BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

The critics of the Church often completely ignore logic (and therefore reason) in their arguments. How can the Vatican be divisive in this matter, when the Anglicans were already seriously divided - and Benedict XVI's action is simply a response to one of the sides in that division?


Leftist critics say Vatican 'divisive'
in welcoming disaffected Anglicans
by Hillary White


VATICAN CITY, October 22, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The battle lines in the culture wars within both the Anglican and Catholic Churches have become clearly visible with the announcement of new provisions to bring traditionally-minded Christian Anglicans into the Catholic Church in groups.

Some are accusing the Vatican of having torpedoed the remains of the rapidly deteriorating Worldwide Anglican Communion with its surprise announcement by Cardinal Levada, the head of the Vatican's doctrinal office on Tuesday.

Although officially denied by the Vatican [??? In July 2008, Cardinal Levada's letter to the TAC acknowledging that the Vatican was studying the latter's request to rejoin Rome was being studied!], it is being widely acknowledged that the move has been in response to overtures by the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), the largest of the "conservative breakaway" groups.

The TAC has objected to the Anglican Churches' decisions to ordain women to the clergy and episcopate and to embrace homosexual activity as equal to natural sexual relations, as well as other deviations from traditional Christian teaching.

After decades of apparently fruitless "ecumenical dialogue," observers have said the Pope has taken the matter into his own hands and offered a refuge to Anglicans who adhere to the tenets of classical, biblical Christianity.

The doctrinal orthodoxy in the TAC on life and family issues, as well as liturgical questions, give a clue to the true nature of the objections to the Vatican's move by both Catholic and Anglican "progressives," liberals and feminists.

Bishop Carl Reid of the TAC in Canada told LifeSiteNews.com, "When it comes to issues of morality, especially family and pro-life, our membership is very strongly on the same page as are Roman Catholics."

Commentators on the left are already saying the decision is "divisive," with Toronto's Globe and Mail, in an unsigned editorial on Wednesday, calling it "a Trojan horse" and a "one sided attempt to reconcile faiths." "It appears to enhance Christian goodwill while inflaming the doctrinal battles between and within the two churches."

While leaders of the disintegrating Anglican Church had no choice but to accept, "Catholics who look for flexibility from their own leadership for themselves, over doctrinal and moral questions - communion for divorcees, abortion, female ordination - get the party line," the Globe and Mail said.

At Tuesday's press conference at the Vatican, Catholic News Service (CNS) correspondent Cindy Wooden brought up the theme of "divisiveness," asking Cardinal Levada whether the decision could be "harmful to the ecumenical movement when you're saying to a dissenting segment of the Anglican Communion that they share the one true faith and you're saying to the rest of them, 'we still have a lot of work to do.'" {Just another instance when you wonder on which side CNS is!]

In the UK's Independent, Paul Vallely noted that the decision is not likely to gain much support from the Catholic bishops of England, who have been "reluctant to open the door wide to traditionalist Anglicans."

Such groups, Vallely wrote, because of their more traditionally orthodox stand on doctrine and liturgy, are "out of step with modern Catholicism" as it is practiced and preached by the largest segment of the bishops. [In many ways, the dissident bishops of England and Wales are even more insupportable than their German counterparts. They'll yet end up being the first Catholics to endorse sharia law everywhere!]

The Guardian, the voice of liberalism in the UK, wrote that the decision means the Pope has "launched a small craft to ferry the disaffected back across the Tiber, a move to asset-strip the Anglican communion of those bits the Vatican might find useful." The move, the editorial said, "ride(s) roughshod over 40 years of ecumenical work."

Damian Thompson, the Daily Telegraph blogs editor and the editor of the UK's Catholic Herald newspaper, has indicated that the objections to the forthcoming Apostolic Constitution, that will make the provisions official, are not only coming from journalists.

He wrote today that insiders at Lambeth Palace, the "Vatican" of the Anglican Communion, and the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, are "implacably opposed" to the new provisions.

