Perhaps because of lack of consultation with both Catholic and Anglican authorities in England, the CDF seems to have failed to grasp what Anglo-Catholicism is really all about. Its fundamental aim was to reassert the Catholic credentials of the Church of England as the “ancient Catholic Church of these lands” identical in essence to the medieval English Church. It is from this foundation that derive all those characteristics of its style that the CDF is keen to preserve ”“ the interiors of its churches almost indistinguishable from Catholic churches, the use of “Father” as the title for its clergy, and devotion to a Catholic type of spirituality including honouring the Virgin Mary. But unless one counts use of the Roman missal in some of their churches, there is no distinctive Anglo-Catholic liturgy.
Anglo-Catholicism is going through a profound crisis precisely because it is losing faith in its central principle. Anglicanorum Coetibus is offering to let incoming Anglo-Catholics hang on to the incidental symbols of that principle, while relinquishing what lies behind it. Does that make sense? Would they not be better off just becoming Roman Catholics in the normal way, and joining an existing Catholic community they can enrich and be enriched by?
Mind-boggling. How can decades of ARCIC as well as meetings b/n Rome and Canterbury on any number of issues (including pleas not to move forward [or sideways] on the ordination of women) be a lack of consultation?
Having read this piece twice, I find it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t explain what the “central principle†of Anglo-Catholicism is and otherwise suggests Anglo-Catholicism is little more than Catholic “incidentals.†It strikes me as rather patronizing towards Anglo-Catholics. And the claims about RCIA are overdone and assume that an anima Catholica comes into being only by going through the approved process – again, patronizing.
Something tells me the reason the claims and arguments in this editorial aren’t persuasive is that there is actually another argument, a subtext, at play (as there will be in most perorations from RCs of a certain stamp on the subject of Anglicanorum coetibus). Deep down (or perhaps not so deep down) they want not Anglicans to become RC but the RCC to become Anglican (women’s ordination, blessing same-sex unions, a fuzzier stance on abortion and contraception, etc. ) Anglicanorm coetibus is another statement that says it simply isn’t going to happen.
There seem to be fundamental misunderstandings on both sides. But now is not the time, while the Anglican world is in the midst of an identity crisis, for Rome to affirm the Catholic credentials of the Church of England.
Typical Bitter Pill hatchet job. Don’t waste your time with it, they are stuck in a ’70s time warp.
While I sympathize with Monksgate’s (#2) sense of the “tone” of the Tablet article, I think it DOES get the heart–if not of Anglo-Catholicism as it has evolved, then of the Oxford Movement–precisely right. If, despite ecumenical politeness, the Roman Catholic Church still believes the ultimate solution is “come home to Rome,” then the Catholic-minded members of the C of E, in their heart of hearts, still consider the Roman church an interloper, redundant, because the C of E [b]is[/b] the Catholic Church in England. And it is precisely to the extent that Anglican Catholics have lost confidence in that interpretive paradigm that they will find the schema envisioned in Anglicanorum Coetibus attractive.
Monksgate –
[blockquote]Something tells me the reason the claims and arguments in this editorial aren’t persuasive is that there is actually another argument, a subtext, at play (as there will be in most perorations from RCs of a certain stamp on the subject of Anglicanorum coetibus). Deep down (or perhaps not so deep down) they want not Anglicans to become RC but the RCC to become Anglican (women’s ordination, blessing same-sex unions, a fuzzier stance on abortion and contraception, etc. ) Anglicanorm coetibus is another statement that says it simply isn’t going to happen.[/blockquote]
That is precisely correct. If you’re not familiar with the source, the Tablet, a/k/a the Bitter Pill, wants exactly all that and have pushed for those things for a long time. They’re about as Catholic as KJS, and this editorial is an expression of dismay, because bringing in orthodox Anglicans sets back their project of subversion even further.
The whole focus on RCIA is not because they really want all the prospective converts to get Catholic teaching (which would be redundant for the group we’re talking about anyway), but so that they get teaching [i]other than[/i] what the Catholic Church teaches. RCIA in a lot of places – and I’ll suspect even more by percentage than in the USA – is in the hands of Tabletistas and many things are taught that clash with the actual teaching of the Church. Anglicanorum Coetibus puts the new Catholics beyond the reach of this ilk, and they’re angry about that. The Holy Father was very wise with the establishment of personal ordinariates, and he well knew the potential for mischief if a move such as this had been entrusted to the usual suspects.
Good point, Fr. Dan (#5). Would that the Tablet writer had put it as directly as that.
Another point the Tablet seems to miss is that Anglicanorum coetibus makes an offer to all Anglicans, not solely those in the CofE. So yes, CofE Anglo-Catholics might consider themselves to be the Catholic Church in England, but I suspect Anglo-Catholics in other parts of the world aren’t quite so sanguine about that argument as it applies to them. I think the editor fails to understand Anglo-Catholicism world-wide. (And wasn’t it the international TAC that has most persistently knocked at the door of the Vatican?)
The Tablet editor has hit the proverbial nail on the head. The ideal that Anglicanism is the Catholic Church reformed was not merely an English insight. It was the common self-identification of TEC before the rise of ecumenism obliged TEC to soften its claims and its heritage and instead to embrace a denominational self-understanding largely divorced from its former position.
It was a belief that Anglicanism was a microcosm of the Catholic Church which thrilled the American Samuel Johnson and his friends when they abandoned Congregationalism and went to England for ordination. It was this conviction which inspired Samuel Seabury. In comprehending Seabury’s party in the formation of PECUSA, the American Church took in such a vision. Hobart and his followers asserted this self-understanding. The veto power of the House of Bishops retains this self-understanding.
The ideal that Anglicanism worldwide is an expression of the continuity of the Catholic Church preceded the Oxford Movement. That movement merely asserted a self-understanding as old as Jewel’s “Apologia”. It is when we read church people describing TEC as a denomination that we see how far we have retreated from our founding identity.
ps. We see this denominationalism when our dioceses now describe themselves as “The Episcopal Diocese of X” or in the tautology of “The Episcopal Bishop of X”. Denominationalism suggests a unique and self-authenticating reality. This leads to our contemporary assertion of autonomy and antipathy to a “Communion” identity.
Wow. WVParson, I had not heard these things before. Verrry interesting.
#5 I don’t think that’s quite right. There’s of course (and always has been) a breadth of opinion within English Anglo Catholicism. But the central thread has been desirous of unity with the See of Rome (ARCIC makes no sense otherwise). The hope was, of course, that the COE would be corporately reunited with the rest of the Catholic church. (After all, it was the Catholic church in England merely separated through the injuries of time). It is loss of confidence in this interpretative paradigm that will influence the response of many to proposed RC schema.