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

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

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

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

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

+ Justin Welby
+ Vincent Nichols

Book Review by Fr John Hunwicke: The Anglican Papalist: a personal portrait of Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton

Fr Fynes Clinton, prime mover in the foundation of the League, was not only a seminal thinker in formulating the Anglican Papalism position, but also the development of the entire course of Anglican Ecumenism in relation to the Orthodox Churches, as well as the Catholic Church. The Very Revd Archimandrite John Salter, has written his long anticipated biography. Fr John Hunwicke writes this review for the Catholic League.

The Anglican Papalist: a personal portrait of Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton

by A.T. John Salter ; available from and published by the Anglo-Catholic History Society
ISBN 978-0-9560565-2-8
£20.00
Pbk; 194pages.

 

Fr John Salter’s book delivers precisely what it claims to provide; a personal account of the priest who was for half a century the dominant figure in the Papalist movement within Anglicanism, and Founder of the Catholic League. It is not a work merely of scholarship ... not a half-baked spin-off from a DPhil thesis; you will search in vain for the detailed footnotes of a youthful scholar covering his back. Far more - for, in compensation, you will find yourself personally immersed in a period and in a person both known intimately to the author. 

Anglican Papalists are often written up very engagingly and with due tribute to their eccentricities – as a body of people who appeared to pretend that they were Roman Catholics and whose deep sense of obedience to authority led them to disobey every maxim of the ecclesial body which paid them (perhaps unjustly, I have felt that this is the picture which emerges from the writings of Michael Yelton). Salter does not make this mistake. He perceives the deeply doctrinal significance of Fynes-Clinton’s life, and brings out what is creatively unusual in his witness. FC, for example, believed strongly that the See of Rome is the divinely appointed centre of unity; and that the decrees of the [first] Vatican Council are normative. But this in no way diminished his affection for the Orthodox East. Commonly, anti-papal Anglicans use Orthodoxy as a convenient weapon with which to attack the Papacy, while ultramontanes regard Orthodox as schismatics or worse. FC admired the Orthodox and secured their affection (and honours) by his unceasing hard work, especially for the troubled Serbian Church. But his ‘Romanism’ brought him into conflict with Canon J.A. Douglas and Mr Athelstan Riley and led to his removal from leadership in an Anglican-Orthodox society of which he had himself been one of the founders. FC instinctively realised the truth later to be expressed in the CDF document Communionis notio (1993): that, although ‘wounded’ by their separation from Rome, the Eastern Churches are true ‘particular churches’. He even planned for Hagia Sophia to be recovered from the Turks and handed over to the Orthodox rather than to Eastern Christians in communion with Rome! The little Orthodox chapel in the Anglican Shrine at Walsingham is an initiative of FC, just a few feet from the foundation stone of the Holy House, with its ‘papalist’ inscription (full text in Salter) which so infuriated the Bishop of Norwich. FC’s balanced stance, so obviously right to our way of thinking, represented in the inter-war years a rare combination.

 

Of very considerable importance – and relevance to our own times – is a document which Salter prints in full. Towards the end of 1932, in anticipation of the anniversary of the Catholic Revival, FC and Fr Robert Corbould composed a manifesto to which hundreds of papalist clergy subscribed. “In the modern Anglo-catholic movement much of the enthusiasm over the observance of the centenary cloaks a marked departure from the original Oxford principles ...” The authors describe the creeping influence of Modernism in matters Christological; the growth of Relativism (“mutual toleration of opposed teaching”).They disclaim the popular misconception that Catholic identity is assured “by revival of ceremony”. Firmly, they “reprobate the toleration and even positive support by certain Anglo-Catholics of the immoral sanction of artificial contraception given by many bishops at Lambeth”. Here are the authentic tones of S Pius X (Pascendi Dominici gregis) and the affirmation of Christian sexual mores by Pius XI (Casti conubii) and Paul VI (Humanae vitae). This manifesto anticipates by sixty years the current distinction between real Catholicism, resolutely counter-cultural, and the flaccid conformities of ‘Affirming Catholicism’. Inevitably, it concludes that “the real and essential goal is reunion with the Apostolic See of Rome ... the existence of the Church of England as a body separate de facto from the rest of the Catholic Church is only tolerable when it is regarded as a temporary evil”.

