Senior Anglican bishop reveals
he is ready to convert to Roman Catholicism:
Move could spark exodus of clergy
By Jonathan Wynne-Jones
Religious Affairs Correspondent
Oct. 24, 2009
The Rt Rev John Hind, the Bishop of Chichester, has announced he is considering becoming a Roman Catholic in a move that could spark an exodus of clergy
Hundreds of traditionalist clergy could join the exodus, though most are waiting for the exact details of the new apostolic constitution to be published.
Bishop Hind said he would be "happy" to be reordained as a Catholic priest and said that divisions in Anglicanism could make it impossible to stay in the church.
He is the most senior Anglican to admit that he is prepared to accept the offer from the Pope, who shocked the Church of England last week when he paved the way for clergy to convert to Catholicism in large numbers.
In a further blow to the Archbishop of Canterbury's hopes of preventing the Anglican Communion from disintegrating, other bishops have cast doubt over its survival.
The Rt Rev John Broadhurst, the Bishop of Fulham, even claimed that "the Anglican experiment is over". He said it has been shown to be powerless to cope with the crises over gays and women bishops.
In one of the most significant developments since the Reformation, the Pope last week announced that a new structure would be set up to allow disaffected Anglicans to enter full communion with Rome, while maintaining parts of their Protestant heritage.
The move comes after secret talks between the Vatican and a group of senior Anglican bishops. Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was not informed of the meetings and his advisers even denied that they had taken place when the
Sunday Telegraph broke the story last year.
Now
Bishop Hind, the most senior traditionalist in the Church of England, has confirmed that he is willing to sacrifice his salary and palace residence to defect to the Catholic Church.
"This is a remarkable new step from the Vatican," he said. "At long last there are some choices for Catholics in the Church of England. I'd be happy to be reordained into the Catholic Church."
While the bishop stressed that this would depend on his previous ministry being recognised, he said that the divisions in the Anglican Communion could make it impossible to stay.
"How can the Church exist if bishops are not in full communion with each other," he said.
Conservative archbishops and bishops have broken ties with their liberal counterparts following the US Episcopal Church's consecration of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop.
Bishop Broadhurst said that the Pope has made his offer in response to the pleas of Anglicans who despair at the disintegration of their Church.
"
Anglicanism has become a joke because it has singularly failed to deal with any of its contentious issues," said the bishop, who is chairman of Forward in Faith, the Anglo-Catholic network that represents around 1,000 traditionalist priests.
"There is widespread dissent across the [Anglican] Communion. We are divided in major ways on major issues and the Communion has unravelled.
"I believed in the Church I joined, but it has been revealed to have no doctrine of its own.
"I personally think it has gone past the point of no return. The Anglican experiment is over."
The Rt Rev Martyn Jarrett, the Bishop of Beverley, also said there were questions over the church's survival, adding that the Church of England has changed too dramatically for some traditionalists.
"They are beginning to reflect that the theological position of the Church isn't what they believe," he said.
"The offer from the Vatican is momentous and I felt a great sense of gratitude that the Roman Catholic Church is thinking about the position of traditionalist Anglicans."
Clergy at the Forward in Faith conference, which met in Westminster yesterday, expressed relief that the Pope had provided them with an escape route.
Fr Ed Tomlinson, vicar of St Barnabas, Tunbridge Wells, said that he would be following the lead of Bishop Hind.
"The ship of Anglicanism seems to be going down," he said. "We should be grateful that a lifeboat has been sent.
"I shall be seeking to move to Rome. To stay in the Church of England would be suicide."
Hundreds of traditionalist clergy could join the exodus, though most are waiting for the exact details of the new apostolic constitution to be published.
Battles lie ahead over whether priests who leave to join the Catholic Church will be allowed to take their churches with them, but some bishops have already warned against property seizure.
Dr Williams was only informed of the details of the Pope's decree last weekend and is understood to have been "implacably opposed" to the move.
Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, said he was "appalled" that his successor was given such short notice and was excluded from discussions on the issue.
