Churches Head For A Showdown In Rome

[cappie]

The Archbishop of Westminster has blamed Church of England bishops for keeping their leader in the dark about the Pope’s attempts to entice Anglicans to Rome.

As the Archbishop of Canterbury prepared to visit Pope Benedict XVI for the first time since plans to admit Anglican opponents of women priests into the Catholic faith were published, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, deepened the row.

Archbishop Nicholls said that it had been the “duty” of the Anglicans involved in the talks to keep their primate informed about the Pope’s plans.

The Archbishop was defending the Pope against accusations of discourtesy after he failed to alert Dr Williams of the proposals for an Apostolic Constitution, or decree to set up a new Anglican ordinariate. The announcement was sprung on a distressed Dr Williams last month with barely two weeks’ notice.

In an interview with The Tablet, Archbishop Nichols declined to comment on the accusation from the Anglican Bishop of Southwark, Dr Tom Butler, who accused the Holy See of discourtesy in failing to consult Dr Williams.

Archbishop Nichols said: “While approaches had been made to the Holy See, I don’t think that had been conveyed to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Frankly it was the duty of the Anglicans to do that.”

The Apostolic Constitution, published by the Vatican this month, enables thousands of disaffected Anglicans to become Catholics. Married Anglican clergy will be allowed to train for the priesthood in seminaries set up within the new Anglican ordinariates. The admission of married men will be “on a case-by-case basis”.

It even allows for married Anglican bishops to be granted the status of retired Catholic bishops, to become members of the local Catholic bishops’ conference and to be allowed to use the “insignia” of episcopal office, such as the mitre, pectoral cross and staff.

Former Catholic priests who left the Church to marry and subsequently became Anglican clergymen will not be permitted to return. More than one in ten Church of England priests who converted to Roman Catholicism over the ordination of women priests have returned to ministry in the established Anglican Church, according to figures released to The Times. Such priests have warned Anglican clergy against going over, with one saying that he had not been made welcome in Catholic churches.

A total of 441 clergy received compensation payments worth £27.5 million when they left the Church of England after the General Synod voted to ordain women priests in 1992. Of these, 260 went to the Catholic Church. Thirty-three have returned to stipendiary ministry in the Church of England.

Senior Catholics sought yesterday to quash speculation that the Pope’s visit to Britain next September had been downgraded from a State to a pastoral visit because of the dispute over the new Anglican Ordinariate.

The Queen, who was expected to host the Pope at Buckingham Palace, made no mention of a Papal visit in the Queen’s Speech yesterday. A Church source said that this was because the visit was not due to take place until the end of next year. Downing Street declined to comment.

[url="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6922455.ece"]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6922455.ece[/url]

[cappie]

Outreach to former Anglicans not model of ecumenism, archbishop says

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

ROME (CNS) -- Calling Pope Benedict XVI's arrangement for Anglicans wanting to become Roman Catholics "the elephant in the room," the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion said the pope's move was nothing groundbreaking from an ecumenical viewpoint.

Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury spoke Nov. 19 at Rome's Pontifical Gregorian University at a conference marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of the late Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, a pioneer in Catholic ecumenism.

While the archbishop's address focused on efforts over the last 40 years by the Roman Catholic Church and Anglican Communion to promote full unity, he said he obviously had to mention Pope Benedict's apostolic constitution establishing "personal ordinariates" -- structures similar to dioceses -- for Anglicans wanting to enter into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

The papal document was released by the Vatican Nov. 9. It allows the former Anglicans to continue using their liturgies; permits the ordination as Catholic priests of Anglican clergy, including married men; and establishes a governing council of priests to advise and, in some cases, make decisions along with the local ordinary.

Archbishop Williams said the constitution was "an imaginative pastoral response to the needs of some" Anglicans who felt their church was moving in the wrong direction, particularly over questions related to the ordination of women and the acceptance of homosexual behavior.

Allowing the Anglicans to maintain elements of their Anglican heritage "shows some marks of the recognition that diversity of ethos does not in itself compromise the unity of the Catholic Church," the archbishop said.

However, he said, it does not fulfill one of the goals of ecumenism, which is to bring Christian churches into full unity without one denomination absorbing another.

The papal document, he said, "does not build in any formal recognition of existing ministries or units of oversight or methods of independent decision-making," such as an Anglican synod that would include laity, "but remains at the level of spiritual and liturgical culture, we might say."

Archbishop Williams said, "It remains to be seen whether the flexibility suggested in the constitution might ever lead to something less like a chaplaincy and more like a church gathered around a bishop."

In addition to speaking at the conference, Archbishop Williams was to meet with leaders of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and other Vatican officials and was scheduled to meet Nov. 21 with Pope Benedict.

[Apotheoun]

Below is a link to the text of the Archbishop of Canterbury's address:

[url="http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/2616"]Archbishop's address at a Willebrands Symposium in Rome[/url]

[Gregorius]

[quote name='cappie' date='19 November 2009 - 04:59 PM' timestamp='1258667956' post='2005814']
[u][b]However, he said, it does not fulfill one of the goals of ecumenism, which is to bring Christian churches into full unity without one denomination absorbing another.[/b][/u]


[/quote]
For some reason, I thought relativism wasn't part of ecumenism either.