 

Salter’s book is to be unambiguously commended. By its pages you will live through the days when exiled East European royalty enlivened the social life of London, and you will be reminded by the heroic figure of St Elizabeth of the New Martyrs of the Communist Yoke of Russia, alias Her Imperial Highness Grand Princess Elizaveta, that Ruritania was not entirely a land of fopperies. You will meet the mysterious, little-known figure of the Jesuit bishop Michel d’Herbigny, who flutters through the period sabotaging ecumenism, playing off Greeks against Rumanians and Serbs against Russians and Catholics against Orthodox; who attempted unsuccessfully to infiltrate and sabotage the Malines Conversations. You may get some surprises: did you know that the Holy See was lobbying the British Government to stop Russia liberating Constantinople from the Turk and handing over Anatolia to Orthodox Hellenes? You will be shocked, I suspect, to know that Paul VI returned to the Turkish government the Ottoman flag captured at Lepanto. As our own day watches the Christian populations of Iraq and Syria being killed or driven into exile by a Western-encouraged ‘Arab Spring’, you may feel some sympathy with FC’s rhetoric about “the black trail of the Turk ... so hateful to the Englishman sickened with the massacres of Christians in these last years”. We who have been told so little about the realities of the ‘Kosovo’ problem, or the ‘enormity’ (FC’s word) of the Zionist appropriation of Palestine, may gain a more rounded understanding of how so many current problems arise from this little known yet comparatively recent period of history.

 

Should mainstream schools give up their endless courses about Nazi Germany and adopt Salter as the text-book for a new course enabling the kiddies to understand the world they are actually living in? No ... it would be too topical and too raw ... ‘Hitler’ is as safely irrelevant a syllabus as the Wars of the Roses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Homily by the Priest Director, Fr Mark Woodruff, at a Mass in Westminster to pray for Pope Francis

If I were to seek my own glory that would be no glory at all
21 March 2013 – Thursday of the Fifth Week in Lent

Fr Mark Woodruff writes:

Our new Holy Father has tagged himself with some luminous markers in his first week in office. His baptismal patron is St George, the soldier-saint chosen as the patron of the Crusades against Islam’s occupancy of the Holy Places; yet for his pontifical name he chose St Francis, who went to speak of the love of Christ to Sultan Malik al-Kamil in Egypt, so as to bring the Crusades to a peaceful end.


Quite apparently chosen by the Conclave to lead the Church in both institutional and spiritual renewal (and to those who were expecting a Vatican placeman this is reminiscent of the emergence of John XXIII from the midst of the Pian Church), the Jesuit might have been expected to look to the patronage of Ignatius of Loyola for reform or Aloysius Gonzaga for purity of life and purpose – and we have known neither a Pope Ignatius nor a Pope Louis before. Instead he lighted upon Francis, “the richest of poor men”, inspired by a fellow Cardinal, we are told, not to forget the poor who are the Church in his native Latin America.


Immediately, however, clever commentators thought he must have more in mind the great Jesuit missionary of Japan, St Francis Xavier, on whose evangelical sanctity and evangelistic labours the Catholic Church in the Far East was built, just at the time a Church apprehensive of true renewal was losing its northern flocks to the Reformation in the West. There could also have been the less than worthy Pope Alexander VI’s grandson, St Francis Borgia, who gave up his dukedom to enter the Society of Jesus, starting out as a cook and waiter at table, until he became a second founder of the Jesuits, consolidating its novitiates and setting up what was to become the Gregorian University. Another remarkable Francis was not a Jesuit, but an Oratorian, the beloved Francis de Sales, the beauty of whose preaching of the love of God, simplicity of life and purity of discipleship won many who had been excited into the ferment of Calvin’s Reform back to the unity of the Church. Although the city of Geneva of which he was bishop was lost to him, his proclamation and living of the gospel was truly the new evangelisation of its day. But all of these saints are named after St Francis of Assisi and modelled themselves on him. Likewise it is to the humble, innocent Poverello whom the Lord commanded to rebuild his Church - the person in whom perhaps more than anyone else Jesus Christ has come again - that our new Holy Father has turned for a pattern in living, inspiration in endeavour and protection in prayer. We have already heard from him that the greatest power in the Church is service; that the Church is a Church of the poor; and that its duty is to protect those whom worldly society rejects and resents, along with the creation God has given to sustain us all alike.