The Rt Rev Gregory Cameron, Bishop of St Asaph and a close colleague of Dr Williams, said that the archbishop was likely to be saddened by the developments.
"Rowan has worked very hard for unity both within the Anglican Communion, and with Rome, and I suspect he may feel that what has happened is little short of a betrayal, not by the Catholic Church, but by some of those in his own ranks."
"He is likely to be saddened that they felt driven to seek such a radical solution and that some of them now feel they have to go."
"Up until now, the Roman Catholic Church has been putting its weight behind Rowan, but now it is appearing to put its weight behind the conservative groups it can most easily win over."
"The danger is that they'll have every disaffected Anglican beating down the pathway to their door and asking for special treatment."
The
Sunday Telegraph can disclose that
the planning behind last week's announcement began in 2006, when the Pope asked the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to consider how they could invite Anglicans into the Roman Catholic fold.
He had reached out to disillusioned Anglicans three years earlier, when as head of the Congregation, the most powerful of the Vatican's departments and successor to the medieval Inquisition, he wrote a personal letter to Anglicans in America. He reassured them of the Catholic Church's support of their stand against the liberal tide.
Ranking Anglican bishop
open to turning Catholic
Oct. 26, 2009
Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, has refused to rule out converting to the Roman Catholic church.
If he did it would be one of the most high-profile conversions to come of Pope Benedict XVI's move to allow disaffected Anglicans full union with Rome.
Dr Nazir-Ali, who retired as the Bishop of Rochester in September, said: "I won't rule it out or rule it in. I wait with interest to see that the details of the offer are."
He was speaking over the weekend at a London conference of 500 traditionalists, who were welcoming the Pope's surprising initiative.
They voted in favour of consulting parishes on whether or not to split from the Church of England to join the Catholic church, but decided they could not act further until details of the Apostolic Constitution were published.
Worldwide up to 400,000 Anglicans, upset with the ordination of women bishops and homosexual clergy, could convert to the Catholic church.
The following commentary is much too harsh with Archbishop Williams, who is hapless enough, but is right on about the fundamentals of the situation - and properly appreciates Benedict's bold end-run (the equivalent of a nuclear option) around the professional ecumenists. Warner is also a very expressive and literate writer.
Vatican's first strike
has left Anglicans
dazed and confused
By Gerald Warner
Oct. 25, 2009
This was the Church of England's Pearl Harbour. A bruised and dazed Archbishop Rowan Williams was pulled from the rubble of Henry VIII's bombed-out edifice to take part in a joint Anglican-Catholic news conference last Tuesday, announcing Pope Benedict XVI's imminent Apostolic Constitution offering special provisions for Anglican converts to Rome.
Seated beside his captor, Archbishop Nichols of Westminster, Williams looked like a downed spy-plane pilot being paraded before the world press in Cold War Moscow.
If you are wondering why the Archbishop of Canterbury should be taking part in the promotion of an offer designed to tempt members of his flock to defect, that is simply a reflection of the confusion generated by "ecumenical dialogue".
For face-saving reasons, Williams tried desperately to pretend that this Vatican initiative was the outcome of mutual consultation, when the reality was that he had wakened up that morning to find Ratzinger's tanks on his lawn.
Only the previous day had Cardinal Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), arrived at Lambeth Palace to brief Williams on the fait accompli. Williams admitted as much in a letter to the bishops of the Anglican communion in which he wrote: "I am sorry that there has been no opportunity to alert you earlier to this; I was informed of the planned announcement at a very late stage…"
At the Roman end, the buzz is that Cardinal Kasper, the official ecumenical pass-seller, had been kept in ignorance almost as long. The notoriously liberal Catholic bishops of England and Wales are similarly believed to have had a minimalist profile in this exercise. The leading role was played by the CDF, under the supervision of the Pope. This was Blitzkrieg. Word on the street is B16 is kicking butt.
