Cardinal Kasper on the destruction of Anglicanism
10 th February 2006
"OFFICIAL ecumenism with the leadership of post-Reformation churches has become more difficult; particularly in ethical questions we are drifting apart. This is leading to the self-destruction of these churches, as has become evident in the Anglican Communion but also in some Lutheran churches." Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Vatican's "Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity," in Diakrisis, a Tuebingen-based institute of confessing Christian communities.
Quoted by David Virtue 8th February 2006
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Cardinal Cormac Murphy- O'Connor
"The end of an ecumenical dream"
(TIMES 7th Feb 2006)
By Ruth Gledhill
THE Church of England is expected to commit itself today to the ordination of women bishops - the cost being unity with the Roman Catholic Church.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy- O'Connor, the leader of the four million Roman Catholics in England and Wales, expressed disappointment yesterday at the end of an ecumenical dream.
It was "inevitable" that there would be women bishops in the Anglican Church and so ecumenism was "at a plateau". As co-chairman of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission for 16 years, the Cardinal spent much of his earlier ministry bringing about closer relations between the two churches.
Yesterday he said that he was saddened that many of its conclusions, such as in the area of authority, had not been "received" into the Anglican Church.
The General Synod, meeting not far from the Cardinal's base in Westminster, was told that Roman Catholics remained committed to working with the Church of England. But Father Anthony Milner, the Catholic representative at the synod, asked how Catholics could continue an "impaired" dialogue when disagreements within the Anglican Church itself made it "hard to make out who you are talking to sometimes".
In a paper to the synod, the Catholic Bishops' Conference said that ordaining women bishops would be "a risk too far for the Church of England".
Anglican orders were declared by a 19th-century papal bull to be "absolutely null and utterly void", but the Catholic bishops said that women bishops in the Church of England would raise "serious questions" about the nature of the orders. Any doubts about their validity involved "serious doubts about the validity above all of the Eucharist celebrated by the priests concerned"
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BISHOP DAVID CHISLETT WRITES ABOUT THE TAC AND ROME
10th February 2006
At the inaugural meeting of the PATMOS HOUSE COMMUNITY on 23rd August last year, I concluded my address with these words: " . . . at this point in the disintegration of world Anglicanism, for 'fair dinkum Anglo-Catholics like us', the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia (and its parent body, the "Traditional Anglican Communion"), though small, is an entirely satisfactory regrouping of Anglicans to which we can belong, especially in the light of current conversations which many hope will lead to the TAC's becoming an "Anglican Rite Church" in full communion with the Holy See of Rome."
Are we in cloud cuckoo land? Could this really come about? Surely we are overstating things!
I want to remind you of a few facts. There have been Christ-centred, Bible-believing, Gospel-driven, Catholic-minded Anglicans ever since the split in the 1530's who have prayed and worked for the reunion of all Christians (including the Church of England) with the Holy See of St Peter. These "papalist Anglicans" have been hated and despised by just about everyone simultaneously (including, strange as it may seem, other Anglo-Catholics). But through the centuries they prayed, and prayed and prayed.
In the early 20th Century these Anglicans played a major role in significant ecumenical discussion, and, indeed, with Abbé Paul Couturier, the establishment of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, believing such unity to be the will of Jesus for his Church. Following Vatican II it seemed that their prayers were being answered as the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) began to produce agreed statements as part of the journey to the reunion of Rome and Canterbury. Most Anglicans - even those who didn't really approve - were coming to accept that reunion was inevitable.
Then various member Churches of the Anglican Communion began to create NEW obstacles to unity. No longer content to accept the authority of Holy Scripture, or the Faith and Order of Catholic Christendom to which historic Anglican formularies had committed us, bishops around the world began to play fast and loose with just about every Christian doctrine, from the divinity of Christ to the Gospel itself, to Christian marriage, to the Holy Spirit's role in Confirmation.
