Priest Director's Newsletter - May 2015

When Father Henry Joy Fynes Clinton brought about the foundation of the Catholic League in 1913, it was not solely an Anglican-Roman Catholic concern. In Father John Salter’s biography, The Anglican Papalist, we were given the picture of a man focussing on a host of different things at the same time, each within the context of the others. Thus, while the League with our companions in the Sodality of the Precious Blood may be the last Papalist body for Anglican-Catholic corporate reunion standing from the time before the modern ecumenical movement, and while friendly relations and collaboration (if not the passion for reunion) between the members of the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion show that our original aims have become the ecumenical mainstream, Fynes Clinton envisaged the re-integration of the Latin Catholic West to rest upon the reintegration of the whole Church, not just parts and pieces of it. He therefore appointed as the League’s patrons beside Our Lady of Victories, recalling the concerted effort of western Christendom that turned back the Ottoman Empire and its fleet at Lepanto in 1571, whom we venerate as Mother of the Church, and St Joseph, patron of the Universal Church from the Latin West’s point of view - but also St Nicholas of Myra, the holy protecting bishop beloved of the Orthodox East.


Fynes Clinton’s concern for the Christian East was realised in aid and activity in parallel with his promotion of Anglican reunion in the West. Fr Salter credits him with doing perhaps more than anyone else to achieve the stability of the Serbian Orthodox Church in its time of trial, by ensuring a desperately needed new generation of priests was trained in England. In this he assisted the Archbishop of Canterbury and thus cemented a bond between the Church of England and the Serbian Church to this day. Fr Fynes even saw a chance in the collapsing years of the Ottoman Empire for the Aya Sofya mosque in Istanbul mourned by Christians as the lost Hagia Sophia, the Great Church, to be restored by British power to the Patriarch of Constantinople. This cause may appear quixotic with hindsight; in any case he abandoned it, as it became clear that shadowy interests in the Roman curia did not wish to assist the recovery of the suffering and persevering Orthodox Church of the Eastern Roman Empire (which in Christian charity would have been the right thing to do), but hoped instead that in the power vacuum the Papacy could insert itself, install a Catholic patriarch at Hagia Sophia, and drive East-West reunion the vantage point while all else was in disarray; they certainly did not want an Anglican brokering arrangements with the Orthodox that would get in the way. While this was no less Quixotic than Fynes Clinton’s flight of imagination, it was much less innocent. The patriarchate did not forget the Anglican kindness borne of a desire for the Church to manifest its intrinsic unity: the foundation of the Nikaean Club and the Fellowship of St Alban & St Sergius, to foster Anglican-Orthodox mutual affection and solidarity belong to this era, as does the 1922 recognition of Anglican priestly orders. The particular bond between the Church of England, with the Archbishop  of Canterbury taking a leading role, and the Orthodox Churches of the Christian East has persisted to this day. It is important to keep in mind how important the involvement of Anglican Papalists in official ecumenism was in its formative stages, and this was because of their principle that reunion is not about piecemeal amalgamations or bilateral arrangements, but the intrinsic unity of the Church in the fullness of communion that must involve all Christians in each of the Churches, especially led by the apostolic Churches. This necessarily involves the ministry and proper authority of the Pope, the Bishop of the First See and successor of St Peter, as integral to the ecumenical objective from the outset, not a role to be added on when desirable and acceptable as some last piece of the jigsaw.


It is a cause of dismay that this principle is so lost even among the best people involved in contemporary ecumenical activity. It is a regular criticism of Anglican ecumenical policy that it fields different people taking different tones when talking to Catholics from those it fields when talking to the Orthodox, or Evangelicals, or Lutherans, or Reformed Churches. To an extent, the specialisms and interests of experts in each Church make this inevitable. We all warm to aspects of other Churches that we find resonate with us or stimulate fresh insights for our life in our own Church. This reflects how the Church is the Universal Church that manifests itself in the life of each Church with its gifts and graces, the holiness of the people and the faith that belongs to us as one. The Catholic Church understands that this Universal Church fully “subsists in” it, although according to Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism, because of the barriers separating Christians that yet they share in common, it is difficult for her “to express in actual life her full Catholicity in all her bearings”. In other words, we need each other in order to be the Church on earth in full; we need each other in order to manifest ourselves in the world as the Spotless Bride of Christ with which Christ the Bridegroom unites Himself across both heaven and earth in His own divine life, never to part. Who shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus? (Romans 8.35) Much, it seems.