Another one of those luminous markers was the acceptance of a ring once belonging to Pope Paul VI as his own Fisherman’s Ring. After many years, in which the painstaking faithfulness and leadership during an ear of the greatest social changes of such a beautiful and holy soul as Pope Paul have been questioned and even despised, it is a blessing to the Church that Pope Francis has signified the hermeneutic of continuity between his new pontificate and that of the wise, bold popes of the great Second Vatican Council. So the great tradition goes on and the Church brings riches from its treasury both old and new.


Yet another marker is his insistence that he is from the first successor to Peter not with grand titles such as Supreme Pontiff or Universal Pastor but as bishop of the local Church of Rome. Thus he has honoured the remarkable Petrine ministry and teaching office of his predecessor not by reference to him as “the Pope Emeritus”, but as “our retired bishop”. In this he echoes Pope Benedict’s call as successor of the apostle Peter, that Britain heard in Westminster Abbey, to give a convincing account of the hope that lies within us, not by a facile accommodation to the spirit of the age but an ever deeper unity in the apostolic faith in Jesus Christ truly risen from the dead. It is worth noting here that it was the witness to Jesus’ resurrection and the purity of teaching conserved by the Church at Rome, in direct continuity from the apostles Peter and Paul, that caused it to be seen by all, in the words of St Ignatius of Antioch, as “the church that presides in love”. Its prime role in speaking for the whole Church and resolving the authenticity of its teaching was thus respected for a millennium in both East and West. In our own day, Pope Francis is well aware that the Eastern Churches’ diaspora is now everywhere in the West; just as the Latin West is diffused throughout the world of the Christian East too. His apparent expectation that the local Church of Rome will be trusting the Churches locally to respond to the needs of humanity for the gospel by the lights of where and who they are, whether that is Rome or Istanbul, Buenos Aires or Lusaka, Kiev or Beijing, seems to take into account the realities of how the People of God belong in the communion of the Body of Christ, the need for the Churches to act and live in collegial concert, and the urgency of mutual union among Christians for the sake of realising the blessings in the Sermon on the Mount, “on earth as it is in heaven”. Thanks to the openness of his immediate predecessor to the Orthodox Church, which enabled some notable progress in the joint Orthodox-Catholic theological dialogue, the ground has been prepared for a Patriarch of Constantinople to witness for the first time the inauguration of the local bishop of the Church which presides in love. And the real power-wielder in Orthodoxy, the confident and globally expanding but also “local” Russian Orthodox Church, was significantly represented in Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, a likely successor to Patriarch Kirill someday, who studied for his doctorate here in the West in England. The Moscow Patriarchate has long advocated an alliance from Latin West and Russian East in concert across Europe, for recalling it to the faith that once civilised it by bringing it to Christ. In rooting the Roman bishop’s wider ministry, authority and witness in the faith, needs and experience of the City and culture where he is set – serving as its own apostle of the gospel, rather than primarily ruler of the global church - Pope Francis strikes a chord with Orthodox Churches that have a strong sense of their local purpose, and challenges those which are tempted to rival the Roman curia for binding communion to central control, rather than a presidency in love. Perhaps Pope Francis will prove to be as radical for Christian Unity as his predecessor was in ending the existential papacy, so that the primacy of episcopal office might succeed him.


Perhaps the Pope’s most luminous marker is to share the concerns of the poor. Of course it is true to say that the poor are not necessarily poor because of the rich and the rich are not necessarily rich because of their abuse of the poor. The causes are as complex as the solutions are unpalatable to those with the power to deliver them. But poverty is not just economic and social. It is spiritual too. The Holy Father seems to be referring to another great saint of his Church of Rome, the 3rd century deacon, St Lawrence. When commanded by the prefect of Rome to hand over the wealth of the Church, Lawrence distributed it to the poor and told him that the poor, the disabled, the blind and the suffering were the true treasures of the Church. Sealing his own death sentence, he said that in them “the Church is truly rich, far richer than your emperor”.


