To review our activities as a charity on the members’
behalf, the pursuit of our historic objectives and the wider public benefit
that they serve, it is most convenient to categorise them in terms of
(a) External
grants
(b) Pilgrimage
work
(c) Publications
(d) The
management of our historic movement devoted not only to Christian Unity but
also to the reconciliation of the Churches and all Church Bodies.
A. External Grants
First, we have made several grants, as usual. These
include:
i) The Anglican Centre in Rome, for bursaries so that Anglicans
from parts of the world with fewer resources can benefit from study in Rome and
a deeper encounter with the Catholic Church and the Catholic faith at its heart
ii) The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, towards the
refurbishment of the Catholic League’s Chapel, dedicated to Our Lady of
Victories and the Holy Cross, with the Chantry for Fr Fynes-Clinton, the
founder. Our trustee
iii) The Sodality of the Precious Blood, a constituent
society of the League for celibate Anglican priest members in pursuit of holiness
of clerical life and the promotion of the Catholic faith, life and worship in
the pastoral work of the Church.
(Declaration of interest: One of the League’s trustees, Prebendary Graeme Rowlands,
is a Guardian of the Holy House at Walsingham and Priest-Director of the Sodality,
and took no part in the decision to award the above two grants.)
iv) The Society of St John Chrysostom, which we support
to advance East-West unity and the reconciliation of western Christians and
Orthodox Christians in fullness of communion with the Apostolic See of Rome, in
pursuit of the League’s objects
v) The Ecumenical Marian Pilgrimage Trust, which we
support to promote the spiritual life and Catholic faith in devotion to the
Blessed Virgin Mary, and the reconciliation of all Christians in fullness of
communion with the Apostolic See of Rome, in pursuit of the League’s objects.
(Declarations of interest: One of the League’s trustees, Fr Mark Woodruff, is
Chairman of the Society of St John Chrysostom and Secretary of the Ecumenical
Marian Pilgrimage Trust, and took no part in the decision to award the above
two grants.
Another trustee, Mr Cyril Wood, is Treasurer of the
Ecumenical Marian Pilgrimage Trust, and took no part in the decision to award
it a grant.)
B. Pilgrimage
Secondly, to
promote the spiritual life and the reconciliation of all Christians and their
Churches, we actively promote ecumenical pilgrimages.
i. The League is an official sponsor of the biennial
Ecumenical Marian Pilgrimage Trust’s pilgrimage to Walsingham and other Marian
shrines, in view of the League’s foundational involvement with the restored
Pilgrimage to the Holy House. Two trustees of the League are also trustees of
EMPT, namely Fr Mark Woodruff (Priest Director) and Mr Cyril Wood (Treasurer).
Other trustees are also actively involved as supporters and pilgrims.
ii. The League’s annual pilgrimage to Bruges, visiting
the Basilica of the Holy Blood and Our Lady of the Vine at the Beguinage has
been a permanent feature of the League’s devotional life for over two decades. 16-20
pilgrims attend each year, drawn from Anglican, Catholic and occasionally other
traditions. This covers its own costs and only exceptionally draws on the
League’s resources. The addresses in the past few years have been given by Fr
Philip Corbett, Brother Theodore De Poel osb, Abbot Hugh Allan o.praem, Ian
Knowles, Fr Thaddee Barnas osb, Fr Peter Geldard, Fr Michael Woodgate, Fr Tim
Bugby, Fr Andrew Walker, Archimandrite Ephrem Lash, Canon John O’Toole. 2017’s
addresses will be given by Brother Henry Longbottom SJ.