The present state of the world and the Church shows that Christian Unity is no mere aspiration, “if only”; it is a matter of life and death. At Pope Francis’ moving visit to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I in November 2014, both spoke of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches united in the loss and thus the honour of our present day martyrs – Nigeria, India, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Libya. In February this year, Pope Francis declared St Gregory of Narek (951-1003), the great Armenian mystical poet and philosopher theologian coming from the Oriental Orthodox tradition which has not been in communion with the See of Peter since the Council of Chalcedon in 451, as a Doctor of the Catholic Church. The infamous Ottoman Empire’s genocide of the Armenians in 1915 cost the lives and dispossession not just of Armenian Orthodox, but also Armenian Catholics, Syrian Orthodox and Catholics, and Greek Orthodox in Turkey too. Recently, the Catholicos of All the Armenians, Karekin II, canonised all the 1.5 million Armenian martyrs, who died on account of their profession of the Name of Christ, in the first such ceremony in 500 years. Present in solidarity were envoys from the Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches, whose faithful suffered not in separation but in the deepest union between Christ and his faithful at the taking up of His Cross. And when the 21 Coptic Christians were murdered by the ISIS blood cult on the Mediterranean shore in Libya with the Name of Yeshua on their lips, Pope Francis phoned the Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, Pope Tawadros II, saying that they were not just martyrs of the Coptic Church, but of the Catholic Church too. In a country like Britain which views its history in terms of progress, and its economic and social wellbeing in terms of growth, it is a stark challenge to see the Christianity which shaped our civilisation disregarded here and forced to its knees in the lands of its birth and the regions evangelised by the Apostles themselves.


A decade ago, thanks to our past Priest Directors Father Philip Gray and Father Brooke Lunn, as the Catholic League we paid close attention to the much needed power of mutual reparation in our dealings in England between our Churches and our different takes on a history that we share. Father Philip dwelt on how England is scarred with the ruins of the destroyed monasteries and the disfigured churches that stand as monuments to Christian dissension and mutual recrimination that has not even now been fully come to terms with. Later we had a memorable pilgrimage to Walsingham at which the vicar, now Bishop Norman Banks, took us on a tour of the local churches and landmarks, describing them as other marks of Christ’s Passion in His people: by His wounds you have been healed (I Peter 2.24). On the same occasion, we blessed a new altar in memory of our much loved and long serving General Secretary, Geoffrey Wright, for the Martyr’s Cell where Father Nicholas Mileham is believed to have been held on the night before he died as a witness to our concern for the healing of memories. Father Brooke Lunn was instrumental in ensuring that an annual commemoration of the Carthusian martyrs at which Anglican and Catholic leaders could participate in common to honour them, a few hundred yards moreover from where many Protestant martyrs also died at Smithfield, as part of the story of our Churches that Christ designed to be one on earth as it is in Heaven. There followed observances at the Tower of London to honour the reformer Bishop Nicholas Ridley and Saint John Fisher alongside each other, and at Tyburn Convent to honour not only the Catholic martyrs but also the Anglicans, Congregationalists, Baptists, Presbyterians and others who lost their life for seeking to be faithful to the Truth about Christ and following Him perfectly to the end, the same name, Yeshua, Jesus, on their lips as this year on the Copts’ in Libya.


Pope Francis has frequently reflected on the ecumenism of blood and we will be revisiting our earlier work on the healing of memories, to use Pope St John Paul’s memorable phrase, to add our spiritual support as concerned ecumenists, Anglicans and Catholics together, who recognise that while Christian unity may look impossible from so many angles, it is not only an aspiration, or even an urgent task for which Christ prayed. It is vital as the lifeblood of the crucified Church in the historic Christian East, from which our faith and Church in England originated. And it is no less vital if the words on our lips in England, as Pope Benedict told us on his visit, are to give a convincing account of the Risen Christ and the hope that lies within us.