All these markers point to a new course to the Church’s life for sure. In every image that Pope Francis has conjured up, and every holy person whose name he seems to have invoked, he puts us in mind of the Lord’s words in today’s Gospel: “If I were to seek my own glory that would be no glory at all.” Instead, the Jesuit like the Master seeks “the greater glory of God”; and, according to his own motto, is deeply aware that the Master has chosen him not because he has some gifts or characteristics that the Lord could now find useful, but miserando atque eligendo purely out of having mercy upon him.

Habemus Papam

May God bless and keep Pope Francis ad multos annos

May he also bless and keep Archbishop Justin of Canterbury.

"May they all be one" !

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

Dear Brothers,

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

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

From the Vatican, 10 February 2013

BENEDICTUS PP XVI

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

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

Pope Benedict's Homily At Conclusion of Week of Prayer

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

* * *

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Translation by Peter Waymel]

Disunity - the Fault Disfiguring the Countenance of the Church: Pope Benedict's Angelus Address in the Week of Prayer for Unity

VATICAN CITY, January 20, 2013 thanks to Zenit.org - Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave today before and after praying the midday angelus with those gathered in St. Peter's Square.

* * *

Dear brothers and sisters!

Today the liturgy proposes the Gospel passage about the wedding at Cana, an episode narrated by John, an eye witness of the event. This episode is part of this Sunday that immediately follows the Christmas season because, together with the visit of the Magi from the east and with Jesus' baptism, it forms the trilogy of the epiphany, that is, of the manifestation of Christ. The manifestation at the wedding at Cana is, in fact, "the first of the signs" (John 2:11), that is, the first miracle performed by Jesus, with which he publicly manifested his glory, awakening the faith of his disciples. Let us briefly recall what happened at the wedding feast of Cana in Galilee. It happened that the wine had run out, and Mary, the Mother of Jesus, pointed this out to her Son. He told her that his hour had not yet come; but then followed Mary's intervention and, six large stone jars being filled with water, he transformed the water into wine, an excellent wine, better than the wine that had been served earlier. With this "sign" Jesus revealed himself as the messianic bridegroom, come to establish the new and eternal Covenant with his people, according to the words of the prophets: "As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so your God will rejoice over you" (Isaiah 62:5). And the wine is the symbol of this joy of love; but it also alludes to the blood that Jesus will pour out at the end to seal the nuptial pact with humanity.

The Church is the bride of Christ, who makes her holy and beautiful with his grace. Nevertheless, this bride, made up of human beings, is always in need of purification. And one of the gravest faults that disfigures the countenance of the Church is the injury to her visible unity, in particular the historical divisions that have separated Christians and that have not yet been overcome. Precisely at this time, from January 18 to 25, the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is observed, a time that is always welcome to believers and to communities, which reawakens in everyone the desire and spiritual commitment to full communion. In this sense the prayer service that I was able to celebrate with thousands of young people from all over Europe and with the ecumenical community of Taizé in this piazza was very significant: it was a moment of grace in which we experienced the beauty of being one in Christ. I encourage everyone to pray together so that we can realize "what the Lord requires of us" (Micah 6:8), which is the theme of this year's Week; it was a theme proposed by some communities in India, which invites us to move decisively toward visible unity and to overcome, as brothers of Christ, every type of unjust discrimination. Next Friday at the conclusion of these days of prayer, I will preside at Vespers in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in the presence of representatives of other Churches and ecclesial communities.

Dear friends, once more to the prayer for Christian unity I would like to add a prayer for peace so that, in the various conflicts now going on, the slaughter of civilians cease and all violence end, and the courage for dialogue and negotiation be found. For both of these intentions let us invoke the intercession of Mary Most Holy, the mediatrix of grace.

Following the recitation of the Angelus the Holy Father greeted those present in various languages. In English he said:

I greet all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors present at today's Angelus. In these days, we are celebrating the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Let us join our prayers to those of our brothers and sisters of all Churches and communities, that we may dedicate ourselves ever more earnestly to working towards our visible unity in Jesus Christ. God bless you and your loved ones!

