceses, and York, with three. To be precise, the English church also included the four Welsh dioceses, in addition to fifteen English ones. Although the English bishops had gathered together in "synods" beginning in the Seventh Century, such synods had ceased to meet by the Fourteenth Century, because of the development of two ecclesiastical assemblies, the Convocation of Canterbury and the Convocation of York.

The Upper House of each convocation consisted of prelates (bishops and abbots) while the Lower House consisted of archdeacons, deans of cathedrals and representatives of the parochial clergy. The convocations' origins were connected with those of the English Parliament. As is well known, the English Parliament is a two-house body, consisting of the House of Lords, in which sat until only a decade ago the "Lords Spiritual" (the bishops of the original 26 dioceses of the Church of England and, until the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s some 31 abbots) and the "Lords Temporal" (the hereditary peers, to which were added the life peers in 1964).  The membership of the House of Commons, by contrast, was elected each time the monarch summoned a Parliament. What is not so well known is that at the beginnings of Parliament in the late Thirteenth and early Fourteenth Centuries, "the Commons" included elected representatives of the lower clergy as well as of the laity, but in the 1330s these "proctors of the clergy" began to refuse to participate in parliamentary deliberations, considering them both time-consuming and unsuitably "secular" in nature. Consequently, they began to meet separately under the presidency of a Prolocutor (Speaker) of their own choosing, and at the summons of their respective province's archbishop. This was the origin of the convocations, and the reason why meetings of the convocations took place in tandem with meetings of Parliament, and not otherwise. [1]

The convocations were effectively the "church parliament" for the two provinces of the Church of England. They had two principal functions:

  • to make ecclesiastical laws (canons) which bound both clergy and laity; and,
  • to vote clerical tax grants to the Crown, analogous to those secular taxes voted by Parliament.

However, while Acts of Parliament required the monarch's approval to become legally valid, those of the convocations did not: they came into force when approved by both houses and promulgated by the archbishop of their respective province. While both convocations were in theory of equal authority, in practice the Convocation of York was a small-scale affair as compared with the Convocation of Canterbury, and normally followed the lead of the latter body.

In 1216 King John signed Magna Carta. The first clause of Magna Carta granted "that the Church of England may be free" meant originally free from royal interference concerning episcopal elections and church finances. There had been a number of clashes between the Crown and the Church in the Middle Ages both before and after the grant of Magna Carta but after 1341 there were no major clashes. There continued to be jurisdictional quarrels between the king's courts and the church courts. Some churchmen resented the various Fourteenth-Century parliamentary statutes that sought to limit papal interference with ecclesiastical appointments within the Church of England, but for the most part Church and Crown coexisted in relative harmony until the reign of Henry VIII. Frustrated by the failure of his attempt in 1529 to secure a papal annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon or, otherwise, papal acquiescence in an annulment to be granted by a specially-arranged papal legatine court meeting in England in June/July of that year, Henry began to browbeat the English Church in order to secure its institutional support for his "divorce." He wanted the support of the church to place pressure on the papacy to grant the annulment.

By June 1530 it was becoming clear that any Roman judgment on Henry's marriage was likely to uphold its validity, and from that point onwards the goal of Henry's diplomacy was to prevent or delay a resolution of the case in Rome, while casting about for some means of resolving the matter in England. At the time, most of the bishops had willingly or otherwise proclaimed their support for Henry's annulment petition as had the convocations (academic assemblies of masters and doctors) of Cambridge and Oxford universities. Nonetheless, when Henry suggested in October 1530 to a group of bishops, clergy, judges and lawyers that perhaps the Archbishop of Canterbury might proceed in the case in defiance of the pope, the meeting reacted with consternation, informing Henry that this was impossible. Likewise, the aged Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham (d. 1532), who was an unenthusiastic supporter of the king's cause, refused to have any to do with the suggestion.

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Can the Thirty-Nine Articles Function As a Confessional Standard for Anglicans Today?

