Pope's historic offer creates an Anglican tradition within the Catholic Church

Here is my advice to the Pope:

1. Let Anglicans remain Anglicans.
2. Keep the SSPX out of our Holy Church.

In other words: Let the Catholic Church remain Catholic. Don’t open the Church’s gates for those who want to change our Church in such ways that we might not recognise it again in the future.

THROUGH SHARING A COMMON LITURGY WE NOW SHARE A COMMON FAITH!

This was all made possible by the reforms following the Second Vatican Council which made it possible to communicate the Liturgy in English to an English Church.

However, it has to be admitted that the Anglican practice of Contraception is a stumbling block the bishops are keen to remove.

Here is my advice to tbw:

1. Let tbw remain tbw.
2. Keep tbw’s opinion under a heavy rock.

(The Pope will ignore tbw, tbw will ignore me. Unfortunately, we will all recognise tbw in the future.)

basiloftus – go forth and multiply – do !

Howl for the moon all you wish – we will never demean, debase or scandalise the sacramental nature of human lovemaking ; or dictate it is ever permissible to wilfully deny the procreatve or unitive aspects of that single unity before God.

I can just imagine the reply…

Dear tbw,

1. Who are you?
2. Did you read any of it?
3. I don’t recall asking for your advice.

Yours faithfully,

The Pope.

@ Londiniensis

Don’t worry. tbw will always remain tbw.

@ crosswordkid

Yes, you didn’t ask for my advice. Nor did the Church of England ask the Vatican for an unfriendly takeover bid.

“In other words, Ordinariate priests may work as (for example) teachers . . .”

Ostota pointed out recently that the current English Catholic Church is lacking in apologists who can explain and defend our faith to others. Would the Anglican clergy who convert be bringing these skills with them and, if so, could they please teach them to the current clergy? It seems as if the greatest apologists of the Catholic Church in England have been Anglican converts (think Chesterton and Newman). Is this because the Catholic seminaries don’t teach these skills?

Who knows? We may receive the blessing of brilliant apologists from among those who are coming over. Our Church desperately needs articulate spokesmen to defend our faith.

Annie,

I suspect the reason that so many ex-Anglicans make good Catholic apologists, is that they have agonised over all the Catholic claims in the process of becoming Catholic, in a way that born and bred Catholics have never needed to.

Annie,

They will apologise for not being familiar with NFP but able to teach more up to date methods

If the previous pope had done this in 1992, there would indeed have been a “Second Spring”, but now it is too little, too late.

Those who were going to go to Rome have already gone, apart from a few nearing retirement such as John Broadhurst or Geoffrey Kirk. Those who have stayed with the Church of England have chosen consciously and carefully to be Anglicans. There is nothing of any substance in this announcement which will change their minds.

I grew up in a country full of priests making a paid profession (obligatory religion hour in school from elementary to what you call high school), therefore the system makes sense to me.
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The problem would remain, though, for those vicars with family who did not have any other job than their employment as vicars and who might not have alternative employment opportunity. A good step forward, though.
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The problem of the churches is a non-problem, at least not a dramatic one.
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The Anglicans have too many churches. It is not a matter of generosity for them, but of common sense to share these costs whenever practicable. It helps them and it helps the newly formed Catholic communities.
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In case this shouldn’t happen, I really haven’t the impression that your average Catholic church has, so to speak, plenty of slots available. Most churches have one service a weekday and two, maximum three on a Sunday. It should really not be a big problem – ugliness of the building aside – to find arrangements which are convenient for everyone.
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PP – the suspicion is that JPII was hindered by the Liverpool/Portsmouth axis and simply didn’t bother. You of course know that the real offence, recently, was to Nichols and not to Williams but trying telling Ms. Gledhill that.

@ Mundabor

If I was you, I’d change the avatar. Whenever somebody investigates the history of the Catholic Church, it’s so easy for him or her to find the names and pictures of really holy men and women. Why don’t you use one of those photos as your avatar? This would certainly make more sense than using the photo of a man who has never been beatified by the Catholic Church!

Poor Parson,
in 1992 bishopesses were not on the menu.
I know that you will say that it is stupid to accept priestesses and expect that would be bishopesses do not stand one day at the door crying “chauvinist” (in fact, it is), but the fact is that in 1992 a priest could say that he would remain utterly isolated from the madness through his flying bishop; this might well not be the case in future.
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If and when bishopesses are introduced within the so called Anglican church, this might lead a lot of people to think; possibly even some of those who had accepted the priestesses obtorto collo at the time, and now decide that the measure is full.
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My personal impression is that the feminists within the so called church of England will now have an even easier play, claiming that the solution for dissatisfied Anglicans is, well, already there. Theologically this is obviously senseless, but politically it will carry some weight.
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Having said that, I do not anticipate, and do not wish, a mass exodus. I’ll rather wish a limited influx from *orthodox* converts and a slow work of erosion of Anglicanism in the decades to come.
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tbw,
your absence has done nothing for your intellect.

@ Mundabor

I’ll try again to be absent from this blog.
Perhaps my intellect will impress you more at my next return to this blog.

On the money, please correct me if I am wrong:
1) the converts are going to come mainly from the high church fraction.
2) high church Anglicans are traditionally more higher middle class, and thus an average wealthier, than low church Anglicans.
3) the converts will come in the majority from regular church goers as these are the more probable to “bother” with a conversion.
4) regular church goers are on average better contributors than non regular church goers.
————————————–
Now if this is correct, it would seem to me that unless we have a disproportionate number of priests compared to the the parishioners, the contributions from the parishioners will be such than the situation of the Church in England (I mean: the average yearly contribution pro priest) will be, on average, improved.
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Even if this will not be the case, we’ll have simply more priests available for day to day priestly duties, thus improving the ratio of churchgoers to priests. I cannot imagine this to grow up to the point where it becomes a financial embarrassment (say: hundreds of priests wanting to get in *at a reduced wage* and no decent number of parishioners ready to follow them).
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“Perhaps my intellect will impress you more at my next return to this blog”.
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Highly improbable.
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“Highly improbable”

Oh, what an old pessimist you are!

(But I must forgive you because I gess that you’re still traumatized by a childhood spent in the fascist Rome of the dictator Mussolini…)

Tbw, how about:

1. We take the SSPX,

2. We take the Anglicans who sign on to the Catechism, and

3. In exchange, the Anglicans take our feminist nuns, wiccan wimmenpriest wannabes, dissenters, modernists, Tablet-readers and the like (they’re all about seventy and even the married ones have been using the pill since it was invented, so it shouldn’t prolong the death-throes of the Anglican communion for more than a few years).

@ David from Oz

Just imagine what would happen if all Tablet-readers became Anglicans. Who would be the first to leave the Catholic Church? You name him: Damian Thompson.

As a matter of fact I myself would certainly know nothing about the Tablet’s content, would Damian Thompson not always read and quote The Tablet on his blog.

Mundabor

You can save yourself the effort of too much speculation. The small number likely to leave the Church of England will make no difference to the use of RC churches or to RC finances.

All one can say is that with each “conversion” the average clerical IQ will rise in both churches.

“All one can say is that with each “conversion” the average clerical IQ will rise in both churches”.
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HAHAHA…

(happy now..)

David from Oz:

“3. In exchange, the Anglicans take our feminist nuns, wiccan wimmenpriest wannabes, dissenters, modernists, Tablet-readers and the like (they’re all about seventy and even the married ones have been using the pill since it was invented, so it shouldn’t prolong the death-throes of the Anglican communion for more than a few years).”.
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A good idea! If we keep sending them such persons with high IQ, they will frighten eventually Poor Parson out of his garrison and the only way to save himself is to swim the Tiber.

