Tuesday, 17 June 2014
Pope to Anglican Primate: Our division is nothing less than a scandal and burden
2014-06-16 - Rome Reports
"It's always good to see you.”
For the second time, Pope Francis welcomed the head of the Anglican Church, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, at the Vatican's Apostolic Palace.
"It's an exceptional pleasure to see you again.”
The archbishop was in Rome on a three-day tour. It included a review of the progress made by the Global Freedom Network, a joint Catholic-Anglican project to counter human trafficking. It's been one of the areas of greatest cooperation between the two Churches. Archbishop Welby introduced his delegation, which included two female priests.
In his address to the Pope (see below), the Anglican leader expressed his desire to achieve full communion between the two Churches. He also praised their cooperation to promote peace and reconciliation.
MOST REV. JUSTIN WELBY, Archbishop of Canterbury: "I marvel at the way God guides frail human vessels to be bearers of the message of salvation, leaving us a legacy across hundreds of years, to which we in our time are called to be faithful. We also know that from the start, as for so many at this time, this has been a witness unto death.”
For his part, during his speech (at the foot of this post), Pope Francis asked the archbishop not to forget the three P's: prayer, peace and poverty, for which they must walk together, he added. The Pope also talked about their shared history, which includes not only, cooperation, but also division.
POPE FRANCIS: "We cannot claim that our division is anything less than a scandal and an obstacle to our proclaiming the Gospel of salvation to the world. Our vision is often blurred by the cumulative burden of our divisions and our will is not always free of that human ambition which can accompany even our desire to preach the Gospel as the Lord commanded.”
They followed their speeches with the traditional gift exchange. The archbishop's gifts were loaded with meaning. The first was a branch from a fig tree with historic roots.
"It comes from a fig tree planted by Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury in 1556, which is inside Lambeth Palace. That tree came from the Holy Land.”
PF: Let's hope that they're sweet.
JW: Oh they are. They're very good. They need sunshine.
His second gift was the copy of a register belonging to Card. Pole, as well as a book on the Lambeth Palace Library. Meanwhile, Pope Francis also gave the archbishop a book, but in a much larger scale.
"This is the book with all the papal medallions from all of the buildings in the Vatican.”
After they exchanged gifts, the two leaders walked by side, inside a chapel at the Apostolic Palace. They prayed in silence for a few minutes before an image of Baby Jesus.
Source: Pope to Anglican Primate: Our division is nothing less than a scandal and burden
Address of Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby to Pope Francis at their 16 June 2014 meeting at the Vatican
Your Holiness, Dear Friends,
My heart is full of gratitude to God, that I have the privilege and pleasure of addressing you once again in this city of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul. I marvel at the way God guides frail human vessels to be bearers of the message of salvation, leaving us a legacy across hundreds of years, to which we in our time are called to be faithful. We also know that from the start, as for so many at this time, this has been a witness unto death. I was moved to be in Santa Bartolomeo where amongst many recent martyrs, the seven members of the Anglican religious order the Melanesian brotherhood are commemorated.
Your Holiness much has happened in the year since I first received your gracious hospitality here. I am grateful for the progress that has been made through the generous support of many, to draw to the attention of the world to the evils of Modern Slavery and Human trafficking. The Global Freedom Network can achieve much practically to dismantle what you have so often rightly said is a grave crime against humanity. It is a crime that we all need to overcome as a matter of urgency, as a matter of human dignity, freedom and wholeness of life. May God give us the resolve and cooperation we need together.
With so many around the world I am profoundly grateful for your remarkable witness of care for the poor and suffering of the world, for your passion for reconciliation, as witnessed so recently in your visit to the Holy Land.
Calling the faithful to pray for peace and reconciliation and doing that publicly is a witness to the power of prayer, one that I have sought to imitate. Such prayers are urgent and vital in so many countries. I especially hope and pray that our collaboration may lead to effective challenge to the unspeakable disaster of wars and civil conflict. In recent months I have travelled with my wife to many of them, into the heart of the areas of war, and the memory of the dead lying unburied and the suffering of the survivors is imprinted on our hearts. What more could be done by our churches together to challenge the resort to war and offer the dream of peace?
Your Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium was inspirational for all Christians. The task of making disciples is of compelling urgency so that the light of Christ may shine into every corner of the world. I have personal reasons for gratitude for the work of the Alpha Course of evangelism, so it is significant for me that it has found a place in the Catholic Church, especially in Latin America. We continue to develop many other means of evangelism, most recently in the Pilgrim Course, pray that we may continue to learn from one another about the joyful task of leading people to know Jesus Christ.
As we remember the precious spiritual heritage that is common to us both. I pray for the continuing work of the members of the official groups who conduct our ecumenical conversations.
Remembering always the desire of Our Lord that “all may be one”, we remain deeply committed to this work. I realise that that there are matters of deep significance that separate us. Yet looking back, we see that the Grace of God has led so much to happen. In November this year be it will be 50 years since the decree on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintigradio, was promulged by your predecessor Blessed Pope Paul VI, and it is right that I should pay tribute to the work of the Holy See through the PCPCU through these fifty years towards the goal of full visible unity. In 2016 we will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Archbishop Ramsey's historic visit, commemorated in the ring given him by Pope Paul VI.
Your Holiness when we first met, I expressed the hope that we might find ways to strengthen what we share, and that we might seek opportunities as pastors of the Christian family to pray, act and speak together. I am glad that there have been opportunities as well for me and His Eminence Cardinal Vincent Nichols to do just that. I have found much encouragement in this. A further sign of this joyful intention is the establishment of the Chemin Neuf Community at Lambeth Palace. This religious Order with an ecumenical charism founded by Fr Laurent Fabre, is a daily sign of hope to us in our spiritual life of what we can share spiritually. Last Wednesday I saw again Jean Vanier, and we prayed together. What a gift he is to the whole of the poor of the earth.
Please be assured, Your Holiness, of the continuing respect and affection of the Anglican Communion, and the assurance of our prayers as we seek with you to serve the call of Christ to maturity in faith, and to do so full of joy in service.
I’d like to end with a prayer for the Global Freedom Network in its struggle to persevere against modern slavery and human trafficking: that the Church has the freedom and courage to witness to and to serve the cause for peace, together, globally. Amen.
Pope's Address to Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby
"The goal of full unity may seem distant indeed, yet it remains the aim which should direct our every step along the way"
The Vatican translation of the Pope's address to Archbishop Justin Welby of the Anglican Community 16 June 2014 at the Vatican:
Your Grace,
Cardinal Nichols,
Cardinal Koch,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity!" (Ps 133:1). Once again we meet, Your Grace, as co-workers in the Lord’s vineyard and fellow pilgrims on the path to his Kingdom. I welcome you and the distinguished members of your delegation, and I pray that today’s meeting will serve to strengthen further our bonds of friendship and our commitment to the great cause of reconciliation and communion between Christian believers.
The Lord’s question – "What were you arguing about on the way?" (Mk 9:33) – might also apply to us. When Jesus put this question to his disciples they were silent; they were ashamed, for they had been arguing about who was the greatest among them. We too feel ashamed when we ponder the distance between the Lord’s call and our meagre response. Beneath his merciful gaze, we cannot claim that our division is anything less than a scandal and an obstacle to our proclaiming the Gospel of salvation to the world. Our vision is often blurred by the cumulative burden of our divisions and our will is not always free of that human ambition which can accompany even our desire to preach the Gospel as the Lord commanded (cf. Mt 28:19).
The goal of full unity may seem distant indeed, yet it remains the aim which should direct our every step along the way. I find a source of encouragement in the plea of the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism that we should advance in our relationship and cooperation by placing no obstacle to the ways of divine providence and by not prejudicing future promptings of the Holy Spirit (cf. Unitatis Redintegratio, 24). Our progress towards full communion will not be the fruit of human actions alone, but a free gift of God. The Holy Spirit gives us the strength not to grow disheartened and he invites us to trust fully in the power of his works.
As disciples who strive to follow the Lord, we realize that the faith has come to us through many witnesses. We are indebted to great saints, teachers and communities; they have handed down the faith over the ages and they bear witness to our common roots. Yesterday, on the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Your Grace celebrated Vespers in the Church of San Gregorio al Celio, from which Pope Gregory the Great sent forth Augustine and his monastic companions to evangelize the peoples of England, thus inaugurating a history of faith and holiness which in turn enriched many other European peoples. This glorious history has profoundly shaped institutions and ecclesial traditions which we share and which serve as a solid basis for our fraternal relations.
On this basis, then, let us look with confidence to the future. The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission and the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission represent especially significant forums for examining, in a constructive spirit, older and newer challenges to our ecumenical engagement.
At our first meeting, Your Grace and I discussed our shared concerns and our pain before a number of grave evils afflicting our human family. In particular, we shared our horror in the face of the scourge of human trafficking and forms of modern-day slavery. I thank you for the leadership you have shown in opposing these intolerable crimes against human dignity.
In attempting to respond to this urgent need, notable collaborative efforts have been initiated on the ecumenical level and in cooperation with civil authorities and international organizations. Many charitable initiatives have been undertaken by our communities, and they are operating with generosity and courage in various parts of the world. I think in particular of the action network against the trafficking in women set up by a number of women’s religious institutes. Let us persevere in our commitment to combat new forms of enslavement, in the hope that we can help provide relief to victims and oppose this deplorable trade. I thank God that, as disciples sent to heal a wounded world, we stand together, with perseverance and determination, in opposing this grave evil.