[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]

Pope Benedict writes for the Financial Times: "A time for Christians to engage with the world"

Courtesy of Vatican Radio, below is an English language article written by Pope Benedict XVI in Thursday's Financial Times newspaper (20 December 2012). The article originates from a request from the editorial office of the newspaper asking for the Pope's comments to mark the occasion of Christmas and following the recent publication of the Holy Father's book on Jesus' infancy (The Infancy Narratives).


“Render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God,” was the response of Jesus when asked about paying taxes. His questioners, of course, were laying a trap for him. They wanted to force him to take sides in the highly-charged political debate about Roman rule in the land of Israel. Yet there was more at stake here: if Jesus really was the long-awaited Messiah, then surely he would oppose the Roman overlords. So the question was calculated to expose him either as a threat to the regime, or a fraud.Jesus’ answer deftly moves the argument to a higher plane, gently cautioning against both the politicization of religion and the deification of temporal power, along with the relentless pursuit of wealth. His audience needed to be reminded that the Messiah was not Caesar, and Caesar was not God. The kingdom that Jesus came to establish was of an altogether higher order. As he told Pontius Pilate, “My kingship is not of this world.”

The Christmas stories in the New Testament are intended to convey a similar message. Jesus was born during a “census of the whole world” taken by Caesar Augustus, the Emperor renowned for bringing the Pax Romana to all the lands under Roman rule. Yet this infant, born in an obscure and far-flung corner of the Empire, was to offer the world a far greater peace, truly universal in scope and transcending all limitations of space and time. Jesus is presented to us as King David’s heir, but the liberation he brought to his people was not about holding hostile armies at bay; it was about conquering sin and death forever.

The birth of Christ challenges us to reassess our priorities, our values, our very way of life. While Christmas is undoubtedly a time of great joy, it is also an occasion for deep reflection, even an examination of conscience. At the end of a year that has meant economic hardship for many, what can we learn from the humility, the poverty, the simplicity of the crib scene?Christmas can be the time in which we learn to read the Gospel, to get to know Jesus not only as the Child in the manger, but as the one in whom we recognize God made Man.

It is in the Gospel that Christians find inspiration for their daily lives and their involvement in worldly affairs – be it in the Houses of Parliament or the Stock Exchange. Christians shouldn’t shun the world; they should engage with it. But their involvement in politics and economics should transcend every form of ideology. Christians fight poverty out of a recognition of the supreme dignity of every human being, created in God’s image and destined for eternal life. Christians work for more equitable sharing of the earth’s resources out of a belief that, as stewards of God’s creation, we have a duty to care for the weakest and most vulnerable. Christians oppose greed and exploitation out of a conviction that generosity and selfless love, as taught and lived by Jesus of Nazareth, are the way that leads to fullness of life. Christian belief in the transcendent destiny of every human being gives urgency to the task of promoting peace and justice for all.

Because these goals are shared by so many, much fruitful cooperation is possible between Christians and others. Yet Christians render to Caesar only what belongs to Caesar, not what belongs to God. Christians have at times throughout history been unable to comply with demands made by Caesar. From the Emperor cult of ancient Rome to the totalitarian regimes of the last century, Caesar has tried to take the place of God. When Christians refuse to bow down before the false gods proposed today, it is not because of an antiquated world-view. Rather, it is because they are free from the constraints of ideology and inspired by such a noble vision of human destiny that they cannot collude with anything that undermines it.In Italy, many crib scenes feature the ruins of ancient Roman buildings in the background. This shows that the birth of the child Jesus marks the end of the old order, the pagan world, in which Caesar’s claims went virtually unchallenged. Now there is a new king, who relies not on the force of arms, but on the power of love. He brings hope to all those who, like himself, live on the margins of society. He brings hope to all who are vulnerable to the changing fortunes of a precarious world. From the manger, Christ calls us to live as citizens of his heavenly kingdom, a kingdom that all people of good will can help to build here on earth".

2013 and Future Steps for English Church Unity

The Director, Fr Mark Woodruff, writes in our December Newsletter:

 

 

2013 is the Centenary of the Catholic League. This will be a year not only to celebrate a dedicated history, but also to renew our prayer for Christian Unity, in fullness of communion in the Catholic Faith and in union with the Apostolic See of Rome.