Our Lady of Victories, pray for our unity. Saint Joseph, Patron of the Universal Church, pray for its reconciliation. Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, pray for its restoration. All holy martyrs for Christ’s Church and His Gospel, pray for the victory of His Kingdom over death, hell and destruction. Christ, Who is risen from the dead, trampling death by death and to those in the tomb giving life: have mercy on us.

Pope Francis: AMONG CHRISTIANS, UNITY IS ALWAYS GREATER THAN CONFLICT: Vatican Information Service

Vatican City, 26 January 2014 (VIS) – The 47th Prayer Week for Christian Unity – for which this year's theme is “Has Christ been divided?” – concluded yesterday afternoon, the solemnity of the Conversion of St. Paul, with the celebration of the second Vespers in the Roman basilica of St. Paul Outside-the-Walls. The event was attended by representatives of other Churches and ecclesiastical communities present in Rome.


In his homily, Pope Francis, referring to the theme of the Prayer Week, drawn from St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians, observed that the Apostle was grieved to learn that the Christians of Corinth had split into various factions, and “could not even praise those who claimed to belong to Christ, since they were using the name of the one Saviour to set themselves apart from their other brothers and sisters within the community. In other words, the particular experience of each individual, or an attachment to certain significant persons in the community, had become a yardstick for judging the faith of others”.


“Amid this divisiveness, Paul appeals to the Christians of Corinth 'by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ' to be in agreement, so that divisions will not reign among them, but rather a perfect union of mind and purpose. The communion for which the Apostle pleads, however, cannot be the fruit of human strategies”, continued the Pope. “Perfect union among brothers and sisters can only come from looking to the mind and heart of Christ. This evening, as we gather here in prayer, may we realise that Christ, who cannot be divided, wants to draw us to himself, to the sentiments of his heart, to his complete and confident surrender into the hands of the Father, to his radical self-emptying for love of humanity. Christ alone can be the principle, the cause and the driving force behind our unity.



“As we find ourselves in his presence, we realise all the more that we may not regard divisions in the Church as something natural, inevitable in any form of human association. Our divisions wound Christ’s body, they impair the witness which we are called to give to him before the world”. The Bishop of Rome cited the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism, “Unitatis Redintegratio”, which affirms that “Christ the Lord founded one Church and one Church only. However, many Christian communities present themselves to people as the true inheritance of Jesus Christ; all indeed profess to be followers of the Lord but they differ in outlook and go their different ways, as if Christ were divided”, and adds, "such division openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalises the world, and damages the sacred cause of preaching the Gospel to every creature".


“We have all been damaged by these divisions. None of us wishes to become a cause of scandal. And so we are all journeying together, fraternally, on the road towards unity, bringing about unity even as we walk; that unity comes from the Holy Spirit and brings us something unique which only the Holy Spirit can do, that is, reconciling our differences. The Lord waits for us all, accompanies us all, and is with us all on this path of unity”.


“Christ, dear friends, cannot be divided! This conviction must sustain and encourage us to persevere with humility and trust on the way to the restoration of full visible unity among all believers in Christ. Tonight I think of the work of two great Popes: Blessed John XXIII and Blessed John Paul II. ... Pope John blazed new trails which earlier would have been almost unthinkable. Pope John Paul held up ecumenical dialogue as an ordinary and indispensable aspect of the life of each Particular Church. With them, I think too of Pope Paul VI, another great promoter of dialogue; in these very days we are commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of his historic embrace with the Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople”.


He continued, “The work of these, my predecessors, enabled ecumenical dialogue to become an essential dimension of the ministry of the Bishop of Rome, so that today the Petrine ministry cannot be fully understood without this openness to dialogue with all believers in Christ. We can say also that the journey of ecumenism has allowed us to come to a deeper understanding of the ministry of the Successor of Peter, and we must be confident that it will continue to do so in the future. As we look with gratitude to the progress which the Lord has enabled us to make, and without ignoring the difficulties which ecumenical dialogue is presently experiencing, let us all pray that we may put on the mind of Christ and thus progress towards the unity which he wills. And to journey together is already to be making unity!”