(Pope Francesco): Don’t forget the three p's:
(H.G. Welby): Three p's?…
(Pope Francesco): Prayer, peace and poverty. We must walk together.
(H.G. Welby): We must walk together.
Your Grace, I thank you once more for your visit. I ask the Lord to shower his blessings on your ministry and to sustain you and your loved ones in joy and peace. Amen.
Sunday, 15 June 2014
Anglican leader comes to Vatican, launches IARCCUM website Vatican Radio
(Vatican Radio, 14 June 2014) The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby arrives in Rome on Saturday for a two day visit that will culminate on Monday in a meeting with Pope Francis in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace. On Sunday the Anglican leader will preach at Vespers at the church of St Gregory on the Caelian Hill, visit the two Anglican churches here in Rome and take part in a prayer service with the St Egidio community at St Bartholomew’s on the Tiber Island. During his packed programme, the Archbishop will also launch a new website for the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity and Mission (IARCCUM), showcasing ways in which members of the two communions are increasingly worshipping, working and witnessing side by side.
To find out more, Philippa Hitchen spoke with Canadian bishop Donald Bolen, co-chair of IARCCUM and Canon Alyson Barnett-Cowan, director of Unity, Faith and Order at the Anglican Communion office in London and co-secretary of IARCCUM…
Listen:
Bolen: The website is meant to be a resource centre on-line for anyone interested in Anglican-Roman Catholic relations, from parishes looking for best practises, to researchers looking into the archives of Anglican-Catholic dialogue, to anyone following the news who might be interested in more information – for example about the visit of the ABC to Pope Francis.
Q: It’s a real scholars’ paradise of documents relating back to the beginning of the dialogue in the 1960s?
Yes, the coordinators of Anglican-Roman Catholic relations passed the guidelines that once material is over 30 years old it could be made available to the public, so there’s a wide range of archive materials up to the early 1980s, but there’s also newer material that will be of interest to many people…..
It’s also got a small photo galley that we hope can become much bigger – our hope is that people working on Anglican-Roman Catholic relations in different part so the world will send in resources, best practises, covenants, photographs, videos, which will give other people encouragement and ideas about how to foster relations in their area.
Q: IARCCUM itself is all about encouraging best practises, isn’t it?
Yes indeed, IARCCUM is really called to address the gap between what we could do and share together in terms of common witness, common mission, common prayer, common study, and what we actually do – which is very little. So the idea of best practises, which are all fully acceptable to our churches but which would give inspiration or ideas to others, is one of the purposes of the website….
In New Zealand the local Anglican and Catholic bishops have come up with joint liturgies for Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Advent, that’s a practise which would be quite easy to emulate.
Q: There’s also the question of covenants you mentioned?
I was involved in the preparation of one of those covenants in southern Saskatchewan in western Canada, so that will be on the website and I think would be a good model for other diocese who would be interested in entering into a deeper relationship with their Anglican counterparts…..it identifies many of the things which are held in common and have been worked through in our dialogues, it identifies common concerns and then sets out some practical steps…. for instance from praying in each other’s cathedral together once a year, working together with First Nation people or some other justice issues, to joint formation on everything from altar servers, to sharing of ideas about stewardship and a wide range of ideas where it’s responsible for us to work together.
Alyson Barnett-Cowan, what can you do to spread this kind of work?
Barnett-Cowan: One of the strategies we have is to try and identify pairs of Anglican and Catholic bishops in every country of the world who’ll be champions for the work of putting Anglican-Roman Catholic initiatives together – they’ll be the lead people in promoting this, but we hope that word about the website will spread, that the stories on our Communion news services and the work of Vatican Radio will all penetrate to parts of the world which don’t have perhaps have formally established dialogues.
Q: How does IARCCUM hope to move forward when there are still theological issues still causing obstacles?
The theological stumbling blocks are still there but that’s no reason for us to stop trying to do as much as we possibly can together. Often when you’re trying to solve a theological dilemma, it looms large as the only thing to think about, but the shared faith we have is far larger than the few things that divide us.
Q: You were meeting most recently with ARCIC in South Africa – what can you share from that encounter?
It was a very exciting venue to be in – we met in a leadership development centre where Anglicans, Catholics and Methodists are together working on leadership development with young south Africans, often in situations of poverty. Then we went to a number of projects, an HIV-AIDS cooperative, a women’s collective and places where the churches in Diakonia are equipping the people to be self-supporting – it’s really important for ARCIC to be aware that the Diakonia work of the church is, in many ways, more important than the theological conversations, since it actually changes lives of people directly.
Anglican leader comes to Vatican, launches IARCCUM website Vatican Radio
To find out more, Philippa Hitchen spoke with Canadian bishop Donald Bolen, co-chair of IARCCUM and Canon Alyson Barnett-Cowan, director of Unity, Faith and Order at the Anglican Communion office in London and co-secretary of IARCCUM…
Bolen: The website is meant to be a resource centre on-line for anyone interested in Anglican-Roman Catholic relations, from parishes looking for best practises, to researchers looking into the archives of Anglican-Catholic dialogue, to anyone following the news who might be interested in more information – for example about the visit of the ABC to Pope Francis.
Q: It’s a real scholars’ paradise of documents relating back to the beginning of the dialogue in the 1960s?
Yes, the coordinators of Anglican-Roman Catholic relations passed the guidelines that once material is over 30 years old it could be made available to the public, so there’s a wide range of archive materials up to the early 1980s, but there’s also newer material that will be of interest to many people…..
It’s also got a small photo galley that we hope can become much bigger – our hope is that people working on Anglican-Roman Catholic relations in different part so the world will send in resources, best practises, covenants, photographs, videos, which will give other people encouragement and ideas about how to foster relations in their area.
Q: IARCCUM itself is all about encouraging best practises, isn’t it?
Yes indeed, IARCCUM is really called to address the gap between what we could do and share together in terms of common witness, common mission, common prayer, common study, and what we actually do – which is very little. So the idea of best practises, which are all fully acceptable to our churches but which would give inspiration or ideas to others, is one of the purposes of the website….
In New Zealand the local Anglican and Catholic bishops have come up with joint liturgies for Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Advent, that’s a practise which would be quite easy to emulate.
Q: There’s also the question of covenants you mentioned?
I was involved in the preparation of one of those covenants in southern Saskatchewan in western Canada, so that will be on the website and I think would be a good model for other diocese who would be interested in entering into a deeper relationship with their Anglican counterparts…..it identifies many of the things which are held in common and have been worked through in our dialogues, it identifies common concerns and then sets out some practical steps…. for instance from praying in each other’s cathedral together once a year, working together with First Nation people or some other justice issues, to joint formation on everything from altar servers, to sharing of ideas about stewardship and a wide range of ideas where it’s responsible for us to work together.
Alyson Barnett-Cowan, what can you do to spread this kind of work?
Barnett-Cowan: One of the strategies we have is to try and identify pairs of Anglican and Catholic bishops in every country of the world who’ll be champions for the work of putting Anglican-Roman Catholic initiatives together – they’ll be the lead people in promoting this, but we hope that word about the website will spread, that the stories on our Communion news services and the work of Vatican Radio will all penetrate to parts of the world which don’t have perhaps have formally established dialogues.
Q: How does IARCCUM hope to move forward when there are still theological issues still causing obstacles?
The theological stumbling blocks are still there but that’s no reason for us to stop trying to do as much as we possibly can together. Often when you’re trying to solve a theological dilemma, it looms large as the only thing to think about, but the shared faith we have is far larger than the few things that divide us.
Q: You were meeting most recently with ARCIC in South Africa – what can you share from that encounter?
It was a very exciting venue to be in – we met in a leadership development centre where Anglicans, Catholics and Methodists are together working on leadership development with young south Africans, often in situations of poverty. Then we went to a number of projects, an HIV-AIDS cooperative, a women’s collective and places where the churches in Diakonia are equipping the people to be self-supporting – it’s really important for ARCIC to be aware that the Diakonia work of the church is, in many ways, more important than the theological conversations, since it actually changes lives of people directly.
Anglican leader comes to Vatican, launches IARCCUM website Vatican Radio
Thursday, 12 June 2014
ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY'S VISIT TO ROME, June 2014
 From the Anglican Centre in Rome, 11 June, 2014
When Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and the Pope meet on June 16th, they will be following the pattern of the past fifty years.
Pray for them, and for all the meetings Archbishop Justin will be having during his stay in Rome. Draft itinerary - Sunday 15th June 8.45 am: Meeting with Cardinals Tauran, Turkson, Pell & Bishop Sanchez Sorondo re: Modern Slavery/Human Trafficking 10.00 am: Meet St Peter's Cricket Team in preparation for match in September 11.00 am: Eucharist at All Saints - preside and preach 2.30 pm: Visit Refugee Centre at St Paul's within the Walls. Meet with survivors of human trafficking & exploitation 5.00 pm: Ecumenical Vespers San Gregorio - preach. 6.30 pm: Reception at the Anglican Centre in Rome. 8.30 pm: Attend and preach at St'Egidio Vespers at Santa Maria de Trastevere Monday 16th June 9.00 am: Meet with Fr Adolfo Nicolas SJ, Superior General Society of Jesus 11.00 am: Meet with Pope Francis 12.00 pm: Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity 1.00 pm: Lunch at Santa Marta with Pope Francis 3.15 pm: Meet with St'Egidio community mission and poverty projects 4.30 pm: Meet with Rome-based Chemin Neuf community The Anglican Centre's Mission
The Anglican Centre in Rome promotes Christian unity in a divided world.
