Unitas Newsletter, June 2017 - Priest Director's Message

2017 has seen Pope Francis visit Sweden to mark the 500^th anniversary of the beginning of the Lutheran Reformation. He both traced the positive aspects to Martin Luther’s religious thought and personality, praising him as a great Reformer, as well as warning Catholics of the present day of the dangers five centuries ago that contributed to the split, and that threaten the peace and future reconciliation in the present time: worldliness, corruption, greed, lust for power in the Church rather than the Church’s life of grace, the simplicity of “faith alone” in the power of God, and absolute hope and trust in the love of Christ for sinners, his forgiveness and our redemption.

Since all these virtues can be recognised in the lives of spiritual Catholics we know, and saints we venerate, and all the vices likewise penetrate all sides of humanity’s condition in the world, not just one Church or another, the large unanswered question is: why was it necessary to divide the Church in order to pursue the good and drive out the bad? What conviction, what principle is so inviolable that it stands above the Church’s unity in faith?

Advocates of the benefits of the Reformation have in recent years said that the breach was the result of a misunderstanding. At our events ten years ago to commemorate the martyrs on both sides, seeing that they were faithful unto death and paradoxically reached union with Christ in His sacrifice as they indicated the concrete possibility of our reconciliation in the world, one Anglican speaker remarked that Thomas Bilney, the first to lose his life under Henry VIII for Reformation ideas -and a heroic figure to the Protestants who came after him - would not have turned a hair at Vatican II, with his suggestions of reading the Bible in Church in English and the correction of abuses in spiritual matters (for unimpeachably Catholic reasons). Recently, the Catholic journalist Peter Stanford wrote a book that imagines how Martin Luther would have looked to us if he had emerged today. The case he proposes is that the perspective of today’s Catholic Church would have been able to address his concerns and embrace him through dialogue within the Church, welcome the spiritual renewal Luther wanted, correct Church governance and sponsor other good developments in the Church’s life. It would also re-balance his more extreme views, without disruption to communion. What if? Vatican II indeed called for the People of God to discover the Scriptures for themselves, expanding the amount read in the Liturgy, and permitting their proclamation in the vernacular. Under Pope St John Paul an agreement was reached between Catholics and Lutherans (since assented to by Methodists and Anglicans) on our justification by faith: that it is on account of the gift from God of faith in Christ that we are made righteous, not by good works - these are the essential fruits of faith and righteousness, for goodness in thought, word and deed are indispensable if our faith is real, thorough-going and authentic. The future Pope Benedict oversaw this agreement to overcome the great argument that stirred the Reformation movement; he later turned on a group of Protestant theologians from Germany and said, “If you had been truly Lutheran, we would have been one by now.”

Yet Luther went further than the desire for spiritual renewal, reform to governance, and better participation of the people in worship and sacrament to their daily conversion. He re-cast the Eucharist so that it appeared the same way as before, but concealed the loss of the Roman Canon (which was never heard by the people), and so removed the Eucharistic sacrifice and the core purpose of priesthood. There is an echo in England among Catholic recusants who still say, “Protestants think that our forebears died for the Pope; we know they died for the Mass.” Luther rejected not only the activities of the papacy of its day, but the need for a universal pastor cementing, ensuring and providing for the Church’s unity altogether. He envisaged the universal Church on earth to be an association of local churches, differently reformed and reshaped with a united confession of faith, rather than as a visible, organic whole. Yet his common confession could not be agreed. Identifying Catholic bishops as temporal lords, he viewed the episcopate as not essential for apostolic succession, but merely beneficial for pastoral organisation and the better preaching of the Gospel. He also found that, because his Reformation movement relied on protection and nurture from princes who used it to flex their independent muscles from the authority of the Catholic Emperor, he needed to back Philip of Hesse, and emboldened him to marry again, even though his wife yet lived. The Reformers Bucer and Melanchthon concurred.  The assault on the bond of matrimony was famously emulated in England by Cranmer and directly led to the martyrdoms of the Carthusians and Thomas More.

To summarise: even if there were great misunderstandings on points of belief and the interpretation of the Scriptures, there was a deliberate intention to alter the fundamental faith and order of the one Church across time and place; and this translated into practice and thus into division with pain and suffering on all sides.

It is sad to reflect that this division could have been avoided because reformation was already a vital movement of spiritual renewal within the Catholic Church. The popular Devotio Moderna, the Imitation of Christ, the piety concerning the passion of Christ and His redemption, the reform of the Carmelite Order with St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross, the emergence of St Ignatius Loyala and the Society of Jesus all bear witness. They rest on earlier renewal movements in the Church which are still potent to this day as well: the Franciscan and Dominican preaching friars. And it is often claimed in English history perspective that the Reformation took hold here to correct corruption and abuse, and recover the Church’s pristine purity. Yet those who were at the forefront of pastoral, spiritual, and theological renewal in the life and mission of English Church people in the1530s, well aware of the breach that had arisen in Germany and now the Low Countries and France, were the Carthusians, the Brigettines and the Franciscans who were among the first to lose their lives under Henry VIII. He shut down a Catholic renewal because a reinvigorated Church, articulate with its own Catholic mind, could challenge dependency on royal power and policy. When the Carthusians in London met in chapter to weigh the consequences of their decision to oppose Henry’s marriage outside the law of Christ, the account describes what can only be described as a charismatic renewal as the Holy Spirit came upon them. They knew they faced their deaths. One wonders what might have happened to England and its Church had the renewal been allowed to proceed. Eamon Duffy, in his book Fires of Faith, describes how, under Henry’s daughter, Mary I, England becomes the laboratory for implementing the reforms emerging from the Council of Trent. The lessons of the Protestant Reformation had been observed, and here was to be a proper reform in continuity with the common faith of the Church, clarified, freshly re-proclaimed, with integrity.  No turning the clock back, but a fully Catholic reformation of the Church, its preaching and teaching, the celebration of the sacraments and the presentation above all of the Mass. But the rupture had already happened, and with Mary’s death her popular movement died too.

The instinct against rupture and recovering a lost continuity within the one Church of Christ – one flock under one shepherd – was what caused the League’s founders to draw attention to the scandal and violence of schism and its consequences: in England, two provinces of the Latin Church were detached, and every evangelistic, sacramental and pastoral effort was needed to repair the breach. This was not only to reveal once more the essential unity of the Body of Christ in the world, but also to give a convincing account of the hope the lies within us. The gospel of reconciliation in Christ is hardly compelling when Christians themselves are unreconciled. Yet it looks more and more difficult to imagine how the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church, nowadays with more pronounced differences on faith and order, can find the path of reunion. But we now call that “instinct against rupture” ecumenism, and we press on, because this is integral to Catholicity.

Thus Lund in Sweden was chosen for the meeting between the Pope and the leaders of the Lutheran and other reformation Churches for two reasons. First, it was in 1952 at Lund that the Faith & Order Conference of the World Council of Churches adopted the principle that Churches should act together in all matters, except those in which deep differences of conviction compel them to act separately. Subsequently, the Catholic Church has supported this at the local level and with the encouragement of the successors of Peter. Secondly, Sweden is a country in which Catholics faced civil restrictions on work and freedom of religion into the 1970s; so it is a country where rapprochement and reconciliation – the dialogue of love – has been hard won in very recent memory. It encourages us not to dwell on the failures of the past that we have been formed by, or to believe that the cause of Christian unity has become futile. Still less does it permit us to become further estranged from other Christians, seeing that the events of so long ago seem to explain why we still walk on divergent pathways. Instead, as Swedish Lutherans and Catholics found, the Spirit continues to come upon us, and surprise us with his power to bring us closer in Christ. The great Metropolitan Kallistos Ware often says that unity when it comes can only be achieved by a miracle; but that does not mean we are to be passive – ours is the task is to take down what barriers we can, because these are usually ones that we have erected. The miracle will come when we have faithfully done this good work by God’s grace.

