Loading ...
I know that a lot of folks have been writing about this already, especially those who are interested in spinning it one way or another. I myself am trying to spin it as best I can - I just don’t see the logic of it. Fr. Z thinks that Benedict’s words about the Anglicans on the plane the other day are owing, in part, to his great love of unity as a theological concept, as expressed, for example, by Augustine and Bonaventure. So, somehow, this love of “unity” would justify Benedict in hoping (out loud, in a public way) that the Anglicans will avoid schisms and new breaks. What?? I mean, for crying out loud, they’re already so broken that they’ve “ordained” women. Once they did that, the discussion was over. What is there left to discuss with them on the institutional level? I just don’t see how there can be some new concern over female “bishops” when they already have loads of female “priests”.
I’m less concerned, though, about the Anglican heretics, and more concerned about the witness of the Holy Father. What kind of message do words like these send to protestants? I’m no theological genius, but I just can’t twist these words to say anything other than that we as Catholics are happy for you to be happy as Anglican heretics. The Holy Father concludes by saying that his wish is that: “the Anglican Communion in communion with the Gospel of Christ and the Word of the Lord will find the answers to the present challenges.” As though they could get it on their own, apart from the Vicar of Christ! To talk of the “Gospel of Christ” and the “Word of the Lord”, as though they were just sitting at the corner store, waiting for anyone who wants to come pick them up, confirms all the worst notions of the protestants. Not surprisingly, Cardinal Kasper has said similar things.
I suspect that we will - even if it’s Damian Thompson’s sometimes hysterical reports that will it into existence - soon see some kind of more concrete, more theologically sound (extra ecclesiam nulla salus) type of gesture on the part of the Holy See towards traditional Anglicans. I mean, I certainly hope so! If we can’t lay out the red carpet for people who have said publicly that they want to become Catholics, good grief! how far have we fallen?
In all of this, I can’t help but think of the light years of difference between Benedict’s statement and the words of Pius XI in Mortalium animos; Pius XI leaves nothing to doubt and everyone knows at the end of the day where things stand:
Furthermore, in this one Church of Christ no man can be or remain who does not accept, recognize and obey the authority and supremacy of Peter and his legitimate successors. Did not the ancestors of those who are now entangled in the errors of Photius and the reformers, obey the Bishop of Rome, the chief shepherd of souls? Alas their children left the home of their fathers, but it did not fall to the ground and perish for ever, for it was supported by God. Let them therefore return to their common Father, who, forgetting the insults previously heaped on the Apostolic See, will receive them in the most loving fashion. For if, as they continually state, they long to be united with Us and ours, why do they not hasten to enter the Church, “the Mother and mistress of all Christ’s faithful”? Let them hear Lactantius crying out: “The Catholic Church is alone in keeping the true worship. This is the fount of truth, this the house of Faith, this the temple of God: if any man enter not here, or if any man go forth from it, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation. Let none delude himself with obstinate wrangling. For life and salvation are here concerned, which will be lost and entirely destroyed, unless their interests are carefully and assiduously kept in mind.”
Or look at the conclusion of Apostolicae curae of Leo XIII:
We wish to direct our exhortation and our desires in a special way to those who are ministers of religion in their respective communities. They are men who from their very office take precedence in learning and authority, and who have at heart the glory of God and the salvation of souls. Let them be the first in joyfully submitting to the divine call and obey it, and furnish a glorious example to others. Assuredly, with an exceeding great joy, their Mother, the Church, will welcome them, and will cherish with all her love and care those whom the strength of their generous souls has, amidst many trials and difficulties, led back to her bosom. Nor could words express the recognition which this devoted courage will win for them from the assemblies of the brethren throughout the Catholic world, or what hope or confidence it will merit for them before Christ as their Judge, or what reward it will obtain from Him in the heavenly kingdom! And we, ourselves, in every lawful way, shall continue to promote their reconciliation with the Church in which individuals and masses, as we ardently desire, may find so much for their imitation. In the meantime, by the tender mercy of the Lord our God, we ask and beseech all to strive faithfully to follow in the path of divine grace and truth.
(I have taken the picture with this post from the outstanding blog, Hallowed Ground. Thank you for all of those wonderful photos and images!)
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
It’s not quite fair to compare encyclicals with words given in answer to a reporter on a plane. This wasn’t a long-prepared, premeditated statement, nor did he have time to expound on his full view of the matter. Presumably the Holy Father has considered thoughts on this, but he probably isn’t at liberty yet to share everything he knows, and in this particular context he was just offering a brief (and no doubt intentionally vague) reply to a quick question. So that’s one thing.