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thomas cranmer ez Can the Thirty Nine Articles Function As a Confessional Standard for Anglicans Today?During the Reformation, and for centuries afterward, Protestant bodies defined their theological stances, towards Catholicism and one another, by means of “Confessions of Faith.” Such Confessions were issued by the Lutherans, the Reformed and the Radicals alike, and some Protestant bodies (such as the Mennonites, an offshoot of the Anabaptists of the Radical Reformation) have continued to do so to the present day. Perhaps the first such Confession issued by a group, as opposed to a statement of an individual Reformer, was the Anabaptist Schleitheim Confession of 1527, but others soon followed. Three such Confessions were presented to the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 at the command of the Emperor Charles V, a Catholic, who had demanded a clear account of the position of the Reformers and their supporters. On behalf of the Lutherans, and with Luther’s agreement, Philipp Melanchthon presented the Augsburg Confession, which remains to this day the primary — and for some Lutheran churches the only — binding statement of their belief; on behalf of the Swiss Reformed churches (which had reached an impasse with the Lutherans over Eucharistic doctrine in the preceding year), Huldrych Zwingli’s Reckoning of the Faith; and on behalf of four south German cities the Tetrapolitan Confession, composed by Martin Bucer, Wolfgang Capito and Caspar Hedio, which sought to mediate between the Lutherans and the Reformed. Lutherans, Reformed and Radicals alike continued to produce further confessions, in the case of the Radicals as often as not to differentiate various groups from one another, but in the case of the Lutherans and the Reformed to amplify their original statements, respond to further controversies and to differentiate their views from one another, and from Catholicism. In the case of the Lutherans, such key Confessions as the Augsburg Confession, the Smalcald Articles (1537), the Formula of Concord (1577), among others (ten in all), were gathered together in 1580 in the Book of Concord, which itself became normative for most Lutheran churches, but in the case of the Reformed, by contrast, there were many confessions of faith, similar but far from identical with one another, promulgated by various national or regional churches. These included the First Helvetic Confession (1536), the Scots Confession (1560), the Belgic Confession (1561), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), the Second Helvetic Confession (1566), the Second Scots Confession (1581), the Irish Articles of Religion (1615), the Westminster Confession (1647) and the Confession of the Waldenses (1655). Most Reformed churches, but by no means all, accepted the Canons of the Synod of Dort (1618-1619) which defined the “five points” of Calvinism, namely, namely, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. In almost all such “confessional churches” subscription to the confessions was a prerequisite for ordination, promotion or teaching in a Theology Faculty; and in some Protestant countries subscription was a requirement for those holding public office.

In England, of course, Henry VIII’s breach with Rome (1532-34) had nothing to do with Protestant doctrinal ideas of any sort, although to be sure it is doubtful that if the continental Reformation had not happened Henry would have had the willingness or the ability to break with Rome and to have himself declared to be “only Supreme Head under Christ of the Church of England” in 1534. Although Henry came to see himself as a “reformer” as well as a “godly prince” his idea of “reform” extended only so far beyond despoiling the Church as to attack “superstitious devotion” to saints and images, as well as, half-heartedly, the existence of Purgatory. (Henry allowed the existence of Purgatory to be denied, but believed in prayer for the dead; towards the end of his reign he signed a law allowing him to dissolve chantries, endowed foundations that provided for Masses for the dead, but in his own will he endowed thousands of Masses for the repose of his own soul.) For political reasons Henry engaged in sustained negotiations for an alliance with the Lutheran princes of Germany in the 1530s, and since these princes insisted that a religious/confessional agreement had to accompany a political alliance he allowed reform-minded English theologians, among them Archbishop Cranmer, to strive to come to a theological agreement with the Lutherans. Among the results of these negotiations were the Wittenberg Articles of 1536, the Ten Articles later in the same year and Cranmer’s own Thirteen Articles of 1538. These all showed a good deal of practical reform-mindedness, but although they all employed to a greater or lesser extent Lutheran-sounding terms and phrases, they were never promulgated or ratified: Henry had an abiding, if uncomprehending, hostility to the Lutheran doctrine of “Justification by Faith Alone” and an equally abiding devotion to clerical celibacy, and once it became clear by mid 1539 that he had no need for a Lutheran alliance, he cast them aside and upheld a strongly Catholic view on all controverted theological issues for the remainder of his reign.