So, marking the 500^th anniversary of the beginning of the Lutheran Reformation is a time to face honestly what happened, to thank God for any good and saving gift that emerged, to lament the divisions and the harm they have visited upon the Church and the world, but above all to love and long for the unity of Christ’s people, “that they may be one”, as indivisibly as the Father and the Son are one. As Catholics, our instinct is not to add to division and polarisation, but always to work for healing and reconciliation. MW

Bishop Harries, Islam, and the Purpose of Catholic Ecumenism in the World: Newsletter January 2015

Comfortable Accommodation: Bishop Harries and Islam

On 27th November 2014, the retired Anglican Bishop of Oxford, Dr Richard Harries, proposed in the House of Lords that the next Coronation include readings from the Qur’an. The next morning, on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he spoke of the Church of England’s “creative accommodation” and called for more acts of “inclusive hospitality” such as he had witnessed at a cathedral service to mark the beginning of the legal year. The High Sheriff and the Lord Lieutenant were in attendance and, both being Muslims, they had asked for the ceremony to include readings from the Qur’an. Lord Harries admired the solution – a Qur’anic reading immediately prior to the entirely Christian service. There had been “no blurring of the edges, no syncretism”; but, said Lord Harries, the Church of England should provide for “reciprocity” towards other faiths in a multi-faith urbanised city, and there should be “scope” for other religious leaders to pray at significant ceremonies in national civic life. He had no doubt that this would feature at the next Coronation.

Lord Harries was challenged by the Spectator journalist, Douglas Murray, who complained of yet more Anglican leaders without faith in their own faith, possessing no ability to make an exclusive faith claim about the truth of Jesus Christ. He observed that there was no “inclusive hospitality” in Islam – no Christians are allowed in Mecca, there is no “reciprocity” on the part of imams inviting Christians or Jews to Islamic religious events preceded by readings from the Bible. British Jews, he said, pray for the Queen and the defence of the realm every week – where were such prayers on Fridays in Britain’s mosques? Furthermore, if the Islamic scriptures are to be read prior to Anglican civic services, why not Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh scriptures; or, for that matter, secularist writings? Murray’s answer to the Bishop was that fuzzy Anglicans don’t want their leaders to be fuzzy: they want them to set out what Christian belief is, the faith that Anglicanism proclaims. Even if some individual Christians are unclear about it in their personal faith, they want their Church to be clear. What they do not want is bishops who affirm Muslims in their faith, but who demoralise Anglicans by not affirming them in theirs. A reading from the Qur’an at the Coronation in Westminster Abbey, warned Murray, would cause great offence to Christians.

By the same token it could never happen that a British civic religious event took place in a mosque, let alone with a reading from the New Testament, even if prior to it. Islam only endorses Islamic jurisprudence, even though it expects Muslims to abide by the law of a non-Islamic society in which they live. Thus the request for the faith of Muslims to be shown “scope”, “reciprocity” and “inclusive hospitality” in an Anglican cathedral is disingenuous, since the favour cannot be returned. Christians believe the Word of God to be the Person of God the Son made flesh, speaking through His Body, and His Church’s Scriptures. Islam believes that the Word of God is a Book, conveyed by Gabriel in Arabic without modulation to Mohammad, who is honoured as its unimpeachable prophet. It assumes Christians are likewise a “people of the Book”, but according to an earlier and lesser revelation. Reading the Qur’an in Church (something the Queen already allows at the annual Commonwealth Day service in Westminster Abbey) lends credence to this false view of the Christian Scriptures and makes a wrong impression upon Muslims who believe that their faith to be the pinnacle and fulfilment of all others. Lord Harries counters that, just because Islam in the United Kingdom has not evolved as far as Christianity in its understanding of other faiths and their sacred texts, it does not mean Anglican bishops should not do the right, tolerant and hospitable thing.

But what he has encouraged, both as a legislator-for-life in our national senate, and with all the teaching authority of one of the Church of England’s most distinguished bishops, is the conclusion by Muslims in Britain and across the world that the established Christian Church in England does not believe in the uniqueness of the truth about Jesus Christ and presents it as one faith among many. If so, say those Muslims who beleaguer Christians across the world, why not recognise what lies behind all religions – faith in the only God there is; and why not go the whole way and make your belief explicit with the Islamic profession of faith? Find peace in submission to this ineluctable truth: “After all, the Qur’an has been read out foremost in a cathedral service in England, so they acknowledge the ultimate truth of Islam. If they do not believe exclusively in Christianity, why do you bother to continue?”

It is wounding to think that a bishop from the comfort of retirement in England, after a lifetime of following Christ and serving in the Church’s leadership, is proposing the reading of the Qur’an in Church, especially at the anointing and coronation of our next king whose reign and government is meant to be patterned on the universal rule Christ, while in Iraq, Syria, Kenya and Nigeria, as well as many other places, even children and teenagers are bravely refusing to deny their love for Jesus by submitting to Islam at the point of knives and guns, thus accepting martyrdom rather than giving up on the Body of Christ.

Christian Witness in Interreligious Dialogue and Friendship

This is not to say that interreligious dialogue, friendship, solidarity and common action for peace, mediation, justice and the relief of need are not beauties that humanly unite all those who are spiritual people.  A hopeful aid to building peace and good relationships is “scriptural literacy”. This involves learned and devout followers of different religions meeting in mutual charity and respect, but without compromise to the integrity of each one’s belief, to discuss problems and disagreements by examining one another’s sacred texts. This not only heightens awareness of what each religion truly believes, but illuminates where all can bear witness to together - for instance the sacredness of human life from the womb to the grave, and the stewardship of the created environment. And who can forget the love and faith of those Egyptian Muslims who held hands to form a cordon around Coptic Churches to protect them from desecration by Islamists, or the shared lamentation of Christians, Muslims and Jews at the terrorists’ destruction of the shrines of the Old Testament prophets, sacred to all three?

Such close approach to one another furthermore involves a recognition that in each religion people honestly strive to respond to the deepest questions that human beings and their societies have to  deal with, questions that only faith and spiritual living can answer. This very point was made repeatedly by Pope Benedict XVI on his State Visit to the United Kingdom in 2010, especially in his Address to Civil Society at Westminster Hall. Pope Francis in Istanbul symbolised it too at the Sultanahmet Mosque, which he respected as a House of Prayer and where he stood in moments of silent adoration. We should likewise be strong enough in Christian faith to visit other holy places with the same respect, the same spirit or prayer and praise. But he was not saying, “it is all the same”; “it makes no difference in the end”. He did not remove his Cross, nor did he make well-meaning Westerners’ error of referring to the founder of Islam as “The Prophet”. That would be to accept what he and the Qur’an say about Jesus: that he was not Son of God born to Mary, or die on the Cross and rise again.

The way to the end is for God to lead us on and it is patently not “the same”. How God will lead us and others to union with Him is for Him alone to judge. Our task in the Church is to bear witness to the truth that has been revealed to us in Christ. The Christian knows that this is neither in a book, nor an institution but in a person: the Person of Jesus Christ who is Son of God and Word made flesh, true man and true God, the Light from Light that lightens every one. Islam does not accept this faith and denies that Person. It holds that the Qur’an supersedes the Scriptures of other faiths and corrects Christianity.

The right Christian response is indeed one of “inclusive hospitality”: respect, welcome, dialogue, friendship and inviting each other to join in the practice of the spiritual values that our religions give us to share. It is notable thus that the most telling defenders of Christian holy days and the school Nativity plays have been Muslims who demand that the officials preaching inclusion on ethnic, gender and racial grounds do not achieve it by excluding the religious. The wrong response is the unmeant respect of praying out loud in a Christian Church the Scriptures of a faith that does not share the Church’s belief in Christ. Paul Couturier in 1933, when he re-worked the Church Unity Octave, saw this clearly: Christian Unity is not just an objective for organising or projecting the Church better, it is about the unity of all humanity in the charity and truth of Christ. This comes about not through the “creative accommodation” of what you know by faith to be false, but by prayer that we will all be sanctified more and more by the God we adore. The holier we become, the closer to God we are drawn, the more at one in Christ we find ourselves. Thus when he launched the Week of Universal Prayer for the Unity of Christians, he imagined it like the Good Friday Liturgy’s prayers to include prayer for the sanctification of those who do not believe in Christ, as well as those divided among themselves in His Body. But mostly he saw that Christianity hides Christ by its division, since the Lord Himself had prayed, “Father, may they be one  so that the world may believe that it was You Who sent me.”

