Posted on 01/30/2011 2:26:12 PM PST by fabrizio
LONDON -- Hundreds of disillusioned Anglicans were preparing Sunday to defect from the Church of England to the Roman Catholic Church in time for Lent, Sky News reported.
It follows a campaign by a former Anglican bishop in protest at its stance on the ordination of women and gay clergy.
Father Keith Newton has encouraged Anglicans to join the Ordinariate -- a special branch of Catholicism established by the Pope -- to welcome protestant defectors.
Despite the efforts of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anglo Catholics have begun leaving following the conversion of three Anglican bishops in mid-January.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Ok I admit to a certain flippancy, a weakness of mine I struggle to control, for which I apologise. However it is not totally trifling. Unlike the Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church has not neglected the Sacrements, but there is a danger there. It is all too easy to let routines and set prayers and procedures obscure the message. The more layers of ritual and tradition develop, the more remote God can become. It can reach a point where people end up worshipping the Church (in fact, not intention) rather than the God who ordained the Church. Frankly, I know a lot of Catholics who have wandered down that road (not present company I hasten to add).
Ya don't think so? Turn up the Gregorian on the boom box, release 2 million cfm of incense, and start speaking Latin. Maybe you can get into the spirit of it. This week, and this week only, I can get you a deal on 2 millions years off your time in Purgatory or a low, low 13 shillings sixpence. (Actually H8 did not end this practice in England, just wanted a bigger cut for the Crown)
The C of E will no doubt continue. We are entering a long awkward period during which some Anglican Bishops will lead their people toward Catholicism and re-establish the apostolic succession in Britain, and more Bishops (open gays and lesbians among them) will not.
The Church of England is the "official" religion of the UK. Eventually it will be disestablished and the UK will have Episcopalians and Catholics, just as we do.
And on an ecumenical note, may I add the sentiments of a Catholic Irishman of my acquaintance? "No bloody papist will bless this hunt's hounds!"
How could the populace "react with great unhappiness to the destruction of their churches and monasteries"? They weren't theirs to start off with. The monasteries were, in general, remote and exclusivist places. They divided people. Sure a lot of the monasteries helped the poor, but the point is that they had created a lot of the poor themselves in the first place by concentrating wealth,(a lot of which was shipped overseas). As for the churches, they were still there. It was all the finery and images and relics that the reformers got rid of. Kind of like an iconoclasm (incidentally, personally I think they went over the top with that).
As to the established Church of England, well I may be English but I'm also a good Baptist, and a Baptist by conviction at that. I don't think we should have a State religion. I don't think any country should. The CofE will continue beyond this. The anglo-catholic wing is a relatively small and uninfluential part and they are quite ineffective at spreading the gospel anyway. The Catholics can have them for all the good it will do. They can fool themselves with "apostolic successions" too for all I care.
Yes, it does seem faintly ridiculous to be discussing medieval problems while The Friendly Sons of Muhammed are over running the place.
Would you care to explain that statement further?
Unfortunately the ramifications of that argument are still with us today, made all the worse by being tied to the heady concepts of liberty, nationalism and patriotism. This is not a dead issue, certainly not in some part of the UK. This is why I decry all this Catholic triumphalism - I want my people (the English) to rise and unite again, but I don’t want them to do that on an anti-catholic bandwagon. And that could happen. It really could.
You reinforce my contention that you have no argument, therefore you engage in ad hominem attacks. If you approach faith as uncritically as you approach discussion, it’s no wonder you embrace Roman Catholicism.
It’d actually be more accurate that Pope Clement favored the monarch of Spain (including Latin America), AND Germany, namely the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Catherine of Aragon, Henry’s wife, was Charles aunt.
Henry also had a arguably legitimate case under Roman canon law. He had been granted a legal waiver in the first place to marry Catherine, as she was his brother’s widow. Church law at the time normally prohibited marrying a close relative’s widow; it was seen as a form of incest. The waiver was granted based on Spanish Catherine’s word on something unprovable.... that her previous marriage was not consummated.
The fact that Catherine’s male children—so important for a stable succession—repeatedly miscarried or died in infancy convinced the superstitious Henry he was under God’s curse, hence he felt the “marriage” wasn’t real. Annulments on the basis of such evidence really were routinely granted by the papacy...in normal situations.
Pope Clement however, was in anything but a normal situation. He was under house-arrest by Charles V, who had also (unthinkably!) just sacked Rome itself—something not done for over 1000 years, since ancient Rome’s fall. It’s clear that the political pressure by the European world’s one superpower—Charles V—was enormous, and Henry’s case never had a chance...and Spain (which then included most of South America, and the whole HRE, that is Germany) was clearly favored over (then backwater/weak) England.
The evidence of power-politics playing a role in corrupt/weak Medici Pope Clement’s decision-making on Henry’s annulment is crystal clear to anyone but a zealot.
“..Part of the problem is that the national church is controlled by iron-fisted radicals who took over while individuals in local churches weren’t paying attention...”
Look up and obtain a copy of a book entitled “AA-1025”.