The text of the Apostolic Constitution will not be published for almost two weeks, but it proposes a canonical structure for receiving groups of Anglicans into the Catholic Church while allowing them the local jurisdiction of a "Personal Ordinariate", under which they would be permitted to preserve "elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony". The presiding "Ordinaries" would usually be former Anglican clergy.
Married Anglican clergy could be ordained as Catholic priests, which has happened with some converts, but not married laymen, so no challenge is posed to the discipline of clerical celibacy.
This is not a leap in the dark: a similar arrangement has been piloted among Episcopalian converts in America, where it has worked well. As the constitution will embrace the entire Anglican communion, it is also applicable to the Scottish Episcopal Church.
After 40 years of phoney ecumenical dialogue, Benedict XVI has finally cut the Gordian knot. Since 1970, the ecumenical circus has been run by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), with spectacular lack of success.
In this dialogue of the deaf, "liberals" from both sides indulged in dishonest wordplay, with Catholic appeasers trying to disown more and more of their faith, while Anglicanism ran ever faster in the opposite direction.
While press releases spouted ecumaniac drivel, the Anglicans voted to ordain priestesses in 1992. In 2003 John Paul II suspended talks, following the consecration of the homosexual American bishop Gene Robinson. The Church of England is now moving inexorably to the consecration of women "bishops".
Only a clutch of flared-trousered 1960s relics still dance arthritically to the ecumenical tune. Now Rowan Williams and Walter Kasper have been left to dance around their handbags.
What else did they expect? Was Rome supposed to hang on until the consecration of the first openly alien-abductee Anglican bishop? The Church of England is a nasty car crash. Benedict XVI is inviting believers to crawl out of the wreckage and come home to Rome.
His ecumenical priority is to do what should have been done decades ago and start serious discussions with the orthodox, instead of the time-wasters in a clapped-out remnant of the Tudor civil service. Too much time has been lost in the ARCIC wastes.
Tomorrow, the first round of talks opens between the Vatican and the Society of St Pius X. Having made provision for Anglicans, the Pope can now offer the SSPX a Prelature status, on the model of Opus Dei.
Recognising that many Church institutions are unfit for the purpose or manned by liberal obstructers, it is becoming evident that the Pope is increasingly bypassing them and pursuing his objectives with the help of trusted aides. This is a potentially forceful form of governance – as his first-strike nuclear offensive against the Church of England last week demonstrated.
In contrast, two weekend essays by a couple of American writers who have some reputation for their 'religious' output, are far less persuasive and present some flawed arguments.
Benedict’s gambit
by ROSS DOUTHAT
Op-Ed column
Published: October 25, 2009
The Church of England has survived the Spanish Armada, the English Civil War and Elton John performing “Candle in the Wind” at Princess Diana’s Westminster Abbey funeral.
So it will probably survive the note the Vatican issued last week, inviting disaffected Anglicans to head Romeward, and offering them an Anglo-Catholic mansion within the walls of the Roman Catholic faith.
But the invitation is a bombshell nonetheless. Pope Benedict XVI’s outreach to Anglicans may produce only a few conversions; it may produce a few million.
Either way, it represents an unusual effort at
targeted proselytism, remarkable both for its concessions to potential converts — married priests, a self-contained institutional structure, an Anglican rite — and for its indifference to the wishes of the Church of England’s leadership.
[Of course, I strongly disagree with the use of the term 'proselytism' which implies active campaigning to get converts in. No objective observer - indeed, not even the Church of England itself - questions that the Holy Father's decision was other than a response to persistent solicitation - some English writers use the term 'lobbying' - by traditionalist Anglican bishops seeking an accommodation with and in the Roman Catholic Church. It doesn't help when the Pope gets friendly fire like Douthat's mistaken use of the term.]
This is not the way well-mannered modern churches are supposed to behave. Spurred by the optimism of the early 1960s, the major denominations of Western Christendom have spent half a century being exquisitely polite to one another, setting aside a history of strife in the name of greater Christian unity.
This ecumenical era has borne real theological fruit, especially on issues that divided Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation.
