Catholicism & Ecumenism - Comment from the Catholic League

Futures for Anglican-Roman Catholic Unity

August 20, 2008

The Anglican Communion under the leadership of Archbishop Rowan Williams, strongly supported by the Vatican, emerges as stronger and more cohesive than before. The openly schismatic GAFCON movement representing the conservative Evangelical leaders of the "Global South" proved unwilling to maintain active dialogue and communion with Canterbury and, although they represent huge numbers of Anglicans worldwide, they managed to appear narrow, unwlling to hear and respect views they did not share or the advice of critical friends and, with Lambeth in progress, isolated and diminished by the actions they had taken. Perhaps there is to be a formal split in Anglicanism, but the cohesiveness of the main body led by the Archbishop of Canterbury is likely to remain attractive in most provinces, however strained relations or at the moment on matters of genuine principle. It is, after all, the nature of the Church to abhor schism - authentic unity does not require uniformity, but it does require mutual recognition and acceptance founded on "the work of reconciliation" in Christ that is constantly ongoing and is dynamic in the Church's communion in him.

This is evidently the judgment Rome has formed. At the Sydney World Youth Day, Pope Benedict made it clear there was enough disunity in the history and experience of the Church and no more was needed. He reaffirmed the Catholic Church's objective of full eucharistic communion among all Christians. Even though Cardinal Kasper explained to the English Anglican bishops and the Lambeth Conference that, because "the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate is ... increasingly the stance of the Communion", dialogue towards full communion was compromised, the Vatican has been doing what it can to assist the Anglican Communion in a time of change and transition to become more stabilised, clear in what it wants, decided in its life and witness concering the Christian faith, and no less deflected on its long term aspiration for Christian Unity.

The Vatican is playing the long game, realising that the old hopes for structural reunion have not proved realistic and that fullness of communion will come at the end of a deeper and more demanding relationship over time. And it will be worth taking this time. But why should the Holy See be supporting the unity of the Anglican Communion, when it disagrees with it?

It should not be forgotten that Vatican II's Decree on Ecumenism specifically mentioned the Anglican Communion as a "beloved sister". So as a distinctive tradition within Christianity, tt was expressly honoured and its role in the search for full eucharistic communion is considered unique. Whatever the developments in the Anglican Church over the course of the last 40 years may have done to change that, and while indeed there may actually have been less progress in the end in with the Catholic Church's dialogue Anglicans than with the Methodists and the Lutherans, there can be no justification in giving up on the original objective. So, since Anglicanism remains a significant component of worldwide Christianity, the Catholic Church will want to ensure that they both have a good , respectful and constuctive relationship for the future. As Cardinal Hume once observed, 'the purposes of the Catholic Church are not served by a weakened Church of England'. Furthermore, in his great Encyclical on Ecumenism, Ut Unum Sint, Pope John Paul II called on Christian Churches that were not Catholic to tell him how the Petrine ministry could be imagined and available, to be of service to other Churches too, so that even in separation Peter might strengthen his brethren. Perhaps Pope Benedict's support to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the policy of supporting Anglican cohesion are evidence of such a strategy in practice.

For their part, the Lambeth bishops acknowledged that 'Anglican inconsistency' bewildered other churches. They were thus unsurprised by the words of Cardinal Kasper and understood why the years of formal dialogue with Rome had not borne the fruits hoped for.  But they foresaw two things:

  • the future of ecumenism should be from the bottom up, not the top down
  • whatever is done at the local level must accord with dialogue at the top

Both the Anglican bishops and the Vaitcan delegation at Lambeth showed disappointment that the direction for Anglicanism and the position of the Catholic Church meant that dialogue between their two churches, even though continued, would not be sustained by the same dynamism as before. But there seemed to be little rancour about this, Anglicans having decided in principle and with honest charity to continue in their way and the Catholics speaking with undiminished warmth and concern for the Communion's future.

Two interesting details. First the tantalising infromation that possible recognition of Anglican orders by the Catholic Church had been on the cards. It was known that this matter had been viewed in a new context thanks to 20th century developments and dialogue which questioned invalidity rather than validity. It was also recognised in the 1980s and 1990s that the ordination of women to the Anglican priesthood would impede unity between Anglicans and Catholics. Had the closeness of recognition of Anglican orders been known at the time, even after the somewhat qualified and less than encouraging response from Rome's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to ARCIC I, perhaps Catholic recognition of Church Order within Anglicanism, if not eucharistic communion, might have been achieved by this time, or at least under formal consideration. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine how the Catholic Church could conclude this process while so many Anglican clergy and lay people expressly do not share the general belief about the Eucharist and priesthood. Nevertheless, it is disappointing that the prospect of imminent recognition was explained only after it had become definitively blocked.

