Benedict’s Gambit (Pope is offering an Anglo-Catholic mansion within the Roman Catholic faith)

New York Times ^ | 10/25/2009 | ROSS DOUTHAT

[SeekAndFind]

The Church of England has survived the Spanish Armada, the English Civil War and Elton John performing “Candle in the Wind” at Princess Diana’s Westminster Abbey funeral. So it will probably survive the note the Vatican issued last week, inviting disaffected Anglicans to head Romeward, and offering them an Anglo-Catholic mansion within the walls of the Roman Catholic faith.

But the invitation is a bombshell nonetheless. Pope Benedict XVI’s outreach to Anglicans may produce only a few conversions; it may produce a few million. Either way, it represents an unusual effort at targeted proselytism, remarkable both for its concessions to potential converts — married priests, a self-contained institutional structure, an Anglican rite — and for its indifference to the wishes of the Church of England’s leadership.

This is not the way well-mannered modern churches are supposed to behave. Spurred by the optimism of the early 1960s, the major denominations of Western Christendom have spent half a century being exquisitely polite to one another, setting aside a history of strife in the name of greater Christian unity.

This ecumenical era has borne real theological fruit, especially on issues that divided Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation. But what began as a daring experiment has decayed into bureaucratized complacency — a dull round of interdenominational statements on global warming and Third World debt, only tenuously connected to the Gospel.

At the same time, the more ecumenically minded denominations have lost believers to more assertive faiths — Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism, Mormonism and even Islam — or seen them drift into agnosticism and apathy.

Nobody is more aware of this erosion than Benedict. So the pope is going back to basics — touting the particular witness of Catholicism even when he’s addressing universal subjects, and seeking converts more than common ground.

[BlackElk]

You have to remember that misery loves company as does irrelevancy. In the world in which we live there seems little reason for the continued existence of the Eastern Orthodox Church. They have the Mass and the sacraments but they have accomplished so painfully little for so many centuries, demonstrating a belief that Christ's truth is to be confined to specific nationality groups, subjected to the tyranny of national secular leaders, worrying themselves to death over obsessively parsing decrees of the long forgotten and utterly nonuseful councils of east nowhere in which only their predecessors participated and without collective jurisdiction. The Nestorians and the Donatists and the Arians probably had valid Masses and sacraments until they lost apostolic succession. So what?

History passed by the Arians, the Nestorians and the Donatists (and a good thing too) and they were probably reduced to whining before the end (there may be a few Nestorians left in Asia but no one cares nor should anyone care other than sociologists of the obscure). Neither the Nestorians nor the Donatists nor the Arians, whatever their major errors, ever endorsed the slaughter of babies second hand by supporting the likes of Dukakis or even Obama if given an actual free choice. The east has much to answer for. The large majority of their faithful (and clergy) should receive the same sort of invitation that has been extended to the Anglicans.

May Alois Cardinal Stepinac besiege the throne of God for the graces necessary to their conversion.

[kosta50]

As for Junia ,the text of Romans 16:7 says that Junia along with Andronicus are outstanding among the apostles, meaning in the opinion of the apostles, these two had a great reputation. It does not mean that Andronicus or Junia were the apostles themselves. The chapter is citing all of those, men and women, who had worked hard for the church

That is a matter of interpretation (as so many things from Paul). The sentence sasy they are marked (outstanding) among the apostles, which, of course, can be read two ways, just as in the case of Romans 12:5. The Greeks, who understood Greek the best, read it one way and the Romans another.

Romans 16:7 leaves anough room for ambiguity for some heretical "churches" to justify "ordaining" women.

[kosta50]

Uh.......you mean Protestants don't already proselytize?

You mean they come to an area and invite all Catholics to leave their Church by saying "you can keep your worship" as long as you join us? I don't think so.

No "heretical" offshoot of Catholicism has been in existence since the first century.

What catholicism? The Church didn't even have the New Testament figured out, let alone "orthodox" theology. It took 300 years to do that, and it too two heretics (Tertullian and Origen) to do it for you.

