In the combox, John kindly directed me to the website of the See of Ebbsfleet where you can read
Bishop Burnham's Message after the General Synod's vote on women Bishops. He also has an
excellent homily for the 3 June Sacred Synod of the Society of the Holy Cross (SSC). Traditional Catholics are sometimes puzzled by the tendency of some anglo-Catholics to follow the worst of modern customs in the Roman Catholic Church. Bishop Burnham presciently addresses this in terms of remaining true to the anglo-Catholic spirit:
We shall need our pastoral experience, our inculturation, our catechetical and liturgical skill. We shall probably need to be a little less slavishly Roman: we shall need to be a bit more RSV and a bit less Jerusalem bible; a bit more on with fine liturgical music and a bit less indebted to 1970s folk masses; a bit more damask and a bit less polyester. It will require some of us older priests, brought up with Vatican II reforms, to be more patient and understanding towards some of the younger priests, with their maniples and miraculous medals. They come from a different culture, an age of heritage and retro, not an age of lunar landing and futurism.
This sensible recognition of where the anglo-Catholics need to be when coming into full communion with Rome is picked up by Damien Thompson in an article in this week's Catholic Herald that I missed in
yesterday's roundup:
Ex-Anglicans will bring new life to our Church. In the previous major wave of conversions in 1994, many anglo-Catholics were reluctant to cross the Tiber because of the awful state of the liturgy in many parishes. As Damien says,
The situation now is very different. Pope Benedict XVI is an old friend of conservative Anglo-Catholics in England and America; he shares their dismay at the shoddy state of the liturgy in many churches, and he is seeking to renovate the vernacular Mass by exposing Catholics to the treasures of pre-1970 Latin worship. All this would have been inconceivable in 1994, as would a Ratzinger papacy, and old-fashioned "Sandalista" liberals are still hoping to wake up from their bad dream.
13 comments:
Thank you, as ever, for your charity and kindness to Catholic Anglicans, please hold us in prayer in the coming weeks and months. We have no map for the future and need the help of all who understand the depth of our difficulty.
My blog reflects the nature of our time of trials.
Please, could someone explain to me (nicely, without calling me ignorant) what a Catholic Anglican is. I still don`t know. No, really.
Fr., they so need our prayers and support at this time,when they are feeling 'homeless'.I took the liberty of emailing a message of support to Bishop Burnham and his flock,I just hope and pray that these good Christians will find a welcome in the R.C. Church in England
Bernadette - many anglo-Catholics hold that by being part of the Anglican Church yet remaining true to Catholic dogma and preserving a form of Catholic worship, it is possible to be part of the Catholic Church. Various events (the Gorham judgement, the ordination of women priests, the ordination of women bishops) provoke those in such a position to question whether this is realistic.
The anglo-Catholics have been treated badly by the General Synod which has shown no real desire to keep them in communion.
Well, if that explanation is true (and thankyou - it`s the first I`ve heard), It is: illogical and unreasonable. It is clearly, by definition, not possible to be Catholic AND Anglican, thereby rendering the term "Catholic Anglican" a non-starter. People, you're either Catholic or you`re not.
I know, a lot of priests are getting knocks at the door and phone calls at strange times asking for appointmnets at the moment, but please, could you all get a grip. And, remember St Peter.
I still, genuinely, do not know what an Anglo-Catholic is. It`s a confusion. I know what an Anglican is - many are my friends,.. I know what a Catholic is - many are my enemies. But an Anglo-Catholic ? I am certain I have never seen/touched/smelt/spoken to one.
Do they exist ? seriously - not being flippant. Is it a media invention ?
I am in this position precisely. Having become an Anglican - and always "Anglo-Papalist- when I was 15, I know too well the difficult situation. I was at St Stephen's house with William Oddie. I rejoiced at the election of Pope Benedict and his patristic orthodoxy and his search for good liturgy is my own theology exactly. My friends cannot understan why I am still an Anglican. I largely worship at RC churches & I especially like the Latin Mass & music at Westminster Cathedral, Farm Street & the Oxford Oratory. I reaaly now think the game is up! As for inculturation, how many RC priests listen to Radio Vatican on short wave as I do! I am teaching full time as Head of RS in an independent day school so there is nothing to stop me aprt from a love of such joys as the anglican choral tradition. I live in an Anglican parish with a woman priest who performs "all age services, Sunday specials" etc. It is bleakly depressing. As for bernadette, read Ian Ker's John Henry Newman and you'll find out. I am a huge fan of Aidan Nicholls.