With the purported ordination of women to the priesthood - and in some places the episcopate - arose the need for all clergy who were true Anglican Catholics to insulate themselves ecclesially, ensuring that they and their people were in receipt of valid sacraments.
Most recently, same-sex marriage has come to the fore as the issue most likely to end the Anglican Communion as we have known it.
Throughout this process, .rst world Anglicans desiring to proclaim the Gospel and maintain the Catholic Faith have had to regroup. Wherever possible this has been "just inside" existing Anglican structures (the use of "flying bishops" in England, and the adoption of parishes in the USA by "offshore" third world bishops). In many places, however, because of the intransigence and cruelty of liberal bishops, orthodox Anglican Catholics have had to regroup "just outside" existing Anglican structures into "continuing" Anglican Churches. At the international level the Traditional Anglican Communion is the largest of these bodies.
For 13 years, leaders of the TAC have expressed a desire to establish a relationship with Rome with a view to being "united but not absorbed" (Pope Paul VI's vision), believing that what became impossible for the Anglican Communion as a whole could be achieved by those Anglicans who remained demonstrably orthodox.
We have been encouraged by the response of many Roman Catholic leaders at various levels.
But on both the Anglican side and the Roman Catholic side there are others who are extremely unkind towards us. Nowhere is this more hurtful than when liberal Anglican and liberal Roman Catholic authorities collude to discredit us, presumably to try and maintain the Anglican status quo at all cost!
It will obviously take time and patience for the TAC as a community (together with other Anglican groups who might become part of the process) to make what John Paul II called the "arduous journey" to Christian unity. But because we are Catholic Christians who believe in the Petrine unity of the Church, and in the power of the Holy Spirit, we will gently and prayerfully persist, determined to overcome the obstacles before us.
Father Joseph Wilson, a Roman Catholic Priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn, USA, and a keen observer of Anglican affairs, has written about these things. I conclude with his re.ections as published in The Messenger"
". . . Ecumenical dialogue [i.e. between Rome and Anglicanism] is entering a more realistic phase. As the two churches diverged more and more, the "official dialogue" proceeded and issued optimistic statements; if the official communiques were to be believed, it seemed as though the two churches were growing steadily closer as doctrinal and moral differences between them multiplied.
"Successive Archbishops of Canterbury and Presiding Bishops of the USA were ceremonially received by the Pope in Rome, all the while the of.cial Anglican establishment in Britain and North America was getting loonier and loonier.
"Meanwhile, within the Episcopal Church of the USA and the Church of England, faithful traditionalist Anglicans were struggling to preserve their heritage, and continuing Anglicans, having left the official Anglican Communion to form their own bodies, were persevering against immense odds. With all of these, the Holy See certainly had more in common than with the Anglican Communion establishment with which it was dialoguing.
"But things have slowly been changing in the past few years. Bishops of continuing Anglican churches have been cordially received at Rome, and conversations quietly begun; and when those conversations encountered obstacles among some in the Roman Curia, those obstacles were overcome. Forward in Faith/UK, the traditionalist group in Britain, has been engaged in serious, cordial conversations with Rome.
"And Rome itself has said that it will no longer feel obligated to channel all of its Anglican conversations through the official channels of the Anglican Communion.
"And now there is reason to hope that we return to the Lord Jesus, who is, after all, the Point of it all. We return to the Lord Jesus, who prayed that we might be one. We return to the Lord Jesus and to his Gospel, remembering that the one thing needful is that we be faithful to him.
". . . it seems that, after so long, there's not just a future to hope in, but to be optimistic about as well. Great things are about to happen, great things done by the Lord."
This ". . . is a dialogue Anglicans began in good faith 39 years ago, and it is a dialogue that we [the TAC] are bound to continue, 'that', as our Lord Jesus Christ said, 'they may be one, even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.' [St John 17:22b, 23]"
- The Rt Rev'd Peter Wilkinson,
Diocesan Bishop of the Anglican
Catholic Church in Canada.
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Ordination Service St. Agatha's Portsmouth England (October 2005).