Finally, the Pope greeted the Metropolitan Gennadios, the representative of the Ecumenical Patriarch, David Moxon, the representative in Rome of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and all the representatives of the various Churches and Ecclesial Communities gathered in the basilica of St. Paul Outside-the-Walls. “With these two brothers representing everyone, we have prayed at the Tomb of Paul and have said to one another: 'Let us pray that he will help us on this path, on this path of unity and of love, as we advance towards unity'. Unity will not come about as a miracle at the very end. Rather, unity comes about in journeying; the Holy Spirit does this on the journey. If we do not walk together, if we do not pray for one another, if we do not collaborate in the many ways that we can in this world for the People of God, then unity will not come about! But it will happen on this journey, in each step we take. And it is not we who are doing this, but rather the Holy Spirit, who sees our goodwill”.



“Let us ask the Lord Jesus, who has made us living members of his body, to keep us deeply united to him, to help us overcome our conflicts, our divisions and our self-seeking; and let us remember that unity is always better than conflict! And so may he help us to be united to one another by one force, by the power of love which the Holy Spirit pours into our hearts”, the Holy Father concluded.

AMONG CHRISTIANS, UNITY IS ALWAYS GREATER THAN CONFLICT -  Vatican Information Service

Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols and the Archbishop of Canterbury: Appeal for Peace in Syria

"Our prayers also go with the ancient communities of our Christian brothers and sisters in Syria"

Since the very first days of the Syrian conflict in March 2011, we have prayed as we watched in horror and sorrow the escalating violence that has rent this country apart. We have grieved with all Syrians – with the families of each and every human life lost and with all communities whose neighbourhoods and livelihoods have suffered from escalating and pervasive violence. And today, our prayers also go with the ancient communities of our Christian brothers and sisters in Syria.

The kidnapping this week of two Metropolitan bishops of Aleppo, Mar Gregorios Ibrahim of the Syriac Orthodox Church and Paul Yazigi of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, and the killing of their driver while they were carrying out a humanitarian mission, is another telling sign of the terrible circumstances that continue to engulf all Syrians.

We unreservedly support these Christian communities, rooted in and attached to the biblical lands, despite the many hardships. We respond to the call from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and all the East, and the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and all the East, urging churches worldwide to remain steadfast in the face of challenging realities and to bear witness to their faith in the power of love in this world. We both continue to pray for a political solution to this tragic conflict that would stem the terrible violence and also empower all Syrians with their fundamental and inalienable freedoms. We also call for urgent humanitarian aid to reach all who are suffering. We pray that Syria can recapture its tradition of tolerance, rooted in faith and respect for faiths living side by side.

+ Justin Welby
+ Vincent Nichols

My brother Andrew - Fr Mark Woodruff's article in The Tablet - The new Pope Francis and the Churches of the East

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/163991

When Benedict XVI resigned, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople expressed more than surprise. There was clearly dismay that their “excellent cooperation”, which had overseen the re-engagement of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in dialogue in 2007, after an impasse lasting seven years, might not fulfil its promise because of a “brief papacy”. The Roman pontiff is still regarded as the first of the patriarchs by Orthodoxy, even if Pope Benedict dropped his title “Patriarch of the West” in 2006 as defunct, standing in the way of realistic ecumenism. So why should a pope retire when urgent labours are in hand and their fruits within reach? “With his wisdom and experience he could have provided much more to the Church and the world”.

The Ecumenical Patriarch is regarded as primus inter pares by many, but not all, of the world’s Orthodox Churches. He is second only in the Universal Church to the Bishop of Rome, but he is not an opposite number, having no immediate jurisdiction beyond his small community in Turkey and parts of north-east Greece, although his general responsibility for Orthodox in diaspora affords him considerable influence. For wider leadership he relies as much on persuasion, prestige and moral authority as canon law. With painstaking plans for a Pan-Orthodox Council making progress, and an abiding sense of affinity between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches as both are dispersed alongside each other in every corner of the globe, Bartholomew invested much hope in Benedict’s papacy for mutual support and cooperation in the contemporary setting. Concerned for all Orthodox in diaspora, the continued growth of Christianity in Europe and the very survival of the Churches in their Eastern lands of origin, their joint efforts at solidarity and even communion appeared at risk with the prospect of a new leader.