Poor Parson – come on – you’ve been declaring yourself as catholic all your time on here…what’s your bone of contention ?
You’ve made patchy asides regarding the gross negligences and liturgical nightmares of our crowd and our ikea barns ; and you’ve got really strong antagonisms to your own and our millennia-old tradition condemning artificial contraception ; but what’s your real ‘beef’ with all this ?
As for your IQ gybe – well you know how I feel about our clergy ; but your crowd are a pitiably pragmnatic and relativist bunch in the main ; you must kind of worry which sort of cleric is going to become the predominant force within the anglcan community now most of the trads are either jumping the Tiber or becoming more sectarian ?

The importance of IQ is highly overrated, Wifey always assure me.

assures me.

One cannot be Anglican and Catholic: that such a clever man as the Holy Father makes that mistake is tragic; but then he is just a man and this is politics, not faith and morals.

@ Marcel

I agree with your excellent comment written at 6:27 pm.

“(The Catholic Church can’t afford to pay for many new full-time priests, that’s for sure)”

The Church is constantly bemoaning the shortage of priests, and worrying that vocations have dropped to alarming levels. Maybe she should be glad about that as you seem to think there would be no money with which to pay them anyway!

johnhenry – highly , highly overrated [this is from someone of PARS and Olympiq IQ] – it means bugger all – especially given the high IQ tests aren’t specifically IQ tests at all ; more like elitist general knowledge tests.

Damo – I wouldn’t say ‘very’ !

Well, it’s published and now we wait for the reaction of the Anglicans.

What a very, very strange situation. The revolutionaries of the 16th Century create a new religion and kill tens of thousands of Englishmen and women who refuse to give up the Faith of their Fathers of 1,300 or so years. The centuries that follow see their repression and execution; even the putting to the sword of every inhabitant of three Irish towns. In England, there are riots against them, legal and social exclusion, marginalisation, contempt.

The revolutionaries’ descendants, secure they believe in the knowledge that Catholicism has been broken forever, allow a measure of political and religious liberty to Catholics. The Church is restored in the land, but is made up mainly of the poor and social inferiors. Nevertheless, during the rest of the 19th Century, the Faith makes inroads, even at one stage into the very fabric of the Revolutionary Anglican Establishment itself.

Finally, in the 20th Century, the heresy inherent in the Anglican sect impells it head-long towards an accomodation with and eventual surrender to, a new, frightening, Christ-hating secular and relativist ideology arising from atheistic marxism … and the triumph of the Catholic Faith in the land that the Mother of God and her Son had never deserted (even though the English had deserted them), begins.

Oh Holy Spirit, you really are the bees’ knees! (Psalm 198)

I know that some of this blog’s readers don’t only know Latin, but are also able to read French texts.

I also know that many of them are pro-life Catholics.

May I therefore request those of them who are pro-life and French-speaking to sign the following online petition:

http://www.lapetition.be/en-ligne/contre-la-condamnation-de-nemat-safavi-coupable-dacte-de-sodomie-5247.html

Thank you.

Let’s hope that in the future more PRO-LIFE Catholics will reject the murderous policies of Mr Ahmadinejad and the bloody Iranian regime.

The bee’s knees; but otherwise a great comment.

Er, sorry, I take that back. Psalm 198??

“To save one life is as if you have saved the world”, the Talmud says.

I agree. So would Jesus.

Let’s all of us make an effort to save the life of Nema Safavi. He mustn’t be murdered for being a homosexual! Let him live! He’s still so young…

This was my last comment on this blog this month.

You can sign an online petition in favour of Nema Safavi’s right of life here:

http://www.lapetition.be/en-ligne/contre-la-condamnation-de-nemat-safavi-coupable-dacte-de-sodomie-5247.html

Let’s be in favour of PRO LIFE – policies.
Let’s say NO to the murder of homosexuals!

Mundabor @ 5:12 pm – Your socio-economic assumptions as to the profile of the High Church element in the C of E are entirely back-to-front. Historically, the great majority of Anglo-Catholic parishes were working-class or even slum parishes: the areas that most clergy wouldn’t touch with a barge-pole. Many of the early Anglo-Catholic clergy were left to their own devices because the areas were regarded as too dangerous for the Bishop or Archdeacon to conduct a visitation.

Even today, it is typically the poorer areas in a city which are served by clergy of more Catholic persuasion. (One of the reasons the idea of a “third province” for mainly high-church traditionalists was abandoned was because, due to the nature of the parishes it would have comprised, it could never have been financially self-supporting.) The parishes with the serious money these days are the evangelical parishes, without whose financial input most dioceses would be on the verge of bankruptcy (even more than they are at the moment).

OTSOTA

I don’t have a “beef” – I have come to the conclusion after many years of study and ministry as a priest that the Church of England is actually significantly better than the RC alternative, and I encourage as many as possible to join it.

There are always a few in each generation who hanker after absolutist structures and ideologies, and they make their way across the Tiber. But rather more come this way, and they find a Church which is both Catholic and generous in spirit.

Thankfully it’s not my problem, but those who are contemplating the reception of future “converts” might wish to ask themselves why someone who has allegedly accepted the papal claims all along has taken so long to make the journey?

If the Church of England is wrong, and they are right, what is new in this offer to force them to make a decision? Should they not as a matter of integrity have left the Church of England years ago?

TBW didn’t sign the petition in support of the Holy Father that made the rounds on the Internet when HF lifted the SSPX excommunications a few months back, so I’m not inclined to sign this one out of cussedness.

But it is the first time a leftist Catholic (tbw) agrees with a SSPX-follower (Marcel).

Given this development we will find tbw agreeing with Bp. Williamson someday.

Marcel,
the HF is certainly not mixing Catholicism and Anglicanism.
It is very clear that the intention is to allow the converts to become Catholic, by respecting some of the cultural elements of their heritage.
Nothing of the baggage of doctrinal errors of Anglicanism will be allowed to get into the Church. Nothing whatsoever.
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There is no “Catholic and Anglican” here. One is, and will always be, either the one or the other.
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@ teresa

I will never agree with “Bp.” Williamson.
Nor will the German chancellor Angela Merkel ever do it. (May God bless her. She’s such a wonderful politician. And no, teresa, she is NOT a leftist. Nor am I.)

“Across the Tiber”, “Across the Pond”, “Down Under”, etc., can we please give these expressions a well-deserved holiday, say for a year or two?

Poor Parson: I think not a few Anglicans have delayed converting out of loyalty and affection for the traditions of their forefathers; but as it was for me, they will eventually decide – “enough”; and now, with an open invitation having been extended by His Holiness, they will not need to deal with the pursed lips and cold shoulders of RC clergy who value inter-faith collegiality over conversions. If, when I first approached a Catholic priest about converting, he had pooh-poohed the whole idea, as I believe has been the experience of other potential converts, I might well have been embarrassed enough to slink back to Holy Trinity Church (Anglican) and never thought about it again. In fact, it was the retirement of my Anglican minister out of disgust with the slide of the Canadian Church into apostasy that gave me the gumption to also leave. Best decision I ever made, thanks be to God!