Personally I’m rather confused… nothing the pontiff said seemed particularly worrisome to me except maybe for that part about not wanting breaks or schisms among Anglicans. But what does that mean exactly? If you leave a schismatic/heretical group and return to Rome, is that a schism or an un-schism? Anyway, it certainly doesn’t seem bad to wish a Protestant group as much unity among themselves as they can muster… except, obviously, that we should want as many people as possible to return to Rome. I realize that that’s the boiling issue here, but still, apart from that, it doesn’t seem bad to discourage schisms among Protestants themselves.
Again, I just think we need to be patient and wait for more. In the days of Pius XI and Leo XIII, you didn’t have to deal with arguments exploding across the planet within hours of making a verbal comment. So give the Holy Father a break. Anyway, if the traditional Anglicans do come back, the effect will be better if Rome hasn’t been looking too vulturish.
“I suspect that we will - even if it’s Damian Thompson’s sometimes hysterical reports that will it into existence - soon see some kind of more concrete, more theologically sound (extra ecclesiam nulla salus) type of gesture on the part of the Holy See towards traditional Anglicans.”
Hysterical? I suppose so. But sometimes you have to make an unseemly fuss in order to get people to pay attention.
“If we can’t lay out the red carpet for people who have said publicly that they want to become Catholics, good grief! how far have we fallen?” Well, exactly. Beautifully put :)
Most Catholics with ecumenical inclinations, even Popes, don’t seem to recognize that the vast majority of protestants and non-Christians are running as fast as they possibly can away from Rome.
Damian Thompson, thanks so much for dropping by! I love your blog and I think that you’re doing tremendous work there in England for the Catholic cause. I’m sorry that I said “hysterical” - that was a bit harsh - I just thought that your post’s title rather overstated what the news about Archbishops Myers’ words should lead us to conclude.
Clara, I’m astounded that you don’t see what I’m talking about. Yes, it’s unfair to compare encyclicals with press briefings on an airplane. But I’m talking about the content, whether it’s a sentence or book - no rational human being could conclude from the pope’s words that he was encouraging of conversion and eager to receive all Anglicans of good will into communion with him. The impression given is exactly the opposite, as I said: just be converted to Christ and his gospel and find your path forward to today’s challenging circumstances.
This is the kind of talk that made sedevacantists out of the likes of Thomas Droleskey. This is the kind of stuff - not, certainly, if this were the only statement of its kind, but because this is consistently the language used - that fuels the concerns of the SSPX over Rome’s stand on religious liberty. I’m not here accusing the pope of heresy - I’m simply saying that his language is utterly unhelpful, does not encourage protestants who are unsure what to think, and only confirms sedevacantists and SSPX-ers in their concerns about Rome’s commitment to tradition.
I normally wouldn’t comment on every piece of pc, unhelpful language out of Rome (or the pope), but for crying out loud, at this delicate time, we’re trying to encourage these people to convert! Now is the time to jump from a sinking ship, we should be saying. Or, rather, the ship is already wrecked; save yourselves from drowning in the water, come aboard the barque!
I, too, think that we need to be patient - which is precisely what I said in my post. I think that, though the rhetoric has been unhelpful, we’ll see some concrete gestures that will make up for what has been left unsaid. I hope!
Your Welcome, Josephus
When I pull up the RSS feed for this blog, I find the subtitle: “Unity in charity, diversity in truth”. I am therefore left scratching my head as to why the writer here took the approach he did.
I lead my own blog entry on this subject with the observation that we simply don’t know for sure what Pope Benedict was thinking when he spoke about his hope that the Anglican communion won’t break into even smaller factions. To leap to a single judgment that the Pope has compromised the Church’s teaching about who she, the Church, truly is, seems rash.
If we have to level a finger at anyone, perhaps we should start with the Catholic press, rather than the Supreme Pontiff. Some journalists have spun the Pope’s words in so as to give the impression that the Church doesn’t want Anglicans to convert. I believe that is a malicious reading of the Pope’s words.
However, it isn’t very demanding to imagine that Pope Benedict could reason beyond the practical ramifications of additional fractures. After all, more splits would complicate ecumenical dialogue and turn it into an even larger hall of mirrors. But His Holiness may also have reasons for not wanting to see more splits based on theology, based on his knowledge of Church history and what it took to heal the breaks of the past.
In no way would Pope Benedict, as I pretty clearly stated in my blog entry, refuse anyone who turned to the Church and desired Catholic unity. I think it is entirely reasonable, however, that he might prefer to bring in larger groups. The Vicar of Christ must also consider the macro questions, and not simply individual cases.
o{]:¬)
Fr. Z, thank you for taking the time to comment! As for the subtitle to our RSS feed, it’s a joke - like most everything else we do. ;) We’re just using the liberal line for fun, when that’s obviously not the view of the writers of this blog.