Radicals, indeed. And a bit more sinister.
“Divorce and annulment are not the same thing.
Deliberately confusing the two is like confusing miscarriage and abortion.”
Oh, I’m not confused. Legally they are different things.
In a divorce, you have to pay your ex-wife. In an annulment you have to pay your church. Is that what you meant?
I enjoy your style of presenting facts with humor....very amusing and informative.
‘So the Catholic church got rid of all if its homosexuals?’
So your church is like Iran — no homosexuals? Do you use the same methods?
‘Does that mean the pope is endorsing Anglican rites?’
Do you know the difference between liturgical differences and theological differences?
Ironically, his second daughter turned that question into a political weapon which she used with serious effect.
Is this article a problem with terminology? By "Anglican," do they really mean Episcopalian?
Nice, but Matthew 10:14 has nothing to do with members of the COE joining the RCC or RCC joining the COE. Reading donna, "it's FUNdamental".
The the Anglican Ordinates are a form of/within Roman RITE
The Anglican Ordinates are model after Opus Die.
OK, let's dig into this.
1. How could the populace "react with great unhappiness to the destruction of their churches and monasteries"? They weren't theirs to start off with.
The churches did belong to the people of the parish, in much the same way that a village church "belongs" to its people today. You know how proud a small village can be of its beautiful old church (usually much too big for the current population, never mind the current churchgoing population, what with the migration to the cities and suburbia.) Back in those days, with no mass communication and no easy travel, the parish church was local meeting place, bulletin board, memorial, art gallery, and pet project. The parish decorated it - most of the images that were smashed by the iconoclasts were locally produced by their own craftsmen - the wall paintings that were whitewashed over, the statues that were burned, the intricate carved roodscreens that were hacked to pieces (stained glass I'll grant you was a specialty item, paid for by the local large landowners and imported from the workshops at urban centers or from France at great expense, but dearly loved and shown to visitors with pride. Much of the surviving medieval stained glass was hidden from the image-smashers by local parishioners - that's why so many country churches have just the head of Christ or St. Anne because that's all they had time to save and hide.) When outsiders came charging in with decrees that the church be "purified," what they were smashing and burning was what the people had made and what the people cherished. That is NOT going to go over well, anytime, anywhere.
2. The monasteries were, in general, remote and exclusivist places. They divided people.
See the preface to C.S. Lewis's The Discarded Image for a good summary of the fallacy of applying modern assumptions to medieval worldview.
Monasteries were not remote in pre-industrialized days (that of course begs the question - remote from what? Everywhere was remote from everywhere else, then.) Their land and holdings were labor-intensive (everything was labor-intensive in those days). Many formerly well-populated rural areas have emptied into the cities and suburbs.
Your large monastery was by necessity just another landowner, with tenants, freeholders, bailiffs, and all the rest of the feudal administrative machinery. The idea that they could afford to stand remote and separated from the laity is the assumption of a modern who forgets just how many people are required to till even a small amount of land in the days before modern ploughs, mechanized reaping, and hayrakes came in -- never mind the internal combustion engine, I'm talking about horse- or oxen-drawn equipment. The pleasant picture of a couple dozen Benedictines with their habits kilted up mowing their entire property with old-fashioned scythes is completely impossible. A big religious foundation would have to have hundreds of tenants and a smaller number of freeholders just to farm the land, with the same arrangements for a portion of the increase or rent to be paid to the landowner.
Because they were the same as any other landowner from an administrative point of view, they had good and bad in their ranks. Some managed their property better, treated their tenants better, and were better loved by their tenants and adherents. Others, not so much. But this was true of any class of landowner in all of Britain, not exclusively the monasteries and religious foundations.
3. Sure a lot of the monasteries helped the poor, but the point is that they had created a lot of the poor themselves in the first place by concentrating wealth,(a lot of which was shipped overseas).
"Concentrating wealth"? Modern ideas applied to the feudal system again. Any large administrative body is going to concentrate wealth -- that was true of every landowner in England from the smallest freeholder to the greatest Duke. It was not unique to the monasteries. And, of course, the concept of aiding the poor on ones own land was also not unique to the monasteries, but the monasteries were the primary custodians of the system of hospitals, refuges, almshouses, chantries, etc. Many of the nobility fulfilled their charitable obligations by donating or bequeathing sums of money to the monasteries for the care of the poor. Some of the "doles" that were created in those days are traceable in the legal records.
I do not know if anybody has made a study of the relative income and expenditures of the great monastic houses on poor relief, but their dissolution undisputedly left the poor hanging out to dry. The Poor Laws were first enacted towards the end of Henry's reign. That tells you who was doing the lion's share of the work to care for the poor.
As for sending stuff overseas, they sent absolutely as little as they thought they could get away with. Like any other business, their main thought was to invest any surplus back into the property. There were some pretty fierce squabbles on that score from time to time.
For what it's worth, I took a degree in history as an undergraduate, with a concentration in military history with particular reference to the American Civil War and the English Civil War. And of course all of this brouhaha under Henry is what set events in motion that led to the platform in front of the Banqueting House.
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