Thompson reports that a "good source in Rome" has informed him that Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams "put pressure on Vatican ecumenists to stop the Apostolic Constitution being issued."

Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican's chief ecumenist and long-time opponent of the former Cardinal Ratzinger, was notably absent from the Vatican's press conference.

The Apostolic Constitution is said to be entirely the work of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and to have largely left Cardinal Kasper out of the loop.

At the press conference in London, held simultaneously with the meeting in Rome, Rowan Williams said that the Vatican's announcement does not "disrupt business as usual" in the "mainstream" of ecumenical dialogues. "As we speak, preparations are going forward for further informal talks," he said.

He made the remarks despite the statement last year from Cardinal Kasper, who said that the decision by the Anglican Communion to ordain women as bishops had effectively brought the ecumenical process to a halt. [Kasper obviously laid down the line from the Pope, as on his own, he would never admit that. Only last week, he held a news conference at the Vatican touting a book by his dicastery on the 'rich harvest' of the ecumenical process so far! - apparently forgetting what he was presumably constrained to say at the Lambeth Conference.]

"Although our dialogue has led to a significant agreement on the idea of priesthood," he said, the decision "blocks substantially and finally a possible recognition of Anglican orders by the Catholic Church."

Some observers have acknowledged what was said in the Vatican's own press release, that the move is plainly an outreach to Anglicans who reject the ultra-liberal direction on sexual issues of the Anglican Communion in the west.

Writing on the website of Catholic Culture, the pseudonymous blogger "Diogenes" said bluntly that the decision has enraged the "progressivists" because those coming into the Catholic Church "will be active in practice, theologically aware, and proportionately resistant to gay and feminist faddishness."

Philip Lawler, founder of Catholic World News, cautioned, however, that some Anglicans may not be looking across the Tiber with much enthusiasm. Also at Catholic Culture, Lawler wrote, "Conservative Anglicans might glance nervously at the Catholic parishes in their neighborhood, notice the theological novelties and the liturgical abuses, and wonder whether they might be leaving one untenable situation only to enter into another." [I am sure they are well aware of the widespread secular infection in the Catholic Church, and they're not doing this with any illusions. Yes, there are errant Catholics, but so far, the Church itself and the Pope have remained steadfast in the faith as handed down from the apostles. And that's something the Church of England no longer offers.]

Meanwhile, the feminist and homosexual "faddishness" of the most liberal sections of the Anglican Communion continues. This July, in defiance of an official moratorium, the Episcopal Church in the U.S. (ECUSA) approved a resolution to continue consecrating homosexual bishops. ECUSA is set to install a virulently pro-abortion lesbian candidate for the bishopric of Minnesota.



I meant to post this earlier, after I had lifted from it the quotation from St. Edward the Confessor.

Thoughts on the Anglican initiative
by PATRICH ARCHBOLD

Oct. 22, 2009


On History

It continues to be my belief that one day Pope Benedict the XVI will be remembered as the great unifier. The Pope who began a process that will eventually lead to one flock and one shepherd. There will likely be much pain between now and then but the day is coming when we will all be one again. When we get there, Pope Benedict will be widely regarded as the beginning.

On Ecumenism

One of the reasons PB will be regarded as the Father of Unity is that he has finally rejected the fruitless ecumenism of the past decades. Oh sure, much lip service has been given by the Vatican and Nichols and Williams to the ecumenical process, but the truth is that it had nothing to do with it.

In fact, in order to get this done Pope Benedict has to avoid all the usual channels. Archbishop Nichols and Rowan Williams didn't learn about it until about ten minutes before we did. But the most glaring evidence that the old ecumenism is dead is that Cardinal Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (our head ecumenist) was not allowed within 1000 yards of any microphone during this process. [We now know he was safely out of range in Cyprus, co-chairing the Catholic-Orthodox theological dialog that was supposed to get on with studying the role of the Papacy in the first millennium when the Church was undivided.]

If it had been up to the old ecumenical guard this never would have happened. So the Pope just bypassed them all. Sometimes its good to be Pope.