“those who are contemplating the reception of future “converts” might wish to ask themselves why someone who has allegedly accepted the papal claims all along has taken so long to make the journey?
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Because it is a long and painful journey.
John Henry Newman himself did need several years of retirement and prayers, and this after a theological journey which had been so much longer.
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Besides, you say that you you encourage as many as possible to become Anglicans.
You should have the same doubts about them, why they suddenly rejects them.
Because they want to remarry (if laymen), or want to marry their mistress (if priests), is the most common answer.
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thanks personaingratissima,
if it is as you say then the windfall might not be so big. Pity, actually, but one does not look in the pockets of the converts and I wish them all all the best.
On the other hand, what you are saying seems to condemn the so called church of England to bankruptcy anyway, as the Evangelicals seem bent to depart sooner rather than later.

Johnhenry:

“If, when I first approached a Catholic priest about converting, he had pooh-poohed the whole idea, as I believe has been the experience of other potential converts, I might well have been embarrassed enough to slink back to Holy Trinity Church (Anglican) and never thought about it again.”
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The modernists share the conviction that converts are the “worst” Catholics, because they tend to be “radical” (that is: be able to appreciate the Truth and the Beauty of the Catholic Faith).

“…and [Ordinaries] may even use their episcopal insignia.”

A minor point, but one wonders if the Ordinaries will keep their Anglican insignia or get/create new ones?

I believe the archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster share the same coat of arms? Canterbury features the pallium, no longer given to Anglican archbishops by the pope, but still used by Canterbury.
I believe a papal letter in the early part of 20th century authorized the use of the same arms for Westminster, still used by the Anglican diocese of Canterbury, but red rather than blue (a red pallium for Westminster rather than blue).

One also wonders if their will be a similar sharing of emblems, heralds? One wonders, too, if the hereditary Earl Marshal of England (Duke of Norfolk) and head of the College of Arms will be brought in to decide the matter?

Also, will the territories of Anglican Use Catholics have the same names as Anglican dioceses? Will Parliament or the Established Church permit that?

Maybe John Gummer will re-introduce the “Catholics (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill? When he first introduced the Bill he noted: ” My Bill would get rid of historical discrimination and guard against the insidious future discrimination that arises from political correctness, which is itself a kind of fascism.”

Johnhenry,
if you felt like giving some details about how you changed from many years among the Anglicans to the Church – obviously becoming admirably orthodox in the process – this might be a beautiful and edifying reading not only for Poor Parson but also for all those who tend to doubt the sincerity of the new converts.
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I’d also like, if you feel so inclined, to know whether an Ordinariate would have changed anything for you personally (as in: would have hastened the process, made it easier, etc.).
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If you think it’s too private, no problem of course and apologies for asking.
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Mundabor: The departure of the Evangelicals may, paradoxically, be hastened if the Anglo-Catholics do leave in significant numbers. The A-Cs have been useful to the Evangelicals as ballast in General Synod to stop the entire show being taken over by the über-liberals (as in the USA and Canada); but once the A-Cs have departed or been neutered, the Evangelicals (who have in any case much less of an ecclesial sense of obligation to a particular body) are unlikely to continue funding an organisation which will then be at the mercy of the doctrinal innovators. So I see little future for the C of E except as a liberal rump, accommodating with the world, the flesh and the devil at every turn, and living by selling off the family silver until the last piece is gone.

Poor Parson,

I wonder whether you are over-simplifying.

My impression, from chatting around, is that mainstream CofE regards the arrival of practising homosexuals into its priesthood as an American peculiar that is, if not under control, shunted pretty firmly into the ’sin-bin’. and can be ignored therefore.
The arrival of women priests can be blind-eyed provided they remain in the next parish. But the arrival of women bishops can’t be ignored, as they will be in charge [ or will be unless arrangements are agreed].

For those on the High Church wing, the Roman no-no to women priests [ ie, in this context, bishops] is pretty clear; for those on the evangelical wing, Sola Scriptura [ ie St Paul] is a pretty firm no-no.
I even learn that some of the stricter non-conformist churches frown on women in charge.

So the CofE game will be [ subject to its Synod] in process of changing radically. It will take time. Some people will be able to live out their days without having to come to terms with the change [ as, perhaps, you?]. Others will have to work out what to do next.

So I see little future for the C of E except as a liberal rump, accommodating with the world, the flesh and the devil at every turn, and living by selling off the family silver until the last piece is gone.
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I fully agree with you.
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Wonder what Poor Parson thinks?
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PP:
You can save yourself the effort of too much speculation. The small number likely to leave the Church of England will make no difference to the use of RC churches or to RC finances.

All one can say is that with each “conversion” the average clerical IQ will rise in both churches.

Perhaps the number that leaves will make ‘no difference…to RC finances’ – after all, it has been said for years, “Anglicans have deep pockets, but short arms.” but will it make no difference to ‘CofE’ finances?
Your sardonic gibe about IQ indicates that you have forgotten the most basic part of Anglican Theology – you remember ‘Now there remain, faith, hope, and niceness, and the greatest of these is niceness.’[You will probably correct my allusion]. If I were inclined to sub-Freudian ‘psycho-babble’ I would draw the inference from the de haut en bas, patronising, minimising, malevolence-disguised-as-goodwill, tenour of your comments that you not merely feel violently threatened by this, but powerfully, nay, ineluctably, drawn towards it.
If it is going to present so insignificant a problem to the CofE, why do you feel the need to keep on about it, like a dog scratching away at a healing wound? Why do you continue to pour water on it, and from an ever-increasing height?
It looks as though, already, one of your assertions – that ‘Anglican Patrimony’ will restrict those in the Ordinariates to the BCP (which, of course, they’ve none of them ever used!) is shewn to be going beyond the facts: I wonder whether any other of your categorical assertions might be shewn to be similarly groundless.
I could sign myself ‘Even Poorer Parson’…

On the departing so called anglo-catholics: my impression from last year(lambeth) is that even with all of them in, they wouldn’t be in a position to stop the feminist charge in the years to come, merely to postpone it or – that might have been a possibility – contribute to the next compromise only helping the shop to become even more absurdly “diverse”.
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Once bishopesses are firmly established and the secularist drift is unstoppable, practising homosexual vicars or even bishops will be, methinks, the next step. Let us not forget that in 1992 assurances about bishopesses being out of the question had been given and look what is happening now, not even two decades later.
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Mundabor

It is only a matter of time before you will find the priest emerging from the sacristy en route for the altar is – a Woman!

Mundabor:

I am flattered by your kind comments; but no, my conversion story is not suitable for a blog. It is, at one and the same time, too pedestrian and too complex. I will, however, say this – all the converts I have known are very sincere and very orthodox and very committed. I would have loved to have been born a Catholic; but since that was not to be, I and my fellow converts take deep satisfaction (not pride) in seeing each other at Mass each and every Sunday morning and, not infrequently, on weekdays as well. We absolutely love the “Catholic thing” in all of its multi-faceted, kaleidoscopic, magnificent glory. We eat fish on Friday, fast from midnight, mark Holy Days of Obligation on our calendars, go on pilgrimages, kneel and kiss the Bishop’s ring, refuse to call Father by name alone, walk away from Church on Ash Wednesday with soot on our foreheads – to mention but some externalities…so yes, people can take it as read that converts are sincere.

_____

As for the new process for welcoming Anglicans into Holy Mother Church, I think it is a good development; but as Peter Palladas and others have mentioned, mass conversions are really a thing of the past, when kings and princes could bring whole countries to the Faith by personal fiat. Still, the new Apostolic Constitution for Anglicans will give courage to those who are too timid to “come inside”, as Waugh once said, on their own. Personally, I’m glad I did it on my own. I find Catholic traditions from the Continent richer/deeper than Anglican traditions, choral evensong notwithstanding.

Am I alone in thinking…not much yet has been mentioned about the possible impact on Anglican religious?