[That's rathere rash. Please enumerate! I can think of only two - the document on justification with the Lutherans, and an agreement about the role of the Virgin Mary, with the Anglicans.]
But what began as a daring experiment has decayed into bureaucratized complacency — a dull round of interdenominational statements on global warming and Third World debt, only tenuously connected to the Gospel.
[A rather simplistic reduction of the state of ecumenical dialog (which, by the way, was never intended to be simply an experiment). It is afflicted not so much with complacency, as by becoming focused on the process rather than the goal.
And I'm surprised Douthat seems to ignore the pragmatic purpose of ecumenical dialog - which is to galvanize concrete action on practical issues that all sides can support - inasmuch as theological dialog may quite literally go on till Kingdom come! Global warming and Third World debt are certainly not 'tenuously connected' to the Gospel. Positive action in both areas embody Gospel principles - one, of responsibility for God's creation, and the other, love of neigbor demonstrated by equitable justice towards poorer and weaker communities.]
At the same time, the more ecumenically minded denominations have lost believers to more assertive faiths — Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism, Mormonism and even Islam — or seen them drift into agnosticism and apathy.
Nobody is more aware of this erosion than Benedict. So the Pope is going back to basics — touting the particular witness of Catholicism even when he’s addressing universal subjects, and
seeking converts more than common ground.
[I don't think the Church, much less Benedict XVI, has ever confused. much less conflated, ecumenism with evangelization!
Along the way, he’s
courting both ends of the theological spectrum. In his encyclicals, Benedict has addressed a range of issues — social justice, environmental protection, even erotic love — that are close to the hearts of secular liberals and lukewarm, progressive-minded Christians.
[But he does not make statements about social issues because he is trying to 'court both ends of the ideological specturm' - he's saying what needs to be said about such issues from the Catholic point of view!]
But instead of stopping at a place of broad agreement, he has pushed further, trying to persuade his more liberal readers that many of their beliefs actually depend on the West’s Catholic heritage, and make sense only when grounded in a serious religious faith.
[That's fuzzy! Especially since the social positions liberals most care about - those that do not respect the defense of life, the family and the institution of marriage - certainly do not 'depend on the West's Catholic heritage'!]
At the same time, the Pope has systematically
lowered the barriers for conservative Christians hovering on the threshold of the church, unsure whether to slip inside. This was the purpose behind his controversial outreach to schismatic Latin Mass Catholics, and it explains the current opening to Anglicans.
['Lower the barriers' is an inappropriate expression for what the Pope is doing. He is not so much 'lowering' any barriers - or standards for that matter - but opening doors, for which there is an admission price: Everyone who enters must profess the essentials of the Catholic faith, respect the Tradition and follow the Magisterium of the Church.
It's no free pass, whether it's the Lefebvrians or the traditional Anglicans who have been knocking at the door - whose strongest suit is that the doctrine they profess and their liturgical practices are already 'more Catholic' than the beliefs and practices of cafeteria Catholics!
It stands to reason that the forthcoming Apostolic Constitution is primarily intended for such Anglicans, not those whose beliefs and practices are closer to evangelical Protestantism, who would have no interest in turning Catholic anyway!]
Many Anglicans will never become Catholic; their theology is too evangelical, their suspicion of papal authority too ingrained, their objections to the veneration of the Virgin Mary too deeply felt. But for those who could, Benedict is trying to make reunion with Rome a flesh-and-blood possibility, rather than a matter for academic conversation.
The news media have portrayed this rightward outreach largely through the lens of culture-war politics — as an attempt to consolidate, inside the Catholic tent, anyone who joins the Vatican in rejecting female priests and gay marriage.
But in making the opening to Anglicanism, Benedict also may have a deeper conflict in mind — not the parochial Western struggle between conservative and liberal believers, but Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam.
Here Catholicism and Anglicanism share two fronts. In Europe, both are weakened players, caught between a secular majority and an expanding Muslim population. In Africa, increasingly the real heart of the Anglican Communion, both are facing an entrenched Islamic presence across a fault line running from Nigeria to Sudan.