Thus a statement from the Patriarchate explained Bartholomew’s decision to attend Pope Francis’ inauguration personally: the need for “a profoundly bold step ... that could have lasting significance”. It is the first time the Bishop of Constantinople has attended the inauguration of the Bishop of Rome ever, let alone since the great schism of 1054. Yet the Patriarch has already visited Rome a number of times since Pope Benedict’s visit to Istanbul in 2006. He was the only ecumenical leader invited to make a speech at the celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of Vatican II and there have been annual visits between Rome and Constantinople on the feasts of their apostles for decades. But this latest visit was different: “after such a long division … authentic reunion will require courage, leadership and humility. Given Pope Francis' well-documented work for social justice and his insistence that globalization is detrimental to the poor … the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic traditions have a renewed opportunity to work collectively on issues of mutual concern… But such work requires a first step and it would appear as though Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is willing to take such a step.” In one of those seemingly informal but resonant gestures that we are beginning to expect from Francis, the response was immediate and commensurate. The successor of Peter greeted the successor of the other Galilean fisherman as “my brother Andrew”.

Another dimension was revealed in a press interview within hours of Francis’ election by Patriarch Sviatoslav, Major-Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, by far the largest of the Eastern Churches in communion with Rome, which shares the same origins in Kiev as the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as the same Byzantine Rite and tradition as the Church of Constantinople itself. He revealed that the young Jorge Maria Borgoglio frequently attended the Ukrainian Divine Liturgy served by Fr Stepan Chmil, a great mentor to him: “The Holy Father knows not only of our Church, but also our liturgy, our rites, and our spirituality.” Furthermore, as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Francis was Ordinary for Eastern Catholics. In 2009 Sviatoslav arrived as the auxiliary bishop for the Ukrainian Catholic eparchy in Argentina and tells how his first steps in episcopal ministry were under the Cardinal’s watchful care. They have an even closer bond now, because a year later Sviatoslav was called upon to succeed his revered mentor Lubomyr Cardinal Husar, who retired like Pope Benedict has done. At the age of 41, his election boldly charts a new course for the Ukrainian Catholic Church in service of society and the unity of Churches at home and abroad for decades to come. Pope Francis will be looking East to a dynamic former protégé for inspiration as he charts his own new course.

Whether it concerns a renewed partnership with the historic Eastern Catholic Churches, or forging new bonds hopefully leading to communion with the Orthodox, the model for Pope Francis’s understanding of the Christian East, unlike his predecessors, is not European. They envisaged the re-composition of the old Christendom around the reference points of the Mediterranean. But in world Christianity, Borgoglio has seen that the East is now right across the West, just as the West has suffused the lands of the East and is likewise worldwide. To talk of our respective territories is, as Benedict realised, increasingly beside the point. Anthony O’Mahony, director of the Centre for Eastern Christianity at Heythrop College, estimates that there are now over 4 million Eastern Christians, Catholic and Orthodox across Western Europe.  But the weight of the diaspora seems to be shifting from Europe and North America to the emerging powers in the global south, notably Australia and Latin America. Here these old Churches are young and confident, able both to sustain their tradition as they also become indigenous and move beyond being simply ethnic chaplaincies. They can thus play strong roles alongside others in the work of evangelisation, spiritual renewal, ecumenical engagement and wider social development. This is what Pope Francis is used to and how he will approach the inheritors of Byzantium across Europe too, Catholic and Orthodox alike.

So, what of the Russian Orthodox Church, the largest of all? Moscow regards itself as Third Rome and the decisive player in the future of the Orthodox Church as a whole. It believes an alliance with the Catholic Church in “the struggle for the soul of Europe” is critical, but finds the universal primacy of the Roman see difficult to contemplate. It sent its Head of External Relations, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, who did his doctorate in the West at Oxford and is regarded as a likely successor to Patriarch Kirill. The message from Moscow present and future was clear: Pope Francis was firmly addressed as “primate of the Roman Catholic Church” and as Kirill’s peer. Despite progress in Orthodox-Catholic dialogue, which is seeking an agreed view on the Roman primacy in the first millennium as a basis for recovering communion, it feels out of place to the Russian Church, whose consciousness largely relates to the second, during which it has grown considerably, with little awareness of the need for a universal primacy. Its present size, resources and world diaspora mean that it is no longer local but a fact of life to come to terms with, not just for the Catholic Church but other Orthodox jurisdictions too. Importantly, Russia’s activity in the Middle East reanimates an Imperial role as protector of all Orthodox. Given that peace and stability for that region and its Christians will loom as large for Francis as for Benedict, because they directly affect the wellbeing of Europe, the significance of the Moscow patriarchate has to be faced.

