A couple of reports and commentaries have referred to the Cardinal Newman connection in the Holy Father's historic opening to converting Anglicans. Damian Thompson spells it out a bit more.
With his daring scheme for Anglicans,
Benedict XVI fulfils the hopes of Cardinal Newman
October 22, 2009
Was Pope Benedict XVI inspired by Cardinal John Henry Newman, whom it is hoped he will beatify in England next year, when he suddenly threw open the gates of Rome to disaffected Anglicans on Tuesday morning?
The official website for Newman’s Cause hinted as much when it greeted the announcement with a reminder of Newman’s support for a proposal to establish an Anglican Uniate Church for converts, similar to that provided for Byzantine-rite Catholics.
The plan was conceived by Ambrose Phillips de Lisle, and Newman rightly guessed that it would be unworkable. But if it could be made to work, he said, he was all in favour. As he wrote to de Lisle in 1876:
“Nothing will rejoice me more than to find that the Holy See considers it safe and promising to sanction some such plan as the Pamphlet suggests. I give my best prayers, such as they are, that some means of drawing to us so many good people, who are now shivering at our gates, may be discovered.”
And now it has been, thanks to Pope Benedict, who I hope will name his great scheme after Newman. I am sure the Pope is familiar with the reference to “shivering at the gates”, which William Oddie quotes in his book
The Roman Option, an account of the English bishops’ failure to meet Anglican pastoral needs in the early 1990s.
The then Cardinal Ratzinger is believed to have read the book, which reads as a dreadful reproach to a hierarchy which determinedly set up obstacles to Anglican corporate reunion. The bishops had no idea that those obstacles would be swept away with such force this week – and for a good reason: the Holy Father did not consult them.
As it is mainly a historical account of Cardinal Newman's involvement in the 19th-century back-to-Rome movement, I have posted the text of the Newman site's article in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread.
The initial commentary from the Spanish Vaticanista Jose Luis Restan also references Cardinal Newman.
The road back home
José Luis Restán
Translated from
22/10/2009
"Our first loyalty is to Christ, not towards the Anglican Communion. Jesus ordered us to be one single body... I feel committed to unity with the Bishop of Rome, and I have always hoped to die, even with any Catholic layman, with the rites of the Roman Church."
Those were the words of a young Anglican parish priest in Kent, southeast England, after the announcement by the Holy See, of the creation of a canonical structure to accommodate those Anglicans who have for years now sought full communion with the Catholic Church.
They are moving words that focus on the significance of this development.
It does not concern only the whims of a few thousand Anglican faithful because they oppose the decision of the Anglican Communion to ordain women and homosexuals. Nor is it a scheme by clever prelates in the Vatican to take advantage of the discontents in a Christian community that is in open decline.
It is much more serious and profound. Indeed, it has been over 150 years that deep tensions have characterized the Anglican churches. The great Cardinal John Henry Newman, whose beatification is expected to take place in 2010 (probably by the Pope himself), has left us a profound and sorrowful chronicle of his time that sheds light on what many Anglicans have understood and felt increasingly in recent years.
It tells of the growing consciousness that the treasure of the faith based on the Gospel and the tradition of the Fathers of the Church can only be found with full accommodation, defense and support, in the Catholic Church presided over by the Successors of Peter.
This consciousness has become more intense to the degree that the Anglican Communion itself has evolved its internal 'Protestantization', and to the degree that the professed faith as well as ecclesiastical discipline in essential matters has increasingly gone into the hands of liberal majorities in congregations dominated by political logic and the media's sense of the times.
The ordination of women and homosexuals as priests and bishops could well have been the fuse but it does not indicate the real root of the problem, as the Kent priest's words indicate.
After almost two decades of patient dialog with these Anglican brothers, Benedict XVI has expressed his openness to them in the form of Personal Ordinariates for Anglican converts, similar to the Prelature of the Opus Dei or military vicariates.