England had a Protestant Reformation imposed on it in the course of Edward VI’s reign (1547-1553), although the rapidity and spontaneity of the restoration of Catholic practice and rites after Edward’s death in July 1553 and the succession of his catholic half-sister Mary, even before the law was altered to legalize and restore Catholicism, shows how superficial was its effect. Under Edward, changes in practice — the replacement of the Latin Mass by successive Books of Common Prayer in 1549 and 1552, the implementation of communion in both species in 1548, the allowance of clerical marriage in 1549, the removal of altars in 1550 and their replacement by wooden tables, to name the most notable — preceded changes in doctrine, and it was only in June 1553, less than a month before the king’s death, that 42 “Articles of Religion” drafted by Archbishop Cranmer were promulgated by the authority of the Privy Council (no ecclesiastical body or assembly ever debated or approved of them), and they died with the king. Nevertheless, as they formed the basis for the later 39 Articles, it is only right to glance at a few of their distinguishing features. Taken as a whole, they are Protestant, they are Reformed and they are unCatholic (and certainly not in any sense “Anglo-Catholic”). As they were formulated in the 1550s they do not dwell upon matters such as predestination, election, perseverance in grace and assurance of salvation which were to agitate the Reformed world generally and English Protestants particularly from the 1580s onwards, but on matters such as the Eucharist, on which a great chasm had opened between the Lutheran and Reformed camps in the 1520s and which was rapidly becoming more embittered in the 1550s, the 42 Articles took a decidedly Reformed stance. For example, Article 29 (which corresponds to Article 28 in the 39 Articles) “Of the Lord’s Supper” contains a passage, subsequently omitted, which runs “For as much as the truth of man’s nature requireth, that the body of one and the selfsame man cannot be at one time in diverse places, but must needs be in one certain place; therefore the body of Christ cannot be present at one time in many and diverse places. And because, as Holy Scripture doth teach, Christ was taken up into heaven, and there shall continue until the end of the world, a faithful man ought not either to believe or openly to confess the real and bodily presence, as they term it, of Christ’s flesh and blood, in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.” Taken together with the “Black Rubric” (which rejected “anye reall and essencial presence there beeyng of Christ's naturall fleshe and bloude” in the eucharistic elements) of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer their fully Reformed stance is clear enough. The 42 Articles also contained condemnations of universalism, millenarianism, and the “sleep of souls” until the general resurrection which were omitted from the later 39, as well as the clear statement that “the decrees of predestination are unknown to us” to which many later Calvinists would have objected (if it was interpreted to mean that the elect could not be aware of their own election).

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Erastianism

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thomas erastus ErastianismMany Anglicans have heard or read the word Erastian or Erastianism without really understanding what the word really means. Erastianism is a political theory of absolute state primacy over the church. The idea comes from Thomas Erastus (1524-1583), a Calvinist who debated whether religious leaders had the right to punish sinners and dissidents in matters of doctrine. He argued that sinners (against church precepts or morality, or those who for example denied the Trinity) should be punished by the State.

The idea of the State in control of the Church is an old one, and the ultimate cause of the increase in the political power of the Papacy. The Church under Constantine is the first example of an official established Church. History is characterised by the Church being under the control of a strong State and being independent at times when the secular power was weak or non-existent. Soloviev quoted Saint Jerome as saying: Ecclesia persecutionibus crevit; post quam ad christianos principes venit, potentia quidem et divitiis maior, sed virtutibus minor facta est (The Church firstly languished under persecution. After this, she turned to Christian rulers who gave her wealth and power, but she thereby grew weaker in virtue).