Secondly, Cardinaly Kasper called on the Anglican Communion to "retrieve the strength of the Church of the Fathers" through a "new Oxford Movement". This is classic Kasper. What he means is a question he has long posed of the Catholic Church in its ecumenical mission to achieve unity with other Christians, also known as "ecumenical learning". It asks, "What is it that we Catholics need to learn and can learn, or receive, with integrity from our others?" It is to turn on its head the usual ecumenical attitude to dialogue and inter-Church relations, which can too often be about defending positions, holding the line, or insisting on what others need to learn from us, or how they should change to fit in with us. So just as Catholics expect to learn from the experience and tradition of the Christian past, and from the Spirit's rich gifts bestowed from the Tradition in other churches from which the Catholic Church finds itself now separated, Kasper asks - given the deepened loss of communion between Anglicans and Catholics and Orthodox - what can the Anglican Communion retrieve by revisiting the success at retrieval by the old Oxford Movement from the shared Tradition of the Fathers and from the Spirit's riches in other churches from which it finds that much more separated?

Bishop Christopher Hill of Guildford found the suggestion of a new Oxford Movement "laudable", but missed the point of Kasper's method. Instead of addressing the question, "What do we need to retrieve and learn and embrace from what we have lost and what others might have to offer?" - the same question Catholics ask themselves - he asked for Catholics to return to the "conciliar tradition" of the Middle Ages. This is a favourites point in Anglican ecclesiological apology at the moment. It supposes that before the excesses of the Papacy in the late 1400s and 1500s there was a golden period when it operated within the structure of Church Councils - first among equals, needing to consult before decisions, tending to act as a court of appeal rather than on its own initiative. There is a great deal of scholarship on this, and it is true that the Papacy did work on these lines. But when it needed or wished to it operated in possession of universal jurisdiction. It is also true that harsh political realities meant that Pope's did not always get their way and were outwitted. It is also true that the papal claims to universal jurisdiction were never recognised in the Christian East, and they are really a factor of the collapse of the imperial power in the West and the tendency of the papacy to provide monarchical rule in a continent of many different kings and dynasties: and the East had no objection to this exercise of patriarchal authority within Rome's own territory. The point is that the governance of the Western Church under the political and economic conditions of the Middle Ages does not provide an adequate model for the coming One Church, which must always seek to conform with the witness of the Church of the Scriptures, the Church of the Fathers, and the Undivided Church of the first millennium.

Besides, even if the conciliar papacy were genuinely the settled structure of the Catholic Church in the West in the prior to the Renaissance, the uncertainty with which it responded to the crisis of the consequent Reformation and then the Enlightenment, meant that authority in the Catholic Church had to be clarified. This was finally settled at Vatican I, which recognised the immediate universal jurisdiction of the Pope under certain defined conditions as a practical and theological necessity for the Catholic Church. This meant that the Catholic Church had definitively moved on from any attachment to the conciliar tradition, if there had ever been one, and affirmed the infallibility of the Pope on matters of faith and morals when the right conditions applied and demanded it, and his power to govern every corner of the Roman Catholic Church when this was needed. Of course, this was modified and developed at Vatican II when the place of the Pope's universal service of teaching and guiding on faith and morals, and direct pastoral governance, was understood as being in consultation and communion with the whole of the college of bishops as the head of their local churches alongside him, primus inter pares, but nevertheless still "primus". This is Catholicism as it is; the genie cannot be put back in the bottle, so to speak, and ecumenical partners cannot find a fruitful approach in wishing "Rome to be other than she is". The truth is that Rome is always becoming "other than she is", undergoing development and purification within her obedience to the Tradition and what she learns and receives from the Spirit's rich gifts to others. And reading Lumen Gentium, Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church and the episcopate which completes the teaching of Vatican I on the role of the Papacy, reveals a profoundly compelling image of the Church through the bishops of each of the local churches, including the Bishop of Rome, as a collegial body constituting the reality of the whole universal Church in perfect communion. With this living collegiality, why look to the Middle Ages?