What says Alton Abbey? If they do come over, let it be to Solesmes or to Subiaco.

johnhenry:

Three bees in One, hence the apostrophe after the ’s’”.

Psalm 198 – well, this was a bit of a stab in the dark, really

I only have one request to make of our new Catholic brothers and sisters.

Please, friends, any left-over “indabas” you have lurking about – could you leave them with that layman with the Brezhnev eyebrows who is currently parked in our Cathedral in Canterbury.

“Three bees in One”. I take it you are very good at dodgeball, BC?

Rugby man, myself, johnhenry.

A benefit accruing should be the opportunity to learn how English can be well used in the liturgy.

My dear brethren at Quarr had, initially, simply no idea how to deliver a largely non-inflexive language with any rhythm or aplomb. Would gabble through the Psalms, folding syllable into syllable, eliding word into word, shunting phrase into phrase. (’Sanctuary’ – four syllables, three or even, on occasions, seemingly only two? If you’re stuck at that level no wonder choir was a mess.)

Better now with twenty years’ practice, but still room for improvement.

Granted you still need good text to work with, not the limp lettuce of Nu Ordo speak.

I went on wikipedia and was rather stunned by the sheer number of Catholics who were slaughtered in England between 1535 and 1680. For those not up to speed on English martyrs, here’s the link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Martyrs

I truly believe that these men and women are continuously interceding with God for the salvation of their beloved country, England. The Holy Spirit has graciously heard their prayers, united with the faithful on earth, and has responded by offering the English people a way to bring their traditions into the fold of the Catholic Church.

And before cradle Catholics get too bent out of shape about this, please remember that these traditions come straight out of the ancient Catholic Church of England. In fact, we can only be enriched.

Annie:

Hear, hear. May I politely refer to your last sentence but one, which should of course read “ancient Catholic Church IN England”.

Benedict

You will, of course, find a warm welcome when you come home to the true Anglicana Ecclesia, where you can enjoy the fullness of the riches which the Catholic Church of this realm has gathered through so many unbroken centuries.

Thanks, PP.

But I prefer to remain within the Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, not a State Sect which reflects the heretical beliefs of a set of radical destroyers.

Annie

The bloodletting went both ways, and the numbers on both sides are not small. I think at that time that few understood, on either side, that it is always good to die for one’s faith, but never acceptable to murder for it.

That having been said, I’m sure I and many others would have been “people of the time”, waiting with anticipation for the next hanging, burning drawing and quartering, regardless of which side we would have taken.

The 1500s were not a great century for decent Christian behaviour by any denomination anywhere in the world, I’m afraid.

Poor Parson

When I read Benedict’s words, “but I prefer to remain within the Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ, not a State Sect which reflects the heretical beliefs of a set of radical destroyers”, I thought at first that he had left Roman Catholicism and was referring to the Vatican State.

I guess it’s all a question of perspective.

PP,

You really have no idea how trite you sound, do you?

“I’m sure I and many others would have been ‘people of the time’, waiting with anticipation for the next hanging…”

Just speak for yourself, please, Madame Defarge of the knitting needles. You make the common mistake of attributing your sins to others. They/we have enough of their/our own without being saddled with yours. Public executions are not a thing of the distant past, and indeed, are ongoing; but nevertheless, few civilised people would ever wish to attend one.

johnhenry

The sad fact is that such gruesome spectacles were “entertainment” for the masses, in some cases.
I’m sure no one posting here would have engaged in such activities.

These days, we use blogs to engage in high tech stonings.

I see the link to the English Martyrs didn’t take in my previous post. Here it is again (fingers crossed):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_martyrs_of_the_English_Reformation

Americans tend to say both “Catholic Church of England” as well as the “Catholic Church in England. I guess it’s because so many churches start with “The Church of . . .”. I’ve been mulling over in my mind when one or the other is used. This is my personal opinion only, and others may differ. But it seems that “of” is used when the phrase it at the end of the sentence, as in “The relics of St. Thomas Moore should rightfully belong to the Catholic Church of England”. It conveys the feeling of ownership, almost as if it’s the title of something. I’m guessing you would say “The relics of St. Thomas Moore rightfully belong to the English Catholic Church”. The word “in” tends to be used in a phrase in the middle of a sentence, such as “The Catholic Church in England is growing in numbers”. It goes well with the present progressive tense, conveying something that exists but can change. This must all sound like babbling to you, but it’s difficult to explain because I’m not a linguist.

Somewhere along the line, it seems our two countries separated a little on the use of words. I believe you say “walking in the street” while we say “walking on the street”, which must sound like chalk on a blackboard to you.

Oh well . . .hopefully we can understand each other anyway.

Poor Parson,

“Anglicana Ecclesia” means “English Church” (in Latin Rite or Curial language) and was, at the time of the Magna Carta, in communion with the See of Peter/Rome. It certainly wasn’t the “Church of England,” established in the 16th century!!

Remember, too, the See of Canterbury was Rome-founded; founded by a Roman monk, Augustine, sent by Pope Benedict’s predecessor, Pope Gregory I, in 597.

Only recusant Catholics (and those met and united with them) can historically claim “The Catholic Church of this realm”… “through so many unbroken centuries — all the way back to Augustine and Pope Gregory himself.

Greydon: Excellent post at 1.35am.

It is to be remembered though that Catholics in Britain in communion with the See of Rome were in existence for centuries before the See of Canterbury was established. Saints Alban and Patrick being prime examples of this.

It took a few years of careful thinking and discernment before I finally committed to entering full communion with the Catholic Church. I converted from Anglicanism to the Catholic Church in 2008. Prior to that, I had a couple of “false starts”–I quit two RCIA courses, then in 2008, I finally completed an RCIA course that was aimed at a more mature audience (unfortunately, some RCIA courses are aimed at more of an adolescent audience).

As someone who used to be Anglican, I can definitely say that one of many stumbling blocks for me was letting go of the beautiful liturgical language of the older style Eucharistic services in the Anglican Church, especially the Continuing Anglican churches. To go from that to ICEL-style simplicity was not initially enticing. But the truth is more important than pretty language.

I also had to fully grow into full agreement with the Catholic Church’s doctrines and world view. It took time and careful thinking. It also involved personal sacrifice. I could no longer be my own pope. I could no longer live the kind of life I had been living.

Some things must happen in the fullness of time. If you ever wonder why hasn’t some particular Anglican converted to the Catholic Church already, especially when that person seems to feel so strongly that they want to become Catholic or leave COFE/Anglicanism, please try to remember that such a Christian may indeed want to be doing such a conversion for the right reasons, at the right time.

I hope the new provisions for Anglicans seeking full communion with the Church will help facilitate their journey; it can be arduous enough with all the changes that they must embrace.

Would any of the convert clergy like to get jobs teaching homiletics to our seminarians? We need something to improve the quality of preaching!

Good post, MQ.

Norris: You are so right! Protestant preachers really know how to preach. Think – “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” – preached by Jonathan Edwards at Enfield, Connecticut on July 8th, 1741, and then shiver in your miserable Catholic boots (just joking). We must remember, though, the central purpose of the Mass is to partake of Christ’s Body and Blood, and not to listen to a sermon. I can count on one hand the memorable homilies I’ve heard at Sunday Mass; but that’s not the crux, as I’m sure you would agree. Great preaching exists in the Church; but the Mass is not the time and place.

Benedict Carter – 19th century Catholics as “social inferiors”? Are you one of the superiors then? You sound like an Anglican from Barsetshire.
***
What about those born Anglican who converted to Catholicism but later returned to their mother church. (Wasn’t there a whole parish like this in the US in the 1990s led by a curiously named Fr. Pope?) If not allowed to become (remain) priests, could their laity worship in one of the new Catholic/Anglican parishes? Would they be required to ‘repent’ of their heresies more than the others?