25 January 2006
.jpg)
Traditional Anglican Communion
An impressive moment, Deacon Anthony Murley lies prostrate while the
Bishop Robert Mercer CR and clergy sing the Litany
The Ordination Service of the Reverend Anthony Murley to the Sacred
Priesthood in progress at St Agatha's Portsmouth, England. Traditional
Anglican Communion
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Encyclical calls for deeper understanding of love
IN his first encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI called for a deeper understanding of love as a gift from God to be shared in a self-sacrificial way, both at a personal and social level.
Catholic News Service reports that the Holy Father said love between couples, often reduced today to selfish sexual pleasure, needs to be purified to include "concern and care for the other."
Love is also charity, he said, and the church has an obligation to help the needy wherever they are found -- but its primary motives must always be spiritual, never political or ideological.
The nearly 16,000-word encyclical, titled "Deus Caritas Est" ("God Is Love"), was issued on Wednesday in seven languages. Addressed to all Catholics, it was divided into two sections, one on the meaning of love in salvation history, the other on the practice of love by the church.
The pope said his aim was to "speak of the love which God lavishes upon us and which we in return must share with others." The two aspects, personal love and the practice of charity, are profoundly interconnected, he said.
The encyclical begins with a phrase from the First Letter of John: "God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." The pope said the line expresses the heart of the Christian faith, which understands the creator as a loving God and which sees Christ's death as the ultimate sign of God's love for man.
In today's world, however, the term "love" is frequently used and misused, he said. Most commonly, it is understood as representing "eros," the erotic love between a man and a woman. The church, from its earliest days, proposed a new vision of self-sacrificial love expressed in the word "agape," he said.
At times, the pope said, the church, with all its commandments and prohibitions, has been accused of poisoning eros or of being ready to "blow the whistle" just when the joy of erotic love presented itself.
But in modern society, he said, it has become clear that eros itself has been exalted and the human body debased.
"Eros, reduced to pure 'sex,' has become a commodity, a mere 'thing' to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man's great 'yes' to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will," he said.
Properly understood, he said, eros leads a man and woman to marriage, a bond that is exclusive, and therefore monogamous, as well as permanent.
The pope said there was a connection between the commitment to justice and the ministry of charity, but also important distinctions. Building a just social and civil order is an essential political task to which the church contributes through its social doctrine, but it "cannot be the church's immediate responsibility," he said.
"A just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the church," he added.
"The church cannot and must not take upon herself the political battle to bring about the most just society possible. She cannot and must not replace the state," the pope said.
The pope said that those working for Catholic charitable organisations need to be witnesses of the faith as well as professionally competent in humanitarian affairs.
The church's charitable activities, he said, should not be seen as opportunities for proselytism, in the sense of imposing the church's faith on others.
SOURCE: CHURCH RESOURCES
In first encyclical, pope calls for deeper understanding of love (Catholic News Service 25/1/06)
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United Kingdom - Ordinations
25th January 2006
The Reverend Peter Adamson, presently Deacon at Aske Chapel, Richmond, North Yorkshire. Is to be ordained to the Sacred Priesthood on the 29th April 2006 at Aske Chapel, Richmond, North Yorkshire. The new priest will serve at Aske Chapel and in the Northern Deanery under the direction of the Northern Area Dean The Reverend Ian Westby. The Right Reverend Robert Mercer CR presiding, with letters mandatory from The Right Reverend David Moyer, Episcopal Visitor to the United Kingdom.
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Rome and the TAC
2nd January 2006
The Primate of the TAC, Archbishop John Hepworth, has released the following two statements, in the face of on-going media speculation about the desire of the Traditional Anglican Communion to fulfil, at least within its own community, the goal for Unity between Anglicanism and the Holy See established by Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsay, "united but not absorbed".