In his homily at the end of the Lambeth Conference, Cardinal Kasper exemplifies the better ecumenical method. Bishop Hill had welcomed his "cirtical friendship", but looked to find a new path for dialogue in the new situation through asking Rome to accept Anglicanism's ways by itself becoming different. Instead, Kasper asked what the Catholic Church could learn from the Lambeth Conferece and the way Anglicans debate, rather than request Anglicans to change and become like Roman Catholics, the discredited and futile "ecumenism of return". He expressed the hope that Catholics with their Petrine ministry, papal authority, collegiality of bishops and communion-ecclesiology could learn to listen to each other and produce decisions that came from within and not imposed from above. A decision from the Pope, after all, if it has grown from the consensus fidelium and is the result of profound mutual obedience and listening in the Church, can never truly be imposed.

 

Tags: anglican, benedict, catholic, conciliar, kasper, lambeth, papacy, receptive ecumenism, williams

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Response to the General Synod and the Lambeth Conference

August 16, 2008

 

Response to the Proceedings of the General Synod of the Church of England and the Lambeth Conference, August 2008

The Catholic League for the Unity of Christians notes with regret the decision of the General Synod of the Church of England to proceed with the ordination of women to the episcopate.

As Cardinal Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, observed in the statement of July 8, it signifies

‘a breaking away from the apostolic tradition maintained by all the Churches since the first millennium and therefore is a further obstacle for the reconciliation between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England.'

The position of Unitas-Catholic League

The League has been dedicated since its foundation in 1913 to the reunion, the visible unity, of the whole of Christendom. Therefore it has never supported partial ecumenism which excludes the Orthodox Church or the Apostolic See of Rome, hence the original concept of a league, and our contemporary campaign, ‘Unitas'.

It began as a witness among Anglicans to this holistic view of Christian re-integration, as the earlier Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom, which had once included Orthodox, Anglicans and Roman Catholics, ended. Over the last two decades, it has restored this wider embrace as an ecumenical society, with a 600-strong membership drawn from the Anglican, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Free Churches in the United Kingdom. All aspire, even if in different ways, to the unity of all Christians somehow in full communion with the Bishop of Rome as perpetuator of St Peter's apostolic service to strengthen and nourish the universal Church of Christ.

So we are working to counter the sense that it is acceptable for churches to be separate. We promote the teaching of the Second Vatican Council on the Church as communion, and Christian unity as fullness of communion. We endeavour to nurture prayer for unity and spiritual ecumenism. We actively support the Catholic ecumenical movement and especially the Holy See's efforts to overcome disunity and restore the fullest communion among the churches, on the basis of the perfected agreement in faith which must precede it.

In our view, without a shared commitment from all churches to a holistic view of the re-integration of Christ's Universal Church, it is difficult to see how the shared objective of Christian Unity according to his will can become that organic and visible reality on earth for which we long. It is more difficult to see how reconciliation among Christians can be furthered, let alone hastened, by the recent decision of the Church of England.

Unitas-Catholic League has refrained from detailed analysis of the Anglican debate on the episcopate. Partly this is because it could add nothing distinctive; and partly because an Anglican differentiation of the ordained ministry could not recognisably form part of the universal tradition of the one Church. The view from the worldwide college of Catholic bishops - clarified in the teaching of Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales, and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity through Cardinal Kasper in his 2006 address to the Church of England bishops - has been unequivocal. Besides, the issues of concern shared by our Anglican members with their Catholic and Eastern Christian friends have been fully set out by bishops and organisations within the Anglican Communion.

So our intention instead has been to emphasise the positive appeal of Catholic ecumenism, and the importance for the whole of people of God of unity in belief, order and communion, at the dynamic heart of which must lie the immemorial witness of Peter in his successor, the bishop of the Church at Rome, which is the ministry of the Pope.

But now that the Church of England has made its decision, division between the Anglican Church and its Catholic and Orthodox ecumenical partners in preference to this search for communion has taken permanent, solid form. We have entered a new situation in the movement towards Christian unity. The old paradigm of reunion for the Catholic and Anglican churches - on the basis of episcopal structures to be mutually ‘united, not absorbed' - has come to an end. So the League's work and witness towards the unity of all Christians with the See of Peter must adapt to a very new phase for ecumenism in general, and Anglican-Catholic relations in particular.