2012 has seen the continued search of the Church of England to resolve its internal differences and, indeed, for its own internal ecumenism. If the Church of England majority, which sees the admission of women to the presbyterate and episcopate as a legitimate development to the received tradition, cannot allow a place for fellow Anglicans who believe the Church should keep to the Tradition on which all can be reconciled as they were once united; and, given the uncompromising tone with which some of their number have called for the rejection and even exclusion of the minority, it sends a powerful message to the ecumenical partners of Anglicans working with them, beyond ecumenism, towards reconciliation and fullness of communion. If most Anglicans do not want spiritual ecumenism to work within their own ranks, and fullness of communion cannot be achieved within the juridical bounds of the Established Church, how can it seriously engage with the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church on unity, let alone the other Churches stemmed from the Reformation?

The answer is the same basic “fact of life” that has animated the League for 100 years. There can be no ecumenism worthy of the name that does not take into account communion with the bishop of the See of Peter in Rome, not as the last piece in the jigsaw, but as the destination from the outset of our Christian ecumenical journey. Piecemeal ecumenism – such as the Porvoo agreement between the Anglican Churches of Britain and Ireland with most of the Lutheran Episcopal Churches, or the Union of Bonn with the Old Catholics, or the Leuenberg Agreement with non-episcopal Reformed Churches – is hopeful and should be encouraged. But where it constitutes to all intents and purposes the exclusion of the Apostolic Churches of East and West - most especially communion with the successor of Peter at Rome - there is a risk of “settling for less”, or even an ecumenism that is anti-Catholic. A substantial bloc of Anglicans and Protestants in a staged process of reconciliation that is not taking the Petrine ministry into account as a first principle (and as it is, not as some may wish it to be) is not necessarily a building block to Church union. All too easily it risks standing as a rival to Catholic faith and life; the instinct is for schism.

This is not even true to what the Reformers thought they were achieving by their reform of the Church, and its tradition as they had received it. To employ the terms of Pope Benedict for a different controversy, their thinking was that of a “hermeneutic of continuity and of reform”, and not of “discontinuity and rupture”. Continuity with the rest of the Latin Church has long been part of the Anglican apologetic, even though, along with the other churches of the Reformation, the new direction for the English Church led to rupture, because of the imposition upon it of the boundaries of a nation state. So it is surely a sore in the spirits of all belonging to the League that our Anglican members are seemingly forced by events further from their lifelong hopes for the reconciliation of their Church with the Church of the Apostolic See of Rome, the more faithfully they seek to live by the Common Tradition which has formed us all. As Pope Benedict put it, when he spoke to representatives of all the Christian traditions at Westminster Abbey on his Apostolic Visit, the account of the hope that lies within us that will be convincing to the world does not lie in a facile accommodation to the spirit of the age or theological relativism, but an ever deeper unity in the apostolic faith.

One of the things that has become apparent, in the two years since the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham was established, is that those who have joined it as they realised long cherished hopes for Anglican-Catholic reunion (perhaps not the way once planned, but the way that has been opened up by Divine Providence in the Church that God has given us) have moved by their conscience, not without cost; and that this has been rewarded by the focussed efforts of the Catholic Church to create, within its otherwise largely regimented system, new space that makes sense of 450 years of Anglican custom, culture, heritage and tradition. As Fr Aidan Nichols OP has recently observed, with an urgent need for a new evangelisation of an old Europe, it is seeking to fill a gap in the Catholic Church’s mission that it did not realise was there. The Catholic Church in England is a marriage of many worthy families - the recusants, the body of converts from the last two centuries, the Irish and Scottish diaspora of in the same period, and nowadays a large number of Catholics settling here from all over the globe. But what of our engagement with England, its people, its culture and its spiritual sensibilities? This is the question the Ordinariate will be addressing in its worship and mission. Properly understood, it is the most profound ecumenical signal that the Church’s supreme authority, exercising the Petrine ministry, has acknowledged that the Anglican tradition is not only an essential tool in the Christian Church’s mission across the Anglophone world, it is also to be seen as an integral component in the Universal Church as the Catholic Church understands it and hopes it can better manifest.