To this day, you have every heretical "church" that ever existed...form Gnostics, to Arians, to Donatists, Juadaizers, etc.

You're watching one do just that right now. The Pope has launched a few lifeboats for those who'd like to survive.

That may be. Hey they can keep whatever they do and how they do it, as long as they recognize the pope. That's pretty much it. The Eastern Catholics have married clergy, recite the Creed without the Filioque, etc., doesn't matter...as long as they bow to the pope.

Smells just like old Rome: as long as you burned incense to Caesar, you could profess anything you liked.

The "numbers of Catholic clergy and nuns" have been rising and falling for 2,000 years. Heresy, persecution and apostasy have all played their part. It will be that way until the end of time.

Yeah, reality is hard to take. It always helps to stick the head in the sand and pretend the sun doesn't shine.

Still waiting for you to tell us about this terrible fallout for the Catholic Church.

Hasn't happened yet, but I can't see how such an aggressive attempt can go without a counter reaction.

[narses]

“Hasn’t happened yet, but I can’t see how such an aggressive attempt can go without a counter reaction.”

What ‘aggessive attempt’? Rome responded to the formal REQUEST of the Traditional Anglican Community. Rome was ASKED to create a method by which those Anglican’s betrayed by the pagan’s and heretics in charge of the C of E could come home.

[stripes1776]

The evangelical, Protestant nature of Anglicanism is slipping away unfortunately

I agree with a lot of what you said except that part about the Evangelical wing of the Anglican Church. The Evangelicals are still alive, but perhaps not so well.

Not so long ago, the Anglican Church fell into three camps. The Anglo-Catholics made up the left-wing. The Evangelicals made up the right-wing. In the big and mushy middle was the Broad Church. The Broad churchman was infinitely polite. He never said anything controversial because he didn't want to offend either the Anglo-Catholics or the Evangelicals. So every thing the Broad churchman said was sufficiently ambiguous to please both the left-wing and the right-wing.

But then the Roman Catholics held Vatican II. Reform was in the air. The the Broad churchman, who wanted to be very ecumenical and inclusive of everybody, said that the Anglicans needed to reform too. So they revised the liturgy and got rid of all that stuffy and stilted English with the "Thous" and "Thys" and "vouchsafests", and came up with a liturgy in everyday pedestrian English like the Roman Catholics. Well all of a sudden the Anglo-Catholic and Evangelicals started to talk to each other and they cried foul. The Anglo-Catholics suddenly realized that they were conservative and part of the right-wing along with the Evangelicals. But it was too late, because the Broad churhman was in the majority and he became the New-age churchman of inclusivity. And the minority Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals were powerless to stop the reforms. And it has been a strange and bumpy ride every since.

So there is a quick and condensed version of the recent history of the Anglican Church. The Anglo-Evangelicals are still Evangelical. A lot of them have left the official Anglican Communion to form "continuing" churches, as have the Anglo-Catholics. But the Anglo-Evangelicals, wherever you find them, are still evangelizing.

[marshmallow]

You mean they come to an area and invite all Catholics to leave their Church by saying "you can keep your worship" as long as you join us? I don't think so.

A silly, tortured hypothetical. Try to keep it real.

Whom exactly do you imagine might do this and what do you imagine the response might be?

For the record, if two groups (one of whom is Catholic) join and the Catholics "keep their worship" it becomes a matter of debate as to who has joined whom.

Hasn't happened yet, but I can't see how such an aggressive attempt can go without a counter reaction.

You're right, it hasn't happened yet.

Why don't you entertain us some more and give us some reasons why that might be.

We could use a good laugh.

It's funnier when you pretend to be concerned for the Church. See if you can work that in there, too.

[SeekAndFind]

you can thank Apostle Paul for mentioning "Junia" as an apostle.

Is Junia male or female ? If the later, how sure are we that this is so ?

[kosta50]

It is never used as a male name. The male verison of it is Junius. Junia is like Julia, except a different month.