The power the Church obtained from kings and emperors prepared the way towards the schisms between Rome and the Oriental Patriarchates, Luther, King Henry VIII and the Church of England, the Church of Utrecht and the Old Catholics. The principle of Cuius Rex eius religio (literally "whose king, whose religion" – the "Vicar of Bray syndrome" – not having any real religious convictions but just going along with one's country's ruler, and changing as the regime changed) ran parallel with the rival claims of the Popes. The Church in Russia and the Balkans was subjected to imperial domination, a sort of cæsaro-papalism, and in the West, the rule was papo-cæsarism. The Anglican theologian Eric Mascall, in The Recovery of Unity, made the remarkable observation that "the causes of Christian disunity are to be found in the agreements of Christians rather than in their disagreements". Does not all this ring a bell in the collaboration of churchmen in present-day anti-Christian agendas?

The historian will easily identify the first step of the rise of the Papacy in the Gregorian Reform undertaken by after Gregory VII (1073–85). The essential theory behind this reform, which imposed clerical celibacy in the western Church, consisted of affirming that the Church was founded by God and entrusted with the task of embracing all mankind in a single society in which divine will is the only law; that, in her capacity as a divine institution, she is supreme over all human structures, especially the secular state; and that the pope, in his role as head of the Church under the petrine commission, is the vice-regent of God on earth, so that disobedience to him implies disobedience to God: or, in other words, a defection from Christianity. This, under Boniface VIII, who issued Unam sanctam in 1302, became the two swords. Both spiritual and temporal power were to be under the pope's jurisdiction, and that kings were subordinate to the power of the Church.

Now we understand the reason for the revolt of Elizabeth I and Henry VIII before her against the Papacy! It was simple rivalry over who pretended political power, the local Monarch or the Pope as Emperor of the world. This is the whole key to understanding what has gone on in the Christian world since the fourth century, but especially since the mid eleventh century, which was – no coincidence – the fateful year 1054, the schism between Rome and the Byzantine Church.

As the power of the Papacy became extreme through centuries of weak kings and princes, that power went to their heads and corruption set in. What do you do when you want a check on the Pope’s power? You’ve got it. Put the Church under secular authority. That is what the Reformation was all about. The doctrines of Protestantism, the famous solas, was all about making priests and bishops unnecessary. If the clergy is not necessary for salvation, you do away with the Pope, bishops and priests at one fell swoop – but don’t imagine for a moment that this was to give freedom to the people! This is where Erastus and the tyranny of the Protestant State came in. The people would go on tithing, but no longer to the clergy but to line the pockets of politicians and corrupt officials.

When I consider all this, I look upon the demise of Establishment Anglicanism with a feeling of relief. I compare it with the demise of European Establishment Catholicism in the nineteenth century, in the wake of the French Revolution. The doctrine of the separation of Church and State, as it developed in nineteenth century liberalism, was called madness by Gregory XVI in 1832 when he condemned Lamennais. But, it was the only solution for the freedom of the Church from atheistic and anti-clerical political authorities. This is what the document on religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, was all about. The State and the Church are two radically separate entities.

Some traditionalists would like to see the State reinforce their agenda and uphold the Social Kingship of Christ. They are living in a fantasy world. The people they would ask to punish heretics by putting them in prison and making them pay fines are those who legislate for abortion, divorce, same-sex marriage and curbs on religious expressions in public places. But, the price of disestablishment is not having the grand buildings one had and the money to finance their upkeep. The Church becomes a private enterprise and has to be financed as such, either by getting people to tithe or earning money.

The Church lives in a world of negative secularism, the ideology that has reigned in France since the Revolution and the anti-clerical era of the 1900’s. It now characterises England’s New Labour and political correctness. The Church does just fine if it collaborates with all this stuff, accepts secular moral / ethical tenets, waters down any requirement religion will make of our moral conduct. But, from the moment the Church complains about abortion, equal opportunities laws to an unreasonable extent – and so forth, persecution is not far away.

