Posted on 12/25/2005 10:09:32 AM PST by churchillbuff
As the Anglican Communion threatens to break up, one large group of Anglicans is blazing a trail to Rome, and another could follow suit.
The Traditional Anglican Communion, an autonomous group of 400,000 clergy and laity separate from the Anglican Communion, has drawn up detailed plans on how to come into full communion with the Holy See.
After 12 years of consultations, both internally and informally with the Vatican, the group - with the help of a Catholic layman - is preparing a "Pastoral Plan" asking the Vatican for an "Anglican Rite Church" that would preserve their Anglican heritage while allowing them to be "visibly united" with Rome.
The Traditional Anglican Communion's worldwide primate, Archbishop John Hepworth, hopes the group's College of Bishops will approve the plan at a possible Rome Synod in February 2006.
The church's members are so far reported to be unanimous in their desire for full communion. If formally agreed, the proposal would then be presented to Vatican officials.
If Rome approves, the Traditional Anglican Communion, a worldwide ecclesial body based in Australia, could become the largest Anglican assembly to return to the Church since the Reformation.
In a statement released earlier this year, Archbishop Hepworth, a former Catholic priest, said the denomination had "no doctrinal differences with Rome" that impeded full communion. "My broad vision is to see the end of the Reformation of the 16th century," he said.
The denominations has pursued unity with Rome since the Anglican started ordaining women as priests, a move that, Archbishop Hepworth says, was the "ultimate of schismatic acts" and irrevocably "fractured" the 1966 Common Declaration between Rome and Canterbury.
The historic agreement made between Pope VI and then-Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey, obliged both communions to work towards unity through serious dialogue.
Vatican Caution
During recent informal talks, Vatican officials advised TAC to grow in numbers, become better known by forming friendships with local Catholic clergy and laity, and build structures through which they can dialogue with other churches. We've now done that," Archbishop Hepworth said. "By next year's synod, our conscience will have brought us to a certain point - it will then be for the Holy See to decide what to do."
Meanwhile, the Catholic bishops of England and Wales have warned the Church of England that going ahead with women bishops risks destabilizing both the Church of England and the whole Anglican Communion, in a report the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales referred to "tremendous and intolerable ecclesiological risk" involved in ordaining women bishops.
The Church of England is considering whether to allow women to become bishops, with a debate expected at its general synod in February.
Ordaining women as bishops is particularly contentious for those opposed to women priests as they would be unable to recognize or accept the authority of all priests, male or female, who were ordained by female bishops.
For Forward in Faith, a worldwide association of Anglican who remain part of the Anglican Communion but are unable to accept the female ordinations, the situation is somewhat different than that of the Traditional Anglican Communion.
They remain committed to being Anglicans, so communion with Rome "is not on the agenda," according to Stephen Parkinson, director of Forward in Faith in the United Kingdom. However, the group is sympathetic to the Traditional Anglican Communion and is likely to move closer to that denomination's position if women are ordained bishops in England and Wales.
Currently, Forward in Faith-UK is negotiating with the Church of England for a "structural solution" that would enable its members to belong to a separate province within the Anglican Communion should the church decide to consecrate women as bishops.
But greater independence for Forward in Faith members might open the way for the group to move unilaterally towards Rome. "We could then pursue our own agenda," said Parkinson. "Ecumenism could then become an imperative for us."
Not if But When?
The Vatican is monitoring the current problems besetting the Anglican Communion. Not only do the communion's member churches have divisions over ordaining women as bishops, but Anglicans continue to be torn apart by the consecration in 2003 of Gene Robinson, the openly homosexual Episcopalian bishop of New Hampshire.
At a Church of England synod in London in November, Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, was strongly criticized by nearly half the church's presiding archbishops over the issue of homosexual clergy.
In the same week, the archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, announced that he was aligning the country's 17 million Anglican with the breakaway United States Episcopal churches. His church has already severed constitutional ties with the Church of England over Robinson's consecration.