Where the European encounter is concerned, Pope Benedict has opted for public confrontation. In a controversial 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, he explicitly challenged Islam’s compatibility with the Western way of reason — and sparked, as if in vindication of his point, a wave of Muslim riots around the world.
By contrast, the Church of England’s leadership has opted for conciliation (some would say appeasement), with the Archbishop of Canterbury going so far as to speculate about the inevitability of some kind of sharia law in Britain.
There are an awful lot of Anglicans, in England and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader who takes Benedict’s approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one, if they want him.
This could be the real significance of last week’s invitation. What’s being interpreted, for now, as an intra-Christian skirmish may eventually be remembered as the first step toward a united Anglican-Catholic front — not against liberalism or atheism, but against Christianity’s most enduring and impressive foe.
[It's difficult to share Douthat's rather tenuous speculation. It's an interesting thought, but I doubt that the anti-Islam factor had anything to do with the Pope's pastoral decision. Surely, Benedict XVI does not want new Catholics unless their primary motivation is to profess and practice a faith they truly believe in, and not only as a matter of convenience. Besides, determined Christians of any denomination can stand together against Islam - they don't have to convert to Catholicism for that.]
I do not trust David Gibson at all when it comes to his treatment of Benedict XVI, and I have never been able to follow the peculiar meanderings of his perverse reasoning - though I suspect he does it to call attention, as he does in this piece, in which he deliberately uses an absurd and fallacious hypothesis that could seem 'provocative' to anyone who's interested.
My problem with this article is worse, however. On many important points, Gibson expresses opinion that is distinctly uninformed - one would think he would check out some basic facts before rashly committing himself in writing. Just because he wrote a dubious 'biography' of Benedict XVI does not automatically make him an expert on religion, but he is being treated as such by editors who don't know any better.
Is Pope Benedict a closet liberal?
By David Gibson
Sunday, October 25, 2009
When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope in April 2005, all the world rejoiced -- or recoiled -- with the certain knowledge that the cardinals had settled on the one man who would be more conservative than John Paul II.
For those who weren't so enthused about the Holy Spirit's selection, there was grim consolation in the fact that Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, was 78 years old and was himself predicting a brief papacy that would serve as a transition to whatever came next.
Some transition. In less than five years Benedict has shown himself to be quietly yet deliberately engaged in re
shaping Catholicism. Even more surprising are the remarkably liberal means he has used to achieve his ends -- means that could lead to places the Pontiff may not intend to go.
[You under-estimate Joseph Ratzinger if you think he has not thought all his moves through like a chess grand master. We see now he leaves the routine business-as-usual 'governance' of the Vatican to people like Cardinal Bertone, but it's not just so he can write what he must write, but so he can move his chess pieces with leisurely consideration in what Gibson calls 'reshaping Catholicism', which is really Benedict XVI's way of bringing the Church and Catholics back to the unencumbered essentials of the faith.
And he apparently keeps his moves close to his chest, involving persons he trusts in his strategies on a strictly need-to-know basis. He's seen too much at the Vatican to trust its bureaucracy in the really important matters.]
A case in point is last week's stunning announcement (it took even the leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, by surprise) that the Pope is creating a novel "church within a church" so that Anglicans can join with Catholics without giving up their rites and traditions.
[Until we have seen the Apostolic Constitution, using the term 'church within a church' is jumping the gun.]
The goal is to accommodate traditionalist Anglicans around the globe and conservative Episcopalians in the United States who are upset about the acceptance of openly gay clergy in North America and female bishops in the Church of England, and with what they see as the failure of their leadership to discipline the transgressors.
[Gibson misses the point: their objection to women and gay priests is just one expression of their traditional Christianity which reaches back to the teachings and practices of the undivided Church (of which only the Roman Catholic Church remains the custodian)! Those who merely object to these liberal 'innovations' but do not subscribe to traditional Christian doctrine are not likely to be attracted by the Vatican initiative.]