I am brought to realise that one aspect of Anglican patrimony will have to go, that of Erastianism or its modern equivalent. It is ironic that some of those who are most vocal in upholding “classical” Anglicanism are those who live in countries where the Church is free in a free State. Isn’t it amazing that you don’t find this way of thinking in England? A few days ago, I received a series of highly rude and aggressive e-mails from a person claiming to be an ordinary Anglican lay parishioner in the north of England. I am English, and know our people have lived under the Established Church. I examined the headers of the e-mails in question, and found the IP address based in Florida – an American! Of course! Is it not amazing that those who live in a free country are those who often despise the freedom of other people’s consciences? Thank goodness there are some wonderful American Anglicans and Catholics who are grateful to be free and love the freedom of others!

At last, we have a Pope who is a theologian and a historian. He has no ambition to be a secular emperor, but he does take his role to govern the Church seriously, and will not allow himself to be trodden underfoot by the atheist and the negative secularist. The Church has to live in a secular world, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. The USA is an example of a secular state that traditionally respects the freedom of conscience and all religions. The price of the Church’s freedom from political interference is the freedom of non-religious people from specifically religious tenets. We can’t have it both ways.

For the first four centuries of the Church’s existence, Christians lived either under persecution or indifference. The Christian community celebrated the liturgy and the Sacraments, studied the Scriptures and the Fathers, prayed and waited for the Parousia. Today, it is the life of monks, and increasingly of the rest of us. We try to have a moral influence on the world as much as possible, but we should try to do so through positive witness and not violence and shows of fanatical behaviour. We are free, but we no longer have the power churches once had. The price is paid and our survival depends on the authenticity of our religion and the quality of our faith, love and prayer.

We will be observed and judged for our love for each other.

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Ecclesiastical Sundries

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"And now, it is asked, will a result be achieved in the discussions with Rome, will we soon have an agreement? Frankly, sincerely, speaking in human terms, we do not see such an agreement in view. What does an agreement mean? On what are we in agreement? On the fact that only through the Church we find the means of salvation? …

"This does not mean abandoning truth in order to find a middle way, absolutely not; yes, in human terms, we will not reach an agreement, the way we see things, [the talks] do not serve any purpose, in human terms. Yet, when we speak of the Church, we do not speak in human terms, we speak of a supernatural reality to which Our Lord promised that it would not fail, against which the gates of hell would not prevail. And, therefore, even if we face a difficult and contradictory reality, we know that events are in God's hands, He who has the means to put things in order. It would be proper to recall that to talk and to debate is necessary, but it is not enough: when one talks about saving souls, when one considers how God rescued the Church from other crises it faced through the centuries, we see that holiness is that with which He renews and heals the Church. Without grace, and remaining solely at the level of men, all is lost from the beginning. All of us, as Catholics, must, therefore, act, advancing in grace, in the love of God, in charity."

  • The Kirk is miffed at the Holy Father's address to the Scottish Bishops. In his address, the Holy Father referred to "the great rupture with Scotland’s Catholic past that occurred four hundred and fifty years ago" and linked Scotland's history of sectarianism to the upheaval of the Protestant Reformation.  Some Scottish Presbyterians are eager to celebrate the 450th anniversary of the Reformation.  Donald Gorrie, the former Liberal MSP and a Kirk elder for forty years, said:

I think this (the Pope's remarks) contributes to the difficulties. One of the difficulties in persuading either the Church of Scotland or the government to celebrate the Reformation as it deserves is that it will be seen as being sectarian and triumphalist and anti-Catholic. In fact, it is a good opportunity to celebrate the Reformation by ecumenical type services to show how far we've come.

Och, it's unbelievable that anyone would think that the Protestant Reformation was sectarian and anti-Catholic!

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