Pope Francis’ intention to trust and work with the “local Church” resonates with many Orthodox. They have long been looking for signs that the collegiality set forth at Vatican II will turn into reality. They have noted how he has called himself not supreme pontiff or pope, but Bishop of Rome. They will be looking to see how the primate of the Church “presiding in love” at Rome, will treat the Eastern Catholic Churches: as subsets of the global Roman Catholic organisation, or as honoured Churches, firmly rooted in their local homeland, yet now living side by side with Latin Catholicism’s own diaspora in the emerging societies of the south and throughout the world. It will reveal how the new Pope envisages the restoration of communion between Catholics and Orthodox, since West and East must rely on each other for the future. The Orthodox will be hoping that indeed Pope Francis, Brother Peter to Brother Andrew, “knows our Church”.

Fr Mark Woodruff is a Westminster priest and Vice-Chairman of the Society of St John Chrysostom, which promotes Catholic-Orthodox relations and the unity of the Churches of East and West.

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.

Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk congratulates and warns newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury

To the Right Rev. Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham


Dear Brother and Lord Bishop,

I would like to extend to you wholehearted congratulations on your election as Head of one of the oldest episcopal chairs founded by St. Augustine of Canterbury in the 7^th century.


You have been entrusted with the spiritual guidance of the entire Anglican Communion, a unique union of like-minded people, which, however diverse the forms of its existence in the world may be, needs one ‘steward of God’ (Tit. 1:7) the guardian of the faith and witness to the Truth (cf. Jn. 18:37).


The Russian Orthodox Church and the Churches of the Anglican Communion are bonded by age-old friendly relations initiated in the 16^th century. For centuries, our Churches would preserve good and truly brotherly relations encouraged both by frequent mutual visits and established theological dialogue and certainly by a spirit of respect and love which used to accompany the meetings of our hierarchs, clergy and ordinary believers.


Regrettably, the late 20^th century and the beginning of the third millennium have brought tangible difficulties in relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Churches of the Anglican Communion. The introduction female priesthood and now episcopate, the blessing of same-sex ‘unions’ and ‘marriages’, the ordination of homosexuals as pastors and bishops – all these innovations are seen by the Orthodox as deviations from the tradition of the Early Church, which increasingly estrange Anglicanism from the Orthodox Church and contribute to a further division of Christendom as a whole.


We hope that the voice of the Orthodox Church will be heard by the Church of England and Churches of the Anglican Communion, and good fraternal relationships between us will revive.


I wish you God’s help in your important work.


‘May the God of love and peace be with you’ (2 Cor. 13:11).

Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk

13 November 2012

Department of External Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate

At the Feast of St Peter and St Paul on June 29th, the Holy Father prays at the Confessio, the resting place of the remains of St Peter the Apostle and Martyr, accompanied by Metrpolitan Emmanuel of the Orthodox Church in France. At this great Mass, the choirs of the Sistine Chapel and of the Anglican Westminster Abbey in London combined.


Ut Unum Sint!

New Year Newsletter - England's New Ecumenical Directions

Fr Mark Woodruff writes:

The last couple of years have been pointing to a new future for the English Church. First, the several jurisdictions of the Orthodox Church in Britain that are part of overseas national or regional Churches decided to live and act together. From now on, we will be talking less of the Russian, Greek, Serbian and other Orthodox Churches in this country and more of an Orthodox Church of Great Britain. Archbishop Gregorios of Thyateira and Great Britain remains the ruling bishop of the churches belonging to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in this kingdom, but he is now to be known more widely as the President of the Assembly of Orthodox Hierarchs of Great Britain. Orthodoxy is not composed of national and provincial churches like Anglicanism and Lutheranism; it is supposed to be a single entity and thus manifest the universal Church of Christ wherever it is found – a living reality and an ecumenical objective on which it is united even now with the Catholic Church. So the new arrangements will bring its true nature and purpose to the fore. The Orthodox Church is not ethnic, or exotic: it is a local Church in Britain too, an integral part of the universal Church as we know it in these islands. Estimates are that in Britain there are half a million Eastern Christians of various backgrounds. This often disregarded body is a vast gift from God to sustain and reinvigorate the mission and service of all the Churches in this land. It is also his sign.

