This story, and the Times' original headline for it - start off with the negatives, but the former Archbishop of Canterbury actually sees what may be good in Pope Benedict's opening to disaffected Anglicans.
Former Archbishop of Canterbury 'appalled'
by Pope's 'treatment' of his successor -
but sees the positive aspects nonetheless
by Ruth Gledhill
Oct. 24, 2009
Lord Carey of Clifton has called on his successor as Archbishop of Canterbury to complain to the Pope in person about not being consulted over plans to admit disaffected Anglicans to the Roman Catholic Church.
Lord Carey warned that the Pope’s strategy could damage relations with the Vatican. Lord Carey, who stepped down in 2002, urged Dr Rowan Williams to protest strongly when he visits the Pope in Rome next month.
Lord Carey was speaking after the joint press conference this week between Dr Williams and the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, to announce the move.
Under an apostolic constitution decree, the Pope will set up personal ordinariates, or extra-geographical Roman Catholic dioceses, such as those that already exist in the military, to take in former Anglicans who oppose women bishops and accept the Petrine ministry of Rome.
Dr Williams appeared distressed when he said at the press conference, hosted by the Roman Catholic Church in Eccleston Square, that he had known nothing of the initiative until two weeks ago.
He was notified formally only when Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, visited last weekend to fill in some of the detail.
The Times understands that the former Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, a former co-chairman of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, known as Arcic, tried unsuccessfully to stop the apostolic constitution being published. His protests and others’ concerns delayed its publication, intended for last February.
The two archbishops presented the constitution as “a response by Pope Benedict XVI to a number of requests over the past few years to the Holy See from groups of Anglicans who wish to enter into full visible communion with the Roman Catholic Church”.
They said: “The announcement ... brings to an end a period of uncertainty for such groups who have nurtured hopes of new ways of embracing unity with the Catholic Church.”
Lord Carey said that he, too, had been caught unawares by the development, which some insiders believe has dealt a death blow to 40 years of official ecumenical dialogue under the auspices of the Council for Christian Unity, if not to the Anglican Communion itself. The council was not involved in preparing the constitution.
[Why should it have been? ARCIC is the quintessential institution geared only for dialog, almost for perpetual dialog, because it sees reunification in terms of all or nothing, and has not geared itself at all for partial but concrete gains. As an interim measure directed at specific Anglican groups who have requested to rejoin Rome, the Apostolic Constitution is the business of Rome alone!]
He sought, however, to make the best of the development.
“I give it a very cautious welcome,” he said. “It is worth considering because there are a number of deeply worried, anxious Anglo-Catholics who do not believe they have a constructive future in the Church of England with the ordination of women as bishops.
“I was pastorally concerned for them when I was Archbishop of Canterbury. I know Rowan is as well. So this
could go a long way to helping.”
[So why indulge in a petty fit of pique because there was not enough 'consultation'? When Williams decided last summer that he was going to allow two 'tracks' in the Anglican Communion, he basically decided that women/homosexual priests and bishops were acceptable and legitimate in the Anglican Communion even if a significant number of its members opposed these practices as a betrayal of Christian Biblical teaching. No principled Christian could possibly accept such a decision that exacerbated the split within the Communion instead of resolving it.]
The Times has learnt it was reports of bishops emerging in tears from the General Synod meeting last July that rejected all provision for traditionalists that finally provoked Rome into offering them a home.
Lord Carey said that there were two positive aspects to the new Apostolic Constitution.
“This initiatve is almost a back door ecumenical gesture. What we have seen is the failure of the final report of Arcic. Straightforward ecumenism at the theological level is going nowhere. This fresh initiative could have surprising consequences.”
George Austin, former Archdeacon of York, said: “
Rome has done this cleverly because the Catholic bishops in England are liberal. The Pope has shown considerable leadership. That is what Popes do. What has surprised me is the sort of people, and number, who have said they will leave.”
Moment of truth
for Anglo-Catholics
Oct. 24, 2009
Be careful what you ask the Pope for, because he might just give it to you. That’s the truth slowly sinking in to attendees at the annual conference of Forward in Faith, held in London today.
For ages, many Anglo-Catholics have said they would come over to Rome, but on their own terms (not unreasonable ones, in my opinion). And now the Vatican has said: OK, you can have your own church-within-a-church, only for form’s sake we can’t call it that.
Uh-oh. Suddenly one or two Anglo-Catholics who used to bleat on about how the only obsctacle to coming over was the ghastly RC bishops’ conference are having second thoughts, even though that ghastly conference has been written out of the picture.
On the other hand, other Anglicans whom you would never expect to be attracted by a Roman offer are taking it seriously, so dramatic are its contents.
The “flying” Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Andrew Burnham, told the Forward in Faith meeting today:
“We are Western Christians, Catholics of the Latin Rite, separated from the Holy See.”
Well, now there’s a way to demonstrate that. It’s already clear that Burnham and most of the big guns in the Anglo-Catholic movement will join the Personal Ordinariate, surmounting practical problems. Most young priests will do likewise, I suspect.
Many lay people will be less keen, in some cases because (as one disillusioned Catholic convert put it yesterday) they’re as attached to their church buildings as they are to their faith.
We shouldn’t expect a definitive response from Anglo-Catholics for some months. But my gut feeling is that the Personal Ordinariate will work, and work well, though its final shape may surprise us. More on this later.
Other reports of the FIF meeting indicated a lot of surprising hostility - but now I have to seek out where I read that earlier today.
Also, John Allen's Friday column was a really lengthy discussion of the Anglican initiative, and here's the link:
ncronline.org/news/what-vaticans-welcome-anglicans-means
Too much could-be/would-be! I think, for now, we should sit back a bit, think back more leisurely over what we know now about what is after all an unprecedented development, and get ready for what the Apostolic Constitution will actually say - and all the explanations we will need afterwards, based on what is actually there, not on what one now thinks there may be.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/10/2009 02:11]