Anglican-Roman Catholic Relations Now

Towards the close of the 19th century, Anglican leaders had high hopes for unity between the Roman Catholic Church and their own ‘reformed Catholicism'. While Anglican orders were not then recognised as Catholic, Pope Leo XIII in 1896 called for prayer for unity to be intensified, trusting that the problem could be solved. This led in 1908 to what became the century-old Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, then the Malines Conversations and later the fresh context following the Church of England's union with the Old Catholic Church.

Later came Vatican II's renewed teaching on the Church as the people of God and Christian unity as communion in Christ through baptism. Then followed the dialogues with other Christians, not least the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission. By the 1990s Catholics were questioning invalidity in the Anglican Church rather than validity, in view of a common aggiornamento in the middle of the 20th century, parallel pastoral and liturgical renewal, and a largely shared understanding of the Church in the modern world.

Recently, this mutual identification found expression in the inspiring ARCIC report on Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ. And both churches worldwide have re-committed themselves not just to theological dialogue but to active collaboration on evangelism and service, through the International Anglican and Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission.

It is tragic that after this long prepared closeness of mind and life, the Church of England chooses irrevocable changes to its structures that the Catholic Church has stressed it cannot consider itself free to accommodate.

Anglicanism's answer is that the doctrine of the Church, the Eucharist, priesthood and episcopate - largely agreed with the Catholic Church through ARCIC - remains unchanged. Any change concerns the principle of justice and equality, reasoned from baptism in Christ in which there is neither male nor female. To the Anglican Church this Scriptural correction to a cultural injustice can take precedence in the Kingdom of God over prior religious rulings.

A number of respected Orthodox and Catholic thinkers have been open to exploring this argument. But in neither the Orthodox Church nor the Catholic Church is it conceivable that such a change could be taken out of step with the agreement of the whole Church - or that anything, whatever its merits, might harm the unity of the household of faith.

After all, there is a painful memory common to us all of the effects of schism and mutual persecution down the ages. And the last three decades within Anglicanism indicate what happens to fullness of communion, if one group imposes its decision on another which it has failed to carry with it. The Church needs no more division.

Indeed, those Catholics who have encouraged Anglicanism in such changes, in the hope that the Vatican will follow suit, have done the Catholic Church a grave disservice in further preventing restored communion between Catholics and Anglicans. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches alike see that agreement in faith precede communion in the Eucharist. It is this prize, for which ecumenism is the race, which is denied us yet again.

As Cardinal Kasper has now told the Lambeth Conference, the decision to ordain women as bishops ‘blocks substantially and finally' the recognition of Anglican church structures and priestly orders. These had opened up to review; but the introduction of additional areas of disagreement since the Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue began means that its basis is altered. From now on, it proceeds at an altered level too. As Pope Benedict remarked at the World Youth Day celebrations in Sydney, the Church's objective is full Eucharistic communion. But Anglican development in a divergent direction, says Cardinal Kasper, ‘directly undermines our goal'. So both already long paths to unity in Christ, which once looked convergent, face extended diversions because of new Anglican obstacles.

Of course, the Catholic Church will come to terms with the Anglican decision. Dialogue and wisdom will deepen, as will the mature friendship, and collaboration on the ground.  The Anglican-Catholic dialogue will now sit alongside the historic international dialogues with the Methodists, Lutherans, Reformed and Pentecostal Christians. It will be no less searching and fruitful. For instance, a root controversy of the Reformation - the doctrine of justification by faith -   has been resolved in a joint declaration between the Holy See, the Lutheran World Federation, and the World Methodist Council. The Anglican Communion could follow suit.

Cardinal Kasper famously sees that in the Church there are always two principles vying with each other - the Catholic and the Protestant principles - or, as Kasper himself says, the unitive and the prophetic principles. They are there to correct and energise each other. Without a prophetic or ‘Reform' instinct, the Catholic instinct for overriding oneness can get reduced to a sterile institutionalism that resists renewal, purification and development. And without the unifying Catholic instinct, the prophetic impulse for change and development can lead legitimate diversity into fragmentation, and place conscientious schism above ecclesial integrity. All churches should hold both principles together in harness, so that they can both drive the Church's growth and deepen its members' cohesion. If one prevails, the dual power of both is lost.