The Urgency of Unity in Christ’s Kingdom

For this reason, Christian unity and prayer for it are under repeated attack. One cannot help noticing that while a bishop calls for the “inclusive hospitality” of Islamic texts at significant ceremonies for which Anglicanism has responsibility, no such “creative accommodation” conducive to the union of all Christians with the Apostolic See of Rome - and not to its exclusion - has been facilitated by the final ratification of changes to the ordained ministry in the Church of England. This seemingly insurmountable block to reunion is a blow for all who have upheld unity in the Catholic faith, offering a convincing account of the hope that lies within us in the Risen Christ, as the true vision for the unity of all humanity in the charity and truth of Christ, especially in this Anglican land where the largest number of churchgoers is actually Catholic. The fading of the ecumenical dream of visible, organic unity is a blow to Roman Catholics as much as to Anglican Catholics alike, because as fellow Christians we ought to rely on each other for mutual strength and encouragement; and for the sake of the Gospel we cannot afford for our separation to loom so large as to obscure the glory of Christ.

So we press on, without relenting in prayer for unity in the Church because of the holiness of our union in Christ, but knowing that God maps out a path that for the moment we cannot see. For its part, our Catholic League recently sponsored the conference in London to mark the 50^th Anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, especially the Decree on Ecumenism. The message from all sides was telling: we are tempted to give up and more easily go our separate ways; but years of prayer, and friendship and mutual theological learning have disinclined us to. No one part of the People of God can go it alone, as if it were exclusively the Body of Christ, and it is the essence of Catholicity to work as a countervailing force to wilful schism and as the impulse toward the truth that binds in one faith the Universal Church. So Catholicism is not Catholic if it operates as one mere movement among many. Its work is constantly to seek and to realise this Universal Church, the Church as God sees it from His perspective, the spotless Bride adorned for her Husband, inseparable from His Son. In other words, the supposedly failed Ecumenical Movement which has not led to the union we hoped for has still changed everything: the idea of the One Great Church cannot be avoided by divided Christians; everyone in honesty must know that no separate denomination is willed by Christ to serve as an end in itself, be it Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant or Pentecostal; and the Catholic Church’s engagement with other Christians and Churches is not only a current commitment, it is permanently the way that the Church is. Providentially for now it seems that, if we cannot be visibly one, the important thing is to walk as one wherever and whenever we can. What is at stake is the direction of humanity – whether it is still to be enslaved by the market of human options that take us away from true choice, by the forgetting of the sanctity of life and by the relative weighing up of advantageous options, or whether to be captivated by the truth about God and humanity in Christ, and to live it even now in the Kingdom of Christ.

Can it be that, in moving together against the world’s injustices, resistant to the hatred of peace, and contrary to the abomination of desolation that hides the Devil’s lust for blood and death behind a religion, to the horror of most Muslims and perverting Islam , whose name derives from peace (the word Islam is related to salaam), we will render “One Lord, One Faith, One Church” visible to those with confidence in nothing? Can it be that in together meeting the need of the world for relief as well as hope, spiritual as well as material, even separated Christians will be seen at one with the Lord, and be convinced that it is believable the He was sent by the Father after all?

Some think that ecumenism is wishful thinking, “finished”, or even a harmful delusion. But the prayer for the Church of the Christians to be one so that the Lord may make Himself seen will not stop its echoing. The fact is that we have all died and been raised in Christ, we have all been given His Spirit; the Kingdom has been given to us and we have all been rendered blessed, in order to live in it. Thus we can either persevere in disunity, complicit with the world that is satisfied with one Church strained into many, and falling short of our blessedness. Or we can act on the capacity we have been given to place our Catholic faith and our Catholic Church at the indefatigable service of the “unity of all humanity in the charity and truth of Christ” (words from the annual prayers of Paul Couturier for the Week of Prayer). Now is not the time to despair of Christian unity or to disdain those who we feel are walking away from its objective. It is no harm to our integrity as Catholics to walk with them still, in firm conviction that our steps together will enable our leading by the Light that lightens everyone to the fullness of truth. For the sake of the salvation of humanity, and its true “creative accommodation” at the “inclusive hospitality” of the Celestial Banquet in the Kingdom coming on earth as in heaven, it is nothing less than our duty.

Fr Mark Woodruff, Priest Director

Priest Director's Address to the Annual General Meeting, July 2014

Let me begin by thanking Fr Graeme Rowlands for his hospitality at St Silas’, Kentish Town. It truly is a spiritual home for us in the Catholic League not only because of a constantly warm welcome here, but also because of the unshakable faith we share: whatever the obstacles and separation between the Church of England and the rock from which it was hewn, the Latin Catholic Church in communion with the Successor of Peter in his See of Rome, Christ founded only one Church, that it has no other creed but the Catholic faith, and that union is necessary because it is not in the nature of the Body of Christ to be divided and because He willed it on the night before He died.


On a number of recent home visits to North-west England, I could not help but concluding that the once confident Christianity as part of the fabric of society that I knew - Catholic, Anglican and “chapel” - had considerably collapsed in attendance, presence and confidence there. When I was growing up, Lancashire was a bastion of old recusant Catholic England still alive in the people, but it is difficult to trace its large significance in the region now in the same way it was once so obvious.  Other churches have suffered in like degree. I suspect the reason is that the churches have lost touch with the identity of whole constituencies of people, and the everyday lives of ordinary folk, especially the poor and working class. St Silas, a Catholic Anglican parish that had once been marked for closure, however tells the story of how such need not be so. The beautiful celebration of the liturgical and sacramental life, solid Catholic faith put into practice, and assiduous pastoral care by connecting practice of the faith with the life and experience of people through school, home and community makes for a vibrant worshipping community. And in truth and justice, the pattern is repeated in many places around the country, where the Church and its priests can truly present the image of the People of God as the true human society, a “still more excellent way” and alternative to what the market, the state, and “wider society” have to offer.


Instead of the Church accepting that it must conform to a pluralistic view of society and humanity, living as one choice on offer among many, with one view on morality in conduct both private and public, and giving in to the convention that religion is a private opinion, it is at its best when it presents not an exclusivist society turn in on its own preoccupations, but a reflection of the true order of the universe, and thus human society, in which Christ is king and all is to be seen in relation to that fact of existence, and paying due to Him as subject to His truth as teacher and rule as Master.


Among the objects of the Catholic League are not just concerns that we would describe nowadays as ecumenical, but that go to the heart of what human society is for and what it needs. Thus we are to promote the spread of the Catholic faith and the deepening of the spiritual life. In our day, “spiritual life” is not so much concerned with cultivating a private spirituality, as with keeping open the religious dimension in every aspect of life from which it is being progressively deleted: school, care services, public administration, social and cultural observance and, as Pope Benedict alerted us on his visit in 2010, the dialogue between faith and reason, religion and political or commercial activity without which no one receives a satisfactory answer to the deepest questions that our existence contemplates.


If public Christianity disappears in this land, largely with the accommodating acceptance of the Churches, what is to fill the vacuum? We have seen in a dozen instances in the last century what an un Churched or secular State offers us: World War I, National Socialism, the atheistic humanism of Marxist-Leninism and the resulting starvation of millions of Ukrainians and Russians; the Cultural Revolution of China; the Killing Fields of Cambodia; the emergence of states whose state economies depend on supplying the drugs trade rather than public and business virtue; the implosion of Arab secularism into false Islamism and blood-letting in the Middle East; the collapse of a common Catholic society among Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda because of the coming of greed and corruption after years of Communism. The list goes on. To all of this the only answer is not medieval theocracy, but a society where God is worshipped, His law is kept and His gospel suffuses all our values. For this to be recovered - as recovered it must be if what comes next is not to disintegrate, leaving us nothing, no value, no principle, no truth to go on - it is vital for the Churches to stand out as manifestations of the other way of being human, and of being human society. And, again as Pope Benedict insisted on his visit, we offer no credible account of the hope that lies within us unless we are one. This is why my predecessor, Fr Brooke Lunn, said time and again that English society deserves to be served and led by one Church, the Church that unites and integrates, the Church that presents the faith that is Catholic.