Under Benedict's
unprecedented arrangement, bishops and whole dioceses and parishes could go Roman, and married clergy could bring their wives along and remain priests.
[Not unprecedented - it has been done successfully with a few Episcopal communities in the US! I suppose we may call them pilot communities now.]
Cardinal William Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- and Rome's point man in the secret negotiations with disaffected Anglicans that preceded the move -- said 20 to 30 Anglican bishops have asked the Vatican about joining up.
But much uncertainty remains, for both Anglicans and Catholics.
[Of course, much uncertainty remains. I find this banal observation remarkably stupid. Only the intention has been announced so far, and some features that resemble those that have already been tried out in the pilot communities. Even after the Apostolic Constitution is published, tehre will be dozens of questions raised. Look at the simple Motu Proprio that Summorum Pontificum was - and how many unresolved questions remain to this day.
Some Anglican bishops have been lobbying for this, some claiming to bring their entire communities in tow. Now the Pope has given them a way to do it. It's still up to them, individually and collectively, to decide whether they can accept his terms.
The Vatican has certainly not projected publicly how many it expects to take the offer. Cardinal Levada limited himself to saying 'Maybe 30 bishops or so". For the Church, it is not a numbers game - the offer is out there - whether only a handful avail of it, or hundreds of thousands.]
As Father Thomas Reese of the Woodstock Theological Center in Washington has pointed out, allowing a separate Anglican rite in the Catholic Church -- complete with married priests and seminarians, new hymnals and good music (finally, many Catholics might say!) -- could alter Catholic views on celibacy and liturgy as much as it changes the Anglican Communion.
[Again, the speculations are getting far ahead of what is known so far. Does Fr. Reese really think these questions have not been considered by the Pope? It is just as conceivable that the Apostolic Constitution will have a statute of limitations that will limit the married clergy allowability only to those who join within a certain period of time, and that as time passes and the new Catholics are assimilated , Anglican seminaries will stop accepting married applicants, and eventually, the Anglo-Catholic clergy will observe celibacy just like regular Catholic clergy do. Why should it be assumed that the newcomers, who will be a decided minority, will prevail over the faithful adherents and practitioners of priestly celibacy in the universal Church's 400,000-strong clergy today?]
What this move confirms, however, is that change is the paradoxical mantra of Benedict's papacy. In another development last week, one that drew far less notice but could have a profound impact, the Vatican opened a dialogue with the leadership of a traditionalist, right-wing sect that split with Rome in 1988 over what its members saw as dangerous and even heretical trends resulting from the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.
Among other things, Vatican II affirmed the principle of religious liberty, launched dialogue with other churches and religions, expanded the role of lay Catholics and promoted liturgical changes that overhauled the Mass for the first time since the counter-Reformation Council of Trent in the 16th century.
Many observers say a rapprochement could require Benedict to make
compromises on some of those issues, which could further encourage a critical reinterpretation of the Second Vatican Council and its modernizing reforms.
[There is that objectionable word again. The Church never compromises on principles. Mons. Fellay himself is clear about this: "We are not looking for compromises - we seek clarification". One imagines Benedict XVI welcomes these doctrinal talks with the FSSPX because he is aware of the ambiguities in the Council documents as well as the deliberate distortions and misinterpretations that the progressivists have worked on them - and this appears to be a God-given opportunity to make these clarifications once and for all.]
In 1988, under the direction of then-Cardinal Ratzinger, the Vatican had already created a special provision to allow the schismatic group (called Lefebvrists after their late leader, rebel Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre) to continue to use the old Latin Mass and other pre-Vatican II rites if they would stay connected to Rome in some fashion.
But Ratzinger has always wanted to do more to bring the remaining schismatics back into the fold, and as Pope he has made extraordinary concessions to achieve that end. The principal innovation was his personal order, in 2007, to allow the old Latin Mass to be celebrated anywhere in the world, whether the local bishop likes it or not. That created,
for the first time in Catholic history, two parallel rites in the Western church -- one in Latin, the Tridentine rite (after the Council of Trent); another in a newer form, which is almost always celebrated in the vernacular, or local language.