Kasper advocates ‘receptive ecumenism', whereby the churches learn what, with integrity, they can receive from other Christian traditions in belief, worship, spirituality and even how their structures operate. The Church, in the Catholic Church par excellence, thus gains from God's gifts bestowed on other traditions - even some correctives - but which are held back behind false and worldly denominational barriers.

In January 2006 Cardinal Kasper was asked what the consequences for the Catholic Church would be if the Church of England were to admit women to the episcopate. He replied it would be an option for the Protestant principle over the unitive principle and end the Anglican claim to be both Catholic and Reformed. But, he continued, at least everyone would know where the Anglican Church stood and Catholic-Anglican ecumenical relations could make progress again on this clearer new footing. And as he has now said to the Lambeth Conference:

‘It seems to us that the Anglican Communion is very close to the Protestant Churches of the sixteenth century and is taking a position that those Churches took until the second half of the twentieth century.'

Yet he has often observed that Anglicans and Catholics find themselves closer together now than at any time since the 16th century. Stark differences have now arisen because we are getting to the heart of our problems, not because we are more estranged. And so we can speak frankly with each other, precisely because our friendship is mature and we are committed to each other.

All the past achievements remain in place. They underpin current ecumenical understanding and they will sustain collaboration in mission and service into the future. And, even if the dialogue has been irrevocably changed, Anglican setbacks to the Catholic Church's long term hopes for communion do not permit any turning back by the Holy See in following Christ on the path to unity. Striving for the goal of full Eucharistic communion is a duty of which none may tire.

The Next Steps for the Catholic League

The League will continue to promote the unity of all Christians with the See of Peter. Catholics believe that the Petrine ministry of the Church of Rome and its bishop, the Pope, ‘presiding in love', is too precious a gift for Catholics to keep to themselves.

So, as always, we work to resist the spirit of denominationalism. Pope Benedict, supporting the Archbishop of Canterbury's efforts to keep the Anglican Communion together, has given short shrift to attempts to draw Rome into breaking up koinonia within Anglicanism. The apostolic ministry of the Pope is always to strengthen the unity of Christ's flock so that the world may believe, and not loosen bonds of communion.

So we would urge our Anglican members to do nothing that is not conducive to the greater unity of the Church as a whole.

We continue to foster spiritual ecumenism, as commended by Vatican II, in pilgrimages and prayer for unity in Christ, and the mutual exchange of the many gifts and riches in our distinctive traditions. The Church needs them all. Central is our reconciliation work to repair the distrust and hurt caused by past enmity, still affecting Christianity to this day. Hence our efforts towards a common ‘new memory' about the Catholic and Protestant martyrs, as advocated by Pope John Paul. All this is in hope of a future ‘unity in diversity' - but a rich diversity rooted in nothing other than unanimity in faith.

That said, it has to be borne in mind that (aside from the pastoral and mission problems posed by Pentecostalism) reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church (including the Oriental Orthodox Churches) has now become the Holy See's ecumenical priority.

All our members should recognise that the Catholic Church's focus on East-West reunion will be the true dynamic determining the future course of relations with Anglicans and Reformation churches in the West.

Anglican and Roman Catholic Next Steps

It is sad that the perspective on those Anglicans who wished their Communion to keep to the shared practice of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches is that they are a ‘minority' of ‘dissenters'. A lesson for the Christian unity movement has meant moving out of a history of persecution and denunciation and into giving an honoured place to principled difference; people who were once excommunicated, thanks to the Catholic ecumenical approach, are now seen as invaluable ecumenical partners and wise, critical friends. This spirit is needed just as much within church bodies as between them.

The idea of majorities is likewise beside the point. What matters is communion, and its fullness in the whole Church and between the churches. Once, famously, the Church was ‘astonished to finds itself Arian'. What overcame that divide, was not one side prevailing over the other - the Catholic-Orthodox were the minority - but the desire for undivided participation in Christ and with each other. So the doctrinal question was resolved through the faith the Universal Church believes and practises in fullness of communion, not in the end through pursuing disputations and divisions.

Anglicanism prides itself on its comprehensiveness and interdependence. These are very closely related to St Paul's understanding of the Church as the communion of the baptised faithful, as taught by the Catholic Church. Thus it is alien to Catholic understanding that anyone should be expected to leave. Witness Pope Benedict's concern to repair the schism within Catholicism over the old rite of mass, at the same time as maintaining the overall unity of a very diverse Catholic Church worldwide. In the light of these principles, the reluctance towards the inclusion of the ‘universal-oriented' Catholic believers in the Anglican world looks out of place.