It is a permanent Anglican Communion presence in Rome. Its Director is the Archbishop of Canterbury's Representative to the Holy See. It exercises a ministry of hospitality and prayer, and provides educational opportunities and resources. UK Charity No 1003666 Company No 2604444 |
Tuesday, 10 June 2014
Anglican Centre in Rome : York Weekend on ARCIC III - October 11 + 12, 2014
Organised by the Friends of the Anglican Centre, Rome
SUNDAY 12TH OCTOBER 2014
Whole York Weekend
SATURDAY 11TH OCTOBER – 11am – 4pm at Clements Hall
York Open Meeting The Synod of Whitby (664AD) : The Church Universal and Local – ARCIC III
- Dr Clare Stancliffe, Honorary Reader in Ecclesiastical History at Durham University with a research interest in Christianity in Northumbria to 800
- Father Henry Wansbrough, Emeritus Member of the Faculty of Theology at Oxford, a Benedictine monk at Ampleforth Abbey and a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC III).
Lunch provided – cost £20 per head (£10 for those in full time education)
SUNDAY 12TH OCTOBER 2014
Pilgrimage to Whitby, Lastingham and Rosedale
A short pilgrimage following on from the Open Meeting, to embrace some of the significant Christian sites in North Yorkshire. Overnight at Sneaton Castle, Whitby. £32.60 a head for B & B, plus £13 for a 2 course evening meal on arrival
Further details for both Saturday and Sunday from:
Canon David Goodacre - david.goodacre29@sky.com
The Rt Revd Edward Holland - ed.holland@uwclub.net
The Revd Bill Snelson, Development Officer – development@anglicancentre.it (01423 862660)
Whole York Weekend
Book by email here, and pay using the Donate button on the Anglican Centre site here:
Friday, 16 May 2014
Centenary Thanksgiving and Annual General Meeting
Please join us for a Mass of Thanksgiving to mark the
end of our Centenary Year, at the Church of St Silas, Kentish Town, London NW5
3QP, at 1800 on Monday 30th June, 2014.
The principal concelebrant is Fr Graeme Rowlands, Priest-Director
of the Sodality of the Precious Blood, our sister society for celibate clergy
members.
The Mass will be preceded by our Annual General Meeting at 5.15pm.
Afterwards there will be a celebratory dinner – please remember to
book with the Secretary in order to ensure your place, by the 16th June.
The Tabernacle Treasury – Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane
For most of its history, the League ran a Tabernacle Fund, set up by Fr Fynes Clinton to assist Anglican parishes with the purchase of eucharistic vestments, monstrances and tabernacles as a means of promoting the spiritual life and Catholic faith in the sacraments, all directed towards the corporate reunion of the Church of England and the Catholic Church. Until a few years ago, we maintained a register of monstrances owned by the League and lent to parishes and clergy unable to maintain possession of their own. About five years ago, we were able happily to complete the work of the Tabernacle Fund by donating the remaining monstrances out on loan. Then a new opportunity emerged and we reopened the Tabernacle Fund one more time, for an exceptionally good cause close to the League’s heart.
Corpus Christi Church on Maiden Lane in London’s Covent Garden will be known to many. It was established by Cardinal Manning, but not many now remember why. He built it as a National Shrine in honour of the Blessed Sacrament, in reparation for the blasphemies occasioned upon the Most Holy Eucharist in the 16th century and since, and the physical and religious destruction visited upon the Church and its unity as the Body of Christ. This relates directly to work on reparation for the damage of the Reformation era and on reconciliation through honouring the Anglican, Protestant and Catholic martyr traditions, which the League undertook under four successive Priest-Directors - Frs Philip Gray, Robert Farmer, Brooke Lunn and Mark Woodruff.
Corpus Christi Church is currently being restored to its former glory as a Victorian gem. It will become once more the National Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament, where there will be all-day adoration and a new Guild founded for union of prayer and ever greater conversion to faithfully following our Lord. The needs and intentions of the Members of the Guild across the world will be remembered daily at a special Mass. We very much hope that members of the League will wish to join.
The one thing that Corpus Christ Church lacked was a monstrance of the size and design suited to the Church and its new work. Thanks to Fr Graeme Rowlands, we have purchased a beautiful monstrance, now engraved with the Emblem of the League, that will always stand as a witness to the League’s hopes for the union of all Christians, and especially the reconciliation of Anglicans and Catholics in fullness of communion at the Altar of the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church.
The members of the Executive will attend the Vigil Mass of the Holy Trinity at 1800 on Saturday 14th June to present the Monstrance that will henceforth serve at the centre of the Shrine. Fr Mark Woodruff will preach at the 1130 Solemn Mass and Procession the following week on the Sunday of Corpus Christi, 22 June 2014, when the Monstrance will be used for the first time. All members of the League are warmly invited to take part in these magnificent ways to conclude our Centenary Year.
Britain’s Christian Society: Priest Director's Newsletter, Easter-Summer 2014
When the Prime Minister repeated his view in April
2014 that Britain is a Christian country, it was hard to forget two things –
what he said to Pope Benedict on his departure from England at East Midlands
airport in 2010 and his argument against the Archbishop of Westminster over the
effects of welfare reforms in February.
To Pope Benedict, Mr Cameron recalled Newman’s lesson
from the decline of ancient Rome, about
a state that had lost its “sentiment of sacredness” and its need for a “common
bond of unity” based on more than the unanimity of self-interest (Lectures on
the History of the Turks in their Relation to Europe, Lecture 7, Barbarism
and Civilisation). Reflecting the Pope’s
observation at Westminster Hall that British constitutional values concerning
power, democracy and liberty have much in common with Catholic Social Teaching,
he latched onto the Pope’s “challenge” for humanity to embrace its true purpose
with “the new culture of social responsibility we want to build in Britain”, of
which “faith is part of the fabric”. Such responsibility is more than working
for the common good. It estimates Britain in theological terms, going beyond
faith as personal profession, to faith - specifically the Christian faith - as
defining British civilisation and a national life together conceived on
Christian lines. Thus, whatever our hard-won tradition of tolerance and
personal religious liberty, nonetheless Britain is a corporately Christian
state.
On Cardinal Nichols (as he now is) he observed, “Many
of the great political questions of our time are also moral questions – we
should not be surprised, and nor should we be dismissive, when members of the
clergy make their views known. But
neither should political leaders be afraid to respond… The Archbishop of Westminster … offered a
critique of this Government’s welfare reforms. I respect his view but I also disagree
with it deeply.”
It is hard to reconcile the two comments. First he
admires a society that is unified in purpose, bears a sacred character, and thus
resonates with Catholic Social Teaching. Next, when a Catholic Social Teacher
“challenges” (Mr Cameron’s word!) the direction that British society’s purpose
is taking - because in its effects it
is unpicking the fabric of the common good of which is part - it is
extraordinary that he personally goes to the lengths of arguing against the Church’s
moral critique of these effects, point by point, in The Daily Telegraph (18 February). It is important to recognise
that the Cardinal was not casting doubt on the decency or good faith of
political reformers, let alone involving himself with the practicalities which
are the concern of party politics. But in any state, especially a professedly
Christian state, Christian teaching about how the Kingdom of God is served in
this world has to be heeded, not just noted “with respect”. For, far from being
“simply untrue”, as the Prime Minister complained, everything Cardinal Nichols
had stated about people’s safety net being withdrawn came from the direct
experience of priests, parishes, charitable organisations and other dioceses and
Churches across Britain. Thus he was merely doing what a certain type of
British politician says the Church should confine itself to – defining what is right
and where people are going wrong, and thus saving people’s souls. He had
acknowledged that politicians were trying to repair public finances, as well as
to break dependency, stimulate more employment and improve more prosperous livelihoods
in a sustainable way, with the necessary support for those at greatest risk.
But he also pointed out, whatever the good intentions, that systems and the
politics behind them are not neutral or occupy a different compartment of the
universe from the “spiritualities” – they boil down to personal effects on
individual households; and when this causes hardship, especially noticeably
wider hardship, there is a moral question to be answered. Thus the Cardinal was
not just expressing his “views” with which the Prime Minister felt free to
disagree “deeply”; he was speaking truth unto power. Power found this “challenge”
uncomfortable, weighed it respectfully, set aside what it had earlier said to Pope
Benedict, and rejected the Cardinal’s application of Catholic social teaching.
So did the Prime Minister also dismiss the “sentiment
of sacredness” and the “common bond of unity” arising from it? When Mr Cameron
says “Christian”, he means a rather individualised version of “Protestant”. In
a Protestant society, the individual believer is his or her own interpreter of
the Bible, needing no mediation from the Church for access to God, faith or
salvation. The Church conducts worship based on the Bible and its clergy’s
preaching is authoritative because the theology tradition claims it says
nothing more, nothing less than is explicit in the text. In such a society, this may be fine as long as
the State likewise sees itself as subject to the Scriptures (and can thus use
the Church to keep the people there too). But when the nature of the text of
the Bible itself is open to question - its
formation, its origins, its literary genres, its historical and social
contexts, its standing as literal,
analogical or allegorical truth – who is the interpreter then? What authority
privileges the “view” of the Church – in other words, her teaching - when all
the world is free to decide from out of the same Scriptures their own religious
teaching and moral choice, rather than those of the Body as a whole?
