``We do not consider the practice of asking Mary and the saints to pray for us as communion dividing ... we believe that there is no continuing theological reason for ecclesiastical division on these matters.''
Ecumenical bump!
Posted on 05/17/2005 6:16:45 AM PDT by marshmallow
SEATTLE (AP) - A group of Roman Catholic and Anglican leaders studying the role of Mary, the mother of Jesus, said Monday that after years of talks they have agreed that Catholic teachings on the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary into heaven are consistent with Anglican interpretations of the Bible.
The two sides issued a joint document, ``Mary: Grace and Hope in Christ,'' which will now be examined by the Vatican and the Anglican Communion.
If the terms of the new accord are eventually accepted by top church officials - by no means a certainty - it would overcome one of the major doctrinal disagreements dividing the world's 77 million Anglicans and more than 1 billion Roman Catholics.
Historically, the Anglican Communion has opposed the papal teachings because there is no direct account of them in the Bible.
Immaculate Conception refers to the mandatory Catholic dogma, pronounced in 1854, that Mary was born free of ``original sin.'' The Assumption refers to the belief required since 1950 that Mary was directly received, body and soul, into heaven at the end of her life. Anglicans have neither teaching.
Both Catholicism and Anglicanism officially agree, however, on the virginal conception, meaning that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born.
Anglican Archbishop Peter Carnley of Perth, Australia, co-chairman of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, said the Catholic dogmas concerning Mary are ``consonant'' with biblical teachings about hope and grace.
The remaining question between the faiths is the authority on which those dogmas are based, he said - a question to be tackled in future discussions.
``For Anglicans, that old complaint that these dogmas were not provable by scripture will disappear,'' Carnley said during a news conference with Seattle's Catholic Archbishop, Alexander Brunett.
The commission spent five years developing the 81-page booklet, in a process sponsored by the Anglican Consultative Council and the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
The document's release was also significant because it follows tensions between Catholicism and Anglicanism over actions by the Episcopal Church, the Anglicans' U.S. branch.
Presiding Episcopal Bishop Frank Griswold, who for a time chaired the commission studying Mary, resigned from the panel after he oversaw the consecration of gay Bishop V. Gene Robinson in New Hampshire. As recently as last month, the Vatican said Robinson's consecration and same-sex blessings by Canadian Anglicans ``created new obstacles'' for relations between the churches.
Though Griswold did not attend the news conference, he was in town Monday to have lunch and attend vespers with Brunett and Carnley.
Bob Chapman, a reporter for the independent Episcopal weekly The Living Church, said there is a long Anglican tradition of honoring Mary - there is even a shrine to her in Walsingham, England - but the degree of devotion varies greatly within the faith.
``I can name a couple of parishes here in Seattle that have better Marian devotion than some Roman Catholic parishes,'' he said, but to other Anglicans, the notion of honoring her is ``anathema.''
The accord announced Monday is aimed at bridging those extremes, he said.
``There are churches that look with suspicion on people who do these things, and yet we all live together under the same umbrella,'' Chapman said.
``We do not consider the practice of asking Mary and the saints to pray for us as communion dividing ... we believe that there is no continuing theological reason for ecclesiastical division on these matters.''
Ecumenical bump!
This should be interesting to watch.
In England and the U.S. (the only areas I am really familiar with) you have a wide range of customs and beliefs gathered under "one big umbrella" -- the church was designed this way by Elizabeth I, who was trying to bring the English religious wars to a peaceful end. She managed to include everybody but the extreme Puritans on the one hand, and the extreme Roman Catholics on the other.
The way this has developed in the U.S., you have two poles or lines of continuum within the church: (1) "high" versus "low" in belief - in other words more-Catholic-than-Rome on one end (with devotions to the Blessed Virgin and the saints, Eucharistic Adoration, etc.), and straight-arrow Protestant on the other, with Sola Scriptura and the XXXIX Articles' condemnation of anything that "smacks of Popery"; (2) "high" versus "low" in ritual - from lots of vestments, incense, bells, processions, etc. to a bare-bones Morning Prayer and Communion on the other end with "Virginia clericals" (business suit and a dog collar).
Like the X-Y graph political test you see on the internet, a church may be just about anywhere along these two lines -- there are churches that are very high in ritual but very Protestant in theology (the old "high and dry" of the pre-Oxford Movement English church), likewise there are very Catholic churches theologically that conduct a bare-bones service with very little in the way of vestments, music, etc. But I would say that most of the "low" churches are low in both ritual and belief, ditto most of the "high" churches.
The standout conservative holdouts in the ECUSA are mostly the "low" and evangelical churches. This doesn't leave much of a place for the "high" churches, whose Catholic ritual makes the evangelicals suspicious. They also don't approve of the ordination of women.