Owing to the advancing years of the Benedictine nuns at
the Beguinage and their reducing numbers the pilgrimage will sadly only last a
few more years.
iii. With the developments and improvements at the
Catholic Basilica of Our Lady of Walsingham, it emerged that the former Sue Ryder
House was to be reopened as the Dowry House, a place for retreats and spiritual
support work for pilgrim groups operated by the Community of Our Lady of
Walsingham. The building contains the Walsingham Martyrs’ Cell which the League
once furnished with an altar in memory of Geoffrey Wright, the late and
long-serving General Secretary of the League. Therefore, now that the building
is restored to Church use, the altar has been recovered from its place of
interim storage and restored in the Cell for the priests of visiting groups at
the Dowry House to celebrate the Eucharist. As previously, this is on condition
that its use be available alike to Anglican and Roman Catholic groups, which
has been readily agreed by the Bishop of East Anglia in the spirit of hopes for
reconciliation. The League has also purchased sets of vestments for use in the
chapel.
C. Publications
Several publications are in preparation. These
include:
i) A collection of articles and essays gathered over the
years since the foundation of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, to
which the League gave considerable support in its first years. This will follow
up on a Special Edition of The Messenger in 2010 marking the Ordinariate’s
foundation and supporting the case for it from the perspective of the League’s
historic objectives.
ii) A collection of articles and essays to summarise work
conducted by Fr Philip Gray when he was Priest Director, on themes of
reparation, martyrdom, restoration and reconciliation. This too will be a
Special Edition of The Messenger. Long in preparation, almost all papers have
now been collected.
iii) Father Michael Woodgate’s booklet on devotion to the
Precious Blood will fill a gap in contemporary devotional provision. This will
join a small number of books of prayers developed by the League for wider use.
iv) Dr Michael Walsh’s complete history of the Catholic
League. This not only gives an expert Church historian’s view of the first
fifty years, already covered by two earlier histories, but a comprehensive
review of work and influence since the time of the Second Vatican Council, and
the League’s work to commend the documents and reforms of Vatican II in
Anglican Catholic circles but also ARCIC, from the 1960s into the present day
and the League’s Centenary. It is hoped this book may be adopted by a
mainstream publisher and available in 2018.
A copy of each publication will, as usual, be supplied to
each member and complimentary copies will be presented to each Anglican and
Catholic bishop, the seminaries and theological colleges, and significant
libraries. The Executive considers that with the release of these publications,
especially the history following on from the Centenary, the work of the League
will largely have been completed.
D. Management of the charity, towards Christian unity and Church reunion
The management of the Catholic League’s work for unity
has largely been manifested in the activities of the trustees in various parts
of their extensive ecumenical networks. The Priest Director serves as a member
of the Department of Dialogue and Unity at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of
England & Wales, with a special focus on Catholic-Orthodox unity, but in
the same department meeting serves Mgr Keith Newton of the Ordinariate of Our
Lady of Walsingham, together with others charged with promoting good
Catholic-Anglican relations and rapprochement. Fr Mark is also chairman of the
meeting of the Bodies in Association with Churches Together in England and with
Churches Together in Britain & Ireland, which coordinates with these
official ecumenical instruments the work and advocacy of ecumenical societies.
The Priest Director was invited during the year to
represent Cardinal Nichols, Vice-President of the Council of Catholic Bishops’
Conference of Europe, at the biennial meeting of representative bishops of the
Catholic and Orthodox bishops of Europe. The League generously made available
some resources to enable preliminary consultations in advance of the
presentation he made.
Two officers directly assist the Ordinariate of Our Lady
of Walsingham, either in its management or in the production of its online
monthly magazine, The Portal. The Priest Director currently writes, too, a monthly
column on diversity in the Catholic Church’s life, of which the Ordinariate is
a notable instance, with particular reference to the Eastern Catholic and other
Christian traditions.
Mention should also be repeated of two officers of the
League who serve as trustees of the Ecumenical Marian Pilgrimage Trust. Three
officers have also been closely involved with the Catholic Walsingham
Association and one is a Guardian of the Holy House. Thus the League enables a
certain strengthening to the ecumenical ecology, both in the official and the
spiritual spheres.
As in every year, the League issues liturgical and prayer
materials for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, based on the principles
of its re-founder, Abbe Paul Couturier. These are specially designed to be used
within the prayer of the faithful at daily Mass. It bears repetition that the
English co-founder of the Week of Prayer, then known as the Octave, was Spencer
Jones, an Anglo-Papalist priest, whose influence led to the foundation of the
League towards Anglican-Catholic reunion, and indeed played a part in its early
work.