Thus Britain, a confessionally Christian state, has
abandoned the defence of marriage and family stability by facilitating divorce;
it has undermined the corporate observance of Sunday and the principal
Christian holy days (notably Good Friday and Ascension Day) in favour of the pressures
of the market; it has engineered the exclusion of historic Catholic institutions
that helped to found the nation’s childcare services from any further role in
adoption and fostering; it is tacitly softening the application of the laws
that strictly limit abortion and forbid euthanasia; it is barring the
professional freedom of Catholics and other Christian doctors and nurses
working in general practice and reproductive healthcare if they are
conscientiously opposed to the termination of the lives of unborn children, or
refuse to refer applicants to those who are not. There are numerous further
examples.
Yet this is not because any of our succession of
church-going Prime Ministers is not Christian. It is because they do not see
that, beyond a moral or spiritual critique, the Church has bearing on society,
and how individuals live their lives in good conscience and under the law, any
more than anyone else. The individual is free to decide, the Archbishop of
Westminster is entitled to his views and a Christian Prime Minister “deeply
disagrees” with him. No one wants a theocracy, social rule by religious
leaders. Nor do we want this or that political leader’s subjective impression
of Christianity, its generalised values and supposed historic influences,
rather than what it teaches and demands. Instead we need a society that is able
to integrate, rather than balance off against each other, our political and our
spiritual identity, one that is, as Mr Cameron himself said to Pope Benedict, a
“fabric” where faith is not a patch stitched on but in the weave.
For this to happen, as Fr Brooke Lunn insisted time and
again, both as editor of The Messenger and
then Priest Director, England needs the Christians of this country to be
united, not at odds. A society with political, social, historical, moral and
spiritual integrity deserves a Church that brings Christ’s voice to bear upon
it because she is His Body exemplifying His wholeness in humanity; a society
without wholeness even more deserves the Church that brings integrity to its
political, social, historical, moral and spiritual identity for it truly to be
humanity. Only the Catholic Church can provide this; not because its universal
extent in time and place can be all-encompassing, but because its social
teaching is the teaching of Christ about human beings and how they are designed
by God in the image of Christ to make up one humanity in Him. This is not a
view, or one critique among many. It is how things are from the perspective of
the Kingdom of Heaven and how they ought to be conformed in the kingdoms of
this world. In a Christian society, it is not merely to be taken into account
by the rulers, but internalised and put into practice.
The alternative is a society defenceless against
monstrosity. One hundred years ago, Britain and Ireland went to war in defence
of “little Catholic Belgium”. Four years ago, the centuries-old “folk
Catholicism” of Belgium and its uneasy modus
vivendi with political liberalism were irrevocably shattered, when Bishop Roger
Vangheluwe of Brugge admitted the sustained abuse of two nephews. Nuns were
heckled in the streets, priests advised not to appear in public, the Archbishop
of Brussels-Malines repeatedly assaulted with custard pies, and the retired
Cardinal Danneels questioned by police. In March 2014 King Filip of the
Belgians, whose uncle King Baudouin had abdicated rather than approve the
legalisation of abortion, signed into law the euthanasia of children.
A remarkable recent book, Justice, Unity and the Hidden Christ, by Matthew John Paul Tan,
explains what has been going on in advanced Western societies, by asking why,
when there is so much need for Christians to unite in addressing the ills of
society, and there are so many opportunities for the concerted social action in
service of suffering humanity that Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism called for,
Christian unity has not come to pass and the Church remains in a state of
rupture. Tan locates the problem in the decision of the Church in the modern
world to recognise the freedom of the world and its social, economic and
political structures from the Church, allowing them to migrate beyond the realm
of the Kingdom of God. The Church may seek to set the tone, but civil society
and the state have autonomy in their own, separate sphere. Free from the
boundaries of the reign of Christ, the state and civil society identify their
own ultimate objective, which now becomes earth-and-time-bound, in preference
to the end of all things - the good, and the coming of the Kingdom, such as we
see in the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer.
Tan sees the Church in shock and denial at the flight
of its child and what it has chosen for its path to happiness. For instead of
the Kingdom, the state and civil society have chosen for their own the
objectives of the unfettered market. This means unconstrained personal liberty,
even to the interpersonal “violence” that means one person may prevail over the
rest. In this context, says Tan, it is hardly surprising that the Churches have
not been able to draw together in serving the realisation of the unity of
humanity in Christ, because the new “state/society/market matrix” actively
prevents them from doing so. The Christian Churches have been constrained to be
part of a market of choice and competition – not just with each other but with
every other ware on offer. Thus the Universal Catholic Church can hope at best,
if it is to engage with the world to which it has given spiritual liberty, to
serve as its chaplain. It is a far cry from Newman’s state with both a common bond
of unity and a sentiment of sacredness, or even Mr Cameron’s socially
responsible state, with faith woven through its “fabric”. But it is what we
have come to.
Tan’s remedy is to say that the Church’s diakonia – its service of the Kingdom in
and for the world - whether ecclesial or ecumenical - would be impossible now,
unless it is united with its leitourgia.
This is not just its “liturgy” as the work of the people to worship God, but
the work of God for and upon the worshipping people. By this he means that it is time for the
Church to reassert itself as the alternative humanity, the “still more
excellent Way”, restoring as its end the objective that points us towards God
and his Kingdom. Thus humanity can recover a proper view of the human person,
and of its relations with the other, that is not modelled on the untrammelled
needs of the market and unfettered personal liberalism, but on the endless
self-giving and mutually receiving of the persons of the Trinity, as the pattern
for the people of God and the best, the only true, pattern for the whole of
humanity.
With regard to our leitourgia
– how we are the humanity focussed upon God and His Kingdom – Tan believes that
the way we celebrate Mass and the direction we offer it actually conforms us to
the “state-society-market matrix” that frustrates us so. In other words, we aim
at ourselves and our own progress and development, rather than Christ and His
Kingdom. This is why we are of no use to the world and why we cannot
collaborate ecumenically in a lasting way that can be consolidated, in order to
transform the ills of the world by looking to the transcending intervention of
the Kingdom of God in our own hands as its People.
This is also why the People of God fails to exhibit
itself as the Body of Christ; for, as chaplain to the “state-society-market
matrix”, we are forced to pursue its objectives and not those of the Kingdom.
The “matrix” will seek the Kingdom, not because the Church as its chaplain
exhorts it to, but because that happens to suit its ends for the moment. People
of God we may call ourselves, but we are merely “people” like anyone else,
competing in the market place of ideas and offers and objectives. Hence, we need
to declare our own freedom from this “matrix”, in order to reassert the sovereignty
of God and the lack of society’s autonomy to direct itself as though it lies
beyond the Kingdom of God and the hearing of the teaching of Christ and His
Church. As Martin Luther said, “Let God be God” – not what political leaders,
however well-meaning and personally devout, need Him to be and to mean from
this day to that.
In 2013, a commemorative stone was set into the floor
of the West Door of Westminster Cathedral, commemorating the visit of Pope
Benedict XVI. Its Latin says that he “celebrated the Mass … showing what
advantage faith may be to society.” Advantage? Is that all that is left for us
to offer? Is faith not the “sentiment of sacredness” of a state’s very fabric,
sealing that “common bond of unity” that forms society out of more than the
mere coming together of otherwise divergent and sectional interests?
We are a country of wondrous diversity in which all
have a stake and all possess rights and mutual obligations. Our traditions of
freedom of speech, of personal and corporate religious liberty, of tolerance,
equality and the rule of law have been won at the price of blood that live on
in our collective memory as both defining our present identity and a warning
from history. But our society is not Christian because Christianity transmits
values we can all mostly sign up to, or because Christ reigns in all or some of
our hearts, feebly or strongly, high in archbishops and ministers of the Crown,
or low in us normal people around the altars and pulpits of our churches. It is
Christian because the kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of Our
Lord and of His Christ. This does not depend on a ministerial evaluation, or
because the Church can make a convincing argument. Christ reigns in and over
society, whatever we think. That is just the way humanity and the universe have
been made. To this the Church holds it.
Tuesday, 11 March 2014
Winter-Spring 2014 Newsletter - from the Priest Director
In July 2013, the Catholic League reached its hundredth
anniversary. Founded shortly after the beginnings of the Week of Prayer for
Christian Unity in 1908 at Moreton-in-the-Marsh (and New York), as well as the
modern Ecumenical Movement at Edinburgh in 1910, its voice has not always been
welcome. It has stood out against mere amalgamation between ecclesial
institutions; it has been impatient with mere, good inter-church relations; it
has resisted being a pressure group for Catholicity only within and upon the
Anglican world. Each of these purposes is beneficial, but they are never enough
on their own.
Ecumenism is not enough
As history has shown, without something more, each of those
approaches tends to leave us where we are. In England, the merger of the
Congregationalist Federation and the Presbyterian Churches of England in 1972
created the generously ecumenical United Reformed Church; but other
denominations opposed to the union spun off from it, ironically meaning more
institutional disunity than before; and we are still waiting for the Methodist
Church and the Church of England to join it in full communion. Sadly in recent
years, this noble representative of the post-Reformation “Old Dissent”, ejected
from the English Establishment with the triumph of High Anglicanism following
the Restoration Act of Uniformity in 1662, has been the most declining of all
the traditional denominations. In the same period, despite its enduring sense
of common belonging rooted in the establishment and thus the coherence of the
Church of England, the international Anglican Communion has been developing
into three distinct groupings at various degrees of mutual non-communion. This
demonstrates how the institutions of Churches that arose out of Western Latin
Christendom, following the Protestant Reformation movements in the 16th
century, have not been able to summon from within themselves the forces that
compel towards the Church’s Catholic unity - even when they have recovered the
episcopal ministry in the Church’s threefold order, embraced renewal in
liturgical and sacramental life, especially the Eucharist, and wholeheartedly
undertaken close relations and ecumenical collaborations at local, national and
international levels.