All this talk about ‘converts’ … everyone of us has to convert every day of our lives, and I have a feeling that we will be judged on things quite different from most of what is discussed above.

Rome may have 100% of the truth, but an Anglican using his 75% well is worth more than a Roman coasting at 34% – and making fun of the Anglican in the process.

Stephen Hough:

“Benedict Carter – 19th century Catholics as “social inferiors”? Are you one of the superiors then?

Why would you think that? I pity you, Mr Hough. Your comment reeks of the envy decades of socialism has engendered in the English, who can no longer even comprehend clear English as a result, it would seem.

No. I was referring to one of the 19th Century Church’s main constituents, which was the landless Irish Catholic immigrants.

Landless because in their own homeland the protestants denied them the possibility of even owning it. Hardly a group socially superior to the protestant English who ruled them.

And so they came to England. And amongst them was one of my great-grandfathers.

Kindly lay off the numbers-gibes, Poor Parson.

If one individual, one, comes into the Catholic Church founded by Our Lord on Peter, believing all the Church teaches, her doctrinal and moral teaching, and resolved to follow it relying on grace and in spite of one’s weakness, then (whether that person comes in as part of a large number or a small number), there will be JOY -

- in Heaven;

- on the part of ourselves who are in already (unworthy as we are); and

- ah yes indeed – do not doubt it! – on the part of that incomer.

I speak from experience on this latter point: the quiet joy has been a never-failing one.

Thanks Johnhenry and Mike Quentel, what a beautiful message you have written, full of insightful and profound views. “It took a few years of careful thinking and discernment”; “the truth is more important than pretty language”; ” I could no longer be my own Pope” accurately reflect, I am sure, the feelings and troubles of many potential Anglican converts in these troubled years.
—
And yes, charity means also that one must understand that such a momentous change will, in most cases, not happen overnight. That it wants to be accurately digested and grown into, with the time allowing the Holy Ghost to slowly work in us and lead us gently to the Truth.
—
I think that I will not be contradicted in saying that whilst a sudden conversion cannot be a bad conversion and can come out of a sudden but profound realisation of the Truth, a slow and careful process of conversion will generally result in a beautifully Catholic soul.
—
On the other hand, by reading posts like yours and johnhenry’s I am also reminded of how lucky we cradle Catholics are, even with the tambourines and all the affliction of the “aggiornamento”, to have been borne in the right shop, with the truth ours for the asking and without having to go any painful process of detachment from the (as the beautiful, erm, Catholic hymn says) “faith of our fathers”.
—

“Mundabor
It is only a matter of time before you will find the priest emerging from the sacristy en route for the altar is – a Woman!”
—–
Apart from the smile which such an abysmal, unwittingly comical ignorance of the most basic tenets of Catholicism caused in me, what is most striking is that this is the man who claims to believe that he is… a Catholic!
—
Still, every message of his points out to the very simple fact that his supposed Catholicism consists in being, through and through, Protestant.
—-
I mean, I can understand is one says “I do not believe in God, therefore I am an atheist”.
But this is like saying “I am a Christian and by the way, God does not exist”.
—-

laicus, Noah’s Wife just can’t help herself; she’s in denial, you know. Erastianism is simply logically unsupportable in this day and age.

Stephen hough,
“everyone has to convert every day” is totally beside the point and certainly does not authorise anyone to say that there’s no issue of conversion “because I convert every day”; this is, as Mike Quentel pointed out, “being your own Pope”.
—
Similarly, the rather obvious consideration that there may be Anglicans who are more pious than not-too-pious Catholics is a non-starter. The matter of truth and falsehood is nothing to do with the individual souls.
—
It is rather worth thinking, though, how an Anglican would score which, upon appearing at the pearly gates, would say to the bearer of the keys “well, old boy, I think I score 74% and therefore I think that I deserve entry much more than than chap before me in the queue, who was admitted with, I reckon, 34%”.
—
Methinks the answer of the bearer of they keys might be something on the lines of “you see, he might have scored only 34% because of his own weaknesses, but he had the humility to acknowledge his limits and do his limited best to limit the damage they do. You, on the other hand, always refused to accept the authority of the Church on the ground of your proud assumption that you score is high. I am very sorry to inform you that you score at 19%”.
—

I simply don’t understand how any priest, however much he longs for union with Rome, can stand up and say publicly that he has never been a priest, that all the sacraments he has celebrated have been (at best) delusions and (at worst) blasphemies, and that his entire ministry has been a sham. Yet this is what Anglican priests who take advantage of Anglicanorum Coetibus will ipso facto be doing.

orphan,

I suggest you read more testimonials from former Anglican clergymen who have converted. In fact, the truth about how they feel concerning their former ministry is rather more complex. They do not in the least think that their “entire ministry has been a sham,” but rather think along the lines of “it was pretty good and useful as long as it lasted, but in the end something was missing.” That “something” being communion in Faith and Sacrament with the Universal Church.

More to the point, have you even read Anglicanorum Coetibus? The document does not in any way state that Anglican ministry is useless, let alone blasphemous; quite the contrary in fact: it heaps lavish praise upon the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral patrimony of Anglicanism, calling it a “treasure” and a “precious gift”. It also recalls the phrase in Lumen Gentium stating that “many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside [the Catholic Church's] visible confines.”

Orphan: No-one will be required to stand up and say as much publicly and in as many words; and many will therefore feel that it’s OK. But they will be required to say that they “believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God”; and it has been made quite explicitly clear that the teaching of Apostolicæ Curæ is included in that, and not just as describing the situation that obtained in 1896 but as a present reality. Any Anglican clergy who believe that they have had sacramentally valid ministries will be perjuring themselves in making the above statement; and if they go on to be (re-)ordained they will also be intending an act of sacrilege (cf. Creed of Pope Pius IV). How they can do that with a clear conscience I do not understand.

Persona 6ratissima, we are, to coin a phrase, singing from the same hymn-sheet on this.

Gideon Ertner, yes, I have read Anglicanorum Coetibus and the Complementary Norms several times. However, the brutal fact remains that reordination is required, and that therefore Anglican priests were, in Rome’s opinion, no more than laymen, and that, hence, the sacraments they purported to celebrate were indeed nothing but a delusion and a sham.

personaingratissima, sorry for misreading your name when I wrote the above!

From Little Black Censored
Anglican clergy by definition believe that their Orders are already those of the Catholic Church. They will not be required to surrender that belief – let alone to abjure it publicly – before reordination as Roman Catholic priests, but will leave the issue in God’s hands, asking him to supply whatever had been lacking. St Chad humbly accepted reconsecration by Roman rites, although he was already undoubtedly a Catholic bishop, for the sake of removing all doubt in other people’s minds and regularizing his position when circumstances were confused. He will be a good example to follow.

> Anglican clergy by definition believe that their Orders are already those of the Catholic Church. They will not be required to surrender that belief <

Of course they are required to surrender it. Were it not so, why would they have to be reordained?