These two groups have made common cause in opposing the radical lib ECUSA leadership, but I don't think they can reconcile their differences sufficiently to maintain a new church body together.
Which means, I think, that the High Anglicans will split off and join the Catholics.
The origin of the Anglican church is not in any significant theological debate, but in the desire of a secular ruler to obtain a divorce, obtain Church lands and property, and to exercise direct ecclesiastical control.
Cardinal John Henry Newman, perhaps the greatest Anglican theologian, was familiar with such questions of authority when he helped start the Oxford Movement. Newman and a few of others started this movement to return the Anglican Church to its early roots.
Newman's attempts to link the modern Christian faith with the early Church affirmed many of the doctrines rejected in the Reformation. In the end, Newman was convinced that the first Christians professed the same beliefs practiced by the modern Catholic Church and that the Catholic Church taught with divine authority. Newman eventually concluded that the Church of England was in schism and that Rome was the only valid successor to the historical and ecclesiastical claims of the early Church.
**they have agreed that Catholic teachings on the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary into heaven are consistent with Anglican interpretations of the Bible.**
Mary, Mother of the Church, pray for us!
What seems most likely to me is that the African Bishops (or the Southern Cone bishops) will set up a parallel administration within the U.S. If ECUSA is tossed from the worldwide communion, that administration will claim to be the "real" ECUSA -- and the cat will be amongst the pigeons with respect to the property.
The "high" and more Catholic Anglican churches have been organized for a long time (since the ordination of women) under the Forward in Faith group -- that group is working with but distinct from the AAC and the Network. If the new organization in the U.S. turns out to be primarily evangelical, they will probably go with Rome.
This, of course, is ultimately the issue. Most RCC adherents will readily concede that their devotion to/worship of Mary is based upon their organization's 'tradition' and not upon the Scriptures. The RCC, like the Mormon church, is unabashedly accretionist, i.e. their respective organizations have established mechanisms to add to (or change)their belief structure. as time goes along, beyond those concepts found in Scripture.
The risks of an accretionist church, of course, is that, like the old children's game of 'telephone', by the time the story gets filtered through the 'tradition' of each of the carriers on its way around the circle, it bears little or no resemblence to the original message. The advantage of the accretionist approach is that it can readily adapt to cultural and scientific developments, but the disadvantage is that no effective mechanism has been found to keep the accretions 'tied to' and limited by the original message.
The Anglicans have always muddled along somewhere in the middle between the accretionists and the non-accretionists, granting some (undefined) role to 'tradition'. All that is changing here is that (apparently) some segment of the Anglican church is swinging toward complete accretionism.
For those of us with a high view of Scripture (versus man-made accretions), this is sad. For the accretionists, obviously, it is a cause for celebration and an old-fashioned "I told you so."
And of course there's also the problem that St. Paul refers specifically to the oral and teaching tradition as well as the written word . . .
And I wish people would quit saying that Catholics "worship" Mary. They don't, never have, and anybody who claims to do so is not following the teachings of the Church.
This is an extraordinary development. Papal authority is the last obstacle to reunion. It's a big one, but if they can agree on the Immaculate Conception, it's certainly possible.
Bite your tongue ... the Catholic and Mormon churches have nothing in common. The belief of the Catholic Church comes from the Bible; the Mormon's derive their beliefs from a novel.
It's all kinda academic to me. My family couldn't afford to wait around in a screaming liberal ECUSA diocese while the Anglican Communion sorted things out . . . since we were ultra-montane anyhow, we just took the last step and joined the Catholic Church.
In retrospect, I'm sorry we waited as long as we did. Only very minor differences, the only doctrinal points we had to reconcile ourselves with were the invalidity of Anglican Orders and the primacy of the Bishop of Rome . . . everything else (including the liturgy) is virtually identical.
The Catholic Church, especially in the U.S. and Western Europe, have been "Anglicanized," in the sense that there's a spectrum of liturgy and widespread "cafeteria Catholicism." That doesn't mean that the high-Church Anglicans can be reconciled with the Catholic Church, especially since there are several Anglican-Use Catholic parishes in the U.S.
Guess we're fortunate around here. This is a very orthodox archdiocese - there's even a Latin Mass (FSSP) parish with the full approval and support of the archbishop. Our parish is a standout for orthodoxy as well. It's the opposite of bland -- good sound Biblical homilies, based on the lectionary of the day, with examples drawn from the lives of the saints -- plenty of traditional practices such as Lenten penance services, First Fridays, Sacred Heart devotions -- traditional music: Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony, good English anthems (Byrd, Tallis, Farrant) -- excellent religious education program for children and adults alike -- plus a good parish school run by the retired archbishop! And of course the traditional vestments, processions, candles, bells, incense etc. that make an ultramontane Episcopalian feel right at home.
We really, really like it here.
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