But this is not only an English or European concern. Fr Fynes-Clinton, the Catholic League’s principal founder, looked to the reunion of all Christians when he placed the League under the joint patronage of St Joseph (for the West) and St Nicholas (for the East). Now, Christians in the East are under severe threat, and their very continued existence is under direct and violent attack. In June this year, no Mass has been celebrated in Mosul for the first time in over 1600 years, because murderous armed robbers and abusers of young girls, posing as Islamist jihadis, have driven them out under threat of forced conversion, or death. The founder of Islam, Mohammed, insisted there was to be no compulsion in religion and famously invited the Christians to celebrate the Eucharist in his mosque. But this means nothing to the materialistic terrorists who are destroying the lives, history, culture, property and patrimony of a mature Iraqi Christian-Muslim society, which was borne of the land of Mesopotamia, known as the “cradle of civilisation”. At this time of terrible crisis - and, frankly, our own helplessness in the face of what is going on - we need to learn from the East and to consider what may happen here in the West. How resilient are our protections to liberty, the positive toleration of religion and the recognition of its indispensable value? History reveals many times when the Church has been destroyed or exterminated, only to indicate new growth and renewal elsewhere, or later on. What is our sensation of decline in England in the present age in comparison with what is happening in Syria and Iraq? Will the Church grow in strength and renew itself? Christianity has never been overcome; is it to submit now? If so; what will succeed it for our society and the Church of the future? What we can say is that, the relativisation of the Christian religion and the proclamation of Christ’s Gospel and Kingdom as one option among many in the market will ensure it is left on the shelf. If we do not believe it is the Way and practise it accordingly, who will? It does not matter, then, if we are many or few – it does not depend on our effort, but requires our faithfulness and our witness to the universe as it has been revealed to us: with Christ its King, embodied in one People of God, related to one truth that alone can bind it, and fulfilling its purpose through choosing the only objective that can be arrived at without destroying it in the process - the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

In this task, I would like to thank especially Fr Christopher Stephenson for his work as Priest Director of the Apostolate of Prayer in which he encourages many of these themes to be expressed in intercession and devotion. I also thank my fellow Trustees in the work of the League, especially in the observance of its Centenary 12013-14. The celebrations were beautiful and adorned with fine contributions from Archdeacon Luke Miller, Dr Robin Ward, Father John Hunwicke, our President Fr Michael Rear and Judge Michael Yelton. Fr Miller's addresses on Fr William Congreve SSJE and St Therese of Avila at our centenary Festa in Walsingham led to the publication of a special edition of The Messenger including a moving version of the Stations of the Cross. All this stimulated interest in the League's history and respect for our work.


Furthermore, the distinguished Church historian, Dr Michael Walsh, is considering writing a history of the League that fairly appraises the Anglo-Papalists’ initiative in laying foundations for later Anglican-Catholic dialogue and their long-term contribution to the movement for Christian unity. He and I recently offered a joint session at the Third International Receptive Ecumenism conference in Fairfield, Connecticut, examining this history, the recent development of Ordinariates for those of Anglican tradition in the Catholic Church, the nature of Anglican patrimony and the future of the Anglican-Catholic engagement towards visible, organic unity. As for its prospects, it became apparent to me that North Americans are less concerned with historic European problems, and the Ordinariates viewed as a solution to them or as a possible threat to worldwide ecumenism. Instead, they see the positive potential for the Catholic Church to embed within itself something of Anglican tradition and liturgy, just as Anglicans have taken on other traditions, not least in a structural way in the past. The phenomenon of the Ordinariates they did not see as a further delineation of difference and mutual exclusion, but as a way in which Anglicans and Catholics could understand each other, feel affinity towards each other and be drawn together. For the main purpose to this they saw as to work together on much needed efforts towards common service of the aims of the Kingdom of God in the world, sustained by a faith shared more closely - so that the world might see that unity is possible, however difficult it may seem at present, and so that the world might believe from the concerted effort of the two Churches that it was indeed the Father who sent the Son who is visible in them.

Our Centenary Year has ended with a presentation to the Catholic Church of Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane. Adoration, of a monstrance bearing the League’s emblem and objects. The Church was founded by Cardinal Manning as a place of reparation for the offences and injuries to the Eucharist, the priesthood and the unity of the Body of Christ in England in the past. He had intended for it be the National Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament, where reparation could be made not through recrimination against history and the Protestantism of the English nation and constitution, but through an ever more intensified pouring out of love and devotion, towards healing, salvation and reconciliation in the one Church of Christ. Fr Alan Robinson, the parish priest, an old friend of Fr Rowland’s and mine, has been charged with the restoration of the Church and its work as a National and International shrine to the Blessed Sacrament. It had no monstrance worthy of the task for daily Exposition, Adoration and Benediction, something around which all Christians can be united regardless of the lack of fullness of communion. So the League has presented one, thanks to Fr Rowlands’ efforts, towards the church's restored role. Fr Robinson is to refound the Guild of the Blessed Sacrament, which will be an international fellowship of prayer for reparation, peace and reconciliation, sustained by the daily offering of mass and the Adoration that will be at the heart of the Church’s future work.


Since these objectives are very close to the aims of the Catholic League, and directly reflect work that we have done on ecumenical reparation and reconciliation in the past, following Pope St John Paul II’s encouragement of “the healing of memories” between the separate Church histories that still divide us as potential rivals, and mindful of Pope Francis own description of how Christians are united by martyrdom and suffering in the past through an “ecumenism of blood”, I hope that members of the League, Anglicans and Catholics alike, will be keen to enrol in the Corpus Christi Guild of the Blessed Sacrament and actively involve themselves in its future new work of prayer and reconciliation.

Centenary - Priest Director's Address to the Annual General Meeting

No True Ecumenism without Unity with the Successor of Peter - No True Catholicism without the Unity of Christians

 

In 1900, four years after Apostolicae Curae dealt a blow to Anglican hopes for reunion with the Catholic Church, the vicar of Moreton-in-Marsh, Spencer Jones, preached a sermon at St Matthew’s, Westminster. England and the Holy See insisted that – nonetheless - there could be no lasting future for the mission to England of the two provinces of Canterbury and York, without restoring their unity with the Catholic Church, the rock whence they were hewn. Furthermore, an Anglican vision of Catholicity cannot exclude, but inescapably relies on, the communion of all Christians with the Apostolic See at Rome. To this end, in 1908, together with Paul Wattson (an American friar whose Episcopalian Franciscan community would shortly afterwards enter full communion with the Catholic Church and, as the Society of the Atonement, continues its work towards unity to this day), Jones co-founded the Church Unity Octave, fore-runner of the present Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, promoting this very objective. After the 1910 Edinburgh Mission Conference (an attempt to coordinate Anglican, Protestant and Reformed efforts in overseas mission, often seen as the founding moment of the modern ecumenical movement), a small group led by the Revd Henry Joy Fynes Clinton, later the long-serving rector of St Magnus the Martyr by London Bridge, founded the Catholic League. Its aim was to maintain the driving principle of recovering communion with the Successor of Peter and to seek the corporate reunion of the Church of England and the Apostolic See of Rome.

The meeting that formally established the League took place 100 years ago today, on July 2nd 1913 at St Mark’s, Bush Hill Park in Enfield. On July 5th at St Mary’s, Corringham in Essex, it was publicly inaugurated with the enrolment of the first members. Although never large in numbers, the “Papalist” agenda it set has been widespread, even mainstream. Thus could Archbishop Randall Davidson lend support to fellow Anglicans (mostly mainstream Prayer Book Catholics) as they conducted the unofficial Malines Conversations with Cardinal Mercier in Belgium. The Conversations’ most famous idea, coming from Dom Lambert Beauduin - “united, not absorbed” - continues to animate Anglican aspirations for unity with the Catholic Church.