The Primate is concerned at reactions from within the Anglican world showing great hostility to a position that was - until the ordination of women - the agreed Anglican position. He is also concerned that some within the Roman Catholic Church are reacting adversely to media speculation. The TAC, as the largest of the "Continuing" Anglican Churches, has achieved a remarkable degree of synodical unity and support for the unanimous stand of its bishops concerning the Holy See. The Primate is aware that the stand of the TAC - an Anglican Church actually seeking full communion with the See of Peter because it believes that such unity is of the essence of the Church - is controversial and newsworthy. He also understands that the full understanding and consent of the clergy and people of the TAC cannot be sought and received without some publicity and media interest. The Primate hopes that the following mature assessments from Bishop Wilkinson and himself will serve as authentic statements for all those watching this process at the beginning of 2006.
From the desk (and computer) of Bishop Peter Wilkinson, OSG
Dear Brethren: Over the course of this year many of you have asked for information on the progress of our talks with Rome. I have told you what I know. So, as a further help to all of us, I have asked the Primate for a letter that would bring us up to date. It follows my introductory comments.
INTRODUCTION
After about 450 years of attempts of varying seriousness, Anglicans and Roman Catholics really began talking to one another after the joint decision by Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey, expressed in a Common Declaration during their meeting in Rome in March 1966 --39 years ago.
Within a year the Commission they established had produced a report that proclaimed "penitence for the past, thankfulness for the graces of the present, urgency and resolve for a future in which our common aim would be the restoration of full organic unity."
In April 1977 Archbishop Ramsey's successor in the See of Canterbury, Donald Coggan, and Pope Paul VI, made a further Common Declaration declaring their desire for "the restoration of complete communion in faith and sacramental life." In the same year, The Affirmation of St Louis, so deeply embedded in our ACCC Constitution and the Concordat, also declared "our intention to seek and achieve full sacramental communion and visible unity with other Christians who 'worship the Trinity in Unity, and Unity in Trinity,' and who hold the Catholic and Apostolic Faith in accordance with the foregoing principles."
This should not be news to anyone in the ACCC. Since those days a lot of water has flowed down the Thames and the Tiber, and a big logjam -- the purported ordination of women to the priesthood. Rome reacted immediately with both Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II stating in letters to the Archbishop(s) of the day that this act would create a stumbling block to unity. Anglican Synods paid no heed either to the pleas of their own constituency, to Roman Catholics, or to the Orthodox Churches of the East some of whose Synods had declared Anglican Orders valid (Constantinople, Jerusalem and Cyprus).
The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission [ARCIC] talks continued and some good progress was made to which Rome did not react.
With the advent of the real possibility of the purported consecration of woman to the Episcopate in England, a Roman Catholic Bishops' response to the Rochester Report (which recommends the Church of England proceed to consecrate women) has stated that, "if the Church of England consecrates women bishops its relations with Roman Catholicism could suffer 'irreparable damage' and warns that women bishops would 'radically' impair relations between the two Churches.
They also said that the reform was at odds with the ecumenical steps taken between the two Churches. The source of this statement goes on to comment that "the long-hoped for reunion between Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism remains the pipe dream of a few ecumenical specialists."
Sad to say, in the Canterbury Communion the situation is still deteriorating. A report says that Archbishop Ellison Pogo told over 100 delegates to the 11th General Synod of the Church of Melanesia, that the Anglican Church in the Central Pacific should permit the ordination of women to the priesthood. Archbishop Pogo urged the recusants [Anglo-Catholics] to rethink their stance.
Another report has it that "the Anglican Churches of the Global South are as divided over the issue of women's orders as is the Church of England. Evangelical provinces such as Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda ordain women -- while Nigeria and Southeast Asia do not. Anglo-Catholic Provinces are equally divided with Central Africa opposed and the West Indies in favour of ordaining women.
"The leader of the Ugandan Church, Archbishop Henry Orombi argued that women priests were not a universal panacea for the church's ills and would not work in some places he cautioned, but he believed this was not an issue that should divide the Church."
