Rome preparing for massive Anglican influx

There have been meetings held today in England and Rome to this effect:  the Holy See is preparing an Apostolic Constitution which will establish the structure by which Anglicans may enter the Catholic Church without having to sacrifice liturgically and spiritually significant traditions which have grown over the past 450 years.

NOTE OF THE CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH ABOUT PERSONAL ORDINARIATES FOR ANGLICANS ENTERING THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

With the preparation of an Apostolic Constitution, the Catholic Church is responding to the many requests that have been submitted to the Holy See from groups of Anglican clergy and faithful in different parts of the world who wish to enter into full visible communion.

In this Apostolic Constitution the Holy Father has introduced a canonical structure that provides for such corporate reunion by establishing Personal Ordinariates, which will allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony. Under the terms of the Apostolic Constitution, pastoral oversight and guidance will be provided for groups of former Anglicans through a Personal Ordinariate, whose Ordinary will usually be appointed from among former Anglican clergy.

The forthcoming Apostolic Constitution provides a reasonable and even necessary response to a world-wide phenomenon, by offering a single canonical model for the universal Church which is adaptable to various local situations and equitable to former Anglicans in its universal application. It provides for the ordination as Catholic priests of married former Anglican clergy. Historical and ecumenical reasons preclude the ordination of married men as bishops in both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The Constitution therefore stipulates that the Ordinary can be either a priest or an unmarried bishop. The seminarians in the Ordinariate are to be prepared alongside other Catholic seminarians, though the Ordinariate may establish a house of formation to address the particular needs of formation in the Anglican patrimony. In this way, the Apostolic Constitution seeks to balance on the one hand the concern to preserve the worthy Anglican liturgical and spiritual patrimony and, on the other hand, the concern that these groups and their clergy will be integrated into the Catholic Church.

Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which has prepared this provision, said: "We have been trying to meet the requests for full communion that have come to us from Anglicans in different parts of the world in recent years in a uniform and equitable way. With this proposal the Church wants to respond to the legitimate aspirations of these Anglican groups for full and visible unity with the Bishop of Rome, successor of St. Peter."

These Personal Ordinariates will be formed, as needed, in consultation with local Conferences of Bishops, and their structure will be similar in some ways to that of the Military Ordinariates which have been established in most countries to provide pastoral care for the members of the armed forces and their dependents throughout the world. "Those Anglicans who have approached the Holy See have made clear their desire for full, visible unity in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. At the same time, they have told us of the importance of their Anglican traditions of spirituality and worship for their faith journey," Cardinal Levada said.

The provision of this new structure is consistent with the commitment to ecumenical dialogue, which continues to be a priority for the Catholic Church, particularly through the efforts of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity. "The initiative has come from a number of different groups of Anglicans," Cardinal Levada went on to say: "They have declared that they share the common Catholic faith as it is expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and accept the Petrine ministry as something Christ willed for the Church. For them, the time has come to express this implicit unity in the visible form of full communion."

According to Levada: "It is the hope of the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, that the Anglican clergy and faithful who desire union with the Catholic Church will find in this canonical structure the opportunity to preserve those Anglican traditions precious to them and consistent with the Catholic faith. Insofar as these traditions express in a distinctive way the faith that is held in common, they are a gift to be shared in the wider Church. The unity of the Church does not require a uniformity that ignores cultural diversity, as the history of Christianity shows. Moreover, the many diverse traditions present in the Catholic Church today are all rooted in the principle articulated by St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians: ‘There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism’ (4:5). Our communion is therefore strengthened by such legitimate diversity, and so we are happy that these men and women bring with them their particular contributions to our common life of faith."

Background information

Since the sixteenth century, when King Henry VIII declared the Church in England independent of Papal Authority, the Church of England has created its own doctrinal confessions, liturgical books, and pastoral practices, often incorporating ideas from the Reformation on the European continent. The expansion of the British Empire, together with Anglican missionary work, eventually gave rise to a world-wide Anglican Communion.

Throughout the more than 450 years of its history the question of the reunification of Anglicans and Catholics has never been far from mind. In the mid-nineteenth century the Oxford Movement (in England) saw a rekindling of interest in the Catholic aspects of Anglicanism. In the early twentieth century Cardinal Mercier of Belgium entered into well publicized conversations with Anglicans to explore the possibility of union with the Catholic Church under the banner of an Anglicanism "reunited but not absorbed".