But a separating out, of some sort, seems to be on the cards. It has to be borne in mind that the Catholic Church will maintain its ecumenical ties with Anglicanism undeterred from the search for fullness of communion. It will not be interested in rivalry, undermining the effectiveness and witness of the Anglican Christian tradition, or deepening division. But, as Pope Benedict has shown in his frequent aspirations for unity, the gift of fullness of communion which has been entrusted to the Catholic Church, along with her currently impeded vocation to fulfil her universality in history for the sake of all Christians, is so precious that it is her duty to share it.

So the Holy See seems concerned at this point in history, now that Anglicanism has resolved on its search for unity in closer company with the Reformation Churches rather than the Catholic Church, to make the gift of communion available more readily to those in other churches who are seeking closer agreement in Catholic faith and life.

Looking ahead, the Christian Church as a whole seems to present three pathways:

  • 1. The Catholic and Orthodox churches in a gradual process of reconciliation
  • 2. A re-grouping of Reformation churches, with which the Church of England is advanced in uniting in Europe, increasingly influenced by the Global South, still embracing liberal, Evangelical and Catholic traditions.
  • 3. A movement of liberal Christian church bodies in the West, which will tend towards relativism and Unitarianism.

Bishop Edwin Barnes, president of the Church Union, states that Catholic Anglicans ‘are looking to the future without any real chance of remaining members of the Church of England'. If so, we would urge not greater structural separation between Christians, but the path of greater communion with the wider Catholic Church as the authentic priority.

And of course, some will wish to remain convinced Anglicans, despite any disagreement, and play a full part in promoting Catholic (and Orthodox) belief and spirituality. From the Non-Jurors onward, this is an honoured witness, and should remain so. Indeed, in the new situation, Cardinal Kasper has called for a ‘new Oxford Movement' to aid spiritual and receptive ecumenism, which will be needed now more than ever. But this cannot work as a semi-denominational group, ‘between communion'.

Some will wish as individuals to become Roman Catholics. We hope the League will continue to be a source of spiritual support and fellowship on the journey towards fullness of communion. We also hope that the Catholic community and clergy will make every effort to make the transition to life in a new Church setting, as so often before, easy and fulfilling.

Some will be looking to reconciliation on a corporate basis. It is well known that there is wariness about this among Catholics in England - partly through fears of a multiplication of jurisdictions and an additional, organised body outside the jurisdiction of the local hierarchy; and partly because some Catholic commentators have little sympathy with their theological and ecclesiological position. But if Anglicans now wishing to be part of the Catholic Church wish above all to be loyally Catholic, then these thoughts should be set aside. They amount to insufficient grounds to deny the gift of communion which Catholics say is their most precious.

It is evident from the warmth of correspondence between the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Traditional Anglican Communion that the Holy See is open to making room for an identifiable body of former Anglicans and the Catholic Church to achieve reconciliation. Furthermore, Archbishop John Myers of Newark, Ecclesiastical Delegate for the Pastoral Provision for Catholics of the Anglican Use in America, has announced the expansion of the Holy See's mandate for the Pastoral Provision to include more faithful and clergy of ‘continuing Anglican communities'. In the US, the Provision allows for the full integration of former Anglican groups into a local Catholic diocese - emphatically not as a semi-separate prelature or organisation - encouraged to use the Roman rite, both in traditional and contemporary English, with the addition of liturgical forms and prayers incorporated from the Anglican tradition. They are also free to use the usual form of the Roman Rite and the ‘extraordinary form' where desired. There is a pastoral case for adapting this generous pastoral, spiritual and cultural accommodation to conditions in England and thus facilitating Christians in England desiring fullness of communion to be energetically loyal Catholics by (as Cardinal Hume once hoped) not turning their back on Anglicanism but bringing it with them.

Whatever the future holds, the League prays first and foremost for the unity of Christians according to the prayer of Jesus - unity according to his will, according to his means. We wish to provide fellowship and spiritual support to all Anglicans, now discerning the way ahead, to be faithful to the call to fullness of communion and especially for this to be realised for all in the unity of Christians with the See of Peter. We remain committed to Catholic ecumenism and especially to supporting the undiminished efforts in dialogue, collaboration and rapprochement between the Catholic Church and its ‘ever beloved sister', the Anglican Communion.