Dissident groups that have left the ACC [note - ed: Anglican Church of Canada] and PECUSA and are bound up with these Provinces and Dioceses, already have some women in major orders. In light of such a massive defection from Anglican (and therefore Catholic) faith and practice [see the Preface to the Ordinal and the Solemn Declaration in our BCP, which declare that we have no Ministry of our own but only that of Christ's Holy Catholic Church], who is there for Rome to talk to -- only the TAC, and those few remaining faithful dioceses and provinces of the Canterbury Communion?
It is a dialogue Anglicans began in good faith 39 years ago, and it is a dialogue that we are bound to continue, "that", as our Lord Jesus Christ said, "they may be one, even as We are one, I in them and Thou in Me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me and hast loved them even as Thou hast loved Me [St John 17:22b, 23]; who livest and reignest with the same Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, One God, forever and ever. Amen.
+Peter Wilkinson, OSG
Statement from Archbishop Hepworth:
The Primate Responds to Reports and Speculation about the TAC and Rome.
It is twelve years since Archbishop Falk led a little group to Rome to explore the possibility of a closer communion with the Holy See, in continuation of the ARCIC agreement between Archbishop Ramsey and Pope Paul VI. Since then, every meeting of the College of Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion (and we have managed to meet every two years) has endorsed the principle of the TAC seeking to be "an Anglican Church in communion with the Holy See".
Different parts of the TAC have different ways of reporting the doings of the College of Bishops, and there are still some differences in the way that the TAC Concordat (the ruling document that creates the "communion" between TAC bishops) is embedded in the Constitutional arrangements of our member churches, so some seem to know more about what happens in the TAC than others. Some churches have managed frequent visits by the Primate to brief synods and meetings of clergy and laity, others have managed rather less.
So the awareness of what is happening with the "Roman question" varies around the TAC. At this time, almost every National Synod has passed some form of resolution accepting the concept of "an Anglican Church in communion with the Holy See", at least in principle. Some have passed very detailed and enthusiastic resolutions, and embarked on detailed activities with local Roman Catholic communities.
Why are we doing this?
Our communion with the Anglican Communion in most parts of the world was shattered by the ordination of women to Holy Orders. In this ultimate of schismatic acts, the Anglican Communion betrayed its claim to share a common Apostolic Ministry with the churches of East and West, which had undergirded its claims to be authentically catholic since the Reformation.
In the same step, the great doctrines of Creation, Incarnation and Redemption are denied. The sacramental life of the Church, by which Jesus brings the saving grace of redemption to each of us, becomes an object of suspicion and uncertainty. Placing a woman priest in a diocese is always "communion breaking", since it makes the very act of communion impossible.
At the same time, the ordination of women fractured one of the most solemn agreements ever made by an Archbishop of Canterbury. Michael Ramsey, when he signed the agreement to create "full and organic communion" with the Holy See, acted upon the urging of the Lambeth Fathers since the "Bell Resolutions" of the Lambeth Conference just before the Second World War, and the enthusiasm of the earliest Conferences for discovering a basis of unity with Rome. And the Pope, in agreeing to this unity that he described as "united but not absorbed", determined to end five centuries of often-bitter division.
The Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission was created to achieve this unity. It was clearly understood that, if Anglicans ordained women to Holy Order, the unity would become almost impossible. So each Anglican Province that voted for women priests, voted to end the possibility of unity. The TAC has simply determined to continue the process, since the impediment does not exist within our Communion.
And there is another reason. Having had our communion with the Anglican Communion shattered, we cannot remain "a church on the loose". To hold the catholic faith requires that faith be exercised in communion. Bishops cannot exist cut off from the mainstream of the church's life. Unity is not an option. Jesus commanded it.
Will we be absorbed by Rome?
Roman Catholics (including a significant number of former Anglican clergy and laity) have urged us to value our Anglican heritage. One author has written movingly that the TAC seeks "to achieve communion (with the Holy See) while maintaining those revered traditions of spirituality, liturgy, discipline and theology that constitute the centuries old heritage of Anglican communities throughout the world".