On the Press

As usual, the bulk of the press managed to misrepresent the whole thing. As usual, they are entirely focused on the married priests bit and about the politics of the whole thing and with anti-gay misogyny underlying the whole thing. That said, there were some bright spots.

One of those spots is a headline used by Ruth Gledhill. While unfair and inaccurate it did make me laugh. "Rome parks tanks on Rowan's lawn." Nice! And of course Damian Thompson continues to delight lovers of snark everywhere!

On Liberalism

Liberals in the Church are rightfully beside themselves. They have always pretended to be for ecumenism so they try to maintain the pretense that this is a good thing. But, as we all know, ecumenism in their minds meant that we become more like them, not the other way around. This has gotta hurt.

Fr. Rutler rightly says that this is "total repudiation of the ordination of women, homosexual marriage and the general neglect of doctrine in Anglicanism" And liberal Catholicism I might add.

As a result we see some of the predictable whinings of the Catholic left, but this is merely the snorts and grunts of dinosaurs as they watch the giant asteroid come throught the atmosphere. [Great metaphor!]

On Names

My one problem with this whole thing is the term "personal ordinariates." I am sorry, this just won't do. I simply cannot say this term three times in a row with a blood alcohol level of .04 or above. We have to come up with a better term than this. I would even prefer non-geographical flying dioceses. NGFDs for short.

On Diversity

Why is it that the same people who love diversity in all its other shapes and forms, detest it when it applies to anyone or anything orthodox? You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

[Mr. Archbold ends with the Edward the Confessor quote, which he labels 'Prophecy'.]



And from Father Z, this excellent homage:


THE POPE OF CHRISTIAN UNITY
by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Oct. 22, 2009


My idea is that we should start to refer to Pope Benedict XVI as …
... the Pope of Christian Unity.

It becomes clearer each year that Benedict goes beyond his immediate predecessors, but always in continuity with them, in promoting Christian unity.

His efforts in this direction can be seen on several fronts:

1) with the Orthodox in general, and the Russian Orthodox in particular;
2) with the SSPX;
3) with the Anglicans.

I can hear it now.

"But Father! But Father!", my liberal readers will say, squirming. "Pope Benedict’s efforts with the SSPX and with the Anglican trads are not really about ‘Christian unity’! They aren’t even endorsed by many high-ranking Catholic prelates or conspicuous newspaper theologians!"

Exactly.

That is precisely why Pope Benedict is preeminently the Pope of Christian Unity.

Pope Benedict has been struggling against forces within his own fold to achieve Christian unity.

His is decidedly not the unity that liberals (Richard McBrien, Gerald O’Collins) have in mind when they think of Christian unity, with its watered-down version of Roman primacy, liturgy, catechesis, sexual ethics and church discipline. In other words, a Christian unity without a Christian identity (christian with a small ‘c’).

No, Benedict’s unity is real unity, true unity that costs something, that stretches people, but that does not compromise what is essential to the Church.

This is not Rahner’s "world church" where anything and anyone goes. It is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church founded by Christ Jesus.

Benedict’s true ecumenism is consonant with everything we are as a Church.

People are going to be stretched, but absolutely nothing essential will be given away.

You see where I am going with this.

Liberals want ecumenism only with those whom they want in their sort of church.

They want ecumenical dialogue with those who agree with the manifestos of, for example, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

But true ecumenism is not about compromise on essentials, giving away fundamental elements of our Catholic identity.

True ecumenism requires that we be stretched, to be sure, but that we submit. We stretch, but we give nothing essential away.

The liberal model of ecumenism gives nearly anything for the sake of bringing in their sort of compromised Christian.

Pope Benedict is the true ecumenist.

He is the Pope of Christian Unity.


The Wall Street Journal ran another woeful article today by Francis Rocca, who is identified the Vatican correspondent for Religion News Service, entitled "The Pope lets a thousand liturgies bloom It is well-meaning but has so many erroneous assumptions in it - Fr. Z actually fisked part of it, but not enough, I think - nonetheless, here is the link to the fisked article, posted 10/23.
wdtprs.com/blog/