Another thing that has become clear is that Anglican Catholics are not “Romanisers”, or (as the press would have it) people of suspect loyalty, threatening to destabilise the Established Church and “defect” to Rome if they don’t get what they demand. They are Anglican churchpeople by conscience, devoted to Christ and his work in the Church and in the world, believing in the Catholic faith “as the Church of England has received it”, serving the ideal of Catholic unity, in the way that luminary Anglicans have striven to do throughout history, and convinced that they have an integral place within the communion of their own Anglican Church, none to say them nay. It has been sad, therefore, to hear this confidence and hope expressed in terms of recrimination against those who have accepted the Holy Father’s invitation. Indeed it is ironic that Catholics in the Ordinariate are enjoined by Rome to observe the provisions of their Anglican patrimony, while there are Anglicans whose ecclesiastical bearings are expressed in adhesion to Roman Catholic patrimony. This is not, however, the occasion for rivalry or a spirit of estrangement among those who are united in what Pope Paul VI called the “communion of origins”.

When the Church of England bishops and the Catholic Bishops of England & Wales first met as bodies together, they agreed that the task of mission and evangelisation in this country is so large that neither can encompass it alone and so, faithful to the integrity of their respective principles, must not work in competition but in mutual charity and peace, side by side. In the same spirit, there must be no condemnation from the Catholic side of those Anglicans who, believing in conscience that they must be faithful to the Tradition and remain committed to the Church of England, reminding it that, while its foundational principles may be Scripture, Tradition and Reason, no one may prevail and all must agree. By the same token, on the Anglican side there must be an end to hostility directed at the Ordinariate and those who have entered it no less as a matter of conscience, obedience to the Christ who calls us all, and in a spirit not of division but of healing the wounds in the Body of Christ that human sin has shown to be divided in this world.

In a society which is indifferent to the Gospel and the Church, even hostile, with our two Churches as leading fellow members of Churches Together in England, we rely on each other. Those who share the “communion of origins” in the Anglican patrimony by which we have been formed in the Spirit of God need to work together from both sides to draw Christians together, not apart. According to what is required by our times, it is up to us on both sides to remind the Church of England (and the wider Anglican Communion) that the Church cannot transmit God’s Holy Tradition in the new way that is called for, without passing on the Church’s doctrine, “pure and whole, without attenuations or distortions” (Address of Blessed John XXIII at the Opening of the Second Vatican Council). And it is up to Catholics and Anglicans together to reveal to the rapidly changing society in which we find ourselves, that its deepest questions, its spiritual sensibilities and its distinctive religious culture have a place in God’s purposes, not as an isolated, possibly declining, and even marginalised phenomenon, but as a key to the re-evangelisation of culture in the struggle for the soul of Europe that is currently being waged.

Anglican Catholics must restore their Movement to its original state – a relentless obedience to the logic of Catholicism, that it cannot be consummated without communion with Peter. And Catholics in England, members of the Ordinariate and members of the dioceses alike, cannot allow the Roman Apostolic Catholic Church to function as a self-sufficient club to the exclusion of those with whom we share the fact of Christian division in this world. The Catholic Church dropped the futile idea of itself as the “perfect society” at the Second Vatican Council, whose Decree on Ecumenism taught that the Catholic Church is somehow not Catholic in all her bearings so long as there are Christians and church communities separate from us. The impulse to Catholic unity is what drives our sacramental life, the pastoral mission of the Holy Father with a special care for all the Churches, and our relations and encounters with other Christians. Schism in Christ’s Church, and false ecumenism that settles for less, should make Catholics restless.

Centenary Events for 2013

The first event to mark our Centenary in 2013 is fittingly the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which the League has done so much to promote throughout our history. Leaflets to help you pray this week most earnestly for reconciliation within the Church, are available for download from the left hand side of this website. 

 

The second event is a Celebration Centenary Festa on the weekend of March 15-17 with a Pilgrimage to the at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. This will include both Catholic and Anglican elements, and it will be led by our good friend, Fr Luke Miller, Archdeacon of Hampstead. The League was the first to make an organised pilgrimage to the newly restored Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in the 1930s, and I hope that you will want to mark our place in its history and give thanks for our own 100 years. We would like as many to be there as possible, at least at some point in the weekend. Please do not think you cannot come because of the cost - £90 (£45 a night for two nights, full board, dinner on Friday to lunch on Sunday). Because it is a special year, we can make concessions – it is most important that you can come if you want to. Please contact the General Secretary, Mr David Chapman, to book your place.