["For the first time..."??? Can Gibson be unaware of other rites still actively used in the Western Church like the Ambrosian or the Dominican?]
Now, with the new provision for Anglicans, there could be three versions of the Roman Catholic Mass for different constituencies. As Reese says, "Once we have three versions, it is more difficult to argue against more."
[There are more - each of the Eastern Churches has its own rite! Is Reese, too, unaware of this?]
Thus far, Benedict's papacy has been one of constant movement and change, the sort of dynamic that liberal Catholics -- or Protestants -- are usually criticized for pursuing.
[What constant movement and change? The criticism from liberals used to be that he's just not doing anything, he's a stick in the mud, and when he does do something significant - historic, even - someone like Gibson makes it appear like he's 'constantly' changing things as though for the mere sake of changing things!
In Benedict's case, this liberalism serves a conservative agenda. But his activism should not be surprising: As a sharp critic of the reforms of Vatican II, Ratzinger has long pushed for what he calls a "reform of the reform" to correct what he considers the excesses or abuses of the time.
Of course a "reformed reform" doesn't equal a return to the past, even if that were the goal. Indeed, Benedict's reforms are rapidly creating something entirely new in Catholicism. For example, when the pope restored the old Latin Mass, he also restored the use of the old Good Friday prayer, which spoke of the "blindness" of the Jews and called for their conversion. That prayer was often
a spur to anti-Jewish pogroms in the past [??? How could it - it is used once a year in a rite that's not obligatory and which, I believe, majority of Catholics have never even attended?] so its revival appalled Jewish leaders.
After months of protests, the Pope agreed to modify the language of the prayer;
that change and other modifications made the "traditional" Mass more a hybrid than a restoration.
[Is Gibson ignorant or what? First, the Good Friday prayer is not part of a Mass at all. Second, what other parts of the traditional Mass have been changed that make it a hybrid now? If it were a hybrid, wouldn't the FSSPX be crying treason to high heavens all this time???? They would have denounced Benedict XVI's Motu Proprio as a farce!]
And Gibson has his facts all wrong about the Good Friday prayer, to begin with. What Summorum Pontificum authorizes is the 1963 edition of the Roman Missal, issued by John XXIII, who had already revised the Good Friday prayer by taking out the references to blindness! It didn't take 'months of protests' for Benedict XVI to make his revision, in which he uses the language of the 'Letter to the Romans', whose 'theology' in reference to them the Jews have always found acceptable. The same Jews who never protested the John XIII Good Friday prayer in 27 years, when it was part of the traditional rites authorized by indult under John Paul II - but suddenly erupted into protest about the selfsame prayer, when Benedict XVI came out with Summorum Pontificum.]
More important, with the latest accommodation to Anglicans, Benedict has signaled that the standards for what it means to be Catholic -- such as the belief in the real presence of Christ in the Mass as celebrated by a validly ordained priest -- are changing or, some might argue, falling.
[What makes Gibson presume that Anglicans do not believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist [not in the Mass!] - they are not evangelical Protestants. And the Anglican priests who turn Catholic all need to be re-ordained!]
The Vatican is in effect saying that disagreements over gay priests and female bishops are the main issues dividing Catholics and Anglicans, rather than, say, the sacraments and the papacy and infallible dogmas on the Virgin Mary, to name just a few past points of contention.
[How can Gibson be so unabashedly free with his uninformed opinions? The Anglicans who sought this rapprochement all had no problem with recognizing the authority of the Pope (or they would never have approached him, to begin with!), and the fact that they are mostly traditional Anglicans means that their liturgy and doctrine have kept fairly close to Catholicism. Once again, it seems Gibson thinks of Anglicanism as akin to Protestantism (the reformed evangelical churches). And this makes what he has to say in the next two paragraphs sheer bunkum!]