LBS: “Removing all doubt” where “circumstances [are] confused” is a good and noble thing to do, but can be achieved perfectly well by means of conditional ordination. (Do we know for certain that St Chad’s reconsecration was not sub conditione?) The “Complementary Norms” (i.e Code of Practice – I thought C of E traditionalists were supposed to be against such things?) go out of their way to state that “the ordination of ministers coming from Anglicanism will be absolute, on the basis of the Bull Apostolicae curae“. Stating that “I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God” will mean – and this seems to have been made perfectly explicit – that one accepts the judgement of the Bull of 1896 as applying in the present.

greydon

The term “Anglicana Ecclesia” was certainly not confined to Magna Carta but was the current Latin appellation of the Church of England in 1534. It appears in Henry’s Act of Supremacy of that year. He was perfectly clear what it was over which he was asserting his sovereignty!

be it enacted by authority of this present Parliament, that the king our sovereign lord, his heirs and successors, kings of this realm, shall be taken, accepted; and reputed the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England, called Anglicana Ecclesia

Note: the Act speaks of “The Church of England” – the title it held the day before as well as the day after the Act. No new organisation, but the same Anglicana Ecclesia as ever.

orphan:

“However, the brutal fact remains that reordination is required ….”.

No, not re-ordination, but Ordination.

These men have been good and useful “Ministers of the Word” in their thus-far non-priestly lives; now, as true priests in the line of Melchizedek, they will be able to offer the Eternal Sacrifice of Jesus Christ to God for men’s sins, and be able, by the power of the Holy Ghost, to forgive men those same sins.

They will be finally priests indeed. Because you are right, they have not been until their Ordination in the Catholic Church.

One mark of adulthood is to admit our mistakes. If I were an Anglican minister seeking to be a priest, I would have absolutely no problem with ordination as such. I would leave my pride behind me and be glad of it.

“I simply don’t understand how any priest, however much he longs for union with Rome, can stand up and say publicly that he has never been a priest, that all the sacraments he has celebrated have been (at best) delusions and (at worst) blasphemies, and that his entire ministry has been a sham”.
————
He can do it if he thinks that this is the case.
He cannot do it (without committing a grievous sacrilege) if he thinks otherwise.
————-
It is a bit like a man coming out of darkness to the light an dsaying “my Goodness, I will now have to admit that I have lived in the darkness all my life!”.
Well certainly those outside will not tell him that there was a lot of light in the cave to make him happy.
——
He can still remain in the cave, though, if it’s so hard.

And look, every intelligent man can say to himself and to others, and with a straight face, that it is what it is and it is better to have seen it, however late, than to have continued in denial.

Humbleness is a good currency in the Catholic world; you can purchase a lot of goodwill and sympathy with it.

Benedict

Unfortunately for your expectations, the Bishop of Rome has no jurisdiction in England, and so any purported “ordinations” will only be that – of doubtful validity, conferred by what are in effect vagantes in this country.

“He can do it if he thinks that this is the case.
He cannot do it (without committing a grievous sacrilege) if he thinks otherwise.”

That is my big concern. There seem to be plenty of Anglican clergy who don’t seem to understand that ordination “cannot be repeated without sacrilege” (Creed of Pius IV, based on the Canons of Trent) – or who do understand it, but somehow think such considerations can be swept aside for a greater purpose, as if sacrilege can be used as a means to a good end – a sacrilege they will be intending by undergoing (re-)ordination while believing their previous orders to be valid.

> These men have been good and useful “Ministers of the Word” in their thus-far non-priestly lives; now, as true priests in the line of Melchizedek, they will be able to offer the Eternal Sacrifice of Jesus Christ to God for men’s sins, and be able, by the power of the Holy Ghost, to forgive men those same sins.

The problem is that most such men have claimed, and still claim, to be true priests in the line of Melchizedek and to offer the Eternal Sacrifice and to forgive sins. Many of them will carry on doing so until the time of their being received into the Roman Church. “Farewell Masses” offered by Anglican priests before being received into the Roman Church are not unknown.

If I, a layman, were to dress up in vestments and “offer Mass” by saying the words and doing the actions, wouldn’t it be a horrid blasphemy? Surely, then, if an Anglican priest purports to say Mass, which he tells his people is the same Mass as the Holy Father offers, while intending all the while to be received into the Roman Church, isn’t that a horrid blasphemy?

orphan:

The judgement of what is a “horrid blasphemy” rests with the Church and not with me (thank God).

I suppose the baptism of Guthram and his Vikings in the reign of the finally-victorious King Alfred the Great wasn’t all pretty and neat either: perhaps there was a Mass where one of these new Catholics slipped a small statue of Wodin into the church with him.

What these men cannot supply, God will. Let them be ordained, and then regulated by the rules pertaining.

PP:

”

Benedict

“… the Bishop of Rome has no jurisdiction in England, and so any purported “ordinations” will only be that – of doubtful validity, conferred by what are in effect vagantes in this country”.

What is meant here by “of doubtful validity”?

Are you really saying that Catholic Orders are not valid per se; or else that because YOU happen to reject a Pope’s right to rule the Catholic Church in England (which is NOT your sect, PP, much as we all love you), then somehow Orders conferred upon men in this country by Rome are invalid?

Annie, I followed your link. There are 377 names on that list, spanning a period of 150+ years. That’s a rate of one execution every 20 weeks. Whilst not meaning to deny or denigrate their sacrifice, it’s not exactly the Parisian terror, and Queen Mary accounted for a similar number in just seven years.

Can we please stop referring to our friend, Poor Parson, as “PP”, which in our parlance means “Papa” (pope) or “Pontificum” (of the popes)?

As an affectionate diminutive for his goodself, I suggest “Parsley”.

Benedict

Yes, I come to that conclusion because the Church of England so conclusively rejected papal jurisdiction, and with it his claim to provide bishops and priests for service in England. It remains the law, that the Bishop of Rome has no jurisdiction here.

They are not recognised as priests of the Church of England – how could they be? – as they are explicitly required by their own denomination to deny the jurisdiction of the English Church. Those “ordained” here are not ordained by a lawful bishop with jurisdiction, and so their status remains irregular.

Except in the eyes of Jesus.

PP
Your broken record on “the Bishop of Rome has [shouldn't that be "hath"?] no jurisdiction here” is getting a bit tiresome, even to this cradle Catholic who sings every week in the C of E.
What, precisely, if anything, do you actually mean when you repeat ad nauseam that “no jurisdiction” phrase? I don’t know if you’d noticed, but a large number of people in this country accept his jurisdiction over their spiritual lives, to say nothing of the organisational infrastructure of the Roman Catholic church in this country – a country in which we still enjoy reasonably unfettered freedom of association. It seems to me that saying that the Pope has no jurisdiction here is akin to saying that FIFA doesn’t.

Poor Parson:

Thank you for that explanation.

The only answer then is the dissolution at the earliest opportunity of the ecclesial community which imagines itself to be the Church in England (aka the Church of England) but clearly (to any sentient bipedal) is not.

Poor Parson! The Holy Father, the Rock of Jesus Christ, is calling you too to His Church! You have so much in common with us already: please try to lower your patriotic guard and see that one can be English and Roman at the same time wihtout any diminution of either.

So the successor to Peter is of lower authority than the King of England! The Wife of Noah’s gibberish gets better by the hour.

Poor Parson:

I am presuming that your apparent belief that the English parliament is the highest authority for Christians is due to ignorance or an attempt at self-deprecating satire that we English can be so good at.

My thoughts on Anglican ordinations are that those who were commissioned to ministry in the Anglican community did so in good faith. They are not priests but they are ministers of the gospel who may have brought many people to love Our Lord.

The baptisms they administer and the weddings they witness are true sacraments. When they share bread and wine or hear confessions, there is no sacrament but these prayers and actions surely help bring peole to an awareness of the sacrifice that Christ paid for our sins and perhaps brought sinners to repentence?