At the Second Vatican Council hope for union was further nourished when the Decree on Ecumenism (n. 13), referring to communions separated from the Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation, stated that: "Among those in which Catholic traditions and institutions in part continue to exist, the Anglican Communion occupies a special place."

Since the Council, Anglican-Roman Catholic relations have created a much improved climate of mutual understanding and cooperation. The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) produced a series of doctrinal statements over the years in the hope of creating the basis for full and visible unity. For many in both communions, the ARCIC statements provided a vehicle in which a common expression of faith could be recognized. It is in this framework that this new provision should be seen.

In the years since the Council, some Anglicans have abandoned the tradition of conferring Holy Orders only on men by calling women to the priesthood and the episcopacy. More recently, some segments of the Anglican Communion have departed from the common biblical teaching on human sexuality—already clearly stated in the ARCIC document "Life in Christ"—by the ordination of openly homosexual clergy and the blessing of homosexual partnerships. At the same time, as the Anglican Communion faces these new and difficult challenges, the Catholic Church remains fully committed to continuing ecumenical engagement with the Anglican Communion, particularly through the efforts of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity.

In the meantime, many individual Anglicans have entered into full communion with the Catholic Church. Sometimes there have been groups of Anglicans who have entered while preserving some "corporate" structure. Examples of this include, the Anglican diocese of Amritsar in India, and some individual parishes in the United States which maintained an Anglican identity when entering the Catholic Church under a "pastoral provision" adopted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and approved by Pope John Paul II in 1982. In these cases, the Catholic Church has frequently dispensed from the requirement of celibacy to allow those married Anglican clergy who desire to continue ministerial service as Catholic priests to be ordained in the Catholic Church.

In the light of these developments, the Personal Ordinariates established by the Apostolic Constitution can be seen as another step toward the realization the aspiration for full, visible union in the Church of Christ, one of the principal goals of the ecumenical movement.

For more details, stay tuned to:

• The New Liturgical Movement
• Creative Minority Report
  
• Te Deum laudamus
  
• The Hermeneutic of Continuity
  
• What Does the Prayer Really Say?
  
• Holy Smoke
  

Resources on Being and Becoming Catholic

If you are interested in books or "tracts" on becoming Catholic, I would suggest you first read Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth. You can read it online at Catholic Answers or you can order a copy. It is a very good introduction to the Catholic Church.

If you are curious what Catholics believe, I would suggest the Compendium to the Catechism. You can read it online or buy a copy. (It's probably better to buy than try reading online, but that's just my opinion.)

Finally, this brief web page describes How to Become a Catholic.

Another Anglican returns home

"I realized I can live without being Roman Catholic, but I couldn't die without being Roman Catholic."

Read the full story.

[H/T: Curt Jester]

News: Los Angeles Anglican Bishop apologizes for attempts to convert Hindus!

I've seen two versions of this story. One, which I consider to be genuine, is from the LA Times. The other is apparently from India Abroad, although I cannot find the actual source article; here's the article at New America Media.

In the genuine article, we read this:

... the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, issued a statement of apology to the Hindu religious community for centuries-old acts of religious discrimination by Christians, including attempts to convert them.

"I believe that the world cannot afford for us to repeat the errors of our past, in which we sought to dominate rather than to serve," Bruno said in a statement read by the Rt. Rev. Chester Talton. "In this spirit, and in order to take another step in building trust between our two great religious traditions, I offer a sincere apology to the Hindu religious community."

The bishop also said he was committed to renouncing "proselytizing" of Hindus. Bruno had been scheduled to read the statement himself, but a death of a close family friend prevented him from attending the service.

In the other article, we read this:

The Bishop of the Epsicopal diocese of Los Angeles has issued an apology to Hindus worldwide for what he called "centuries-old acts of religious discrimination by Christians, including attempts to convert them" reports India Abroad. The apology was given in a statement read to over 100 Hindu spiritual leaders at a mass from Right Reverend J John Bruno. The ceremony started with a Hindu priestess blowing a conch shell three times and included sacred chants.

This meeting was the result of a dialogue, started three years ago, between Hindu leaders and Rev. Karen MacQueen, who was deeply influenced by Hindu Vedanta philosophy and opposes cultivating conversions. "There are enough Christians in the world," she said. "What we need to see is more Christians leading an exemplary life and truly loving their fellow man." However the apology has triggered considerable debate among pastors across the US.