It was the League that made the first organised pilgrimage to the restored Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. The Shrine was founded by Fr Fynes Clinton’s friend and collaborator, Alfred Hope Patten, on firmly Papalist principles, to be a place and a body that insistently pointed to Catholic unity in faith, devotion and communion – as the famous “Rock of Offence”, the foundation stone of the Holy House, showed in recording the episcopate of the local Anglican Bishop of Norwich and the reigning Roman Pontiff of the day. This foundational vision of Catholic communion is one that urgently needs to be re-captured, if Walsingham, with its several denominational places of pilgrimage, is to be true to its aspiration to be not just ecumenically cordial, but a driving force through the prayers of the Mother of God to reintegrate the unity of the One Body of her Son. The League has constantly been ready to help, according to its means, so that at Walsingham, perhaps more than anywhere else in the Church-world we know, the prayer “that they all may be one”, “one flock with one shepherd”, can be manifest.

The Catholic League throughout has also promoted the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, now an official part of so many of the Churches. It was Fr Fynes Clinton – a successful missionary for Catholic faith and living practice as an effective parish priest - who invited to England the Week’s re-creator, Fr Paul Couturier of the Catholic primatial archdiocese of Lyon, to see the Anglican Church on home ground, especially those Papalist Catholic building blocks that offered some projection, even some portent, of the potential if reunion could come to pass. He took Couturier to see a number of the Anglican religious communities, showing living proof of union in the Church’s spirit and mind that Couturier had been saying was the sure path to union in the Church’s body. These close links with the Anglican papalist communities (notably Nashdom Abbey) - links that understood the religious life as a means towards realising corporate reunion – animated and incarnated the direction and objectives of the League, and the way it was able to present simply and clearly its cause for the necessity of the Papacy. Outstanding among those links is Dom Gregory Dix of Nashdom, the most influential of all English-speaking liturgical scholars, and the most penetrating of apologists for the Church’s need for what we would now call the Petrine ministry, or a universal pastorate. Together with the future Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, he convened the group of “Anglicans of the Catholic school” whose landmark report in 1947, Catholicity, set the stage for renewed Anglican hope for post-war reconciliation led by the churches of Europe and, at the heart of that, unity with the Catholic Church. The Bishop of Ripon, John Moorman, no “Romaniser” but a convinced Papalist, was appointed official Anglican observer at Vatican II; and soon Archbishop Ramsey would make the first official visit by an Anglican Primate to Pope Paul VI. The story is well known, but bears repeating, of how the Papal Curia was gathered to greet him in the Apostolic Palace, which contains a fresco depicting Archbishop William Warham (Archbishop of Canterbury 1503-1532), and drew astonished breath when Archbishop Michael Ramsey arrived dressed in exactly the same way – the standard “walking out” attire of the sixteenth century English Catholic hierarchy: rochet, chimere and square-cap. Still worn by the Anglican episcopate, it caused the Cardinals to see that a rupture of four centuries’ permanence might be repaired as if it were yesterday.

As the Catholic League promoted the unity of Anglican Catholics around the pastoral, theological and liturgical renewal of Vatican II, it also recognised the Council’s ecumenical potential for achieving its long cherished object of the reunion of all Christians in communion with Apostolic See of Rome, especially in light of the Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio. Accordingly, it has supported the Anglican Centre in Rome, as well as the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, now in its third phase of dialogue.

The visit of Blessed Pope John II to Britain in 1982, including the encounter with Archbishop Robert Runcie in united prayer and blessing at Canterbury, encouraged the League to renew its call to Catholic unity in One Step More, by the current President, Michael Rear, who is present with us today. Although subsequent events marked steps away from the unity that looked imminent in 1982, the League, by now a society open more widely to all who believe in Catholic ecumenism, has continued to promote Catholic teaching and spirituality wherever opportunity presented itself, towards the Church’s unity in communion with the successor of Peter for all Christians. Efforts led by members of the League in the late 1980s and early 1990s towards the realisation of a form of “corporate reunion, united not absorbed” came to nothing at the time, but in 2009 the seeds grew and bore fruit. With the Church of England’s decision that its episcopate would no longer maintain identity with the Catholic and Orthodox episcopate, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity’s Cardinal Kasper declared the previous endeavour towards unity based on re-convergence to be “definitively” concluded, and the recognition of orders no longer possible. Thus, having exhausted all other options for the corporate reunion of the Anglican Church, Pope Benedict XVI resolved to create at least one manifestation of how the rich tradition and historic mission of Anglican Christianity might achieve fullness of communion with the Catholic Church as “a treasure to be shared.”

As in 2009 the Catholic League approached its centenary, it recognised in the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus a tangible fulfilment of its founding witness to corporate reunion. Yet, at the same time as its direct support for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, it persists, too, in the unfinished work of 1913, the unity of the Catholic Church and the “Church of England entire”, as well as the communion of all Christians with the Apostolic See of Rome. After all, we are all united in a bond of loving our Anglican life, formation, memory and heritage. Moreover, a good number of our members are devoted members of the Church of England in good conscience and are no less devoted to help it rediscover its essential unity with the Catholic Church in fullness of communion with Peter. This may seem impossible at the moment; as earlier visions of reunion and ecumenism pass away; but it is the Catholic League’s unwavering faith that unity not only will come, but must come, because the Lord willed that we may be one, “so that the world may believe.”

Since our last Annual General Meeting in 2012, your officers have continued to meet and work towards the realisation of our much loved Catholic League’s unswerving fidelity to the wholeness of Christian Unity, pursuing which is the only ecumenism that will bring about the unity of the Church in the apostolic faith.

In March 2013 the League, the first body to have made an organised pilgrimage to the restored Shrine, made its Centenary Pilgrimage to Walsingham, led by Archdeacon Luke Miller, talking about the unanimity in the spirit of the Anglican Father Congreve SSJE and the Catholic doctor of the Church, St Thérèse of Lisieux. We were able to celebrate mass in thanksgiving and for the repose of the soul of our founders in the Fynes Clinton Chantry, very close to the Holy House. We arrived just following the election of Pope Francis and were able to devote our thoughts and prayers to his new Petrine ministry of bringing about and binding the unity of the churches, among which Rome presides in love.

We heard shortly afterwards that the Anglican leader in Argentina, Archbishop Gregory Venables - a close friend of Pope Francis’ when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aries - had remarked that the new pope had told him that the Ordinariates had not been necessary and that he wanted to see the unity of the Catholic Church and the Anglican communion as a whole. I am going to surprise you – for a moment - by saying that I agree with him. By that I mean that the corporate reunion of the two is the League’s founding vision; and also that, if the Anglican Communion had been the Church it was, when Bishop John Moorman represented it at Vatican II and Archbishop Michael Ramsey visited Pope Paul VI - setting up the Anglican Centre in Rome and establishing the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, on the principle of convergence in an ever deeper appreciation of our shared apostolic faith in the Risen Christ (something that Pope Paul attributed to our “communion of origins” to which both needed to return more completely) - then of course there would be no need for Ordinariates. Perhaps the Anglican Church in South America maintains the apostolic faith and perhaps its orthodoxy is why Pope Francis has felt such a warm and close bond to it. Elsewhere, however, the sad fact is that the Anglican world has steadily led itself away from those communions of origin and of apostolic faith and order. It reminds me that Blessed Pope John Paul II is said to have upbraided some Lutheran theologians once, at the height of the ultimately successful discussions to achieve an agreement on the question of Justification by Faith (one of the great causes for division at the Reformation), saying, “If you were really Lutherans, we could have been united now”. Something similar applies in this land – “If Anglicans were really Anglicans”, indeed there may not have been the need for Ordinariates and we could indeed all have been one. How right our President Fr Michael Rear was in 1982 – indeed it did look as though all it would take was “one step more”.

Thirty years on, the League’s prophetical call to Anglicanism to be orthodox and apostolic, and to place itself at the service of the gospel and our nation by finding its fulfilment in communion with the whole of the Catholic Church, has been answered in a way that we did not expect, our having almost given up on praying for it as unrealistic.   Yet here the Ordinariate is finding its way to bring a part of English religious culture, through a living body in the Church, to be part of the life and culture of all the Catholic Church. We support it without hesitation because, even though its appearance symbolises in some way a failure of the larger hope for an entirety of communion for all Anglicans and all Catholics, nonetheless it is a tangible materialisation of another tradition expressing what is distinctive and precious about it, not in separation but through perfected communion. It gives to us other Catholics an appreciation and greater understanding of the significant Anglican tradition and its riches as something now planted within our own Church. It ought to be a symbol that unity is possible when difference is embraced and diversity stimulates the creation of unity and indeed extends the Catholic Church’s very universality. It ought also to make us better in reaching out in respect and fraternity towards another community with which we desire to be one but with which there remains much more work to undo obstacles so that, as Metropolitan Kallistos puts it, we are found faithful when the Lord comes at last to bestow the miracle of unity. We are delighted that His Excellency the Ordinary, Mgr Keith Newton, is with us today with some of his clergy and people. We warmly congratulate them on what has been achieved so far and know it will be successful and a blessing to all our Churches.

