The Apostolic Constitution has been published. It is all that Catholic Anglicans hoped for and more.While it officially keeps the door closed on any relaxation of the norms on celibacy – former Catholic priests who became Anglicans, married or no, will not be permitted to join the new Ordinariates – it is clear from Article 11 that former Anglican bishops can become Catholic bishops in all but name, even where they are married. They will officially retain the status of presbyter, but will be allowed to be the Ordinary or head of the Ordinariate, will be allowed to be a member of the local Bishops’ Conference with the status of retired bishop and, significantly, will be allowed to ask permission from Rome to use the seal of episcopal office. This leaves the path clear for Bishop of Fulham Father John Broadhurst, married father of four, to head the new Ordinariate in Britain. Heady stuff indeed – and I mean that theologically and metaphorically.
This document is in essence a practical working out of the embracing spirituality expressed in Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est.
It shows once again a passionate man, this time one who is passionate for unity.
[blockquote]it is clear from Article 11 that former Anglican bishops can become Catholic bishops in all but name, even where they are married. They will officially retain the status of presbyter, [/blockquote]
No, Ms. Gledhill. They will not retain the “status” of a priest, they will BE priests once ordained by a Catholic bishop: likewise, they will NOT be “bishops in all but name” but will NOT BE bishops. Just as abbots or priests who are heads of religious orders exercise jurisdiction of a type, so too with these personal ordinaries. They are not, however, ontologically bishops (they cannot ordain).
And yes, whilst the Holy Father graciously made a provision for use of some episcopal regalia, so too do the various ranks of honorary prelates in the Latin Church (and there are mitered abbots).
“It will be some time before we fully grasp the enormity of its implications and the breadth of its imagination. For example, is their a hint here…”
A good, lively article, but please–“enormity,” “their”: Ruth, have your second cup of morning coffee before you start writing next time!
Yes, I find this rather breathless analysis somewhat surprising, given that Ruth Gladhill is no great admirer of Catholicism or this pope. But despite some of her exaggerations and wrong assumptions (as pointed out by #1), this is truly a historic moment. The joy and enthusiasm that +John Broadhurst of Fulham communicates so unabashedly here is entirely appropriate.
Time will tell, but I suspect this innovative move by Benedict SVI will indeed have far-reaching ramifications that no one can now foresee, for good or ill. I welcome this adventuresome proposal.
Bottom line: It remains a terrible shame, and a great tragedy and scandal, that Rome has been able to hear the pleas and desperate cries for help of the FiF crowd that the deaf leaders of the CoE couldn’t hear, or simply refused to take seriously. Shame on them!
David Handy+
P.S. I was delighted to read that Pope Benedict XVI, whose prolific writings attest a profound admiration for John Henry Newman (and rightly so), is expected to declare the beattification of the great Cardinal and theologian, when he visits Britain next year. How appropriate! It may be overdue, but I think such a step would be marvelous.
As far as I’m concerned, Newman is the greatest Christian that England has ever produced. And John Wesley is the second greatest.
David Handy+
“As far as I’m concerned, Newman is the greatest Christian that England has ever produced.”
For me he is a great thinker who managed to run the entire gamut of churchmanship and two churches, but there was something always shifting about him, he was certainly a revolutionary along with his contemporaries. Wesley led an enormous revival and founded several churches which have grown enormously. But for me there are so many great Christians from here who have inspired me, as flawed or more flawed than Newman: Cranmer whose quiet political determination over several reigns laid the foundations for the Church England I was brought up in; the saints and martyrs of England who we commemorated on Sunday along with Remembrance Sunday: Columba, Bede, Thomas-a-Becket, Ridley, Latimer, Wycliff, Tyndale, and so many others who took the message out from these shores across the world, often facing death for them or their families from disease or martyrdom. Then of course the 19thC reformers including John Newton Wilberforce and even in my lifetime, preachers such as John Stott and JI Packer and theologians such as NT Wright and Rowan Williams.
Giants on whose shoulders we have been blessed to stand.
I suppose it is sniping at minutiae, but there was a time when The Times used to pride itself on its factual accuracy. Sometimes Ruth Gledhill seems not to bother to check her facts. For example, she tells us that the worker priest movement was banned in France in the 1970s. Completely wrong. It was under pressure from the Vatican, owing to political involvement, from 1957 onwards, and formally banned in 1959. In 1965 it was given permission to operate again, and now flourishes as the Mission de France based at Pontigny, under its own bishop, as a kind of dispersed diocese – rather like what is being proposed for Anglicanism now. Which might be a story of sorts – if Ruth Gledhill could wake up to it.
Pageantmaster (#5),
I’m glad you chimed in and added some of your own favorite English Christians. Certainly there have been many outstanding ones. I could add such great Anglican saints as Lancelot Andrewes, John Donne, George Herbert, or C. S. Lewis, just to name a few.
I guess I’m just partial to radical church reformers, perhaps because of my quirky personality, or maybe because I’m so firmly convinced that what we need in Anglicanism today is not just gradual, incremental, evolutionary change, but drastic, sweeping, truly revolutionary change in order to cope with the stern challenges of a post-Christendom era. But then again, I’m an American! Enough said.
David Handy+
#7 Rev Handy
“I guess I’m just partial to radical church reformers” – I think that is right. Now 100 plus years looking back, we tend to think of the Tractarians and Anglo-Catholics as traditionalist, as ‘catholic’ forgetting that they were in their time social and ecclesiastical revolutionaries, the radicals of their time. Building, disturbing, disobeying, rethinking they were as much a reaction to the modernity of their day. I remember visiting one of their great works in Oxford, and completely over the top it was as well. I was told that this was what they had to say to the Rationalists and Darwinists of their day – gold, glitz, angels, the works – it was in many ways a reaction and a statement.
Of course now we don’t see them that way, because in many ways they ‘won’ and changed into a much more establishment mindset, and I don’t think many really forgave Newman for marching them up to the top of the hill…..and leaving them there.
No. 6, on worker priests: That history is indeed an interesting one. But perhaps even more interesting to readers of this blog is the story that Adrian Hastings mentions in his wonderful and quite readable history of English Christianity in the 20th c., where he writes of Hugh Lister, a priest of the Church of England, as a kind of forerunner of the worker-priest. (For basic orientation on Lister’s life and career, there’s a pretty good Wikipedia article, with excellent references for further reading.)
In brief, Lister–close friend of Austin Farrer; both studied at Cuddesdon when Michael Ramsey was a fellow student–became a trades union organizer in the East End in the 1930s; then he went on, most unusually, to be a combatant officer in the Second World War, killed in Belgium a few months after the Normandy break-out. Fascinating fellow–he deserves a full biographical treatment.
#5
Since when is St. Columba English?
#10 Since St. Patrick is Irish.
St. Patrick was Welsh.