Settling for less
The latest report from the World Council of Churches on the
shape of future unity is based on the mutual theological dialogues of the last
50 years, as well as sustained pastoral and evangelistic co-ordination, notably
in the many instances of sharing church buildings, resources and ministers. The
Church: Towards a Common Vision is the result of 30 years of thinking about
the nature and purpose of “the Church and the Churches”, and also about where
Baptism, the Eucharist and the Ministry fit in the Church overall, as well as
in the personal discipleship and Church membership of individual Christians.
Thus it asks how the Church as a whole brings unity and justice to all
humanity, in the service and realisation of the Kingdom of God. It marks a
considerable degree of mutual sympathy and theological convergence through the
Faith & Order Commission (a joint endeavour between the Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches, to which
the Reformed, Evangelical, Pentecostal, Anglican and Orthodox Churches belong).
It is the latest drive for mutual recognition of baptism in each other’s
churches, in the hope of mutual recognition of each other’s churches as
churches. The objective is that each church’s ordained ministry can become
mutually recognised for the purpose of achieving eucharistic fellowship, so
that, in united sacramental life, the churches can bear a common witness to the
societies in which they live that is convincing. For, as the Lord himself prayed,
“may they all be one, so that the world may believe that it was You that sent
Me.” But it somehow seems to be another
instance of that “settling for less” on which we have often commented – good relations, occasional eucharistic and
liturgical sharing, even close collaborations; but yet without visible fullness
of communion in life, faith and body, the Body of Christ.
Unchurching the Church
Meanwhile in England, the retired Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, whose
tactical prophecy has intervened unbidden in the leadership of now two of his
successors, has opined that within one generation the Church of England will
effectively have collapsed as a national institution. Those of us who remember
his own archiepiscopate a generation ago have reason to reflect that the
theological relativisation, in which there is more than one truth and several
integrities; the polarisation and divisiveness that has prevented what
Archbishop John Habgood of York once lovingly called “the Soul of the Nation”
from cohering as a strong and still centre in England’s shared sense of values
and spirituality; and the resulting secularisation of a decreasingly interested
society, can each be laid squarely at his door. The Catholic League, as a
fellowship of long-time friends, keeps some of this memory. Most members have
roots in our Catholic life and pilgrimage together in the remarkable movement
in the Church of England that inspired generations to seek above all - for the
sake of the salvation of the world - the restoration of the Church’s visible
unity reconciled within one, organic Body. It was with an urgent appeal not to
harm the reconciliation of the Anglican Communion with the Catholic Church and
its apostolic ministry that, out of love for their own church, classic
Anglicans, led by the then Bishop of London, Dr Graham Leonard, left at the end
of a rally at Wembley in summer 1992 to go straight to Lambeth Palace. There Dr
Carey told Dr Leonard and the other bishops who accompanied him that, as each
was to retire before long, their influence was passing. The following year,
hundreds of Anglican Catholic priests gathered at St Stephen’s, Gloucester
Road, for a direct debate with Dr Carey, pleading a truly Catholic loyalty to
the Anglican Church they belonged to, but reminding him of the urgency of
Catholic unity and the consequence of not pursuing it: hundreds of
missionary-minded pastoral clergy, he was told, would in conscience consider
themselves ejected (the Shades of 1662) and compelled to resign. His response
was to say - asked the likely number - that a thousand clergy could easily be
replaced by newly ordained women priests. Thus having urged the departure of
hundreds of loyal pastors, Archbishop Carey set a tone for the church of which
he was chief pastor, characterised not by ever greater cohesion through common
participation in the Truth, that
once famed “Anglican comprehensiveness”, but exclusivity, making the Church
less than the Church, and unchurching people from it, alien to the spirit of
the classic Anglicanism so magnificently exemplified in his two great
predecessors, William Temple and Michael Ramsey.
Since those days, over 700 Anglican priests and untold
numbers of lay faithful have looked for the fullness of the Church’s communion
in their apostolic faith through
being received into the Roman Catholic Church, nonetheless still hopeful of the
greater unity of Christ’s people that they had always believed in. Most
recently, well over a thousand people with their priests have become Roman
Catholics in the special provision of the Ordinariate, which offers one way of
bearing witness to the ecumenical vision - held by the Catholic Church since
Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism - that it is somehow not completely itself
unless it makes space for the authentic tradition of others, so that they may
belong as well. Thus a space has been cleared for a manifestation of the
Anglican Tradition alongside the Latin Roman Catholic Tradition. Alongside the
Byzantine and other Eastern traditions, all our Christian traditions of the one
apostolic faith are needed together in concerted harmony, if the “coming Great
Church” is truly to embrace, reconcile and integrate all the people of whom it
makes disciples for Jesus Christ. The Ordinariate is not the whole story of
Anglican Tradition, of course; but it is an attempt on the part of the Catholic
Church to make sense of the indigenous English-speaking religious and
liturgical tradition, and to find the authentic and fruitful points of unity
with it. There are many orthodox Anglicans who in good conscience persist in
their witness to Catholic faith and unity within the Church of England, even in
the midst of great adversity. Their faithfulness to the apostolic faith and
tradition, to which Pope Benedict recalled all English Christians on his
unforgettable visit to these shores, recalls Cardinal Walter Kasper’s appeal,
as President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, for Catholic-minded
Anglicans to start a New Oxford Movement. People’s articulation of adherence to
this historic Anglican tradition makes uneasy listening to their fellow
Anglicans who oppose them, as if it were so objectionable in the contemporary
Anglican Church as to justify calls for their departure, ejection or canonical
inhibition. How those who say they believe in Christian unity, and who follow
the Christ who said, “Let the children come to me; let no one hinder them, for
to such as these belongs the Kingdom of heaven“, can call on people to “leave the Church”, or any church that constitutes it, is beyond
us. The League has constantly stated its support for its members from all
churches who believe the Catholic faith and thereby seek the communion of all
Christians with the Apostolic See of Rome. We ask no one to leave; only, as
Pope Benedict once said, to enter deep into the mystery of the Church where
they are can discover that it is but one.
The Spirit of Communion; the spirit of schism
In all this, what is missing?
The sole principle for which the Catholic League came into existence.
This was not to promote the Catholicity of the Church of England; nor to be an
apologist for the Anglican position; nor to promote interest in and closer
relations with the Orthodox and Catholic Churches; nor to inculcate
particularly Catholic forms of devotion or ways of life; nor even to work for
Church unity as a manifestly good cause in general. These have all formed
important aspects of the Catholic League’s work and witness. But the main
principle is that the ultimate object of unity in the Catholic faith must always
and inescapably be its first step - not the last piece of the jigsaw, but the
only aim from the outset - union, or reunion, or fullness of communion
(whichever you want to call it) in the Catholic faith with the successor of
Peter as Bishop of Rome.
It was this witness that made the League the first body in
England to promote observance of the Church Unity Octave, when it was seen as a
dangerous Romish ruse. Now it is observed in every part of Christendom as the
Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. It was this witness that brought Fr Paul
Couturier to England to see those in the Church of England, led by our
co-founder Fr Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton, who lived a Catholic life and ministry
in it. Couturier and Fynes-Clinton both saw the urgent missionary and pastoral
need for the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches somehow to achieve at last
the corporate reunion that had eluded various attempts at reconciliation in the
past. It was the same witness that influenced the Tractarian and Anglo-Catholic
movements so thoroughly that Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher - no High Churchman -
could say that the Church he led had no faith of its own but only that of the
Catholic Church, before in due course becoming the first Anglican leader to be
able to visit Rome and see the Pope. It was witness to the same truth that
enabled Archbishop Michael Ramsey to be the first to make an official visit to
the Pope and establish the Anglican Centre in Rome, in order to speed the
reunion of the two Churches. It was this witness that ensured that the
representative fielded by the Anglican episcopate as its chief observer at the
Second Vatican Council was a convinced Anglo-Papalist, the great Franciscan
scholar and Bishop of Ripon, Dr John Moorman. It was this witness that helped
to win over the Catholic movement in the Church of England to embrace the
renewal of the Catholic continuous tradition, as it reached out to other
Christians and a rapidly changing world in the aftermath of Vatican II. It was
this witness that made us all think, when Blessed Pope John Paul visited in
1982, that unity was merely “one more step” away. It was this witness that has
continued to fire the 50-year-old Anglican-Roman Catholic International
Commission on its dialogue towards our re-convergence in the one faith we have
in fact shared from our origins before our separateness.