So, even though we find ourselves in a very changed setting for Catholic-Anglican unity from when we had such high hopes in 1982, we press on. Just as we wish to see the Ordinariate reach its highest potential for Christian Unity, not just for itself but for all who hold the apostolic faith, we are no less resolutely committed to support Anglican-Catholic unity in all forms, not least in the sphere of official engagement. We have been particularly concerned to maintain our longstanding support for the Anglican Centre in Rome, whose sentiments to us in our Centenary have been warmer than ever. Our recent grant enables it to serve the promotion of the long-standing ARCIC dialogue. It is interesting to note that a leading English Anglican member of ARCIC III, the evangelical theologian Professor Nicholas Sagovsky, has said that but for the Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus, and its appreciation of Anglican Patrimony, ARCIC may never have thought to reflect on what it is that the Anglican Communion is offering to the Catholic Church in their common quest for Church reintegration, and, for that matter, what it is contributing to bringing about the unity of all Christians. Thus are Anglicans constructively now engaging with this question that was once used to pour no little scorn on the Ordinariate’s entire basis – “What is this ‘Anglican Patrimony’?” The answer is – and I am so proud that it was the League that was the first to prophesy this from the outset in 2009, even before the Ordinariate was established and received its first members – as the peerless Fr Jack Hackett once observed, “That would be an ecumenical matter”.

During the year we have made several other grants of great significance in terms of the object of the League to promote the Catholic spiritual life towards the recovery of unity. One, to the Anglican Shrine at Walsingham, will enhance the Marian Library in St Augustine’s, which we hope will be a resource and blessing to pilgrims from all Churches to England’s Nazareth. Another is to Corpus Christi Church, Maiden Lane, in central London, a Catholic Church which is being restored as the National Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament. In line with an old tradition of the League’s, we are giving a splendid historic Monstrance that beautifully matches the art and architecture of the building. It will be used for an enhanced programme of sustained adoration and Benediction. Even though we Christians are divided at the point of receiving Holy Communion, nonetheless we can be united in devotion, honour and worship for our One Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.

 

 

Mark Woodruff, Golden Square Rectory Hall

Catholic Church of the Assumption & St Gregory, Warwick Street, Soho, London

 

 

Ratzinger Foundation: An anglican will receive the theological award

Ratzinger Foundation: An anglican will receive the theological award

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Pope Francis and retired Pope Benedict greet Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury at the time of his election and enthronement

POPE FRANCIS' MESSAGE FOR ENTHRONEMENT OF ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY Vatican City, 21 March 2013 (VIS) – Pope Francis has sent a message to the Most Reverend Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, on the occasion of his enthronement at Canterbury Cathedral in London, UK, this past Thursday. Archbishop Welby is the 105 Archbishop of Canterbury and the head of the worldwide Anglican Communion. “The pastoral ministry,” writes Francis, “is a call to walk in fidelity to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Please be assured of my prayers as you take up your new responsibilities, and I ask you to pray for me as I respond to the new call that the Lord has addressed to me.” “I look forward to meeting you in the near future, and to continuing the warm fraternal relations that our predecessors enjoyed.”

4 FEBRUARY: POPE BENEDICT XVI CONGRATULATED MOST REVEREND WELBY ON HIS ELECTION AS ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY Vatican City, 21 March 2013 (VIS) – Today was made public the message that Benedict XVI wrote this past 4 February to the Most Reverend Justin Welby on the occasion of his election as Archbishop of Canterbury.   The Pope wrote that the archbishop was taking up his office “at a time when the Christian faith is being called into question in many parts of the Western world by those who claim that religion is a private matter, with no contribution to offer to public debate. Ministers of the Gospel today have to respond to a widespread deafness to the music of faith, and a general weariness that shuns the demands of discipleship. Yet the hunger for God, even if unrecognised, is ever-present in our society, and the preacher's task, as a messenger of hope, is to speak the truth with love, shedding the light of Christ into the darkness of people's lives. May your apostolate yield a rich harvest and may it open the eyes and ears of many to the life-giving message of the Gospel.” Benedict XVI concluded with the prayer that “the Lord grant you strength and wisdom” in whatever challenges the new archbishop may encounter and asking that “the Holy Spirit guide you in all that you undertake in his name.”

Statement by His All-holiness Patriarch Bartholomew at the announcement of the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI, Pope of Rome

Upon being informed on the way to his native island of Imvros of the imminent retirement of Pope Benedict from the Petrine ministry on the Throne of Rome, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew issued a formal declaration and personal statement to the media, responding with sadness to the news. His All-Holiness closely cooperated with Pope Benedict during his papal tenure, issuing joint statements on contemporary problems facing humanity and realizing official exchange visits, but above all resuming in 2007 the conversations of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches (established in 1980 and interrupted in 2000). Immediately upon his election, His Holiness Pope Benedict accepted a formal invitation from His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to visit the Phanar in November, 2006, on the occasion of the Patronal Feast of the Church of Constantinople. He also invited the Ecumenical Patriarch to deliver the only address by an ecumenical leader during the official celebrations in St. Peter’s Square for the 50^th Anniversary since the opening of the 2^ndVatican Council in October, 2012. Below is the text of the formal statement by His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.

It is with regret that we have learned of the decision by His Holiness Pope Benedict to retire from his Throne, because with his wisdom and experience he could have provided much more to the Church and the world.

 

Pope Benedict leaves an indelible mark on the life and history of the Roman Catholic Church, sealed not only by his brief papacy, but also by his broad and longstanding contribution as a theologian and hierarch of his Church, as well as his universally acknowledged prestige.

 

His writings will long speak of his deep theological understanding, through his knowledge of the Fathers of the undivided Church, his familiarity with contemporary reality, and his keen interest in the problems of humankind.

 

We Orthodox will always honor him as a friend of our Church and a faithful servant of the sacred proposition for the union of all. Moreover, we shall rejoice upon learning of his sound health and the productivity of his theological work.

 

Personally, we remember with emotion his visit to the See of the Ecumenical Patriarchate over six years ago, together with the numerous encounters and excellent cooperation, which we enjoyed throughout the duration of his primatial ministry.

 

From the Phanar, we pray that the Lord will manifest his worthy successor as the head of the sister Church of Rome, and that we may also continue with this successor on our common journey toward the unity of all unto the glory of God.

Pope Benedict's Address on Resignation From the See of Rome

Dear Brothers,

I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three canonizations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church. After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me. For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.

Dear Brothers, I thank you most sincerely for all the love and work with which you have supported me in my ministry and I ask pardon for all my defects. And now, let us entrust the Holy Church to the care of Our Supreme Pastor, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and implore his holy Mother Mary, so that she may assist the Cardinal Fathers with her maternal solicitude, in electing a new Supreme Pontiff. With regard to myself, I wish to also devotedly serve the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.