[Resurrexi]

The whole point of ecumenism is to convert people to Catholicism. The Apostolic Constitution [i]Anglicanorum Coetibus[/i] is a perfect example of true ecumenism.

[Archaeology cat]

[quote name='Resurrexi' date='20 November 2009 - 01:20 AM' timestamp='1258680015' post='2005927']
The whole point of ecumenism is to convert people to Catholicism. The Apostolic Constitution [i]Anglicanorum Coetibus[/i] is a perfect example of true ecumenism.
[/quote]
Exactly.

[OraProMe]

[quote name='Resurrexi' date='19 November 2009 - 08:20 PM' timestamp='1258680015' post='2005927']
The whole point of ecumenism is to convert people to Catholicism. The Apostolic Constitution [i]Anglicanorum Coetibus[/i] is a perfect example of true ecumenism.
[/quote]

That doesn't seem to be the M.O when it comes to the Orthodox.

[OraProMe]

I honestly don't think that the Apostolic Constitution is about conversion, atleast for the Anglicans. If you read what a lot of the Anglican clergy and laity are saying it's all about escaping a bad situation in the CofE and finding a place where they can be free from women priests. Very few have actually said "I'm going over because Rome is the only true Church and the denomination I belonged to all my life is heretical".

If the Anglo-Catholics really did believe Catholic ecclesiology and EENS then they wouldn't have waited 20 years for this Apostolic Constitution before coming into the Church.

Edited November 20, 2009 by OraProMe

[Winchester]

The Church of England was founded by a murderer.

[cappie]

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, delivered an impassioned, far-reaching and controversial speech in Rome yesterday on the future of Anglican-Catholic relations. Not surprisingly, it’s generated a great deal of equally impassioned comment. Here’s a selection:

Carl Olson of Ignatius Insight:

Dr Williams seems to be concerned more about arranging deck chairs than dealing with the massive holes in the hull of the Anglican ship. And that, of course, is his business. It’s understandable he might be feeling a bit concerned about the shaking and splintering of the ship beneath him. But why does he think the Catholic Church would ever consider climbing aboard to accept his sad offer of weak tea and stale cookies?

“Spirit of Vatican II”, an anonymous writer who left a comment on the Thinking Anglicans blog:

Rowan Williams’ speech is a glorious statement – majestically mature theology that shows up the pettiness of curial obsessions, without using a single ungracious word. At long last Anglicanism has given its reply to years of petty carping from the Vatican. The reply is just common sense at one level: ‘Cannot we agree to disagree fraternally about minor matters?’ On another level it reflects the full tide of ecumenical dialogue over the last century and the mind of one steeped in New Testament ideals and praxis of koinonia.

Is anyone in the Vatican, even Cardinal Kasper, capable of responding to this with equal breadth and wholeness of vision?

Fr Dwight Longenecker, author of the Standing on My Head blog:

What is really revealed is the depth of his blindness about the real situation between the churches. Can it be that even now he is defending women’s ordination and therefore women’s elevation to the episcopate? He may defend it in his own backyard, but is it possible that he really thinks the Catholic church has not decided on this? Does he honestly think the Pope is going to say, ‘Errm. I guess we flubbed on that one. For you guys it is obviously working really well. I mean your church is going from glory to glory. Is it too late to jump on the bandwagon?’

Blogger and Anglican Bishop Alan Wilson:

Rowan Williams’ lecture in Rome marks an interesting reframing of ecumenical futures. There is, of course, the conventional RC model. The Church achieves the Unity for which Jesus prayed when every Christian in the world submits to it as a Divinely sanctioned Imperium. Or try the Protestant version. Structural and organisational convergence will somehow produce a complex multiplanar hybrid. Everyone trades in their old but coherent structural and accountability models to the shining new one. Unity remains a future goal, and we all have to make it happen.

The blogger Anglican Samizdat:

Where has Rowan been for the last three years? The Anglican communion is proof that the church can’t stay together once internal differences become as stark as they are now. I understand that once Rowan has convinced the Pope of the benefits of women bishops he will be travelling to Saudi Arabia to plead the case for women imams.

Andrew Brown of the Guardian:

The nearest I could get to his message to the pope is ‘Forgive us our women, as we forgive those who trespass against us’ but that can’t be right. For one thing the church of Rome is not about to forgive women priests.

Orthodox Christian blogger Ad Orientum:

The Archbishop of Canterbury has effectively told Pope Benedict XVI where to put his proposed Anglican Ordinariate… I am going to take an educated guess that this is not going to go over well in the Vatican. Oh, to be a fly on the wall when he meets the Pope in private.

Catholic apologist Patrick Madrid:

In related news, a junior-high science teacher in Dismal Seepage, Illinois, is urging the dean of the MIT science department to change his mind about the law of gravity.