For Anglicans like Archbishop Hepworth and Parkinson, it is a question of not if by when the Anglican Communion will fracture. But even if they're right, the Vatican is not inclined to work out precise plans for receiving large groups of Anglicans. Each case is likely to be different, which precludes forward planning.
The Vatican is, however, understood to be urging those groups wishing to come into communion with it to demonstrate they are comfortable with Church teaching, and that they aren't motivated soley by disillusionment with the Anglican Communion.
The two departments responsible for group conversions, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, are keeping a low profile for now.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has been focusing on issues that unite the churches and urging Anglicans to strengthen the bonds that unify the communion, particularly those surround the Anglican Communion's traditional teaching on human sexuality.
In the meantime, both Rome and the estranged Anglicans are waiting to see what the Anglican hierarchy does and how national Anglican churches and individual Anglicans respond.
"If many come over to Rome at the same time, then they're still all treated as individual conversions," said Dominican Father Charles Morerod, a member of the Anglican/Catholic International Commission. "But it is different if a whole province wants to come into communion."
the kind of defense one expects to see if an undefensible position is being defended,<P.*Even those oppposed to the Church Jesus established (matt 1618) normally concede a right of the Church to explain itself and to defend itself against erroneous charges
ME - *Post for us a single heresy taught by any Pope
Nice. Old dishonest debating trick right out of liberal playbooks. change the term of debate. He said "error" -- clearly you cannot defend that so you try to change it to"heresy." I would take this as admission of error
I didn't know you were brother Kolo's mouthpiece :)
That aside; when I read the word "error" used on an ecclesastical thread, I read "heresy". I don't read "error" as referring to that which describes what happened when a groundball hit sharply to short was booted by Derek Jeter
Now, I have had many profitable and pleasant exchanges with borther kolo. This is my first with you. Why don't you tell me what you mean by "error"
Where in the New Testament is there evidence Jesus would let His church fall into heresy and be replaced by a multitude of different churches?
In Romans, St. Paul expressly said there would be doctrinal differences of opinion as to what Christians believed, on issues from diet (kosher, vegitarianism, necessity of circumcision, Saturday or Sunday as the correct Sabbath, etc).
Here:
"Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters.
[Teaches us to not squabble so much about non-core issues.]
One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. 8If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.
For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. 11It is written:
" 'As surely as I live,' says the Lord,
'every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will confess to God.' "[a] 12So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.
13Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way. As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food[b] is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean. If your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died. Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men.
Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble. It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother to fall.
So whatever you believe about these things keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the man who does not condemn himself by what he approves. But the man who has doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.
There are 50 more similar passages about doctrinal differences being part of the catholic (which means "universal") church --- the universal church being the body of Christ, not merely the Roman branch.
"Yeah, that St. Paul sure liked denominationalism, didn't he!"
He stated that it would exist, and that we are not to worry about it as long as the teachers do not add or subtract to what is taught in the Bible; there is a difference.
"I didn't know you were brother Kolo's mouthpiece :)"
Hey, Hey! I don't need no mouthpiece! I got my own big mouth! :)
"Kolokotronis, is the "filioque"(?) heresy or just error, according to the (Greek?) Orthodox?"
Until about 5 years ago there is no question what any Orthodox person would call the filioque, its heresy, a heresy which had tragic consequences for The Church. Five years ago the Orthodox Catholic dialogue on the subject determined that the Creed without the filioque was the "normative" Creed for The Church and that the filioque should not be used in translations or for catechetical purposes. It was also determined, in light of the "revised" explanation of the filioque presented by the Latin theologians, that both particular churches should refrain from calling the presence or absence of the filioque heretical. At this point perhaps an Orthodox person would say, in light of the Latin explanation, that the filioque is an unnecessary addition, with no meaning, to the Creed.