From the Vatican, 10 February 2013

BENEDICTUS PP XVI

Pontifical Council for Unity: Relations with the Anglican Communion in 2012, by Mgr Mark Langham

From the Osservatore Romano, in the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, 18-25 January 2012 http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/weeks-prayer-doc/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_20130118_reflection-langham_en.html Internal Developments This year has witnessed a continuing climate of dissent within the Anglican Communion, with ethical questions concerning the episcopal ordination of active homosexuals creating serious tensions between different Anglican provinces, and presenting a major problem for ecumenical relations with the Catholic Church. Meanwhile, the move in the Church of England towards ordaining women bishops, while not a new development on the scale of the worldwide Anglican communion, has further entrenched an intractable church-dividing issue. Nevertheless, there are also indications that the co-operation between Anglicans and Catholics continues at many levels, and two successful visits to Rome by the Archbishop of Canterbury underlined the close relations between the two communions. Worldwide Anglicanism continues to be dominated by damaging ethical disagreements between provinces. In North America, conservative dioceses continue to secede from The Episcopalian Church, while there appear to be serious problems over the progress of the Anglican Communion Covenant, with the Church of England itself voting not to accept it. As ever, Anglicanism in general, and the Archbishop of Canterbury in particular, face the dilemma of maintaining some sense of identity in an increasingly diverse worldwide Communion, while remaining deeply averse to any centralised authority. The Anglican Covenant, to which the Archbishop of Canterbury has given his personal support, his been widely criticised as too authoritarian and "un-Anglican". At the meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Auckland, New Zealand, in October, much time was given to the Covenant, and it was clear that the structures of doctrinal limitation it implies are unpopular with the majority of Provinces. At present, it is hard to see that the Covenant will gain communion-wide approval, and since adherence to it was to determine participation in ecumenical dialogues, the consequences for Anglican – Catholic relations remain unclear. In the Church of England, meanwhile, the failure of General Synod to pass legislation permitting the ordination of women to the Episcopacy has created a crisis, with the Government seeming to threaten at least indirect pressure to reverse the decision. It is important to note that this vote was not about women bishops per se: that development is inevitable, since the vast majority of English Anglicans support it. The vote was about providing a substantial framework for those Anglicans who cannot accept the measure; the proposal failed as not enough members of Synod felt that safeguards for opponents were secure, despite assurances from the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is hard to see how the legislation, when it returns, can be adapted to encompass two essentially conflicting points of view. The ramifications for relations with the Catholic Church both locally, and more widely, are yet to be seen. ARCIC III and IARCCUM Despite these problems, the second meeting of the current phase of the Anglican – Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC III) took place in May a positive and fruitful environment. The Commission, under the co-chairmanship of Roman Catholic Archbishop Bernard Longley of Birmingham and Anglican Archbishop David Moxon of Aotearoa-New Zealand, met in Hong Kong, as guests of the Anglican diocese, to continue its discussions on the themes ‘ The Church as Communion, local and universal’, and ‘How in communion the local and universal Church comes to discern right ethical teaching’. Both these topics are crucially relevant to the Anglican Communion at this time. During the meeting, it was decided to treat the ethical issue through "case studies", that is, to consider particular ethical issues where there is either agreement or disagreement between Catholics and Anglicans, and to investigate how those differing positions have been reached. It is hoped that this work will be of real value in local circumstances throughout the world where Anglicans and Catholics work together. The Commission met with the leadership of the Catholic and Anglican communities in Hong Kong, and held an evening of discussion and exchanging information with seminarians from both traditions. Members of the Commission were also introduced to the work of the Mission to Seamen, undertaken jointly by Anglicans and Catholics. At a further small planning meeting in November, the ARCIC work assignments in preparation for beginning work on an agreed statement, ahead of the third meeting of ARCIC III, which will take place in Rio de Janeiro in May 2013. The International Anglican Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission (IARCCUM), which was developed following a successful joint meeting of Anglican and Catholic Bishops in 2000, has been revived. Its scope is to publicize the work of ARCIC and promote reception of its work. The co-chairmen, Anglican Bishop David Hamid and Catholic Bishop Donald Bolen, have sent all known local Anglican-Catholic dialogues a questionnaire, to ascertain what is being done about ecumenical relations at present, and to share good practice. These results will be collated early in 2013, and local bishops identified in each region who can help promote the ecumenical achievements of ARCIC. Archbishop of Canterbury The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, announced earlier in 2012 that he would retire at the close of the year, in order to return to a life in academia. This added a poignancy to his two visits to Rome, and in particular his second journey became an opportunity to thank him for his leadership of the Anglican Communion and to bid him farewell. In March, Dr Williams was in Rome to take part in the millennium celebrations of the Camaldolese Order, whose basilica of San Gregorio al Celio has particular historic links with England. As part of these events, Dr Williams participated in Solemn Vespers celebrated by His Holiness Pope Benedict, and delivered an address. Following Vespers, together with the Prior of San Gregorio he prayed in the Chapel of St Gregory, in preparation for its dedication as a special place of pilgrimage for Anglican visitors to Rome. On the following day, he took part in a conference on monastic life, and later visited the San Egidio centre in Trastevere. The Archbishop also engaged in a dialogue with the seminarians of Venerable English College, answering their questions and discussing ecumenical relations with them. In October, Dr Rowan Williams returned to Rome to address the thirteenth ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the profound connection between contemplation and the task of evangelisation. His intervention was given in the presence of His Holiness Pope Benedict, and was followed by a period of dialogue with the Synod Fathers, following which the Archbishop held a short meeting with the Holy Father. On the following day, Dr Williams was present in St Peter’s Square for Holy Mass celebrated by His Holiness Pope Benedict to inaugurate the Year of Faith. During this final visit, the Archbishop met with many friends from the Curia to bid them farewells, including H.E. Cardinal Kurt Koch of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Upon the announcement in November that Right Reverend Justin Welby had been appointed to succeed Dr Rowan Williams, Cardinal Koch sent a letter of congratulations. He will attend the Archbishop’s enthronement next March, and it is hoped that the new Archbishop of Canterbury will make a first visit to Rome later in the year. Other contacts The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity welcomes many visitors through the year, who help to strengthen bonds of friendship and provide first-hand information about Anglican developments. Bishop Steven Croft of Sheffield, England, was present at the Synod of Bishops, as Anglican Fraternal Delegate, and made a brief intervention. He later reported his experience in very positive terms to the General Synod of the Church of England. Bishop Robert Ladds was present in Nettuno for a symposium on the role of the Virgin Mary in ecumenism, in which Monsignor Langham of the Pontifical Council participated. Monsignor Langham also addressed the Trustees of the Anglican Centre, present in Rome in November for their annual meeting. In June, there was a significant visit to Rome by the clergy and choir of Westminster Abbey, London, which recalled the presence of His Holiness Pope Benedict to the Abbey in 2010, and provided an example of collaboration that bears profound witness to the shared heritage of Anglicans and Catholics. The famed Abbey choir was granted the privilege of singing at the Papal Mass on the Feast of SS Peter and Paul, alongside the Sistine Choir, after which they were greeted by His Holiness. On the following day, a concert was given by both choirs in the Sistine Chapel, at which H.E. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone spoke warmly of the English choral tradition. In the same month, Cardinal Koch traveled to England, where in Canterbury and London he met with members of the Church of England and wider Anglican communion representing different traditions within Anglicanism. This visit, hosted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, was an opportunity for the President of the Pontifical Council to experience something of the breadth and inclusivity of Anglicanism. In October, Monsignor Mark Langham of the Pontifical Council attended the Anglican Consultative Council in New Zealand, and made presentations on the work of the Pontifical Council and upon the importance of the Anglican Centre in Rome. He also took part in two workshops on Anglican – Catholic relations. In Rome, the Annual Informal Talks were between the Pontifical Council and representatives of the Worldwide Anglican Communion were held in November. This event offers a regular opportunity for a frank and fraternal exchange of news and opinions on a range of subjects, allowing information to be shared and questions to be answered. This year, the meeting was held at the offices of the Pontifical Council, was chaired by Bishop Brian Farrell, Secretary of the Pontifical Council and included other important representatives of the Catholic Church and Anglican Communion. In December, a significant ecumenical milestone was reached when His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester visited the Venerable English College, and read a message from Her Majesty the Queen congratulating the College on the six hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its original foundation. The message from the second Queen Elizabeth was a small, but significant, indication of how far relations between Anglicans and Catholics have been transformed in recent decades. It was announced earlier in the year that Canon David Richardson, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s representative in Rome and Director of the Anglican Centre, would retire at Easter in 2013. In December, his replacement was named as Archbishop David Moxon of New Zealand, currently co-president of ARCIC. Cardinal Koch sent a message congratulating Archbishop Moxon, and expressing confidence that his considerable experience and gifts would suit him well for this important position which has such a significant role in relations between the Holy See and Canterbury, confirming the bonds of affection between Anglicans and Roman Catholics, and assisting our mutual understanding and work. FUTURE PROSPECTS Certain developments in the ecumenical scene that affect relations between the Catholic Church and Anglicanism are having a negative impact on ecumenical relations, calling into question earlier agreements made by the Anglican – Roman Catholic International Commission, and presenting serious departures from Catholic moral and doctrinal teaching. The internal controversies that these developments have occasioned have made it difficult for Catholics to discern a clear Anglican position on certain issues. The Pontifical Council had hoped that the Anglican Covenant might provide some coherency to Anglican ecclesiology, and limit doctrinal diversity, but its virtually certain rejection means that it is unlikely that help will come from that direction. The question of provision of women bishops in the Church of England has attracted great Press attention, and has been portrayed by many as a significant moment in the life of the Anglicanism. The Anglican Communion has, however, been appointing women bishops in other Provinces for twenty years, and ARCIC has for a long time had to take account of this reality. However, events at the General Synod in London are of major significance to the international dialogue, because of the special position of the Church of England within the communion. These event emphasizes the entrenchment of a development which is a serious obstacle to the progress of Christian unity. With Methodists also, there are increasing concerns about the extent to which local practices do not conform to agreed worldwide practices, and the gap between official Methodist discipline and practice is a matter of some concern to the Catholic Church. In this atmosphere, the positive spirit of the dialogue talks with both Anglicans and Methodists has been all the more remarkable. It is notable that, at the same time as ethical and doctrinal differences present seemingly intractable obstacles, fruitful dialogue on many other topics has still proved possible. ARCIC is preparing important work on the structures of ethical decision making, which it proposes to share with local Anglican – Catholic dialogues. There was particular delight in the Methodist – Catholic dialogue at the areas of common tradition that emerged from its discussion of holiness and sanctification. In addition, ecumenical relations have been cemented through visits to Rome. The Anglican choir of Westminster Abbey, present at the Holy Mass on the Feast of Ss Peter and Paul, sang the Ave Verum Corpus of William Byrd. This piece of music was written by a Catholic for the small and persecuted Catholic minority. That it should be sung in Rome in the presence of the Holy Father by an Anglican choir, was a striking demonstration of how many historical obstacles have been overcome. Above all, the visits by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the important address made by him to the Synod of Bishops, showed a depth of spiritual kinship and co-operation that resonates strongly even in difficult ecumenical times. The new Archbishop of Canterbury, although from an Evangelical background, has cited strong Catholic influences upon him. The coming year will provide opportunities to come to know him, and to carry forward the essential work of striving for Christian unity.