In this way, they may be inserted directly and fully into the Catholic communion, while keeping their liturgical and spiritual traditions.
It is a daring move which has not failed to elicit resentment in some Catholic circles and in the Church of England. But the Pope has once again decided on a valiant measure in the interest of unity, responding to the authentic desire and hazardous path chosen by those who have knocked on Peter's door.
And what will those critics now say who claim Benedict XVI does not govern?
It is not a path of roses that faces those thousands of faithful, priests and bishops who want to return to the mother house. They will be beset by criticism and incomprehension, and they will have to deal with practical problems that have to do with family, finances and their social life.
Most Anglican priests are married, but they may continue to be priests once they are re-ordained in the Catholic rite. But married bishops may not be Catholic bishops, since episcopal celibacy is the rule even in the Orthodox and Eastern churches.
But they will all have to profess their adherence to the totality of Catholic doctrine as it is spelled out in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
With great humility, Archbishop John Hepworth of Blackwood, Australia - primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion - said: "This is much more than we dared to dream and to ask for in our prayers... It is an act of great goodness on the part of the Holy Fahter, who has dedicated his Pontificate to the cause of unity."
It is a day of joy for the universal Church, but in Lambeth Palace, residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, there is no hiding the bitterness - even if the Church of England recognizes the right of their members to find their own way and has declared that the development will not break its ecumenical dialog with the Roman Catholic Church towards eventual unification.
But it is obvious that this represents a further deterioration in the fabric of the Anglican Communion which Williams's mediation has failed to avoid. The wound caused by Henry VIII's schism has not been closed, but the damage it has caused has become more obvious.
With his paternal gesture, Benedict XVI has reached out to the hearts of thousands of Anglican brothers who, like Newman in his day, will be taking the road to Rome - the road back home - with humility and determination.
And that, even in Canterbury, they can well understand.
The Newman article I posted in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread refers to the fact that Pope Benedict XVI has been working on this more-than-rapprochement with Anglicans wishing to 'come home' for 20 years - I made a note to check that out - and also to a 1990s book by an English author about such a possibility.
Fr. Dwight Longenecker, an ex-Anglican priest who now serves in the diocese of Charleston, North Carolina, who writes extensively for Catholic media, gives us the proper background and information on his blog today.
Ratzinger and the Anglicans
by Fr. Dwight Longenecker
Oct. 22, 2009
For ten years I was an Anglican priest, and for ten years I was a Catholic layman in England. I worked for the St Barnabas Society - a charity that quietly assists convert clergy as they convert to the Catholic Church...
Although the Archbishop of Canterbury is dismayed that the Personal Ordinariate project was popped on him as a surprise move at a 'very late stage' it can't have come as much of a surprise. This thing has been cooking for years.
We can trace the development of it back to the early 90's when the Church of England was debating the ordination of women. When the CofE General Synod voted to ordain women in 1992 high level Anglicans were already in discussions with Rome.
The retired Bishop of London - Graham Leonard was not only in talks with Cardinal Basil Hume, but also with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the CDF. I believe Ratzinger was sympathetic to the Anglo Catholics even then, and I know that a personal friendship developed between Cardinal Ratzinger and (now) Mgr. Leonard.
At the same time the Catholic convert journalist William Oddie wrote a book called
The Roman Option in which he argued for an Anglo- Catholic 'church' in communion with Rome which looks very like what we now have as the Personal Ordinariate.
Oddie also criticized the Catholic bishops in England for inhibiting such an option because it was 'unworkable' and 'damaging to ecumenical relations with the Anglicans'. Oddie was subsequently marginalized and treated as a pariah by the English Catholic establishment.
What has happened in the intervening seventeen years? First of all the Anglican Church has continued its slide into secular relativism.
I can remember discussing women's ordination with my Parochial Church Council (local parish governing body) in 1990. I said, "Mark my words. You are debating women's ordination now. In ten years' time you will be debating homosexual marriage." They were angry and incredulous.