If the second article is not fraudulent, it is appalling. Either way, converting people of other faiths to Christianity (generally speaking) is not something to apologize for, it is an order the Church received from the mouth of Jesus (cf. Matthew 28:19-20). Conversion, however, must always be of the person's free will; if by "proselytize" the Anglican bishop mean "conversion by coercion", then yes, that's frowned upon (and the Catholic Church does not permit such acts).

Debate: The 1962 Good Friday rite and the Jewish people

I've done a "diablog" once; now I'll be doing a point-counterpoint with someone who's not a blogger, but a personal friend of mine. The issue at hand is an article from America that he mailed me a few days ago about the "Latin Liturgy" (that is, the 1962 Missal) and the Jews: specifically, the Good Friday rite and its prayer for the Jews.

I read the article, and had something to say about it. The article from an October 2007 issue (which is not available online) is titled "The Latin Liturgy and the Jews". The gist of the article is that the 1962 prayer is damaging for Catholic-Jewish relations -- because it is uninformed by the reforms of Vatican II (specifically Nostra Aetate) -- and that the 1970 prayer should replace it. There are generally two reasons why the 1970 prayer would replace the 1962 prayer: either a) they say the same thing (but the 1970 prayer says it "better"), or b) they say different things (and the 1962 prayer said the "wrong" thing). The article more or less implies b, that the 1962 prayer is "wrong", but near the very end, it seems like it might just be implying a, that the 1970 prayer says the same thing in more sensitive language.

What follows is, verbatim, my email to my friend responding to the article. When I get his response, I will record it below mine (or perhaps interspersed -- it depends on how he formats his reply). He plans to send me his reply sometime this weekend.

---

Jeff's response to the article

Thanks for sending me the America article; I had not yet seen it. I don't know if you sent it to me after reading a recent post of mine on my blog, but if not, the mailing was well-timed. Permit me to offer my comments on the article; I'm sorry it's lengthy, but I want to make myself clear in my position. (If you don't have any objections, I'd like to post my response to this article on my blog.)

First, I'd like to provide the Latin of the prayer for the Jews from the 1962 rite (along with a fair English translation):

Oremus et pro Iudæis: ut Deus et Dominus noster auferat velamen de cordibus eorum; ut et ipsi agnoscant Iesum Christum Dominum nostrum. (Oremus. Flectamus genua. Levate) Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui Iudæos etiam a tua misericordia non repellis: exaudi preces nostras, quas pro illius populi obcæcatione deferimus; ut, agnita veritatis tuæ luce, quæ Christus est, a suis tenebris eruantur. Per eumdem Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus: per omnia sæcula sæculorum. Amen.

Here is the English translation from my 1961 Daily Missal:

Let us pray also for the Jews, that our God and Lord may remove the veil from their hearts; that they also may acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ. (Let us pray. Let us kneel. Arise.) Almighty and everlasting God, You drive not even the Jews away from Your mercy; hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people, that, acknowledging the light of Your truth, which is Christ, they may be rescued from their darkness. Through the same, etc. Amen.

Having this will come in handy for supporting the points I make in my commentary.

The authors write (emphasis mine):

That missal ... contains a prayer for use on Good Friday that singles out Jews for conversion, attributes to them a particular blindness and asks God to lift the "veil from their hearts." This inches perilously close to a view of Judaism as a fossilized and invalid faith[.] ... Meanwhile, the Missal of Paul VI in wide use today strikes a categorically different tone, instructing Catholics to pray that the Jewish people "will grow in the love of God's name and in faithfulness to his covenant." (p. 11)

The Good Friday rite does not "single out Jews" in the sense that they are the only people prayed for; on the contrary, there are also prayers for "heretics and schismatics" ( i.e. separated brethren) and "pagans" (i.e. non-Christians). One might ask: where is the outcry from the Orthodox, Anglicans, Protestants, Muslims, Hindus, etc.? The "veil" and the "blindness" referred to by the prayer are terms found in Scripture; words spoken by Jesus or written by Paul. Jesus talks of the blindness of the Pharisees on at least two occasions (cf. Matthew 15:12-14; 23:16-26); he also proclaims that his mission includes "recovering ... sight to the blind" (Luke 4:18). Paul wrote: But their minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds; but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed. (2 Cor 3:14-16) and again And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God. (2 Cor 4:3-4). The prayer could have used language from the First Letter of John, which puts it quite simply that No one who denies the Son has the Father. (1 John 2:22)