[kosta50]

It's funnier when you pretend to be concerned for the Church. See if you can work that in there, too

Who said I was concerned for the Church?

[kosta50]

Rome was ASKED to create a method by which those Anglican’s betrayed by the pagan’s and heretics in charge of the C of E could come home

Isn't conversion availale to anyone without special provisions? What stopped these Anglicans from simply walking into a Catholic Church and say " I believe what the Catholics Church believes and I want to become Catholic?"

[kosta50]

Junia is as female as Julia...

[choirboy]

As I understand it, this was not an invitation but a response to a request from the Anglicans to join the Catholic Church.

[narses]

1 - what do you care?

2 - Isn’t conversion availale to anyone without special provisions?

Yes, so what? The TAC asked for something, Rome answered.

3 - What stopped these Anglicans from simply walking into a Catholic Church and say “ I believe what the Catholics Church believes and I want to become Catholic?”

A desire to hold onto their own traditions where those did not conflict with the Dogmas of the faith. Rome answered them.

[sueuprising]

Well said! and very informative, thank you. As an ex-Episcopalian, I do know that there are orthodox Anglicans out there, in fact I still belong to the American Anglican Council. However, in the metro NYC area (including Long Island) there are virtually no orthodox Episcopal congregations. From what I have seen they usually turn up in the South. Because of this, I left the ECUSA and have attended a Baptist church. Susan

[stripes1776]

Isn't conversion availale to anyone without special provisions? What stopped these Anglicans from simply walking into a Catholic Church and say " I believe what the Catholics Church believes and I want to become Catholic?"

For the following reasons, as seen in an Anglican Use parish:

They wanted to come into the Church as a corporate body. They wanted to keep their parish churches and their married priests. They want to keep celebrating the Eucharist facing East. They wanted to keep taking communion kneeling at a rail and in two species. They wanted to keep their Anglican liturgy celebrated in a high register of English as in the following:

We beseech thee then, O Lord, graciously to accept this oblation from us thy servants, and from thy whole family: we present it unto thee on behalf also of those whom thou hast vouchsafed to regenerate by water and the Holy Spirit, granting unto them remission of all their sins: order thou our days in thy peace, and bid us to be delivered from eternal damnation, and to be numbered in the fold of thine elect.

Anglicans are rather attached to their parish churches and their liturgy. They want to come into the church as a group and thus maintain their Anglican liturgical and spiritual traditions.

[redgolum]

I suspect that there will be a backlash.

Think of this. A large, semi independent, body is about to enter into many diocese's. The local bishops won't be happy, as some more traditional Catholics and a few early Anglican converts will head to the new Anglican uniate churches. That and there will be married priests, questions about contraception, and a whole host of other issues.

Many bishops will not be happy about this. Just as they were not happy about the Eastern Rite churches coming into the West.

[flaglady47]

“Who said I was concerned for the Church?”

You obviously aren’t, which begs the question as to why you are even on this thread.

[kosta50]

Anglicans are rather attached to their parish churches and their liturgy. They want to come into the church as a group and thus maintain their Anglican liturgical and spiritual traditions

I can understand that. They always had the option of the TLM which is basically what their Mass is except in Latin.

[kosta50]

You obviously aren’t, which begs the question as to why you are even on this thread

For one it's not restricted, for two curiosity.

[SeekAndFind]

I suspect that there will be a backlash.

Think of this.

Plus, there is one very important issue many people have not really considered -- THE ISSUE OF JUSTIFICATION ( how we are made right with God). This issue has been the basis for the Protestant Reformation and I believe that Anglicanism ( at least the traditional one ), still holds the Lutheran view of Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia and Sola Fide ( Justification by Grace through Faith alone apart from good works ).

Many people might not consider this a major issue but when push comes to shove -- THIS WILL BE A MAJOR DOCTRINE THAT NEEDS TO BE SETTLED BEFORE FULL COMMUNION CAN BE ESTABLISHED.