Today, the Roman Catholic Church released an “Apostolic Constitution” offering a way for some orthodox Anglicans to enter into a full communion relationship with the Roman Catholic Church while preserving some aspects of their Anglican heritage. This action recognizes how deeply broken the Anglican Communion has become as a result of the abandonment by some Anglican leaders of historic Christian teaching and discipline. Like the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church in North America ”“ of which ANiC is a part ”“ has also provided a means for those within North America to remain faithful Anglicans.
“We are encouraged to see the Archbishop of Canterbury working with the Vatican to make accommodate these Anglicans,” said the Right Reverend Donald Harvey, moderator of the Anglican Network in Canada. “We urge him to do the same for us by joining with the Anglican Primates who have already officially recognized and endorsed the Anglican Church in North America.”
The Most Reverend Robert Duncan, Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican Church in North America also responded, saying in part, “We”¦ thank God for the partnership that orthodox Anglicans have long enjoyed with the Roman Catholic Church”¦ While our historic differences over church governance, dogmas regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary and the nature of Holy Orders continue to be points of prayerful dialogue, we look forward to an ever deepening partnership with the Catholic Church throughout the world.” [See Archbishop Duncan’s full statement here.]
“While we can’t know the full significance of the Vatican’s move until we have fully reviewed and considered the content of their ”˜Apostolic Constitution’,” adds Bishop Harvey, “the three questions I am most interested in seeing answered are:
1. “Will the Roman Catholic Church require Anglican priests who choose this option to be re-ordained?
2. “Will people who accept this invitation have to subscribe to Roman Catholic dogmas to which the Anglican Formularies are diametrically opposed ”“ such as “Papal Infallibility”, the “Immaculate Conception” and Transubstantiation?
3. “Will Anglican priests ”“ especially married ones ”“ choosing to accept the Roman Catholic Church’s invitation have equal status with existing Roman Catholic clergy and will their ministry be interchangeable and welcomed in Roman Catholic parishes?”
After hearing the news today, an ANiC priest wrote Bishop Harvey: “As for me and my house, we will remain ever faithful to the authority and primacy of the Holy Scriptures and the Faith and Order of the undivided Catholic Church. I need not become a Roman Catholic to be a Catholic Christian. As an Anglican, I am a Catholic Christian.”
“A quote from the English reformer John Jewel (1522-1571) sums up where I believe we in ANiC stand,” says Bishop Harvey. “Jewel said: “We have returned to the Apostles and the old Catholic Fathers. We have planted no new religion but only preserved the old that was undoubtedly founded and used by the Apostles of Christ and other holy Fathers of the Primitive Church.””
Today, ANiC numbers 32 parishes with 3500 Canadians in church on an average Sunday. Members of the Anglican Network in Canada are committed to remaining faithful to Holy Scripture and established Anglican doctrine and to ensuring that orthodox Canadian Anglicans are able to remain in full communion with their Anglican brothers and sisters around the world.
What provisions does the Anglican Church in North America have for receiving Roman Catholics?
Are Roman priests who leave, and there are many who do each year, required to have extra training or re-ordination if they join ACNA
http://manassas-anglican.blogspot.com/
Whilst in no position to give an authoritative answer, which must await the Apostolic Constitution, I can provide a reasoned response to the questions:
1. Of course. The Catholic Church does not, in general, recognize the validity of Anglican Orders: this has not changed. There may well be, however, situations where ordination is bestowed conditionally or absolutely. It may also be that the status of one’s married state (e.g. divorced and remarried) may be an impediment to orders.
2. Of course. “Roman” Catholic dogmas are Catholic dogmas. The fullness of the Church’s Ordinary and Extraordinary magisterium is to be held with the consent of conscience by all Catholics (see [i]Lumen Gentium[/i] #25) of whatever Rite or “Ordinariate.” There is no partial-communion or impared communion such as being suggested amongst the Anglican Communion.