Regardless of the status of the Mosaic covenant -- that is, whether Judaism is "a fossilized and invalid faith" -- it is the duty of the Church to pray that everyone may come to know that Jesus is the Christ of God. The "categorically different tone" in the Missal of Paul VI is certainly ambiguous, and if it were not for the tradition of the Church, one might think the prayer is simply asking that God would make sure Jews stay "faithful Jews". But the Church's definition of "faithful Jew" is different from the world's definition of "faithful Jew" -- in asking for Jews to grow in "faithfulness to his covenant", the Church is really (although in ambiguous and lame terminology) asking that they recognize the Messiah: that they be "faithful Jews" in the same way the Apostles and first Christians were!

The authors continue:

John Paul II taught repeatedly that the church's "attitude to the Jewish religion should be one of the greatest respect, since the Catholic faith is rooted in the eternal truths contained in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the irrevocable covenant made with Abraham" Sydney, Australia, Nov. 26, 1986). Guidelines on Religious Relations With the Jews (1974) states that the witness of Catholics to Jesus Christ should not give offense to Jews. (p. 11)

John Paul's reference here (at least as far as was quoted) is to the Abrahamaic covenant, that through Abraham all nations (not only Israel) would find blessing: this is seen in the opening of the new covenant in Jesus Christ which brought Gentiles into the "people of God" without requiring them to become Jews first: baptism replaced circumcision as the sign of the covenant. As for the terse 1974 document, the context of "not giv[ing] offense to Jews" is this:

In virtue of her divine mission, and her very nature, the Church must preach Jesus Christ to the world (Ad Gentes, n. 2). Lest the witness of Catholics to Jesus Christ should give offence to Jews, they must take care to live and spread their Christian faith while maintaining the strictest respect for religious liberty in line with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council (Declaration Dignitatis Humanae). They will likewise strive to understand the difficulties which arise for the Jewish soul -- rightly imbued with an extremely high, pure notion of the divine transcendence -- when faced with the mystery of the incarnate Word.

In other words, we must preach Jesus to the world, including the Jewish people; in preaching to the Jews, it makes sense to preach Jesus in a different way than to a person who is not under the Mosaic covenant, because Jesus is the fulfillment of a covenant the Jews are familiar with. All it means is that getting Jews to recognize Jesus as their long-awaited Messiah is different than getting "pagans" to recognize Jesus as the Savior of the world who takes away their sins.

The article continues:

Jews around the world remain proudly committed to the faith of their ancestors and the biblical covenant between the children of Abraham and the creator of heaven and earth. (p. 12)

John the Baptist warned the Pharisees not to "presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham." (Matthew 3:9) and Paul writes in Romans 11 about the severing of some branches from the tree (which represent Jews who did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah) and warns those Gentiles who have been grafted in: They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast only through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. (Romans 11:20) Mary recognized her conception of Jesus in this way: "[God] has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity for ever." (Luke 1:54-55) Zachariah, father of John the Baptist, spoke in similar terms, saying that God had brought about the Incarnation "to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear..." (Luke 1:72-74) Jesus himself spoke to unbelieving Jews about their relation to Abraham in John 8. To the first Christians (most of whom were Jews), God fulfilled his promise to Abraham through the person of Jesus the Messiah.

But more to the point, this says nothing about the Mosaic covenant, only the Abrahamaic covenant.

Continuing, the article mentions a rabbi that changed a Catholic document:

When Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, an observer at Vatican II and the most important Jewish theologian there, saw that the penultimate version of Nostra Aetate contained an allusion to conversion, on the eve of Yom Kippur he flew to Rome to speak to Pope Paul VI and the council's bishops. He emotionally professed: "If faced with the choice of baptism or the crematoria of Auschwitz, I would choose Auschwitz." The bishops deleted the reference. (p. 12)

Is that what was meant by "Catholics ... should [not] give offence to Jews"? Sentimentality aside -- not that the Holocaust wasn't a terrible crime against Jews and all peoples -- there were plenty of first century Jews who chose baptism, and the early Church spent its days preaching to them for conversion. Were they in error to do so? On the contrary, as Acts 2:37-41 testifies, some three thousand (Jewish!) souls were added that day.