As the Anglican Church was dominated by the feminist/homosexualist lobby the 'historic Christians' (my term for those who hold to the historic faith once delivered to the saints) became more and more marginalized. Increasingly they saw their true home to be either Rome (for the Anglo Catholics) or sectarianism (for the Anglo Evangelicals)
In the meantime Joseph Ratzinger ascends the throne of Peter. Realizing that it was the professional ecumenists along with the liberal Catholic bishops in England who stood in the way, he shifts the process to the CDF and away from Walter Kasper's ecumenical dicastery.
He waits for the retirement of the good, but ineffectual Cormac Murphy O'Connor - who was for many years a leading light in the establishment ARCIC (Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission) talks and, one of the old style ecumenists.
With Levada at the CDF and [having placed] Archbishop Nichols in Westminster [to succeed Murphy O'Connor] the time was right to move.
While Nichols was originally a protege of Cardinal Hume and an inside member of what Damien Thompson calls the 'Magic Circle' of liberal English bishops, Nichols (who cynics say knows how to trim his sail according to the wind) seems to have become more conservative--supporting new ecclesial movements in his time at Birmingham and ordaining (among others) the married former Anglican priest and theologian John Saward.
There are several other things that remain mysterious about the timing of the move. First of all, it is strange that an Apostolic Constitution should be announced at such short notice, and without the thing being ready for publication.
[Cardnal Levada said it will be in two weeks. And I think the 'short notice' was because the Vatican has learned from the FSSPX fiasco in January that it is never wise to telegraph your intentions ahead of time - because the spoilers will certainly move in and hijack it, as they did with the excom recall. In that case, subsequent reconstruction of known facts and dates has apparently established that the leak came from Cardinal Re at the Congregation of Bishops who alerted his sources as early as September 2008 [a Spanish blogger friend of his blogged about it at the time], and that is why Swedish TV was able to lay the trap for Bishop Williamson in Germany in November 2008.]
We can only guess that the move was made when it was because Walter Kasper was out of town and it saved face for everyone.
[Kasper is at the Mixed International Commission Theological session in Cyprus between the Orthodox Churches and the Catholic Church.]
Why was the Archbishop of Canterbury not consulted? Why was it a surprise move for the Anglicans too? Well, why bother to consult when you already know the answer?
Pope Benedict has been working with these people for decades. He knew they would only stall, ask for 'further clarification', dig in their heels and throw up endless obstacles. The Pope understands that there has been enough talk, enough diplomacy, enough listening and dialogue, and sometimes you have to act.
Benedict will be seen as a kind of Ronald Reagan of the Vatican. When Reagan got to the White House he discovered that the established way of dealing with the Soviets was detente, talk, talk, talk and more talk. He decided that victory was in his grasp and proposed a firm confrontation. "Mr Brezhnev, pull down that wall!" His professional statesmen and diplomats were shocked at his 'foolishness.' But it worked. Communism was already fragile all it needed was a puff of air to knock it down completely.
Pope Benedict's move this week will have similar impact in the world of Christian dialogue. With Personal Ordinariates, not only have the professional ecumenists been shown the way forward, but
the duplicitous liberal Catholic bishops who would have stalled, moved it into 'discussion groups' and presented 'further obstacles' have also been very effectively gone around.
No longer will a gifted, willing and able convert priest have to wait years to be ordained and in the meantime be pushed from pillar to post by Catholic bishops who are driven by a liberal agenda that is actually illiberal.
Finally, the English and Americans should stop being so parochial and offended.
Pope Benedict did not make this move to offend the Church of England or to poach people from the Episcopal Church. He was responding to pleas from people who have already left or are planning to leave the Anglican Church.
Furthermore, he is aware of the tremendous growth of both the Catholic and Anglican Churches in the developing world. I believe he has his eye on the faithful Catholics and Anglicans in Africa and Asia, and that he hopes this move will enable them to join together in a young, new and energetic alliance for the twenty first century.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/10/2009 19:35]