Tom Heneghan of Reuters:

His argument seemed unlikely to convince the Vatican, which sees the disarray among Anglicans as proof that churches need clear doctrines and firm leadership.

[url="http://lukecoppen.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/mixed-reactions-to-dr-williamss-rome-speech/"]http://lukecoppen.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/mixed-reactions-to-dr-williamss-rome-speech/[/url]

[cappie]

To assist all Church of England priests in deciding what their next step should be, we are glad to publish this Discernment Chart. Which will be definitive at least until the next group comes up with some bright idea, like joining the Methodists.

[url="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0FVjxh_C4w4/SwSQ8Qlb1LI/AAAAAAAAAK0/fva_RM6xSdI/s1600/c+of+e+priest+discernment+chart.jpg"]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0FVjxh_C4w4/SwSQ8Qlb1LI/AAAAAAAAAK0/fva_RM6xSdI/s1600/c+of+e+priest+discernment+chart.jpg[/url]

Edited November 20, 2009 by cappie

[Nihil Obstat]

Here's a blog post from the Midwest Conservative Journal. The author considers himself an Anglo-Catholic, I believe, but from all I've read from him so far he seems to be just looking for the next opportunity to change over to Roman Catholic.

LA, LA, LA, LA, LA!!

Thursday, November 19th, 2009 | Uncategorized | 16 Comments

ROWAN WILLIAMS CAN’T HEAR YOU!!

[b]Let me give an outline of what I want to say in the half an hour or so available. The strong convergence in these agreements about what the Church of God really is, is very striking. The various agreed statements of the churches stress that the Church is a community, in which human beings are made sons and daughters of God, and reconciled both with God and one another. The Church celebrates this through the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion in which God acts upon us to transform us ‘in communion’. More detailed questions about ordained ministry and other issues have been framed in this context.[/b]

Debatable. If your Christian tradition allows a person into a position of church leadership who denies all tenets of the Christian faith(i. e. John Shelby Spong) and then makes no effort whatsoever to remove that man or even express a corporate rebuke of him, your alleged “agreement about what the Church of God really is” can and should be called into serious question by anyone with a functioning intellect.

[b]Therefore the major question that remains is whether in the light of that depth of agreement the issues that still divide us have the same weight
[/b]
Yes.

[b]issues about authority in the Church, about primacy (especially the unique position of the pope),
[/b]
Yes.

[b]and the relations between the local churches and the universal church in making decisions (about matters like the ordination of women, for instance).
[/b]
Yes.

[b]Are they theological questions in the same sense as the bigger issues on which there is already clear agreement?
[/b]
Given that they presuppose two readings of Scripture that are fundamentally at odds, I’d have to go with yes here too.

[b]And if they are, how exactly is it that they make a difference to our basic understanding of salvation and communion?
[/b]
See above.

[b]But if they are not, why do they still stand in the way of fullervisible unity?
[/b]
Ditto.

[b]Can there, for example, be a model of unity as a communion of churches which have different attitudes to how the papal primacy is expressed?
[/b]
Given the following, I’m thinking not.

[b]It is of course impossible to open up these issues without some brief reference to issues of very immediate interest in the lives of the Anglican and Roman Catholic communions. The current proposals for a Covenant between Anglican provinces represent an effort to create not a centralised decision-making executive but a ‘community of communities’ that can manage to sustain a mutually nourishing and mutually critical life, with all consenting to certain protocols of decision-making together. As Harvesting notes, Anglicans have been challenged to flesh out their rhetoric about communion through the crises and controversies of recent years, and this is simply part of a variegated response that will, no doubt, continue for a good while yet to be refined and formulated.
[/b]
In other words, a church that can actually decide stuff now and then can be in communion with a church that avoids actual decisions like the plague. Can’t see it happening, Your Grace. And I doubt that the Holy Father can see it happening either.



Ooh, it's not clear when it's unformatted, he's responding to Rowan Williams. Let me try to reformat... Ok, Rowan Williams is bolded, like the original.

Edited November 20, 2009 by Nihil Obstat

[Apotheoun]

I think that Rowan Williams can - and does - hear what the Catholic Church is saying about communion, but in spite of what he hears he wants to create a type of Christian unity that mirrors what is found in the Anglican communion. In other words, he wants a universal impaired communion among all the different branches of Christianity, but clearly this type of impaired communion does not correspond to what Christ willed for His Church, for as He said, "Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one" (John 17:11). Christ and the Father do not share an impaired communion, and nor should Christians within the Church.

Edited November 20, 2009 by Apotheoun

[Nihil Obstat]

I think he wants a communion in which it's ok to be blatantly wrong.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' date='20 November 2009 - 01:29 PM' timestamp='1258748989' post='2006342']
I think he wants a communion in which it's ok to be blatantly wrong.
[/quote]
I think he would be okay with a situation that creates communion between Orthodox believers and Arians, Docetists, Gnostics, Nestorians, Iconoclasts, et al., and probably even pagans.