Hello father, I am a divorced and remarried 'Catholic Anglican' who would very much like to 'come home to Rome'. However, although my marital state has been accepted in the CofE (there is no requirement for previous marriages to be nullified) I am given to understand that I would not be accepted into the Catholic Church in my current state but would have to apply to have my former marriage annulled. If that were to be unsuccessful then presumably I would only be able to make a ‘spiritual communion’ as an outsider. I'm sure that I am not the only ‘Catholic Anglican’ in this positionto apply to have my former marriage annulled. If that was to be unsucessfulthenwhat would be the alternative? I'm sure ther are more than a few Catholic Angicans in my position.
kingsleymole - there are many Catholics in the same situation. The solution is either to seek a decree of nullity of the previous marriage if there are grounds, or to wait until the situation is "brother and sister" which, as I have understood, is not as wildly uncommon as is supposed.
At any rate, I hope you find a warm welcome in your local Catholic Church or, if not, that you find somewhere that offers Catholic doctrine and worship not too far away.
Bernadette.
I think you assume that people choose to be Anglican. In fact Anglicanism was forced on the unwilling British population en masse by Edward VI and Elizabeth I in the 16th century. Catholics were heinously punished, tortured, martyred - you name it, it was done to people who refused to conform to the Anglican faith.
(In fairness of course, many Catholics were themselved persecutors of Protestants all over Europe, but that's not the point just here!)
The English government has always had a pragmatic streak. In the very beginning, the arrangement was simple: there were fines for not turning up at a protestant service on Sunday morning. So there were from the start many people who attended Anglican services on Sunday morning (or simply paid up the fine instead), and then also went to private Catholic masses and devotions. These people were still part of an Anglican parish. They had an Anglican Bishop over them. They were married by Anglican priests and buried in the old medieval churchyard, now controlled by the Anglican parish. But their faith was Catholic.
The punishments became harsher and harsher as Queen Elizabeth became more and more convinced that there was a Catholic plot to overthrow her. Pope Pius V issued a Bull relieving Catholics of their duty of obedience to Elizabeth. This was a serious political and pastoral mistake because it automatically made any Catholic in England an immediate treason suspect.
And that is why Catholic Anglicanism exists. There were many people who, quite literally on pain of death, were utterly forced to live as Anglicans, but in their hearts they were Catholics. Undercover Catholic priests ministered the Sacraments to them, travelling around the country in disguise. The movement grew very slowly, sometimes almost disappearing. The Roman Catholic priests were eventually hounded from the country, but Anglican theologians gradually picked up Catholic ways of thinking. The movement gathered more favour and momentum in the 19th century, eventually re-emerging as what we now call Anglo-Catholicism.
You also, I suspect, confuse Catholicism with Roman Catholicism. The Anglican church did not really exist side by side with a Roman Catholic church in England in those years. There was not the same concept of denominations that we have nowadays. Nobody had ever imagined that a particular street could be in two parishes (one catholic, one anglican) at the same time. To all intents and purposes, although it had strong Protestant aspects, the Anglican church _was_ the Church of Christ in the British isles. It maintained an Apostolic succession of Bishops, Priests and Deacons (though the Roman Catholic church does not recognise this on its own terms). It had a (potentially very beautiful) liturgy and a sacramental understanding that could be interpreted within the Apostolic tradition of the Church. It confessed the Creeds and upheld the same Gospels and Scripture. It had a Catholic understanding of Redemption and Salvation. It recognised the communion of Saints. Yes of course there are theological problems (39 articles, Role of our Lady, understanding of the Real Presence in certain quarters etc), but I've always felt that they were not, in the end, theological.