Also during the year there will be a special Mass of Thanksgiving at a Catholic Church in London, near the July date of our foundation.

 

We also plan a launch for a new history of the Catholic League, its significance and achievements, now being prepared by the eminent historian of the papacy, Dr Michael Walsh.

 

In September we make our annual Pilgrimage for Christian Unity in Bruges to Our Lady of the Vine and the Basilica of the Holy Blood. The dates are 5th to 9th September 2013. Please write to the Director if you are interested in coming.

 

Finally, the year will be crowned by a Centenary Celebration of Christ the King at the Anglican Church of St Silas, Kentish Town on the weekend of 23^rd and 24^th November 2013.

 

On behalf of the officers and executive, I look forward to seeing you at the events, especially in England’s Nazareth. Meanwhile, please pray hard for the healing of divisions between Christians and especially for the peace of the Church throughout the Middle East region: “that they all may be one, as I am in you and you are in me, so that the world may believe it was you that sent me”.

 

Mark Woodruff

Pope Benedict addresses the Pontifical Council for Unity on Ecumenism and the New Evangelisation

THE AIM OF ECUMENISM IS THE UNITY OF DIVIDED CHRISTIANS

Vatican City, 15 November 2012 (VIS) - The close ties between the work of evangelisation and the need to overcome the divisions that still exist between Christians was the central theme of this morning's address by the Holy Father to the members and consultors of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity on the occasion of their plenary assembly dedicated to "The importance of ecumenism in new evangelisation".

The Pope stated, "We cannot follow a truly ecumenical path while ignoring the crisis of faith affecting vast areas of the world, including those where the proclamation of the Gospel was first accepted and where Christian life has flourished for centuries. On the other hand, we cannot ignore the many signs indicating a persistent need for spirituality, which is made manifest in various ways. The spiritual poverty of many of our contemporaries, who no longer perceive the absence of God in their lives as a form of deprivation, poses a challenge to all Christians".

In this context, the Pope added, "we, believers in Christ, are called upon to return to the essential, to the heart of our faith, to bear witness to the living God before the world. … We must not forget what it is that unites us: our faith in God the Father and Creator, revealed in His Son Jesus Christ, effusing the Spirit which revives and sanctifies. This is the faith we received in Baptism and it is the faith that, in hope and charity, we can profess together.

"In the light of the primacy of faith we may also understand the importance of the theological dialogues and conversations in which the Catholic Church is engaged with Churches and ecclesial communities. Even when we cannot discern the possibility of re-establishing full communion in the near future, such dialogue facilitates our awareness, not only of resistance and obstacles, but also of the richness of experience, spiritual life and theological reflection, which become a stimulus for ever deeper testimony".

Benedict XVI emphasised that the aim of ecumenism is "visible unity between divided Christians". To this end, we must "dedicate all our forces, but we must also recognise that, in the final analysis, this unity is a gift from God, and may come to us only from the Father through His Son, because the Church is His Church. From this perspective we see, not only the importance of invoking the Lord for visible unity, but also how striving after this end is relevant to the new evangelisation.

"It is good to journey together towards this objective, provided that the Churches and ecclesial communities do not stop along the way, accepting the various contradictions between them as normal or as the best they can hope to achieve. It is, rather, in the full communion of faith, Sacraments and ministry that the strength of God, present and working in the world, will find concrete expression".

 

The Pope concluded, "Unity is on the one hand the fruit of faith and, on the other, a means - almost a prerequisite - for an increasingly credible proclamation of the faith to those who do not yet know the Saviour or who, while having received the proclamation of the Gospel, have almost forgotten this valuable gift. True ecumenism, recognising the primacy of divine action, demands above all patience, humility, and abandonment to the will of the Lord. In the final analysis, ecumenism and new evangelisation both require the dynamism of conversion, understood as the sincere desire to follow Christ and to fully adhere to the will of the Father".

The full text in English is here on the Vatican website.