None of the above would have to be rejected as worthless if an Anglican Minister becomes a Catholic Priest. No one is re-ordained but ordained to the priesthood of Jesus Christ.

I look forward to welcoming Poor Parson into the Catholic Church and perhaps kneeling to receive the Body of Christ from him in Communion with Saints Alban, Patrick, Thomas More, John Fisher, John Henry Newman and of course the Vicar of Christ (who certainly “hath” jurisdiction in every land regardless of what the state may claim).

paulipops@9:11pm

“There are 377 names on that list . . . and Queen Mary accounted for a similiar number in just seven years.”

And your point is . . .???

“No new organization, but the same….”

The Benedictine monk, St. Bede, invented (in the 8th century) a consciousness of the English Church’s Latin unity when he designated or called the English Christian Church the “Ecclesia Anglicana,” meaning the English Church was part of the Western Latin Church, in communion with the See of Peter. Bede also wanted the English Church to be a part of the Western Catholic Church’s indivisibility or indissoluble nature. In the words of T. S. Eliot, the Western Latin Church became the “incorporated ’sensus communis’ [communal sentiment or judgment] of Europe.”

Over the centuries, the Roman Curia, which always wrote in Latin (naturally!), picked up on the term as meaning that part of the Latin Church (thanks to Bede) located in England in the same way the Latin Church in Scotland was called “Ecclesia Scotticana” in Rome, and the Church in France was called “Ecclesia Gallicana,” the Church in Spain called “Ecclesia Hispanica,” etc. the Vatican Library has many documents (gathered over the centuries) that speak of thse different churches as members of the same indivisible Western Latin Church, all of whom owed their origins to the Christian communities of the Western Latin Church and the See of Rome. (St. paul, remember, wrote an Epistle to the Romans, the Roman Christians in Rome, not to any other Western Christians, in Germany, France, Canterbury, England, etc.)

Finally, most scholars believe, like the Lutheran historian, Martin Marty, that the “Church of England” owes its origins to the Reformation. As Martin notes in the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION: “… the Anglican communion as it has existed since the break with Rome under Henry VIII in the sixteenth century is vastly different from the Catholic Church under Roman papal obedience in England before and since the Reformation. In short, the Waldensian, the Czech groups, the Anglicans were…part of the Protestant revolt from both the viewpoints of the Roman Catholic leadership and HISTORICAL SCHOLARSHIP EVER SINCE [my capitalization].”

In conclusion, Poor Parson,

What makes the recusant Catholics (”since the Reformation,” to quote Martin) so unique is that they preserved the indivisibility or indissolubleness of the English Catholic Church and have kept it alive since the time of Pope Gregory the Great and Augustine (and those before them). Those who left the English Catholic Church, however, to identify with a new ecclesial entity, the Church of England, cut themselves off from that English Church — and the indivisible Western Latin Church (the old faith) — for something newer (new faith).

greydon

Its all very interesting, but unfortunately wrong. The recusant “catholics” were dissenters, and many of them conspired against the Crown.

The Church of England did not cut itself off from its own history in the 1530s. Far from it, as you will discover if you read the text of Henry’s statutes of that period, or the Church of England’s own formularies. It is a Church which has removed the doctrinal accretions and irregularities accumulated by Rome, at least since the time of St Bede, and is now a Catholic Church worthy of the name.

My point was that managing to be “rather stunned” by the “slaughter” of Catholics over a century and a half without mentioning the other side of that particular coin – which is that the Catholics of the time were at least as bloodthirsty when they got the upper hand – is a beautifully one-sided view of history.

Mary killed about the same number in 7 years as successive English governments managed over the course of a century and a half. (For long periods of which there was little or no actual persecution). Both pale into insignificance beside the St Bartholomew’s day massacre in France – according to wikipedia, estimates of the dead range from 5,000 to 30,000.

If we’re going to spend our days digging up past wrongs, let’s do it in a spirit of reconciliation and acknowledgement that it wasn’t remotely all one way.

PP – labelling them dissenters is irrelevant, without first having demonstrated that what they were dissenting from was correct. Saying that they conspired against the crown (which is certainly true, in at least some cases) is also question begging – it’s only relevant if we first assume that their loyalty in that matter should have been to the crown, which is actually what we’re arguing about.

PP – “a” Catholic Church?
Even if you don’t hold that the RC Church is “the Catholic Church”, surely you mean “part of the Catholic Church”. Or perhaps not?

paulipops

Indeed, the Church of England is, as it describes itself, “part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church”. Its teaching is truly Catholic – in the proper sense of that which is universally shared – as opposed to the RC church with its sectarian papal claims and marian dogmas.

paulipops

The term “dissenters” refers to the various bodies and sects which rejected the Church of England.

Their loyalty to the Crown was required by law as citizens of the realm, but many of them saw fit to attempt to assassinate the monarch of the day, encouraged to do so by the papacy, which was constantly conspiring with European states to overthrow the English Crown. In 1570 Pius V issued a bull purporting to depose Queen Elizabeth and to release her subjects from any duty of loyalty to her.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that recusants were looked upon with deep suspicion as supporters of a foreign power.

Interesting posts.

So now we have it: Poor Parson sees himself first and foremost as a State bureaucrat. Catholics are not to be defined by their faith, but as “dissenters” from a State policy, which carries more weight for Poor Parson than religious truth.

No wonder the Anglicans are close in spirit to the Eastern Orthodox. A rebellious “non serviam” binds them together.

Benedict

Au contraire, to dissent from the Church of England is to dissent from the authentic Catholic expression of the Faith in this realm.

When Rome finally gets over its imperial delusions and acknowledges its fellow Christians, Anglicans and Orthodox, there might be a way forward to a united Catholic Church to which all belong. Until then, Rome is the chief stumbling block.

> The judgement of what is a “horrid blasphemy” rests with the Church and not with me (thank God.

Benedict Carter, this is of course true. But for someone who believes himself to be a layman to dress up as a priest and purport to say Mass still seems to me to be, prima facie, a horrid blasphemy.

Benedict: You forgot caesaropapism!

Ptahhopte:

Is he related to The Borgia of the same first name?

Poor Parson:

There is a far greater stumbling block even than your antipathy to the Rock on which Christ built His Church. It’s your sect’s fundamental changes and innovations to the Christian Faith. The Creed and the fist seven Councils are nowhere near enough when you have fundamentally altered sacramental and moral teaching, hold erroneous views of what the Church actually is, and hold to your provinciality.

Orphan:

I can only echo New Catholic’s excellent post of 1.11 am. There is in reality little guilt to be ascribed to men who in good faith thought themselves to be a true priest (but who are not). God may well be offended by their sacrilege against true religion but surely will be pleased by their efforts and good will.

After all, orphan, we don’t blame poor madmen who believe themselves to be Napoleon or even Geoff Boycott, do we? So let us welcome them with great warmth and their new vocations as full priests and forget the past.

Benedict

The Church of England has added nothing to the Catholic Faith which it solemnly professes – that is its raison d’etre. Rome, however, has made many changes and innovations for which there is no authority.

There is a rather amusing blog which you might like to read at http://tinyurl.com/yg9p44p – a more humorous summary than all of the above.

Benedict:

My specific difficulty is as regards Anglican priests who continue to celebrate Mass, etc, while intending to become Roman Catholics. If they intend to become Roman Catholics they must ipso facto believe that they are laymen, and surely for a layman to purport to celebrate Mass is very wrong?

Or, much more usually, they don’t believe they are laymen but are prepared to perjure themselves by stating, upon being received, that they “believe and profess” RC teaching on that as on all other matters.