3. Of course. Once ordained, such clergy will BE Catholic Clergy (and they will be part of the Latin-Rite Church even if under a different “ordinariate” just as there are different “rites” now e.g. Dominican; Carthusian; Ambrosian in the Latin Church). Whether such clergy would be “welcomed” by happy-clappy dissenting soi-Catholics is another matter, but again, once ordained by a Catholic bishop, I would have no qualms at all receiving the Most Blessed Sacrament from their consecrated hands.
Vis-a-vis the quote by Jewel and the quoted ANiC priest, the Catholic Church denies the “branch theory” or “undivided early church” construct implicit in those statements. I suggest the CDF document [i]Dominus Jesus[/i] quoted here in part (though reading the entirety is preferred):
[i]”The Catholic faithful are required to profess that there is an historical continuity — rooted in the apostolic succession53 — between the Church founded by Christ and the Catholic Church: “This is the single Church of Christ… which our Saviour, after his resurrection, entrusted to Peter’s pastoral care (cf. Jn 21:17), commissioning him and the other Apostles to extend and rule her (cf. Mt 28:18ff.), erected for all ages as ‘the pillar and mainstay of the truth’ (1 Tim 3:15). This Church, constituted and organized as a society in the present world, subsists in [subsistit in] the Catholic Church, governed by the Successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with himâ€.54 [/i]
and
[i]
“The Christian faithful are therefore not permitted to imagine that the Church of Christ is nothing more than a collection — divided, yet in some way one — of Churches and ecclesial communities; nor are they free to hold that today the Church of Christ nowhere really exists, and must be considered only as a goal which all Churches and ecclesial communities must strive to reachâ€.64 [/i]
Put succinctly, this initiative by the Pope is for those Anglicans who recognize that the Catholic Faith necessarily involves communion with the Successor of Blessed Peter. This is not an mechanism to “pull in” Anglicans disgruntled with some sub-set of heterodox teachings (e.g. ordination of homosexuals and/or women). Of course, it is to be hoped and prayed and worked for that all Christians might come to recognize Catholic Teaching and to be united in Christ under His vicar on earth.
Are Bishop Harvey’s queries meant to be rhetorical? I imagine he already knows the answers as do most lay Catholics.
I presume to know ANiC’s views on SSB, SSM and partnered gay clergy but where do they stand on WO? Where do “Catholic Christians” stand on WO? My point in asking is on an imaginary scale where the RC represents the full tilt right how many degrees to the left are the ANiC and ACNA? Just curious.
For what it’s worth, the Council of Trent’s decree on the Eucharist (chapter 4 and canon 2), as well as Paul VI’s encyclical “Mysterium Fidei,” only assert a substantial change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord, with only its appearance (species) remaining unaffected, as the dogma of the Church. “Transubstantiation” is not a dogma of the Church but, as both assert, simply a suitable and proper term to describe the change. Paul VI was open to better terminology, should it be developed.
#4
The “accidents” remain unaffected. And if ‘transubstantiation’ does not mean “substantial change” then words mean nothing. What Paul VI was suggesting in #25 of that Encyclical was that alternative terms might be found that could be used in a world no longer familiar with Aristotle’s categories of substance and accidents; he would have insisted, however, that any such term must be unambiguous. Some quotes may be appropriate:
[i]11: … it is not permissible to extol the so-called “community” Mass in such a way as to detract from Masses that are celebrated privately; or to concentrate on the notion of sacramental sign as if the symbolism—which no one will deny is certainly present in the Most Blessed Eucharist—fully expressed and exhausted the manner of Christ’s presence in this Sacrament; or to discuss the mystery of transubstantiation without mentioning what the Council of Trent had to say about the marvelous conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body and the whole substance of the wine into the Blood of Christ, as if they involve nothing more than “transignification,” or “transfinalization” as they call it; or, finally, to propose and act upon the opinion that Christ Our Lord is no longer present in the consecrated Hosts that remain after the celebration of the sacrifice of the Mass has been completed. [/i]
and
[i]
… it cannot be tolerated that any individual should on his own authority take something away from the formulas which were used by the Council of Trent to propose the Eucharistic Mystery for our belief. These formulas—like the others that the Church used to propose the dogmas of faith—express concepts that are not tied to a certain specific form of human culture, or to a certain level of scientific progress, or to one or another theological school.
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