That is revolutionary -- and unexpected from a Pope like Benedict. It could encourage the view, which he and other conservatives say they reject, that all Christians are pretty much the same when it comes to beliefs, and the differences are just arguments over details.
And that could be the final irony. For all the hue and cry over last week's developments, Benedict's innovations may have
glossed too lightly over the really tough issues: namely, the theological differences that traditional Anglicans say have kept them from converting, as they could always do.
[Does Gibson really think theologian Joseph Ratzinger who has dealt with all kinds of Christian theology all his life would 'gloss over' any theological differences lightly????
Besides, Gibson seems to be under the impression that, apart from the split over women and gay priests, there is only one kind of Anglicanism. Has he never heard of High Anglicanism or the Oxford Movement or the so-called Anglo Catholics - whose practices and beliefs are probably closer to the Lefebvrians than they are to the Protestantized progressives of the Roman Catholic Church? And that these are likely to be the ones most attracted by the opening that the Holy Father is facilitating? ]
"If I believed everything that the Roman Catholic Church teaches as dogma, I would be one and I would have been one years ago," Bishop William Ilgenfritz, of the recently formed Anglican Church in North America, a conservative splinter group, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week.
"I don't want to be a Roman Catholic," Bishop Martyn Minns, leader of a group of conservative Episcopalians, told the New York Times. "There was a Reformation, you remember."
[And no one's forcing you or anyone to become Catholic!]
Others, from England to Africa, have echoed that sentiment in the days since the Vatican's announcement.
In short, it may be premature
to declare the Reformation over -- or to try to figure out which side is winning.
[It does seem as if Gibson really thinks Anglicanism and evangelical Protestantism are the same thing! The Church of England did not arise from Luther's Reformation, even if it came into being just 13 years after Luther's excommunication. Henry VIII himself preferred to retain Catholic practices - and the initial Church of England differed from the Roman Catholic Church only in not recognizing the authority of the Pope any more.
Eventually, the Anglicans adapted some Protestant Reformation practices, but I think John Henry Newman before he converted argued that the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, as defined by the Council of Trent, were compatible with the Thirty-Nine Articles of the sixteenth-century Church of England! In any case, Anglicanism is hardly a monolithic structure, quite apart from the split over women and gay priests.
And since I have brought up the question of the varieties of Anglicanism, here is a symplified grid from an Anglican blog of that splintered world according to category:
The broad picture shown above gets a bit more detail - but becomes infinitely more confusing - in this Field Guide on Anglican Churchmanship:
home.comcast.net/~acbfp/churchmanship.html
which is far more confusing even than the Evangelical Protestants because the latter, at least, identify themselves by denomination.
All I can say is that it's almost a relief to think that Western Catholicism is more or less divided only into two: the orthodox [who follow the Gospel, Tradition and the Magisterium obediently on the strength of faith - and I would include the Lefebvrians among this); and the dissenters (the cafeteria Catholics for whom 'anything goes', 'anything' being what pleases them and therefore, what they think the Church should preach).
10/27/09
P.S. Carl Olson at Ignatius Insight also reacted yesterday to Gibson's article:
insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2009/10/benedict-xvi-is-ultraconservative-no-a-reformer-no-a-closet-libe...
He is much kinder than I am, as he attributes Gibson's off-kilter conclusions merely to his lideral ideological bias. He does not point out Gibson's apparent ignorance of basic facts that a writer on religion owes it to himself and to his readers to know, or at least look up before making uninformed comments.
He does point out the relevant excerpt from the joint statement by the Archbishops of Westminster and Canterbury on Oct. 20 that makes it very clear what kind of Anglicans the Pope's opening is intended for - where Gibson appears to believe anyone who does not favor women and gay priests would automatically qualify!
Today’s announcement of the Apostolic Constitution is 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, and are willing to declare that they share a common Catholic faith and accept the Petrine ministry as willed by Christ for his Church.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/11/2009 19:38]