The real problem is, and always was, political power. For example, the 39 articles denounce the Bishop of Rome simply because the contemporary occupant of that See was engaged in a monumental power struggle with the English Monarchy. I'm not suggesting who was right or wrong in that struggle, but making the point that Anglicanism has always been dangerously vulnerable to the prevailing political climate. That weakness is currently showing over sexuality and gender issues, and in a few years' time there will be other issues pressurising the poor Anglican church. The Vatican was of course in the enviable position historically
However these problems are all instutional. They absolutely do not mean that there aren't individuals - Priests, Laity, and even Bishops - who hold to the Catholic and apostolic faith steadfastly and in its entirety but whose place - whose 'home' - is the Anglican church, however ambiguous their relationship the Anglican environment. These people are Catholic Anglicans.
Al
I think Fr F has put it well: Anglican who hold to Catholic doctrine & practice. It was always thus. There has always been Anglicans who are protestants and Anglicans who are catholic, certianly since the Oxford Movemnet in the 19th Century anD a few before then. Newman recognised thet Arians were a majority in the Catholic church of the 4th Century; but he also saw the Papacy as securing orthodoxy which was a factor in his conversion. Can I be provocative and say that Pope Benedict, in his patristic theology, his hermeneutic of continuity and his insistence on good liturgy, represents the spirit of the best of Anglo-Cathlicism. However, as the former master of the society of the Holy Cross said to me in 1992 (he's now an RC priest):" the game's up;the party's over."
I think that you underestimate the theological issues at the time of the English reformation. Certainly, the 39 articles and the "black rubric" show these clearly as do the many changes made to the liturgy by Cranmer and his successors. Anglo-Catholicism never had a comfortable home in the Church of England: the proposed ordination of women bishops and the administrative arrangements which many Anglo-Catholics have found unsatisfactory are simply a further step in the marginalisation of this current in the C of E.
From the start, there was always a calvinist influence within the Church of England and it is hard to avoid it. Not impossible, I grant, but always liable to be undermined.
Of course, the Edwardine changes and much of the elizabethan influence were strongly calvinist, as are the new type evangelicals in the C of E. As well as liberalism, fundamentalist protestantism existes in Anglicanism. The reason why many Anglican priests stay-as well as the percption of poor RC liturgy-is the pastoral strength of being an Anglican priest. One crticism of many RC priests in England is that they see themselves as pastors to a gathered congregation or people. The great unchurched out there means that they do no have to avoid upsetting Anglicans. there are more than enough "fish" for all, so I should like to see RC priests being pastors for ALL who live within the parish boundaries. Many Anglo-papalists, such as former bishop Graham Leonard, had the dream of taking the C of E and its heritaage over to Rome. Little chance now.
I'd certainly assent to rising Calvinism in Cranmer's personal theology, but do remember Cramner isn't Anglicanism.
His various drafts of the Book of Common Prayer were all done in consultation with other senior church clergy and, I'm pretty sure, with saecular authorities as well. It is possible to pray for example the Eucharistic rite with a Catholic understanding of Anglicanism in mind, and that is not a coincidence! The rite would not have been accepted by the church otherwise.
Again I'm not trying to deny or play down the very clear influence of Protestantism on Anglicanism as a worldly institution. I'm trying to explain how Catholic Anglicanism is at least a rational (if at first seemingly unlikely) position!
I'd agree that Anglo-Catholicism has not always been a comfortable fit with the institutional Anglican church, but at the same time, it has clung to life through good times and bad, it has always been there, and it is undoubtedly a substantial and recognisable stream of Anglican thought which deserves consideration in anyone's analysis. And the trend has not always been toward marginalisation; there was huge growth in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As just one example, anglo-catholicism's early ideas are reflected in the fact that almost every mainstream Anglican church or cathedral has a weekly Sung Eucharist as its main Sunday service. In fact I wonder if Anglo-catholicism's decline is partly attributable to the fact that many of its ideas have actually been taken on board by the mainstream, leaving self-confessed Anglo-Catholics smaller and smaller distinctions upon which to identify themselves. That is one reason why the Anglican church is in such a mess over one or two isolated theological issues. Despite how it may seem in recent days and years, Anglo-catholicism has played a huge part in shaping Anglicanism.
Sorry for two long posts!
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