Sadly, in the last few years, there have been those who mar this vision. A tiny but vocal
section of the Ordinariate has denounced the Anglicanism which formed it and
its own Catholic vocation, calling for the Catholic Church – and the League –
to abandon its determination to achieve institutional communion - demanded by
the Lord - between the two communities that are the Catholic Church and the
churches of the Anglican Communion as “futile”. Turning the back on fellow
Christians because of doubting their good faith, however, or making the
Catholic Church exclusive of others, or unchurching those who are fellow
members of the one Church through sharing the sacrament of Baptism, is not
faithful to Catholic teaching; nor is it being faithful to the Petrine ministry
of Pope Francis with a care for all the churches - still less his great
predecessor Pope Benedict. Furthermore, by the same token, certain
Anglican-Catholic voices, regardless of their deep concerns over the reshaping
of the nature and purpose of the Church and its ordained ministry within their
own Anglican Communion, have been arguing for the perpetuated separation of the
Anglican Church over against Roman Catholicism – specifically separation from
the person and office of the Holy Father - as preferable to Catholic unity,
despite their beliefs in the Universal Church and the primacy of the Bishop of
Rome in relation to it. It has been ironic to hear some Anglo-Catholics, who
otherwise sense a close affinity with the Roman Catholic Church, espouse
markedly anti-Catholic sentiments. It is part of the same temptation to
unchurch the other. It serves no useful purpose in promoting the Catholic faith
or the Catholic spiritual life, or in serving the ministry of reconciliation,
of which St Paul speaks, that is laid upon all those who desire union with God
in Christ. Moreover, we have encountered a small constituency of Anglicans who
are not participating in their own Church’s mainstream ecumenism in England,
and yet who want something different from Anglicanism’s mainstream engagement
with the Catholic Church through ARCIC. They reject the offer made by Pope
Benedict (which had, after all, been made in response to Anglican requests over
many years) to take part in a project – the Personal Ordinariates – that could
serve to unite significant elements of the Anglican religious tradition with
the Catholic Church on a basis that genuinely respects its integrity. Instead
they call for a Catholic-Anglican unity that excludes “former Anglicans”, a
unity of their own, on their own terms; not the Church’s, whether Catholic or
Anglican, but something different. Seemingly all of us in our different Church
bodies are tempted to something that is exclusive; something that views reunion
as the prevailing of one viewpoint or interest ahead of another; something that
prefers guarded ecumenical relations in separation; something that recoils from
the call to repentance of the pain-inflicting spirit of division, a spirit that
truly has nothing to do with the principles of faith that each rightly holds
dear, that keep us apart and yet we seek to resolve. Our dialogue towards
reconciliation cannot honour principles that we use as reasons to perpetuate
division.
Fortunately, in the face of this, in our hundredth year, the
members of the Catholic League, Anglicans and Catholics together, rooted in old
friendships and the communion of shared origins of which Pope Paul VI once
spoke, are united in witness to the only principle that matters: communion of
all churches and all Christians in the single binding truth of the Catholic and
apostolic faith with - from beginning to end - the successor of Peter. For this
truth is the force from the Holy Spirit within the Body of Christ that compels
the Church to complete unity and that bestows on it everything that is
indispensable and necessary for it to be the Catholic Church in and for this
land and its people.
The 106th Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
2014 brings with it the 106th year of united
Anglican-Catholic prayer for Christian unity, corporate reunion, institutional
communion. The path is not the sweeping avenue we once hoped for, but leads
through a narrow gate. We should have expected nothing less; and go to and
through it all we must, because we believe, like Mary, that what the Lord has
prayed for is a promise that He will fulfil. Thus we in the Catholic League,
with its Apostolate of Prayer, re-commit ourselves to this true “Common
Vision” of the Church, of full, visible and organic communion. Our annual
leaflet of prayer for unity, based on the work of Fr Paul Couturier, an apostle
and pioneer of unity that Fr Fynes-Clinton brought over to England to further
the cause of Catholic-Anglican reunion, can be downloaded from our website,
www.unitas.org.uk . At the forefront of our minds in the Week of Prayer is the
apparent sheer impossibility of the task of achieving Catholic-Anglican unity
in such an utterly changed situation. We will be thinking, “How can what we are
praying for come about?” We will also be thinking of Pope Francis who is
determined to make common cause with Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury, a
man of profound spirituality, an Evangelical influenced by Catholic piety and
devotion to the Eucharist, who wants to share with the Catholic Church a common
approach to the problems of society - in England and around the world - where
there is injustice and no peace. Surely all Christians are united in the face
of the intense sufferings endured by the Church in the Middle East, parts of
Africa, India and the far east. Given the exceptional persecution of the People
of God by those of other religions and secularists alike, we will also be
recalling that the Lord prayed for us to be one, “so that the world may believe”.
More than Christian solidarity, the need for the Church’s organic and visible
unity – the institutional communion between all the Churches of Christ – has
never been more urgent. Those charged by you, the members, with responsibility
for the League urge all our members to take this particular Week of Prayer to
heart, in the confidence that, whatever appearances there are in this world and
between our respective churches, nonetheless unity is a thing to be prayed for
because it will inevitably happen, for no other reason than that the Lord has
determined it. It is He who has said it will come. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
We know that it is not enough to say, “Of course, we are one
in spirit”, or “We are of one mind”. The hymn boasts, “We are not divided; All
one Body we; one in faith and doctrine, one in charity”. Nevertheless, we know
that its untruth makes us ashamed and causes scandal before the world. How can
we make truth-tellers of ourselves and bring about the institutional communion
that has eluded us for centuries, that is far more than the mere merger of
organisations, and that integrates our many Christianities in the one Body of
Christ that is His Church? The League’s answer is always first to pray, and
second to bear unswerving witness to the belief that there can be no unity that
does not involve our reconciliation together in communion with the Bishop of
Rome as successor of Peter - the depths of the Church’s one faith that comes to
us from the apostles.
Centenary Publications
In 2014 you will receive several long delayed editions of
our journal, The Messenger. One issue will look at reconciliation and
the healing of memories, what Pope Francis has recently termed our ecumenism of
blood. Another will complement our major contribution to understanding Anglicanorum
Coetibus and will seek to assess the significance of the various
Ordinariates in the three years since their establishment and their relation to
the Church’s cause of Catholic-Anglican unity. A third will collect the
splendid addresses and lectures that attended our July 2013 celebrations to
mark the Centenary of the League’s history and service to principled Catholic
corporate reunion, an almost solitary witness for much of its lifetime. A
fourth will enable us to share with you the beautiful devotions led by
Archdeacon Luke Miller in March 2013 at Walsingham, drawing on the spirituality
of the Roman Catholic St Thérèse of Lisieux and the Anglican Fr
George Congreve SSJE, and his Stations of the Cross.
Later in 2014 we hope to see the publication of the League’s
100-year history by the distinguished papal historian, Dr Michael Walsh. The
year will further be marked by an invitation from the Third International
Receptive Ecumenism Conference to address it on the League’s witness to what ecumenists
now call “institutional communion”. We can be grateful to God that our
century-long insistence on the integrity of the whole Church as seen together -
not the piecemeal amalgamations or temporary acts of personal eucharistic
sharing that have attempted and not achieved the solution to our divisions - is
what draws once more the hearts and minds who long for that for which Christ
prayed.
Monday, 10 March 2014
THE POPE TO THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES: TAKE THE PATH TO FULL COMMUNION WITHOUT FEAR: Vatican Information Service
“Since its creation, the World Council of Churches has offered a great contribution to forming the sensibility of all Christians with regard to the fact that our divisions represent a major obstacle to our witness to the Gospel in the world. These divisions must not be accepted with resignation, as if they were simply an inevitable component of the historic experience of the Church. If Christians ignore the Lord's call to unity, they risk ignoring the Lord Himself and the salvation He offers through His Body, the Church: 'there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name … by which we must be saved.'”
“The way to full and visible communion is a path which still proves today to be arduous and uphill. The Spirit, however, urges us not to be afraid, to go ahead with trust, and not to content ourselves with the progress that we have been able to experience in these decades. Prayer is fundamental on this path. Only in a spirit of humble and persistent prayer can we attain the necessary farsightedness, discernment and motivations for offering our service to the human family, in all its weakness and with all its needs, both spiritual and material”.
THE POPE TO THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES: TAKE THE PATH TO FULL COMMUNION WITHOUT FEAR - Vatican Information Service
Tuesday, 28 January 2014
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.
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
Thursday, 23 January 2014
POPE'S GENERAL AUDIENCE: THE DIVISION OF CHRISTIANS MUST STOP: Vatican Information Service
“No, Christ is not divided”, said the Holy Father. “But we must recognise sincerely, although with suffering, that our communities continue to experience divisions, which are a scandal. There is no other word for it: the divisions between Christians are a scandal”. Evoking the words of St. Paul, he added, “Each one of you is saying, 'I am of Paul', and 'I of Apollos', and 'I of Cephas', and 'I of Christ'. Even those who named Christ as their leader were not applauded by Paul, because they used Christ's name to separate themselves from others within the Christian community. But the name of Christ creates communion and unity, not division! Baptism and the Cross are central elements in our common Christian discipleship. Divisions, on the other hand, weaken the credibility and effectiveness of our commitment to evangelization”.
In his Letter, the Apostle rebukes the Corinthians for their divisions, but also gives thanks to the Lord because the community has been enriched in Jesus Christ, “in all speech and all knowledge”. “These words are not a simple formality, but rather the sign that first and foremost he sees God's gifts to the community, for which he is sincerely joyful. In spite of the suffering of divisions, which unfortunately persist to this day, we welcome Paul's words as an invitation to rejoice sincerely in the grace conceded by God to other Christians. We have experienced the same baptism, the same Holy Spirit has bestowed grace upon us, so let us rejoice!”.
“It is good to recognise the grace with which God blesses us and, moreover, to find in other Christians something which we need, something we can receive as a gift from our brothers and sisters”, continued the Bishop of Rome. The Canadian group which has prepared this Prayer Week has not invited the communities to think about what they might give to their Christian neighbours, but rather has exhorted us to encounter one another to understand what all communities can receive from time to time from the others. This requires something more. It requires humility, reflection and continual conversion. Let us follow this path, praying for Christian unity and an end to this scandal”, he concluded.