The League’s work of regular prayer is also sustained by
its constituent body (composed of all members and other supporters), the
Apostleship of Prayer. We are grateful to its own Priest Director, Fr
Christopher Stephenson, who brings great diligence and thoughtful care to the
production of the regular Newsletter which contains the prayer intentions of
the Holy Father and other objects of intercession, including prayer for our deceased
members.
The League maintains four websites in pursuit of its
objects. These are:
- The League's own website, a basic information and history website with occasional updates of news and documentation, at www.unitas.org.uk; and linked from it:
- www.weekofprayerforchristianunity.org.uk, a website to promote the story and observance of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
- www.paulcouturier.org.uk, website in honour of Father Paul Couturier, re-founder of the modern Week of Prayer
- www.seedofthechurch.org.uk, a website concerning the martyrs of Christian disunity, reparation for the blood of Christians shed by Christians, the mutual “healing of memories” called for by Pope St John Paul and the reconciliation of life and memory commended by Pope Benedict.
In association with the League’s project to set out its
own history, we gave access to our archive to the Revd Dr Mark Vickers, a
Church historian and priest of the diocese of Westminster, to look at various
initiatives in the 1930s from a number of quarters, including leading figures
in the Catholic League, notably Fr Fynes-Clinton, towards Anglican-Catholic
reunion. The resulting book, Reunion Revisited, was published by Gracewing in June 2017.
Finally, the League is always very grateful to Prebendary
Graeme Rowlands, Priest Director of the Sodality of the Precious Blood, who is
always a generous host for the Executive’s meetings and our General Meetings at
his Church of St Silas, Kentish Town. His support, and that of all the other
members of Executive – David Chapman, Secretary, Cyril Wood, Treasurer, Fr
Chris Stephenson, Membership Secretary and Priest Director of the Apostolate of
Prayer and Mrs Mary Bacon – is invaluable. It is especially good to give thanks
for him on the occasion of his fortieth anniversary of priestly ordination.
Many congratulations, Father Graeme.
Priest Director’s Notes
Normally, and throughout its history, the Catholic League
has concentrated on matters of ecclesiology and reunion; in other words, the
nature and purpose of the Church, its order and composition, and its
re-integration.
My predecessors as Priest Director and the past editors
of The Messenger, notably the much loved Prebendary Brooke Lunn, have all provided
penetrating critiques of how the Catholic faith - in teaching, discipleship,
spirituality and worship - is to be presented in its entirety as an integral
whole to our society. It is essential, they have said, for the Catholic Church
to be the means to unify all Christians in our society, if its vitally needed
witness is to be credible and embraced by all.
It is with this firmly in mind that we regularly promote
three of our objects: the encouragement of fellowship among Catholics, the
union of all Christians with the Apostolic See of Rome, and the spread of the
Catholic faith. But we have another object: the deepening of the spiritual
life. This concerns not just prayer and spirituality, but the way follow
Christ in our inner lives, our homes and
families, and also in public at our places of work and within the wider
community as public citizens.
Recently, the Anglican Archbishop Justin Welby exhorted
Prime Minister Theresa May to pursue her policy of the United Kingdom’s leaving
the European Union only in a way that overcomes the recent polarisation and
mutual recrimination in our society, so that British people stay together at a
momentous turning point in our common history. Yet this patently Christian
perspective aroused indignation. A correspondent to The Daily Telegraph
remarked that Dr Welby should stick to religion, just like Norman Tebbit told
the Anglican and Catholic bishops to stick to saving souls after the Faith in
the City initiative and in the wake of insistent concerns from the Church over
the effect on the poor of social and economic policy at the height of Mrs
Thatcher’s government (N.B., not the politics themselves but their clear
adverse effect). But what is religion, and what is having your soul saved, if
none of it has any bearing on how individuals pursue their lives in the civil
sphere of the world, if none of it has any bearing on the conditions and
ongoing course of our Christian civilisation? Living our lives before the world
is living our lives before God, just the same. Our life in the so-called “real
world” is no less about deepening the spiritual life than the enrichment of our
personal prayers and communing with God in Church. For it is always our concern
that by our lives as individuals and as the mystical Body of Christ we also
deepen the spiritual dimension of the whole world. Pope Benedict on his visit
to the United Kingdom in 2010 underlined this time and again: faith has bearing
on public life, society and the way we reason; and public life, society and
reason have bearing on our faith. Religion has bearing on our personal,
political, social and economic life, just as all of these conditions, in the
midst of which we find ourselves, bear down upon our religion and our
discipleship of Jesus Christ in His Church.