When the pastor for all the Churches and the servant of their unity, Pope Benedict, visited us in September 2010, he told us that the only way we can give a convincing account of the hope that lies within us is by unity – not good relations, but unity. This can be found in none other than the faith that the Church has received from the apostles. What God is painstakingly making clear in the different Orthodox Churches in Britain shows us that you do not have to abandon your identity, your traditions, your history or your ethos to be one in life and mission. There are still Greek, Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Antiochian, Arabic and other kinds of Orthodox dioceses and parishes, including a kind of English Orthodox Ordinariate – the largely ex-Anglican Antiochian Deanery of the United Kingdom. Each retains its rich and distinctive identity, the sense of family-belonging among its members, its precious cultural and liturgical traditions. But, without any threat to their integrity, they are not only in full communion between each other. They are working on how to be one body in British society, for all the world to see. As Pope Benedict said on how to achieve Christian Unity back in 1972, they are "entering more deeply into the mystery of the Church where you are, to discover that its reality is none other than one". Through them, God is showing us the road we must take to unity. There are tensions and problems and it may take many decades to achieve it. But internal Orthodox ecumenism is being determined by engaging with each other in hope, to deal with difficulties and disagreements, not by separation and estrangement. This is exactly what Pope Benedict was talking about: ecumenical progress is about plumbing the spiritual depths: getting under ecclesiastical self-interest, and settling in the Tradition that we have received.

Secondly, the black-majority and black-led Pentecostal Churches can no longer be seen simply as overseas denominations or individual congregations planted in Britain over the last half century. They form an increasingly coherent movement within the body of the Church in Britain. They are increasingly diverse. They are often serving people at the greatest risk in some of Britain’s most deprived areas, reminiscent of the zeal for service that brought practical relief and the good news of Jesus Christ by the hands of the Anglo-Catholic movement in the nineteenth century and beyond, as well as the Catholic Church in the same period. Some of these churches have their roots in the Reformed and Evangelical traditions. For other churches, the Pentecostal movement resulted in a breaking away from the Catholic Church and so there remains a strong sense of theological affinity as the search for integrating Church and Renewal in the Holy Spirit progresses. Several others have recognised their affinity with the Orthodox Church and its pronounced emphasis on the theology and operation of the Holy Spirit. Several evangelical charismatic individuals and churches have thus found their destiny in Orthodoxy. One, the Apostolic Pastoral Association, which has a strong African identity, takes inspiration from the Coptic Orthodox Church, itself from north Africa, because of its own concentration upon the apostolic faith of the Bible.

In both these families within the Church and how they are developing, the Spirit is blowing where he pleases, and dissolving the old certainties of who we are in the Body of Christ and how we belong to Him. Precisely as the former Cardinal Ratzinger once prophetically said, it is through going deeper than our denominations and encountering the single mystery of the Church.

This is the lens through which to view the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham that began to take form in January 2011. Too many people have seen this in an insular, English way as a mere swap between a choice of rival denominations. Is this what Anglo-Catholics actually believe about the Church of England being "part of" the one, holy, Catholic Church? Is that what those who are now Roman Catholics actually believe about the Catholic Church in which the entire Universal Church of Christ subsists and with which all Christians are already almost completely united by virtue of their Baptism? Of course not. For if we look at this new phenomenon in Anglophone Christianity from the point of view of the Pope and the unity of the Church that he is seeking, here is a concrete message that in the Church, whose complete unity is yet to be revealed, we will not all just have to change to Roman Catholic-"ism". The one Universal Church will integrate all kinds of gifts and providential histories that belong as gifts of the Spirit to the one Tradition and that serve the unity of our faith. In this one Church’s visible unity, there will be a Latin-rite Catholic reality enriched by all the cultures of the world; there will also be a Russian Orthodox reality, a Wesleyan Methodist reality, various realities with a proud attachment to the faith and values of the Reformation, a Baptist reality, a rich mix of Pentecostal and Charismatic realities. There will also be an Anglican reality with all the nuances and "noisy conversation" of its tradition as well as its glorious musical, liturgical and pastoral patrimony. The Pope is saying that the Catholic Church is not narrow, or that it can only conceive of absorbing the other and watering down the different. This is what some Catholics clearly want. But "united, not absorbed" was the declaration of Dom Lambert Beauduin at the Malines Conversations. Thus the Catholic Church is being urged by its supreme pastor to extend itself, imagine vast new spaces long uninhabited, and live up to realising it is called to be the manifestation of the entire universal Church itself. Of this, the Ordinariate for Catholics bearing their inheritance from the treasured Anglican patrimony is a foretaste. It is also a sign that the unity of the churches has to come out from behind great historic ecclesiastical institutions. These have their God-given purpose still, but they are the means and structure for the Church’s proclamation and service, not her limit.