GENERAL AUDIENCE: THE DIVISION OF CHRISTIANS MUST STOP - Vatican Information Service
Saturday, 18 January 2014
POPE RECEIVES ECUMENICAL DELEGATION FROM FINLAND; URGES CONTINUOUS EFFORT FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY: Vatican Information Service
Vatican City, 17 January 2014 (VIS) - Today the Pope received in audience an ecumenical delegation from the Lutheran Church of Finland during their annual pilgrimage to Rome. They have been celebrating the feast of Saint Henry of Uppsala, patron saint of Finland, in this manner for 25 years now.
The Holy Father addressed them, saying: “The Apostle asks the members of the community of Corinth, marked by divisions, 'Is Christ divided?' This question has been chosen as the theme for the Week of Prayer for Christian unity, which begins tomorrow. Today it is addressed to us. Faced with voices that no longer recognize the full and visible unity of the church as an achievable goal, we are invited to not give up our ecumenical efforts, faithful to what the Lord Jesus himself asked of the Father: 'That they may all be one'.”
“At the present moment, the ecumenical path and relations among Christian are undergoing significant changes due primarily to the fact that we must profess our faith in the context of societies and cultures where reference to God, and everything that recalls the transcendent dimension of life, is always less present. We notice it especially in Europe, but not only here.”
“It is precisely for this reason that it is necessary for our witness to concentrate upon the centre of our faith, upon the announcement of God's love that is made manifest in Christ, his Son. Here we find the room to grow in communion and in unity among, promoting spiritual ecumenism, which is born directly from the commandment of love that Jesus left his disciples. The Second Vatican Council also made reference to this dimension: 'This change of heart and holiness of life, along with public and private prayer for the unity of Christians, should be regarded as the soul of the whole ecumenical movement, and merits the name, "spiritual ecumenism”.' Ecumenism is, in fact, a spiritual process, which is carried out in faithful obedience to the Father, in fulfilment of Christ's will, and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”
Pope Francis bid the delegation from Finland farewell, inviting them all to “call tirelessly upon the help of the grace of God and the illumination of the Holy Spirit, bearer of reconciliation and communion, who leads us into full truth.”
The Holy Father addressed them, saying: “The Apostle asks the members of the community of Corinth, marked by divisions, 'Is Christ divided?' This question has been chosen as the theme for the Week of Prayer for Christian unity, which begins tomorrow. Today it is addressed to us. Faced with voices that no longer recognize the full and visible unity of the church as an achievable goal, we are invited to not give up our ecumenical efforts, faithful to what the Lord Jesus himself asked of the Father: 'That they may all be one'.”
“At the present moment, the ecumenical path and relations among Christian are undergoing significant changes due primarily to the fact that we must profess our faith in the context of societies and cultures where reference to God, and everything that recalls the transcendent dimension of life, is always less present. We notice it especially in Europe, but not only here.”
“It is precisely for this reason that it is necessary for our witness to concentrate upon the centre of our faith, upon the announcement of God's love that is made manifest in Christ, his Son. Here we find the room to grow in communion and in unity among, promoting spiritual ecumenism, which is born directly from the commandment of love that Jesus left his disciples. The Second Vatican Council also made reference to this dimension: 'This change of heart and holiness of life, along with public and private prayer for the unity of Christians, should be regarded as the soul of the whole ecumenical movement, and merits the name, "spiritual ecumenism”.' Ecumenism is, in fact, a spiritual process, which is carried out in faithful obedience to the Father, in fulfilment of Christ's will, and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”
Pope Francis bid the delegation from Finland farewell, inviting them all to “call tirelessly upon the help of the grace of God and the illumination of the Holy Spirit, bearer of reconciliation and communion, who leads us into full truth.”
POPE RECEIVES ECUMENICAL DELEGATION FROM FINLAND; URGES CONTINUOUS EFFORT FOR CHRISTIAN UNITY: Vatican Information Service
Saturday, 7 September 2013
Vigil for Syria
16 of the League's members are in Brugge for our annual pilgrimage for the Church's unity.
After a short talk on the Church in Syria from Fr John Salter, a priest of the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch, at 7-15 pm, we gathered before the Beguinage monastery's icon of the Mother of God and offered the Akathist Hymn in union with the Eastern Christians of the Middle East and also with the Holy Father's vigil of prayer and fasting tonight for Syria and the spirit of Christ's peace in the world.
Lord of the Universe, remember in Your Kingdom that part of Your universe which is beloved Syria.
Saturday, 24 August 2013
Catholics of the Anglican Patrimony, Aidan Nichols OP - Fr Mark Woodruff responds to Fr Peter Cornwell's Tablet Review
On 17 August 2013, Fr Peter Cornwell, a married Catholic priest and former vicar of the same church as Blessed John Henry Newman, The University Church of St Mary, Oxford, wrote a surprisingly mean review in The Tablet of Catholics of the Anglican Patrimony: The Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham by the distinguished theologian, historian and thinker, Fr Aidan Nichols OP (Gracewing, Leominster, 2013). Fr Mark Woodruff's response in The Tablet for 24 August 2013 is below.
The book is an extended essay and arose from a remarkable lecture delivered under the auspices of the Ordinariate, as part of a conference on its place and purpose with the work of New Evangelisation. Fr Nichols revisited a familiar and resonant theme of his, that proclamation and evangelisation do not concern only the personal individual but groups and traditions of people, including entire cultures and histories. This understanding, incidentally, lay within Pope Benedict's presentation of evangelisation on his visit to Great Britain in 2010. Faith alone, he said, answers humanity's profoundest questions and longings; hence the need and benefit for the constant and public dialogue of faith and reason, between the Church of Christ and society, the state, politics, commerce and culture. With this in the background, Fr Nichols observed that Catholic society in England was made of four main components: the English recusants at the core of the history from the 16th century onwards, the influx of a large Irish Catholic population to cities from Victorian era onwards, a small but influential stream of English converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism of whom Newman and Manning are the most symbolic but which continues to the present day, and more recently the international diaspora of the last two decades, especially from India, Africa, the Far East and Eastern Europe (including Eastern Catholics) transforming the complexion of parishes especially in the larger population centres. The one culture that seems, however, not to find expression and belonging in the contemporary Catholic Church in England is England's indigenous religious culture for almost the last half-millennium. Thus he makes the argument for embracing the liturgical, pastoral, cultural, spiritual, apologetical, homiletical, operational-organisational and academic-theological traditions and patrimony of Church-of-England Christianity, to equip the Catholic Church in England to address, take seriously, resonate with and converse with English public life and culture, as well as its citizens' religious sensibility, by means of their familiar spiritual language and sensibility.
Where necessary, of course, for reasons of clear exposition of Catholic teaching these Anglican traditions and patrimony need to be duly adapted to meet the fullness of communion within the Catholic Church, but since all internal Anglican traditions, aspects of heritage and customs have been developed and continue in existence within a conversation between the different schools of theological thought and churchmanship, and thus find ways not only to co-exist in Anglicanism's internal ecumenism but also to find clearer expression over against each other, there is something intrinsically Anglican about the adaptation needed when embracing a new setting for being in communion within the Body of Christ. Fr Nichols' 1993 book, which looks at the interplay and relationship between the Catholic and Anglican in English religion, state and culture, The Panther & The Hind: A theological history of Anglicanism remains an essential account of Classic Anglican divinity, and the most sympathetic analysis of the now largely occluded Classic Anglicanism tradition ever made by a Catholic theologian.
It is a pity that Fr Cornwell did not acknowledge this in his endeavour to portray the Ordinariate as a mere refuge for Anglo-Catholics escaping a finally uncongenial Anglicanism. Thus he missed the point that, as the Catholic League can testify, its essential form has been proposed for 100 years at least and that his has influenced Anglican ecumenism for good, spread wide what is now shared by all Christians as "spiritual ecumenism", and placed the cause of Christian Unity, to which communion with the Apostolic See of Rome is integral, at the heart of the Church's purpose in proclaiming the Gospel to the world and its cultures. After all, it is Pope Benedict who organised efforts and structures for a New Evangelisation in the struggle for the soul of Old Europe, including the societies which have in part emerged from it across the world through the 19th and 20th centuries. The Ordinariates established under Anglicanorum Coetibus and Ad Gentes are part of this New Evangelisation and represent the Catholic Church's desire, learned from half a century of direct dialogue and ecumenism, to learn and receive for itself what the providential Anglican tradition and its patrimony has to offer. None of this is for an isolated group that looks in upon its own narrow concerns, any more than Benedictinism, Franciscanism or Jesuitism is - it is something borne by some but for the whole Church - and that includes its efforts to reconciliation and unity.
While some of Fr Cornwell's comments were legitimate debate and criticism in a book review, he made two misrepresentations as to fact, which made it clear that prejudice was the ground upon which he then went on to caricature the persons - the people and priests - of the Ordinariate. It is clear that he can have met few of them. What follows is the letter submitted to the Editor of The Tablet upon submission that Fr Cornwell's affront needed a riposte. it appeared in The Tablet publised on 24 August, 2013. The final paragraph was, however, not included owing to the need to make space for a subsequent letter from Mgr Andrew Burnham of the Ordinariate which addresses the same point more fully and better. (The term "lively conversation" reflects Archbishop Rowan Williams' attempt at a positive description of the adversarial nature of Anglican theological and constitutional decision-making in its Synods, and "treasure to be shared" is a quotation from Pope Benedict's Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.)