I appreciate your attempt to make theological sense of what the Holy Father might have been up to in his remarks. My concern is: when these are the lines that are going out into the media, to be quoted in short snippets, etc., the Holy Father’s words are not going to be assessed with the degree of theological sophistication that they might deserve. In other words, my concern is pastoral more than theological.
I’ve quoted Pius XI and Leo XIII as two examples of theologically acute pontiffs, no doubt, who also phrased things in such a way as to leave no doubt about how things stood. Best to proceed at that level, no?, and then go about identifying the folks of good will who might want to talk.
Does anyone seriously think that talking to Canterbury, at this point, after the “ordination” of female “priests”, is going to bear any fruit? Surely, the Holy Father must know this; which is part of the reason why he didn’t invite Williams to the Pauline Year extravaganza (as, I believe, you have said).
“Unity in charity, diversity in truth?” That’s the subtitle of our RSS feed? See, this is what happens when Iacobus designs the website but then stops posting. People don’t read his quirky sense of humor into details like this.
Anyway, Iosephe, of course I understand “what you’re talking about.” This is well-trodden territory, and all of us here think and worry about religious freedom, indifferentism, Dignitatis Humanae etc etc etc. Got it. I just think you need to relax a bit. It’s a few words, in a brief comment, and there are obviously larger forces at work here. So wait for the end game before getting all worked up and posting unfavorable comparisons to Leo XIII.
For example… you scoffed at the idea that the Holy Father would be biding his time in hopes of getting larger groups. I seriously doubt Fr. Z meant that the Anglicans as a whole were likely to come back to Rome — that’s not happening anytime in the remotely near future. But the Anglicans have been a mess for quite awhile now, and there are quite a lot of disaffected ones around the planet. Instead of just a little band of traditional Anglicans in the British Isles, you might be able to get a much bigger chunk of them, if all the cards are played right. If they’re on the verge of splintering anyway, it would be much better to work this out now; once they’ve broken into multiple pieces, it will become difficult or impossible to bring them in as a group.
Now, suppose for a moment that the situation were like this: the British traddie Anglicans are pretty well set on swimming the Tiber, but there are a lot of others (in the Southern hemisphere especially) who are on the edge, getting fed up with the shenanigans of Canterbury but still a little gun-shy of actually making the break. There’s a possibility of them doggedly hanging on for awhile, a possibility of them coming to Rome, and a possibility of them splitting off and forming their own communion (or several). You think the best way to woo them would be something along the lines of “Your pathetic ship is rapidly sinking! Jump aboard ours and we will honor you richly and treat you like family!”
Well, that’s the sort of thing that would please you anyway. But that kind of eagerness, as though Rome were positively relishing the degradation of Canterbury, would likely just cause pain/indignation to the on-the-fencers. Anyway, that was certainly my reaction in my somewhat moody, sensitive period shortly before and after my conversion; occasionally people thought they were being nice to me by saying things in the spirit of “Oh, from the Mormons, huh? Phew! High time to leave that behind, eh?”
Obviously I basically agreed, but still, it was to those people that I wanted to say, “shut the hell up.”
If the situation with the Anglicans is as bad as it’s looking to be, and if we have people on the inside working to bring this about (which the Holy Father would know better than we), we may not need for Rome to take such an aggressive approach as you would obviously advise. Biding time and letting them realize what they already know might be more, as you put it, pastoral. And actually, in that context, reinforcing the theological importance of “unity” (but in a back-door sort of way) could be a brilliant move. It would remind the potential splinter groups of a theme that should be on their minds as they deliberate about this, without seeming indecorously pleased at their distress.
Obviously I’m engaging in some speculation myself, which may all be wrong, but the point is that there’s a lot going on here, and our own information is limited. I too will be pleased if Rome shortly issues a document emphasizing how welcome the Anglicans will be if they come over, but in the meantime, I trust the Holy Father. He’s done well by us so far, and I’m sure he’ll bring it all together.
As much as I love this Pope (even more so now that I know that he likes cats!), you can take the boy out of the 1960’s, but you can’t take the 1960’s out of the boy. We shouldn’t be too worried that he still has the aftertaste of false ecumenism in his mouth, and besides, we can’t really know what he actually said. This, and the overwhelming pressure on public figures at this point to “be nice”. JPII may have taken this WAY too far by smooching the blasphemous Koran, but compared to him, Benedict has been on his best behavior.
The other consideration involved is that the fracturing of the largest Protestant body in the world doesn’t give Christianity in general a good rap. For those who would swin the Tiber due to these crises, many more will be traumatized, disillusioned, and ultimately may even give up on organized religion altogether. While I want people to come into the Church just as much as the next guy, what I don’t want is a bunch of young Turks coming into the Church full of piss and vinegar who only became “Papists” because they were disgruntled with their own denomination. That leads to a bunch of other now unforseen problems. People need to convert for the right reasons, and crises like these have affects that will influence the Christian world in general, and not necessarily for the good.
