Catholic Parish Priest Given Right to Preach in [Anglican] St Anne’s Cathedral (N. Ireland)

News Letter ^ | 7/27/17

[marshmallow]

St Anne’s Cathedral has appointed a Roman Catholic priest as one of its canons for the first time.

Father Edward O’Donnell, parish priest of St Brigid’s in south Belfast, is now one of three “ecumenical canons” at the Church of Ireland cathedral.

he dean of the cathedral, the Very Reverend John Mann, said the title allows him to help lead worship – meaning he can preach, as well as read scripture and prayers.

To take part in services, they must first be invited by Dean Mann.

Dean Mann said Fr O’Donnell may well take part in this year’s traditional Black Santa fundraising effort, which involves standing outside all day in the run-up to Christmas.

Fr O’Donnell joins two other ecumenical canons who are already in post.

The others are ministers in the Methodist and a Presbyterian churches, and – bizarrely – both are called Ruth Patterson.

In order to have the right to appoint ecumenical canons, a cathedral must first obtain the permission of the Church of Ireland’s general synod.

The church granted St Anne’s the right to do so in 2009.

Other cathedrals on the island of Ireland also have such posts, including Armagh Cathedral, which already has a Catholic ecumenical canon.

However, Dean Mann believes that this is the first parish priest – who is directly in control of ministering to a congregation – who has been given such a post in Northern Ireland.

The new appointment was announced on Tuesday night.

[ebb tide]

“Fr. D. Prummer OP, writing in 1910, affirms in his Manuale Theologiæ Moralis that it is never licit for a Catholic to take part in a non-Catholic cult with the intention of worshipping God in the manner of non-Catholics, more acatholicorum. Such an act, he declares, is nothing other than a denial of the Catholic faith.2 In the same year, writing an article on ‘Heresy’ for the Catholic Encyclopœdia, Fr. J. Wilhelm SJ affirms that a Catholic may attend non-Catholic services, but only ‘provided no active part be taken in them’. In an article on the same subject, the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique reiterates, in 1920, that active participation in non-Catholic rites is toujours interdite – the reason being that it is ‘equivalent to a denial of the Catholic faith’. In 1930, Fr. B. Merkelbach OP in his Summa Theologiæ Moralis writes that ‘active participation in the sacred things of a [non-Catholic] public cult is illicit, since it implies approval of the worship and a recognition of the sect.’3 Using a slightly different terminology but teaching the same doctrine, Fr. L. Fanfani OP writes, in 1950, ‘material communicatio in sacris [‘material’ in the sense that the person in question does not mean to renounce his Catholic faith], if it is active and immediate, is never permissible for Catholics.’4 The reason for this, he explains, is that such behaviour necessarily manifests a commitment to a heretical or at least an illegitimate cultus.”

http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/thomas-crean/praying-with-non-catholics.htm

[piusv]

He is merely following the new Vatican II religion.