Whether or not the Jews of today like it, Christians call Jesus the Christ, the Messiah; when will that be contested? When will Christians have to start referring to themselves as "Jesusians" so as not to offend those who do not believe Jesus to be the Messiah?

My final remark on the article is from this passage:

... substituting the text of the 1970 prayer in the Roman Missal for the 1962 text could resolve the problems without sacrificing any principle. (p. 13)

Oh it could? If no principle is sacrificed, then the 1970 prayer must say (in substance) what the 1962 prayer says, which means it must be asking God to effect the conversion of the Jews to Christ! If that is truly the case, then the removal of phrases like "blindness" and "veils" is a superficial one (one of language rather than intent), and the Jewish people (or their representatives) have no problem with the Church praying for their conversion (so long as they don't use that nasty "c" word). And yet, I would guess that is not really the case: the representatives of the Jewish people do not want the Church to pray for them to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, and would prefer the Church use a prayer of ambiguous language that will eventually (if it hasn't already) take on a multi-covenantal meaning where the Church is simply asking God to keep the Jews faithful to their post-destruction-of-the-Temple religion. Lex orandi, lex credendi -- the longer Catholics pray (or hear) the poorly worded prayer and hear this opposition towards the older prayer, the less they'll believe they should actually be praying for the Jews to recognize the fulfillment of their covenant in Jesus for the good of their souls, and the more they'll think that belief in Jesus as the Christ is "extra credit".

Convert: Marcus Grodi (1994)

Wow, read Marcus Grodi's conversion story at the Coming Home Network. A Presbyterian most of his life, he was confronted with some serious questions and deficiencies of the Protestant theology he'd grown up adhering to. I think the best part of his story is just about half-way through, when he tells about his decision to leave the Presbyterian church in search of the right one:

Marilyn and I knew we had to leave the denomination, but where would we go? This question led to another: Where am I going to find a job as a minister? I purchased a book that listed the details of all major Christian denominations and began evaluating several of the denominations that interested me.

I’d read the doctrinal summaries and think, “This one is nice, but I don’t like their view on baptism,” or “This one is okay, but their view of the end times is a bit too panic-ridden,” or “This one sounds exactly like what I’m looking for, but I’m uncomfortable with their style of worship.” After examining every possibility and not finding one that I liked, I shut the book in frustration. I knew I was leaving Presbyterianism but I had no idea which was the “right” denomination was to go into. There seemed to be something wrong with each of them. “Too bad I can’t customize my ‘perfect’ church,” I thought to myself wistfully.

Around this time a friend from Illinois called me on the phone. He, too, was a Presbyterian pastor and had heard through the grapevine that I was planning to leave the Presbyterian denomination.

“Marc, you can’t leave the church!” he scolded. “You must never leave the church. You’re committed to the church. It shouldn’t matter that some theologians and pastors are off the wall. We’ve got to stick with the church, and work for renewal from within! We must preserve unity at all costs!”

“If that’s true,” I replied testily, “why did we Protestants break away from the church in the first place?”

I don’t know where those words came from. I had never in my life given even a passing thought as to whether or not the Reformers were right to break away from the Catholic Church. It was the essential nature of Protestantism to attempt to bring renewal through division and fragmentation. The motto of the Presbyterian Church is “reformed, and always reforming.” (It should add: “and reforming, and reforming, and reforming, and reforming, etc.”)

Another great section is when he's attending a talk by Scott Hahn (the same Scott Hahn he'd known from Gordon-Cornwall Theological Seminary in the 80's, the staunch anti-Catholic Calvinist). He writes about his discomfort at entering the church where Scott was presenting:

I was nervous as I pulled into the parking lot of the huge gothic structure. I had never been inside a Catholic Church, and I didn’t know what to expect.

I entered the church quickly, skirting the holy water fonts, and scuttled down the aisle, unsure of the correct protocol for getting into the pew. I knew Catholics bowed, or curtsied, or did some sort of jig-like obeisance toward the altar before entering the pew, but I just slipped in and scrunched down, happy not to have been recognized as a Protestant.

Such honesty and humor. It's a great read, really.