We seek to be "Anglican Catholics". That is, to value our Anglicanism while being visibly united to the "whole church catholic" of which our formularies have always spoken.
What stage have we reached?
There have been no secrets up until now, and there will be none in the future. The TAC is following a traditional Anglican method of wide consultation, synodical decision-making and deep involvement of clergy and laity.
At Easter this year, I published for the whole TAC a Pastoral Letter on Unity, which set out for publication the point we had reached and pathways for the future. As with all-important documents of the TAC, the Messenger carried the full text. I am presuming, perhaps rashly in the case of some countries, that the Messenger goes into every TAC home in the world. Certainly, we print enough for that!
At the moment, there are two documents in the final stages of preparation. The first is a "Pastoral Plan", prepared by an eminent Roman Catholic layman, which performs the joint functions of "verifying the TAC as a worthy interlocutor with the Roman Catholic Church" and of setting out the "desired levels of recognition of the TAC by Rome both before and after full communion".
This document will be delivered to every bishop early in the new year, and will be debated by a full meeting of the College of Bishops, in the presence of clerical and lay representatives of each member church, hopefully in Rome in the first half of next year, but perhaps not until September. The document will then go to the synods of the member churches (even if they must have an extraordinary meeting).
If the document wins the approval of the whole Communion, it will be formally presented to the Holy See, and a more formal process will be established. (At the moment, it would be fair to say that wide ranging, multi-level, international contacts between the TAC and Rome have been proceeding for some years, and have intensified in the past year, with a resultant increase in publicity. It is also true to say that a much greater awareness of the TAC still needs to be created.)
The second document is a formal proposal from the TAC to the Holy See for the TAC to become an "Anglican Rite Church "sui juris" in communion with the Holy See".
The first draft of this document was submitted to the Council for Christian Unity, and its response, with input from other Roman Catholic and Uniate Catholic sources, shaped the present document. It is not proposed to submit this document until the Pastoral Plan is approved by the TAC. The College as a whole has not yet approved the present draft.
A further letter is sometimes mentioned. On becoming Primate, I wrote personally to the Council for Christian Unity resuming the conversations that had been conducted by Archbishop Falk. I made the basic claim, sometimes wrongly reported, that "there are no doctrinal or moral matters of such significance that they would prevent unity between this Communion and the Holy See".
In all of these documents matters of historic difference are canvassed. But both our own bishops and those with whom we speak emphasise the fact that we seek to create a eucharistic community, in which we can join at the altar of God, and from which all else must flow. Questions of Orders, of Liturgy, of clergy discipline, of the way in which we would experience our relationship with the See of Peter, have all been the object of our, as yet, informal conversations. We have found deep rapport in our conversations, as well as much direct speaking, but nothing is, as yet, official. I close this summary with some words shared with me by a Cardinal who has followed this journey. "We must learn to practice the unity we already share from the action of the Holy Spirit. Only then can we ask for more. And the time will be God's time, if we are truly prepared to place this in God's hands."
+John Hepworth Primate
P.S. What Prayer Book will be used?
The Traditional Anglican Communion uses a number of national versions of the Book of Common Prayer, often incorporating the Usage of the English and Anglican Missals. These forms of Public Worship are authorised by the College of Bishops, and member churches do not act on liturgical forms without the authority of the College.
English is only the seventh most-used liturgical language in the TAC, so the various English Prayer Books are not the most significant issue in our Communion, albeit they have local importance.
There is no suggestion that we would adopt the Book of Divine Worship. I have personally indicated to the Holy See that we are deeply moved -- and reassured -- that Rome has authorised any Anglican Liturgy at all. A vital issue for us to discuss is whether we want to attempt a Prayer Book for the TAC at some stage in the future, and then translate it into each of our languages. Bishop Mercer has written with some authority on this proposal. Since it would take the entire annual budget of the TAC for a number of years, it is not on my immediate list of things to do. +JH* * * * *