At the moment, the crisis point on which this encounter
between faith and reason, religion and society, is balanced has formed into a
three-pronged piercing of the side of the Body of Christ and the future of our
world alike. First, there remains the morality in commerce and politics lying behind
the current economic emergency which Pope Benedict directly addressed and which
continues to cast its shadow. Secondly, there is the environmental and climate
emergency confronting the very future of our common home, which Pope Francis
has addressed in his encyclical in honour of his namesake St Francis, Laudato
Si’. His teaching reflects the teaching of the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch,
the considered views set out by the Anglican Communion and the World Council of
Churches, as well as leading figures in the Buddhist, Islamic and Hindu
religious worlds. Third, there is an assault on the sacramental institution of
marriage and its integrity. Pope Francis has attempted to address this through
two sessions of the Synod of Bishops, a reform of the canonical procedures for
investigating cases of possibly marital nullity, and an enormous Apostolic
Exhortation arising from the two Synods, Amoris Laetitia, the Delight of Love.
Every priest knows a number of cases of good and honest
people in their parishes, people seeking to be faithful to God and the Church,
yet whose histories, experiences and situation do not match the provisions in
the Church’s discipline of the sacraments, and the express command of Christ
that marriage is indissoluble. Almost every family has members or knows relatives
who have seen the heartbreak of a marriage that failed. Rightly in the Church, these
are not matters for public judgment and are to be addressed with compassion and
mercy by wise and faithful pastors. And it is just as difficult to make general
rules to take account of every hard case, as it is to apply a general rule in
the same way for exceptional cases. This is why Pope Francis has made the
assessment of most marital cases pastoral rather than judicial, entrusting the
decision to the bishop personally. He
has clarified the grounds on which a marriage can be judged to have been null
from the outset after all. He has placed checks and balances in the procedure,
so that there is consistency among the bishops overseen by the metropolitan
archbishop, and therefore between dioceses there is to be no such instance as a
hard line in one, and a soft line in another. He is trying to do two things.
First, he is trying to make a full life in the Church possible, for those who
seek the Lord in good faith, as they approach His mercy with their regrets and
repentance, but also with hope and trust when the way ahead seems barred. For
this, people need to be able to have confidence in both the Church’s pastors
and the Church’s laws that they will clearly expound the Gospel of Christ and
the wholeness of Catholic faith, as well as manifest in every way the light and
mercy of God. Thus, secondly, the Pope is saying that if there is a way to be
found through the immense pastoral and personal difficulties facing those who
desire with all their heart to be free of sin and failure, and to be faithful
to Christ, it is the Church that is to find where the light of God shines from
the Kingdom to show the way through.