Like BAC, I'm a bit confused as to what you might mean by error. When I read that in a theological sense, I read heresy. Now I suppose one could frame a situation where something might be "wrong" or "improper" thus error but not heresy. An example might be the Roman Catholic dogma of the bodily assumption of the Theotokos into heaven. In Orthodoxy, that is what is called theologumenon, a permitted , pious belief. One might argue that for the Pope to proclaim that pious belief to be binding dogma is error, but it clearly isn't heresy.
And there is that pesky free will thing again,too.
If God doesn't allow men to fall into errors and sin there is no free will nor any merit for resisting temptation.Members of His church are still only men and can err. If the coming of Jesus was to somehow insure no one would err from then on,what is the purpose in letting us continue earthly existence. Free will or puppet,it is one or the other. Now I choose to believe and hope God chooses to grant man free will and also provide guidance and strength to choose rightly.
I try to hope that all will accept salvation even as I believe murderers and the like must be permanently stopped.
Heresy...
I am trying to follow all this and I get lost. Heresy is error; is there error that is not heresy but still wrong? Is burning heretics heretical, or even wrong? Is selling indulgences? Are protestants wrong, heretical, both or neither? Does a profound heresy become no heresy at all if its explanation is "revised", implying accomodation? Is there wrong or error outside of heresy?
Not being sure where the lines are to begin with, they seem to be shifting as well. If so, is this man or God? I am lost in this debate.
"Not being sure where the lines are to begin with, they seem to be shifting as well. If so, is this man or God? I am lost in this debate."
I am both sorry and a bit surprised that you are lost in this debate as it is really remarkably simple compared to some of the things we speak about here.
Is it truly difficult to comprehend, MD, that there can be error without heresy? I rather thought my example of the dogmatic proclamation of the Assumption was, from an Orthodox stand point, a good one; certainly not heresy but perhaps an error to dogmatically proclaim it. As for burning heretics being wrong, well you'd have to ask a Russian or a Latin Catholic that one. Greeks weren't big on burning heretics. Can a profound heresy become no heresy at all? Sure, if the teaching is so changed that it comports with or at a minimum does not offend true dogma or otherwise what The Church always and everywhere believed. Filioque may be, in fact probably is, on its way to being just that. Monophysitism may well be more a problem about language than about belief in the nature of Christ.
Are Protestants wrong heretical or both? From an Orthodox standpoint that's easy, both; but I doubt that causes good Protestants to loose any sleep.
*I think you are conflating impeccability and infallibility. Jesus established His church as the Pillar and ground of truth. He sent the Holy Spirit upon it to teach it all truth.
Think of infallibilty as a "negative" charism in that our Triune God prevents the Magisterium - the Pope and the Bishops teaching in union with him (esp in an Ecumenical Council) - from teaching error.
*If burned inside, it is wrong.
Is selling indulgences?
*Bishops collecting the money insist it isn't :)
Are protestants wrong, heretical, both or neither?
*Born into a heresy, their culpability is uncertain.
Does a profound heresy become no heresy at all if its explanation is "revised", implying accomodation?
*Nope.
Is there wrong or error outside of heresy?
*Sure. Imagine SCOTUS Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, naked on a pogo stick. Heretical? No. Wrong? Absolutely
Actually, I woke up at 3:30AM and couldn't go back to sleep last night.
I thought it was the Chinese food...
"I thought it was the Chinese food..."
Maybe the restaurant has a Greek cook...we're everywhere you know!
"All roads lead to Rome."
Safer, then, to have an off-road vehicle.
GREAT COMMENTS (post #48)!
Great web sites:
www.exorthodoxforchrsit.com
www.ianpaisley.com
"Resources for those interested in the Catholic faith:"
Here are more good ones:
www.exorthodoxforchrist.com
www.ianpaisley.com
Ian Paisley is a bigot of the first degree.
"Ian Paisley is a bigot of the first degree."
Others reading here will be quite interested. I'll give it again.
www.ianpaisley.com
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