Tags: anglican, catholic, catholic league, kasper, lambeth, pastoral provision, reconciliation, tac, traditional anglican communion, unity

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Lambeth 2008 - from the Director, Prebendary Brooke Lunn

August 16, 2008

I am writing this in June, before the Lambeth Conference. Those who are reading this will be doing so after the Conference. Every ten years the Bishops of the Anglican Communion gather under the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury - for fellowship and to review the Anglican contribution to the life of our world. The Conference has no legislative authority. Votes are simply measurements of opinion. Nevertheless, the Conference has the potential to make a significant contribution to the wellbeing of our world.

Imagine the Bishops speaking with one voice - one prophetic voice - on...

  • how the basic principle of The Good Society, love, putting others first, needs to be applied in all those issues bedevilling our world today...
  • how, similarly, other principles of The Good Society shoudl be applied - truth and life, holiness and grace, justice, mercy adn peace (cf. the Mass's preface of Christ the King)...
  • how the Domestic Church, the family, is the basic unit of The Good Society, and spelling out the implications of this...
  • how the Church, to be true to herself and to God's will, must be seen to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic...
  • how the issues challenging us today are poth personal and global, and must be tackled at both these levels, as well as at all appropriate intervening levels (cf. the principle of subsidiarity)...
  • and how the Bishops, with all their differences, can speak with one prophetic voice because they are servants of God the Holy Trinity, the perfect society, and pir exemplar of unity in diversity.

Highly imaginative? Yes! Too highly imaginative? It seems that present expectations of Lambeth 2008 are very, very, very low. We might get what we are expecting - or worse. Writing this reminds me of my own cycnicism: "Unlike most Anglicans, I have a high doctrine of Bishops, but low expectations; whereas most Anglicans seem to have a low doctrine and high expectations; and I am the one who is not disappointed."

I have to set, over against this cynicism, the great sense of gratitude I feel for all the goodness I have received within the Church of England (not forgetting the Church of Ireland). It is from within this context that I have learnt (as the General Thanksgiving says) to bless God for our creation, preservation and all the blessings of this life; but above all for God's inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace and for the hope of glory. So, for any who are looking for the opportunity to dance on the Anglican grave, don't look to me to turn up with my fiddle to accompany you.

Martin Luther King, that great prophet of justice and non-violence, had a dream. An impossible dream? Not so, it seems.So is it totally unrealistic for me to dream that all that is of good value in the Anglican faith story will not be just thrown away and discarded? Might I dream of the Church in England - Anglicans, Methodists, Catholics, Free Churchmen - united with each other and with the Roman Apostolic See, and all that is of good value in our several heritages shared with each other? An impossible dream?

Tags: anglican, catholic, lambeth, the good society, unity

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Anglicans in Aspic or Catholics from Glory to Glory?

August 8, 2008

David Chapman writes to the Editor of the Catholic Herald on 8 August 2008:

I think Antony Charles Ryan (Letter, August 1) largely misses the point about those Anglicans in this country considering reception into the Roman Catholic Church. Unlike in America, the majority of them have in all probability used a rite in the celebration of the Eucharist that is very similar, if not identical, to the modern Roman rite. They may love the Book of Common Prayer, as I do, but they don't use it.

I disagree profoundly, and from experience, with Mr Ryan. Let those seeking reception enter wholeheartedly into the Roman Catholic Church in this country. Certainly, we could do with a further injection of good liturgists, pastoral priests, informed laity and the like.

When I was received, fourteen years ago, what I sought was not a little ghetto where I could continue being an Anglican but in communion with Rome, but the certainty of being in complete and unambiguous communion with my bishop and the Holy Father.

The Roman Catholic Church is not perfect - we all love to grumble about it - but I cannot express the joy and peace I find in taking a full and active part in the life of a thriving, positive and growing parish, where those of every nation and background are made welcome and the Faith is taught without compromise or embarrrassment but with great love and humanity. I value my Anglican background (as I was told to do by Cardinal Basil Hume) but I don't want to be preserved in Anglican aspic.

Let the Roman Catholic Church in this country welcome with open arms those who wish to come to us, but welcome them into the fullness of the Church, with all its glories and its faults. Who knows, they may be able to help with the faults and expand the glories.

Tags: anglican, catholic, communion, pastoral provision, pope, reconciliation

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