Pope Francis has said he wants not a change in Catholic
teaching on the indissolubility of sacramental marriage, but a change of
attitude to people among the lawyers and pastors. Yet this has led to the supposition that he
wishes effectively to relax the rule that you cannot be united to Christ in the
Eucharist if you are in a second marriage while the partner to whom you are
still united in your first and sacramental marriage is still living. In other
words, he is said to be encouraging communion for those divorced and in a
second union. The Pope says he absolutely insists on the fundamental Christian
dogma of the indissolubility of marriage, but no less insists on mercy and
compassion in applying that very teaching and the canon law, when it comes to
making a judgment about a marriage’s original nullity. Meanwhile, a judicial
vicar in one of our dioceses in England observes that, whatever the good faith
of those who entered into their marriages at the time, as Christian marriages
probably 80% in his experience are nullifiable because the couple lack a full
understanding of the commitment they were making and the Church’s faith about
marriage: their “informed consent” was lacking or not freely given. Elsewhere,
Pope Francis has agreed with interpreters who have drawn the conclusion that
the breakdown of a marriage may be an indication that it was not quite there to
begin with, and so the principles of sacramental and pastoral discipline are
superseded by those of mercy in a rather different situation. Thus the
principle of indissolubility of marriage is maintained where it applies, but
not where the unbreakable “gave way”. In straightforward cases, a nullity
procedure to the bishop and his marriage tribunal has been simplified; in cases
which are impossible to resolve, is it possible, then, to overlook the marriage
bond and tolerate the admission of those divorced and remarried to Communion?
In search of an answer to this complex question that has
now arisen since the opposing interpretations and reactions to Amoris Laetitia
have emerged, we can consider the experience of the Anglican and Orthodox
worlds. Here, the same principle of indissolubility of marriage exists, but its
strict application is in effect mitigated. Yet the indissolubility of
sacramental marriage has disintegrated as civil divorce is recognised by Church
authorities, and new marriages in Church permitted and celebrated. Of course,
in the Anglican Communion marriage is not fully recognised as a sacrament but
as a divine ordinance; but the same belief in the permanent bond of marriage
between Christians, and by extension to others, applies. Nonetheless, there is
an effectively institutionalised system of divorce, re-marriage and admission
to Communion that does not necessarily depend on the justice or pastoral
circumstances of the cases concerned and the soul-searching of all the parties
involved.
So a confused position now obtains in the Catholic
Church. Some, including certain national hierarchies, favour taking the same
path as Anglicans and Orthodox. Others - including those whose faithfulness to
the teaching of Christ and the sacramental discipline of the Church is nothing
short of sacrificial - are concerned that here we face a defining question as
to what the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church are. Yet there is one
interpretation that cannot be: it cannot be concluded that there is any change
to doctrine, or that the changes to canon law and Pope Francis’ pleas alter how
our faith “demands my life, my soul, my all.” Theology is faith put into words,
it is said, and morals and ethics are faith put into practice. Thus the clear
teaching of Christ is to be followed with mercy and without mercilessness, with
compassion and without hard-heartedness, yet always with integrity and not out
of commending ourselves to the passing values of the world, and heedful
constantly to the express words of Christ.
It surprised me in the late 1990s when beloved Archbishop
Michael Ramsey’s picture in the National Portrait Gallery was labelled, “Liberal
Churchman”, and Henry Chadwick’s biography of him denied him the title Catholic
Anglican, both on the ground that he justified ecclesiastical recognition of
divorce and remarriage other than on Catholic canonical rules. He would have
been wounded to the heart to see this, as he saw the approach of the Eastern
Church, which forbids divorce but sees that some marriages die or fail and that
it is best to recognise this with penitence and move on to a fresh attempt, as
an important witness from the wider community of Churches no less apostolic
than that of Rome.
Yet marriage is, according to the Book of Common Prayer,
the “honourable estate, instituted of God Himself signifying the mystical union
that is betwixt Christ and His Church”.
Our concern for sacramental marriage, its practice and the protection of
its bond, is in the end, then, not only a pastoral matter, or a matter of
personal conduct and moral responsibility. Those who have personally been
through the ordeal of a broken marriage and family above all know this from the
wounds they bear and then offer up in sacrifice, in hope of a redemption of
their situations. For it is indeed a
matter of the bearing of faith on life in public, and the way Christians deepen
the spiritual dimension not just of Christ’s followers but of all society. It
is a sign about how humans are in families and communities, and how human
society is supposed to be as a reflection of the Kingdom of God’s love.
It directly affects our vision of the Church restored in
fullness of communion, our efforts of ecumenism, and the reintegration of
Christ’s society made perfect and complete in the Kingdom of God, that we must
serve, on earth as it is in heaven.