Pope Benedict's Homily At Conclusion of Week of Prayer

VATICAN CITY, January 28, 2013, thanks to Zenit.org - Here is the translation of Pope Benedict XVI's Homily during the ecumenical celebration of Vespers of the Solemnity of the Conversion of St. Paul the Apostle. The occasion marked the end of the XLVI Week of Prayer for Christian Unity on the theme: "What Does the Lord Require of Us" (Micah 6:6-8)

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Dear Brothers and Sisters!

It is always a joy and a special grace to come together, around the tomb of the Apostle Paul, to conclude the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. I greet with affection the Cardinals present, first of all Cardinal Harvey, Archpriest of this Basilica, and with him the Abbot and the community of monks who are hosting us. I greet Cardinal Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and all the collaborators of this dicastery. I express my cordial and fraternal greetings to His Eminence Metropolitan Gennadios, representative of the Ecumenical Patriarch, to the Rev. Canon Richardson, personal representative in Rome of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and all the representatives of the different Churches and ecclesial communities, gathered here this evening. In addition, I am particularly pleased to greet the members of the Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches, to whom I wish a fruitful work for the plenary session that is taking place these days in Rome, as well as students of the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey, on a visit to Rome to deepen their knowledge of the Catholic Church and the Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox young people who study there. Lastly, I greet all those present gathered to pray for the unity of all the disciples of Christ.

This celebration is part of the Year of Faith, which began on 11 October, the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Communion in the same faith is the basis for ecumenism. Unity is given by God as inseparable from faith; St. Paul expresses this effectively: "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism,  one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all"(Eph. 4:4-6). The baptismal profession of faith in God, the Father and Creator, who revealed himself in his Son Jesus Christ, pouring out the Spirit who gives life and holiness, already unites Christians. Without faith - which is primarily a gift of God, but also man's response - the whole ecumenical movement would be reduced to a form of "contract" to enter into out of a common interest. The Second Vatican Council reminds Christians that "the closer their union with the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, the more deeply and easily will they be able to grow in mutual brotherly love"(Decr. Unitatis redintegratio, 7). Doctrinal issues that still divide us must not be overlooked or minimized. They should rather be faced with courage, in a spirit of brotherhood and mutual respect. Dialogue, when it reflects the priority of faith, can open to the action of God with the firm conviction that we cannot build unity alone: it is the Holy Spirit who guides us toward full communion, who allows us to grasp the spiritual wealth present in the different Churches and ecclesial communities.

In today's society it seems that the Christian message affects personal and community life less and less, and this represents a challenge for all the Churches and ecclesial communities. Unity is in itself a privileged instrument, almost a prerequisite to announcing the faith in an ever more credible way to those who do not yet know the Saviour, or who, having received the proclamation of the Gospel, have almost forgotten this precious gift. The scandal of division that undermined missionary activity was the impulse that started the ecumenical movement that we know today. Full and visible communion among Christians is to be understood as a fundamental characteristic of an even clearer witness. While we are on the path towards full unity, it is necessary to pursue concrete cooperation among the disciples of Christ for the sake of passing on the faith to the contemporary world. Today there is a great need for reconciliation, dialogue and mutual understanding, not in a moralistic perspective, but in the name of Christian authenticity for a more incisive presence in the reality of our time.

True faith in God is inseparable from personal holiness, as well as from the pursuit of justice. In the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which ends today, the theme offered for our meditation was, "What Does the Lord Requires of Us," inspired by the words of the prophet Micah, which we have heard (cf. 6:6-8). It was proposed by the Student Christian Movement in India, in collaboration with the All India Catholic University Federation and the National Council of Churches in India, who also prepared the aids for reflection and prayer. To those who have collaborated, I want to express my deep gratitude and, with great affection, I assure you of my prayers for all the Christians of India, who sometimes are called to bear witness to their faith in difficult conditions. "Walking humbly with God" (cf. Micah 6:8) above all means walking in radical faith, like Abraham, trusting in God, or rather placing in Him all our hopes and aspirations, but it also means walking past the barriers, past hatred, racism and social and religious discrimination that divide and harm society as a whole. As St. Paul says, Christians must first provide a shining example in their search for reconciliation and communion in Christ, that overcomes every kind of division. In the Letter to the Galatians, the Apostle of the Gentiles says, "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus"(3:27-28).

Our search for unity in truth and in love, then, must never lose sight of the perception that Christian unity is the work and gift of the Holy Spirit, and goes far beyond our own efforts. Therefore, spiritual ecumenism, especially prayer, is the heart of ecumenical commitment (cf. Decr. Unitatis redintegratio, 8). However, ecumenism will not bear lasting fruit unless it is accompanied by concrete gestures of conversion that move consciences and foster the healing of memories and relationships. As stated in the Decree on Ecumenism of the Second Vatican Council, "there is no true ecumenism without interior conversion" (no. 7). Authentic conversion, as suggested by the prophet Micah and of which the Apostle Paul is a significant example, will bring us closer to God, to the center of our lives, in such a way as to draw us also closer to each other. This is a key element of our ecumenical commitment. The renewal of the inner life of our heart and our mind, which is reflected in everyday life, is crucial in any process of reconciliation and dialogue, making of ecumenism a mutual commitment to understanding, respect and love, "so that the world may believe" (Jn 17:21).

Dear brothers and sisters, let us invoke the Virgin Mary with confidence, the incomparable model of evangelization, so that the Church, "a sign and instrument of intimate union with God and of unity among all men" (Const. Lumen Gentium, 1), may announce with all frankness, even in our time, Christ the Savior. Amen.

[Translation by Peter Waymel]