Fr Mark comments, "I do not lightly take issue with a brother priest in public, especially one for whom I have the highest admiration. But, since he first expressed these views in 2009 in my hearing and yet, despite eirenic argument to put his concerns to rest, persisted in disseminating them by way of attack on the true motivation and character of his fellow Catholics in the Ordinariate, it is important to say that the cause of Christian Unity is served by airing disagreement frankly towards better mutual understanding and rapprochement in a spirit of friendship, not by caricaturing people acting in good faith."
The book is an extended essay and arose from a remarkable lecture delivered under the auspices of the Ordinariate, as part of a conference on its place and purpose with the work of New Evangelisation. Fr Nichols revisited a familiar and resonant theme of his, that proclamation and evangelisation do not concern only the personal individual but groups and traditions of people, including entire cultures and histories. This understanding, incidentally, lay within Pope Benedict's presentation of evangelisation on his visit to Great Britain in 2010. Faith alone, he said, answers humanity's profoundest questions and longings; hence the need and benefit for the constant and public dialogue of faith and reason, between the Church of Christ and society, the state, politics, commerce and culture. With this in the background, Fr Nichols observed that Catholic society in England was made of four main components: the English recusants at the core of the history from the 16th century onwards, the influx of a large Irish Catholic population to cities from Victorian era onwards, a small but influential stream of English converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism of whom Newman and Manning are the most symbolic but which continues to the present day, and more recently the international diaspora of the last two decades, especially from India, Africa, the Far East and Eastern Europe (including Eastern Catholics) transforming the complexion of parishes especially in the larger population centres. The one culture that seems, however, not to find expression and belonging in the contemporary Catholic Church in England is England's indigenous religious culture for almost the last half-millennium. Thus he makes the argument for embracing the liturgical, pastoral, cultural, spiritual, apologetical, homiletical, operational-organisational and academic-theological traditions and patrimony of Church-of-England Christianity, to equip the Catholic Church in England to address, take seriously, resonate with and converse with English public life and culture, as well as its citizens' religious sensibility, by means of their familiar spiritual language and sensibility.
Where necessary, of course, for reasons of clear exposition of Catholic teaching these Anglican traditions and patrimony need to be duly adapted to meet the fullness of communion within the Catholic Church, but since all internal Anglican traditions, aspects of heritage and customs have been developed and continue in existence within a conversation between the different schools of theological thought and churchmanship, and thus find ways not only to co-exist in Anglicanism's internal ecumenism but also to find clearer expression over against each other, there is something intrinsically Anglican about the adaptation needed when embracing a new setting for being in communion within the Body of Christ. Fr Nichols' 1993 book, which looks at the interplay and relationship between the Catholic and Anglican in English religion, state and culture, The Panther & The Hind: A theological history of Anglicanism remains an essential account of Classic Anglican divinity, and the most sympathetic analysis of the now largely occluded Classic Anglicanism tradition ever made by a Catholic theologian.
It is a pity that Fr Cornwell did not acknowledge this in his endeavour to portray the Ordinariate as a mere refuge for Anglo-Catholics escaping a finally uncongenial Anglicanism. Thus he missed the point that, as the Catholic League can testify, its essential form has been proposed for 100 years at least and that his has influenced Anglican ecumenism for good, spread wide what is now shared by all Christians as "spiritual ecumenism", and placed the cause of Christian Unity, to which communion with the Apostolic See of Rome is integral, at the heart of the Church's purpose in proclaiming the Gospel to the world and its cultures. After all, it is Pope Benedict who organised efforts and structures for a New Evangelisation in the struggle for the soul of Old Europe, including the societies which have in part emerged from it across the world through the 19th and 20th centuries. The Ordinariates established under Anglicanorum Coetibus and Ad Gentes are part of this New Evangelisation and represent the Catholic Church's desire, learned from half a century of direct dialogue and ecumenism, to learn and receive for itself what the providential Anglican tradition and its patrimony has to offer. None of this is for an isolated group that looks in upon its own narrow concerns, any more than Benedictinism, Franciscanism or Jesuitism is - it is something borne by some but for the whole Church - and that includes its efforts to reconciliation and unity.
While some of Fr Cornwell's comments were legitimate debate and criticism in a book review, he made two misrepresentations as to fact, which made it clear that prejudice was the ground upon which he then went on to caricature the persons - the people and priests - of the Ordinariate. It is clear that he can have met few of them. What follows is the letter submitted to the Editor of The Tablet upon submission that Fr Cornwell's affront needed a riposte. it appeared in The Tablet publised on 24 August, 2013. The final paragraph was, however, not included owing to the need to make space for a subsequent letter from Mgr Andrew Burnham of the Ordinariate which addresses the same point more fully and better. (The term "lively conversation" reflects Archbishop Rowan Williams' attempt at a positive description of the adversarial nature of Anglican theological and constitutional decision-making in its Synods, and "treasure to be shared" is a quotation from Pope Benedict's Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.)
Fr Mark comments, "I do not lightly take issue with a brother priest in public, especially one for whom I have the highest admiration. But, since he first expressed these views in 2009 in my hearing and yet, despite eirenic argument to put his concerns to rest, persisted in disseminating them by way of attack on the true motivation and character of his fellow Catholics in the Ordinariate, it is important to say that the cause of Christian Unity is served by airing disagreement frankly towards better mutual understanding and rapprochement in a spirit of friendship, not by caricaturing people acting in good faith."
To the Editor, The Tablet, 20 August 2013
Fr Peter Cornwell says that Anglican patrimony “in truth has proved to be quite elusive”. Anglicanorum Coetibus III locates it in liturgical books, the Complementary Norms adding the tradition of married presbyters and the pastoral council for consulting the lay faithful formally. Article 10 refers to a larger hinterland of its aspects of particular value. In 2010 I collected a volume of over 30 pieces of comment and analysis, critical and supportive - Anglicans & Catholics in Communion: Patrimony, Unity, Mission. A second volume is in preparation. A Customary containing the Divine Office and Calendar was published in 2012 and permission to celebrate an Order of Mass with elements of the Prayer Book rite was issued this summer. This is hardly elusive.
Nor is it accurate to say that Anglicanorum Coetibus came “out of the blue”. Such provision was explored by prominent Catholic-Anglicans with designated Roman Catholic figures in England and Rome in the late 1980s. And around 2008, a sizeable group of Catholic-Anglican bishops visiting Rome with concerns about the Lambeth Conference and General Synod, even discussing possible corporate reunion, did not go behind Lambeth’s back. What changed was not a papal assault upon the ARCIC method, but Anglicanism’s decision for a fundamental change within the order of bishop. Nevertheless the additional layer of ecclesial incompatibility provides a re-set ecumenical starting point. In this, some have seen a positive opportunity to think through what Anglicans believe the patrimony they offer to the whole Church’s unity in diversity is, in a manner unaddressed before.
Fr Aidan Nichols has pointed out that the prevailing religious tradition of England for nearly five centuries is a large gap in our consciousness of being the Catholic Church for this land and culture: internalising Anglican aspects of tradition through the Ordinariate offers one way of beginning to fill it, even if late in the day. At the same time it is far from the whole story of Anglican-Catholic reconciliation: for evangelisation to be convincing, Christian unity remains unfinished business.
Fr Cornwell’s mocking tale of narrow sectaries escaping to a “granny flat” is an injustice to the real priests and people of the Ordinariate. He will indeed find some former Romanising Anglo-Catholics, but he will also find inner city pastors, middle-of-the-road “Prayer Book Catholics”, scholars, diverse origins and backgrounds, “Vatican II Evangelicals”, country parsons, overseas missionaries – people with an ecumenical instinct who did not live apart but took part in the “lively conversation” of the Church of England, and who are proving no less willing to engage in our diocesan parish life, as much as they want to see the Ordinariate’s “treasure to be shared” make its distinctive contribution. What binds them in the Catholic Church is not shallow preoccupation with liturgical tastes, but the faith that is none other than our own, and acting upon it generously.
Fr Mark Woodruff
Monday, 5 August 2013
Centenary Grants
During the year leading up to the Centenary, several grants were made in thanksgiving and prayer for the Unity of Christians in communion with the Apostolic See of Rome
- The Anglican Centre in Rome, towards its service of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission
- The Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, towards the renovation of St Augustine's House and the Marian Library
- To the Guild of Our Lady de Salve Regina at the Parish Church of St Magnus by London Bridge. The Guild was a medieval lay movement, revived by the League's co-founder at St Magnus', by Fr Henry Fynes Clinton when he became rector. It remains a lay society in the parish, promoting Catholic unity through devotion to the Mother of God as Fr Fynes intended. There are regular devotions, an annual festival mass and lecture.
- To the Church of Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane, for a monstrance to promote devotion to the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Not long after the League's foundation, Fr Fynes Clinton set up a Tabernacle Treasury to provide Anglican parishes with the means to promote Eucharistic piety as part of the spiritual life and renewal that would bring about unity in Catholic faith and the corporate reunion of Christians in one Church. While the last of the monstrances in the League's possession for this purpose were given away some years ago, we felt it was important to make one last award from the Treasury and that it also go to this particular Catholic Church. The first church in Britain to bear this dedication, Corpus Christi was opened in 1873 and hailed by Cardinal Manning as the national shrine of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. The hymn, Sweet Sacrament Divine, beloved by Catholics and numerous Anglicans alike, was written by Fr Francis Stanfield, who was its parish priest. The Catholic League is donating a splendid historic Monstrance that beautifully matches the art and architecture of the building, currently under restoration. It will be used for an enhanced programme of sustained Adoration and Benediction, as Corpus Christi resumes its role as a centre of devotion to Christ in the Eucharist. 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.
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