As much as I love this Pope (even more so now that I know that he likes cats!), you can take the boy out of the 1960’s, but you can’t take the 1960’s out of the boy.
:)
Clara, as far as the pastoral intention was as you say - and we can only hope that it was! - I entirely agree with you. My concern - perhaps this is the wrong concern to have right now, but I can’t help it - is that this kind of language only adds to the confusion or rather confirms the ignorance of so many protestants who don’t realize that the Catholic Church is calling upon them to abandon their heresies and return to the Barque of Peter. Brow beating folks, as you say, is entirely unhelpful; but stating the facts plainly, on a consistent basis, is, I think, the right thing to do.
Anyway, I’ve said my piece. Thanks for the discussion!
I know, Iosephe. I hear you. Let’s just hope that the thing ends with happy news!
Yes!
I would just like to add that I’ve been thirsting for a piece such as this one from Iosephus for quite some time, and I fully agree with his points. With all due respect, I cannot see how even the recent ecumenical and interreligious speeches at WYD bring any fresh air. It really could have been, in essence, said by a member of the world council of churches, and moreover, these SPEECHES’ substance was akin to the answers quoted in this post. Nothing of the perfect unity of the Church, just talk of adherence to the Gospel.
Last thing: I cannot understand how having the Patriarch of Constantinople at a Papal Mass at St. Peter’s on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul not promote the relativism that has been so consistently condemned. Calling each other “His Holiness” does not help. [http://zenit.org/article-23060?l=english] Rhetorical question: why couldn’t it have been Bishop Fellay at the Mass? He’s not even formally in schism…
Let us conrinue to pray.
If I might speak a moment from England where the whole Anglican business started from… The Church of England is an enigma. It is not capable of philosophical or theological rationalization on anything like lines of logic. Some of it pretends (and believes) it is Catholic but somehow lives with the obvious contradictions of that belief; some of it is liberal off-the-chart Protestant. Philip II of Spain in the 16th Century, it is recorded, wondered at them: “These heretics, have they no fear of Hell?” to which purportedly Don Alonso, his right hand man, replied: “Sire, they are English heretics with a Heaven and Hell of their own invention!”
Some of the Anglicans here, whole congregations even, came over after the fiasco of women “priests” some years ago and found the experience unsatisfactory: many of the clergy retained an element of Anglicanism (including the erroneous belief that they had always been priests). They thought perhaps they were just changing brands of Church, as though it were from one supermarket chain to another, but some, of course, Deo Gratias, found their home in the one true Church, which is how it should be, and brought many graces with them.
As an English Catholic, I am torn between the abhorrence of the historical mess that this country suffered (more than any other) through the Reformation; I see the effects in Society here of godlessness, for which - rightly or wrongly - I blame the C of E for their utter and complete lack of any leadership or any moral fibre. They are no help at all on moral, theological or social questions, and they take a united stand on virtually nothing. Someone may speak out but he is sure to be contradicted by another. They are split from top to bottom. They are for many, literally, a national joke.
The laisser-faire attitude of post Vat II “We’re all the same now” too resulted in false ecumenism and years of fostering indifference to our own Faith as thousands of Catholics left the Church. At least we now see clearly the folly of all those wasted years. In some respects it is this very false ecumenism that propped up the C of E all these years anyway. We gave them a status they did not not deserve.
Yet, I see very clearly too that the predicted hords now about to come over to Rome may be doing so for entirely for the wrong reasons. If they now have women “priests” then why shouldn’t they have women “bishops?” It seems a bit late now to wake up to the consequences, but many a convert has been made for the seemingly wrong reasons. “The Spirit bloweth where it will.” That is why we get converts at all.
Ideally the whole C of E should now fall away into ruins but, invalid and imperfect as they are, this won’t happen because of the spongy nature of the beast: they just adopt a different shape and carry on regardless. But paradoxically its demise would probably leave a vacuum which would be the complete death-knell to any remaining public Christianity here and would not lead Anglicans to the Catholic Church.
We should watch and pray but above all stop the wishy-washy attitude still adopted by some of our hierarchy for fear of some sort of triumphalism. Let us say to our Anglican friends, that real message love - the Truth - echoing Leo XIII. It is not too late; “Come home to where you belong.” God grant them the grace to be able to say yes. Whether the C of E then falls apart is of no great import. It was founded on disobedience and, since it is not the True Church, will eventually crumble, but probably not yet - and least in the UK.