Crossing the Bridge to Rome
Pope Benedict isn’t just welcoming Anglicans who are swimming the Tiber to Rome — he’s building them a bridge. That was my first thought when I learned early today of the new structures the Catholic Church will soon have in place to care for the traditionally-minded Anglicans who want to be in full communion with Rome. There are many of them - the Traditional Anglican Communion, some 400,000 strong, has many members who want to return to Rome. They have become increasingly dissatisfied with the Anglican Church as it has discarded more and more of the ancient Christian doctrines and practices, and ordained openly and actively gay clergy.
It was fifty years ago that Pope John XXIII, in announcing that he would call the Second Vatican Council, expressed the hope for the reunion of Christian Churches. Four years later, on his deathbed, he continued to murmur his greatest wish: Ut unum sint (that they may be one). Today, Pope Benedict has brought that dream a giant step closer to reality, at least for Anglicans. Of course, the majority of the Anglican Church will be cut off, perhaps more than ever, from seeing eye to eye with Rome, but they are fast losing all credibility as Christians, even among their own flocks. Benedict’s bridge will no doubt see more and more traffic in coming years.
The Anglican converts will keep much of their own liturgy and spiritual traditions. This move is at one with Benedict’s wise understanding about the traditionalist Catholics in our own fold — “we can be different but still united.”
Rocco, of course, stole my headline(!), but he has an excellent analysis, as usual.
Here are the text of the Note by the Congregregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the text of the joint declaration of the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, and the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.
I wonder whether the reason the date for John Henry Newman’s beatification has been delayed is so that the Catholics and newly in-communion Anglicans can jointly celebrate the Mass elevating this Anglican convert to the altars. If so, what a grand day that will be!
Welcome home to all the exiles.
Update: October 21
Here’s an article from the Catholic Key blog: a commentary on Benedict’s move by a former Anglican priest, now a Catholic priest at an Anglican use parish. Fascinating!
October 23
Here is some more fascinating information from a website dedicated to Cardinal Newman, about his hopes for Anglican reunion with Rome a century ago. The scheme that was proposed at that time collapsed, but as Newman wrote:
“It seems to me there must be some divine purpose in it. It often has happened in sacred and in ecclesiastical history, that a thing is in itself good, but the time has not come for it … And thus I reconcile myself to many, many things, and put them into God’s hands. I can quite believe that the conversion of Anglicans may be more thorough and more extended, if it is delayed – and our Lord knows more than we do.”
Prophetic words indeed.
And it seems that St. Therese of Lisieux, whose relics were on display very recently in England, may have had a large role to play in all this. The whole story is worth reading.