The next Messenger will be a sequel to Anglicans and Catholics in Communion, capturing the important documentation and analysis about both the implementation of Anglicanorum Coetibus one year on. It will also take stock of our new phase in ecumenism, in which the historic witness of the Catholic League remains an insistent voice, proclaiming that there can be no true and lasting unity that does not first, or at least in the end, embrace the faith that the communion of all Christians needs communion with the Apostolic Local Church of Rome, whose Bishop is the universal pastor Christ has given to his Church and servant of that unity which is vital for that "convincing account of the hope that lies within us" to which Pope Benedict compels us.

As the annual Week of Prayer for Chrsitian Unity approaches - it was devised and first spread round the world by Catholics, and it was the Catholic League's founders who first promoted it in England - please pray ever more urgently for the Unity of Christians. Our nation and society demand nothing less of the Churches in our land than to manifest the one life and truth of Christ whom we proclaim.

Annual Ecumenical Pilgrimage to Brugge: New Orthodox Church

Fr Bernard Peckstadt & Archimandrite Ephrem Lash

Every year, members of the Catholic League go to spend a weekend in early September in Bruges, staying with our friends the Benedictine Sisters at the Begijnhof, or Beguinage. At the heart of the pilgrimage is a daily visit to the 14th century image of Our Lady of the Vineyard, to whom their monastery is dedicated. We are also welcomed at the great weekly pilgrim mass at the Basilica of the Holy Blood.

This year's speaker, leading us each evening in an address about ecumenism, was Archimandrite Ephrem Lash, the distinguished Orthodox translator and parish priest of the Church of St John the Baptist at Highbury in north London. A high point in the weekend was a visit to the beautiful new Orthodox Church of St Constantine & St Helen in Ezelstraat, to hear a talk about the situation of the Orthodox Church in modern Belgium and its warm ecumenical relations with the local Catholic Church from the rector, Father Bernard Peckstadt. Several years before, we had visited the church, which had formerly been the private chapel of a great Bruges courtyard house and more recently the city's "Ecumenical Chapel". It was rarely used and struck us plain and uninviting, hardly a positive place for ecumenical worship and encounter. But shortly afterwards, the Catholic diocese gifted the chapel to the Orthodox parish which had been experiencing considerable growth with the influx of Orthodox faithful to Bruges from other countries as well as people newly coming to Christ from within Belgium itself. They had outgrown the small room nearby they had been using. The transformation of the old ecumenical chapel has been astonishing and it is extremely beautiful. The quality of the newly carved olive wood furnishings, the frescoes and the iconostasis is of the highest order. Father Bernard gave us an introduction to the new church with understandable pride and we were privileged to join his parish as it began Sunday with the celebration of Vespers. Fr Ephrem was invited to serve Vespers and Fr Mark Woodruff, the coordinator of our pilgrimage was invited to recite the first psalm, a great privilege.

Here is the link to the parish's blog about our visit.

At the end of the service, we saw one of our taxi drivers was waiting in the vestibule with his face beaming and almost pressed against the glass, looking in. On the way home he told us he was a Muslim but he loved Jesus and Mary more. It was wonderful to think that our visit had enabled him to come into church and be so inspired by the beauty of the service and the singing that his heart was able to make this no less beautiful profession of faith.




Archimandrite Ephrem (centre), Fr Bernard Peckstadt, rector (left), Fr Mark Woodruff (right), Fr John Salter (far right), Mother Carolyne Joseph SSM, prioress of Walsingham (front left), Sister Teresa Burke SP, secretary of Birmingham Archdiocese Ecumenical Commission (front right)