Indeed, personaingratissima. I simply can’t understand such people and I would find it difficult to trust them.

“…but unfortunately wrong.”

Poor Parson,

Most scholars today differentiate between Catholic recusants and Protestant Dissenters. Anyway, depending on whose side one is one, Bishop Latimer’s observation rings true: ” Wherever you see persecution, there is more than a probability that truth is on the persecuted side.” Certainly until the Catholic Emancipation, truth was on the recusants’ side, especially in regard to the most basic civil rights.

The state church slienced them by persecution, fire and the sword, and by the tongue, whether they were of nobility (the Howard family) or commoners (though the nobility often got off easier). However, collectively, they were truly the saving remnant of the Catholic Church in England until the 19th century emancipation.

“…[Angliican Church]…is now a Catholic church….”
“The Church of England has added nothing to the Catholic Church.”

Ironically, more than half of Christianity (Roman and Eastern Catholicism) considers Anglicans “dissenters,” and the Orthodox, well, maybe what Archbishop Hilarion, representing the Russian Orthodoz Church, said recently says it all:”It is obvious to us that the Orthodox and Catholic Churches cannot be rivals any longer…they must be allies.” No mention of Anglicanism’s common Catholicism!

According to Timothy Ware, since the 1950’s, Anglicans and Orthodox in their discussions have left the question of valid orders to one side in order to deal with more substantive doctrinal issues. Now with the ordinations of women and active gays to the episcopacy (a big addition to “the Catholic Church, Poor Parson!), Anglicanism is really isolated from global Catholicism and owing to GAFcon and seceding Anglicans groups, is being pushed on a totally different stage of its journey, one that I fear will leave it even more splintered, Protestant, and hardly a witness to “a Catholic Chruch.” Maybe GAFcon will save it!
We hope so.

“…dissent from the Church of England….”

To dissent from a state church?? Isn’t that similar to Iran’s religious policy? Or the state religious establishment in Saudi Arabia??? They have state churches too! In the future, I certainly wouldn’t want to watch such church memories of state religion come upon me if I were Church of England, no matter how much distance would lend enchantment to the view!

paulipops@9:54am

Any normal person would be stunned to read about the English Catholic Martyrs and how they died.

There was no mention, either pro or con, re the killings of Protestants because my post was not about that question. It was a reflection on the reality that these Catholic martyrs have been praying unceasingly before God, asking Him to reconnect the Anglican Church with the Catholic Church. How many people killed how many other people is a debate that has nothing to do with the point I was trying to make. It’s rather odd that you would introduce it.

PP The Church of England has added nothing to the Catholic Faith which it solemnly professes – that is its raison d’etre.

Where then did the C of E, (and other provinces in the Anglican communion), gain the authority to change the nature of Holy Orders by admitting women to the priesthood and, in some provinces as bishops? Something which John Paul 11 has said the Roman Catholic Church does not have the authority to do.

The Church of England is the state church – and it’s official definition is “protestant and reformed”.

Poor Parson,

Well, I read them (”…tingurl.com….”), Poor Parson.
What can I say? Childish, short on logic, wit, like kids on stage with mouths hunting for air, attention, a small part of the Anglican theatre. At best, second rate.

There must be better sites out there, ringing of threats of “truth,” the Episcopal Church, “issues” wriggling like lice on a dog’s back!

Boring, Poor Parson! Boring!

Misericordia said: The Church of England is the state church – and it’s official definition is “protestant and reformed”.

The official Church of England website http://www.cofe.anglican.org/about/history/ prefers ‘catholic and reformed’. It states:
“The religious settlement that eventually emerged in the reign of Elizabeth gave the Church of England the distinctive identity that it has retained to this day. It resulted in a Church that consciously retained a large amount of continuity with the Church of the Patristic and Medieval periods in terms of its use of the catholic creeds, its pattern of ministry, its buildings and aspects of its liturgy, but which also embodied Protestant insights in its theology and in the overall shape of its liturgical practice. The way that this is often expressed is by saying that the Church of England is both ‘catholic and reformed.’”

Also interestingly the word ‘protestant’ does not appear anywhere in the Book of Common Prayer.

greydon

The Church of Rome is the state church to end all state churches. It has burned its opponents down the centuries, and imposed its will through proxy monarchs right across the world. It purports to be a state in its own right (as a Church!!) and to be sovereign over all states.

Thankfully its imperialism has been confined to a corner of Rome following the loss of the papal estates, but it continues to hold forth in matters of religion in a manner more befitting a caliphate than a church.

Fortunately most of its existing members simply ignore its wilder statements such as Humanae Vitae – and in parts of the world they are joining the Anglican church in their hundreds of thousands. Those who live in S America recognise a dictatorship when they see one.

Well now, Poor Parson, I would have thought that holding forth in matters of religion is what should be expected from the leader of a church, particularly when it’s adherents are spread over the four quarters of the globe!

Some of us, indeed, feel that over the last twenty-five years there has been insufficient “holding forth on religion” from the top.

dear Poor Parson,

We’ll let the stats speak for themselves: global Anglicanism is 3.6% of Global Christianity. Catholicism, 51% of that Christianty. Anglicanism is growing in Africa, but in the US, it is less than 1 percent of the total population (2.4 million out of 306 million Americans) whereas Catholicism is 24% there. Six out of the nine US Justices of the Supreme Court are Catholic as is the Speaker of the House and the Vice President. Catholicism is thriving in a pluralist society like the US. And 83% of Catholics polled in the States had a positive opinion of the current pope.

In South America, Anglicanism is less than 1/2% of the population. Enough said about the “hundreds of thousands” joining the Anglican Church! Check the stats.

But, yes, many people in Africa are joining the Anglican Church (as they are joining the Catholic Church). Anglicanism is fast becoming a predominately black church, globally. Possibly — with GAFcon — it will straighten out British Anglicans and maybe even suggest the Church of England dis-establish herself before she is graudally forced to! I think black Anglicans will ultimately save the Anglican Church.
Like the black archbishop of York, they are faith-filled and ecumenical.

greydon

I do not have “stats” for the USA, but I do know that some 600,000 people in Brazil each year leave the RC church for other denominations, many of them becoming Anglicans. The Anglican province is growing very quickly as a result of the loss of faith in the RC church.

Gafcon is primarily a third world phenomenon. It has little impact on the consciousness of members of the Church of England, almost all of whom have never heard of it, let alone wondered whether the CofE should be disestablished.

It is curious that you should make such an arcane connection.

Poor Parson,

The overwhelming majority of the non-Catholic Brazilian population join the Pentecostal churches; together with all the other non-Catholic churches they comprise about 15% of the country. According to the CHRISTIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA, updated every year, Brazil has held to this stat for years. The Anglicans are a very small lot in Brazil, according to that source. The other stat that source notes is how Brazilian change churches so often and belong to a variety of churches at once. The Catholic Church has held its own at 72% of a population of nearly 200 million, according to that same source (whose editor D. Barrett is an Anglican)

“Gafcon…has little impact on the consciousness of the Church of England….”

Also, Poor Parson:

Because the African Archbishop of York is from Uganda, whose current Anglican leadeship (in Uganda) is associated with Gafcon, I thought there might be some kind of consciousness. Also, African churches are plagued by government church matters. Churches fight back all the time. Ironcially, the archbishop of York was appointed to his post by the British government.

Finally, more than half the Anglican Communion is African; surely that must enter the consciousness of UK Anglicans! Under certain circumstances, the overwhelmingly strong African presence in Anglicanism must provide a certain relief denied even in prayer — when thinking of growth and the future of Anglicanism.