The decisions of the recent Synod of the Church of England to permit the ordination of women bishops and the refusal to authorize continued episcopal oversight have made the problem for this minority of Anglicans even more acute. For its part, the Catholic Church has clearly articulated its position on the ordination of women. In 1975, Pope Paul VI issued a formal appeal to the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Fredrick Donald Coggan, to avoid taking a step which would have a serious negative impact on ecumenical relations. Just to say, parenthetically, that an appeal to the Archbishop of Canterbury, though, is probably frustrating for him, because unlike the Catholic Church, there is no central authority in the Anglican Communion and, thus, the various provinces””some 39, I believe””have made their own decisions about such questions of practice and even doctrine.
In 1976, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued its declaration Inter insigniores, stating that the Church does not consider herself authorized to ordain women, not on account of socio-cultural reasons, but rather because of the “unbroken tradition throughout the history of the Church, universal in the East and in the West”, which must be “considered to conform to God’s plan for his Church.” (I’m quoting there from the document.) This position was reiterated in 1992 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and again in 1994 with the Apostolic Letter of Pope John Paul II, Ordinatio sacerdotalis. In October of 1995, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a response affirming that the doctrine stating that the Church has no power to confer sacred orders on women is definitive tenenda””it must be held definitively and is to be considered part of the infallible, ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Church. For Catholics, the issue of the reservation of priestly ordination to men is not merely a matter of praxis, or discipline, but is, rather, doctrinal in nature and touches the heart of the doctrine of the Eucharist itself and the sacramental nature, or constitution, of the Church. It is therefore a question which cannot be relegated to the periphery of ecumenical conversations, but needs to be engaged directly in honesty and charity by dialogue partners who desire Christian unity, which, by its very nature, is Eucharistic.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, current President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, addressed this point in an intervention given in June 2006 to the House of Bishops of the Church of England during its discussions on the ordination of women to the episcopate. In his talk he said this: “Because the Episcopal office is a ministry of unity, the decision you face would immediately impact on the question of the unity of the Church and with it the goal of ecumenical dialogue. It would be a decision against the common goal we have until now pursued in our dialogue: full ecclesial communion, which cannot exist without full communion in the episcopal office.”
Very solid and put much more politely than the Anglican church currently deserves….but for those able to read between the lines it is all there.
We warned you not to head down this path. We are appalled at your treatment of the orthodox. We have no future with you unless you repent and get your house in order. We cannot unify with dischordant and wild entities
Rugbyplayingpriest . . . do you think any of the leaders in charge actually give a flying fig whether they can get some sort of “unity” with RCs?
If so, I have a bridge to sell you in the Mojave desert.
A really beautiful talk by Cardinal Levada. While I disagree with the theology behind the Roman Catholic’s vision of “ecumenism,” the main political assertion I disagree with is this one: “Such a step [Arcic III] is a sign of hope and a commitment to pursuing the path to full corporate union on the part of our two Communions.”
I don’t think that the Anglicans’ engagement with Arcic III has *any* sense of hope or commitment to “pursuing the path to full corporate union” any more than a Lambeth or Primates Meeting has any sort of “hope or commitment” to Anglican unity within the Anglican Communion either.
I’m saddened for Cardinal Levada if he believes that the leaders of the Anglican Communion are in any way approaching ARCIC III as anything more than a pleasant dialogue-game.
Sarah, I don’t think the Cardinal does think that Anglican leaders in charge give a flying fig about unity. What they DO care about is being taken seriously by the Vatican (and the Ecumenical Patriarch). The ABC loves to be received at the Vatican, and by the Eastern Orthodox, as a serious Christian leader. Such treatment is becoming harder (impossible?) to justify. As the global Anglican implosion continues I suspect that the Vatican and the Eastern Orthodox will increasingly shun the historic instruments of the Anglican Communion and find ways of continuing the conversation with the surviving remnant of Anglicanism which actually adheres to historic Christianity. Judging from the ABC’s most recent visit to Rome, patience is wearing thin there for the photo ops. Likewise, Archbishop Jonah’s appearance at the ACNA founding assembly last year was further indication that Orthodox Christians are coming to the same conclusions about Anglicanism.
Rome (and we Orthodox) have long since abandoned any serious hope of communion with the Anglican Communion. Generally this is not being said in so many words out of politeness. But it is nonetheless true. The AC is being treated (for now) as a Christian entity, but one that is rather in the mold of the low church Protestant denominations. Whatever its claims to apostolic orders and being a “branch” of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, neither Rome nor Orthodoxy recognizes it as such.
I doubt the ABC will become persona non grata at either the Vatican or the Phanar anytime soon. But no one is under any illusions about the nature of the ongoing dialogue. Its no longer about restoring communion. Its now about improving understanding and peaceful co-existence. The Ecumenical Patriarch would receive the Dali Lama with similar courtesy and objectives.
Actually, you can’t abandon a hope that you never had. The Roman Catholic Church has never, ever, hoped for or worked towards communion with the Anglican Communion. Since the 1530s, it has quite consistently hoped for the reconciliation of Anglicans with the Catholic Church–the submission of Anglicans to papal authority and to Vatican-approved standards of doctrine, discipline, and worship–and it has worked towards that goal. The RC Church has never, ever, held out any prospects for restoring communion except on those terms. The 1896 declaration that Anglican orders are invalid, and thus that there is no valid sacramental life (aside from baptism) in the Anglican communities, was quite consistently followed by the 2000 declaration that those communities are not churches, but merely “ecclesial bodies.”
Dragging women’s ordination into the discussion is a red herring. It did not torpedo the hope that Rome would recognize the Anglican Communion as a sister church within Catholic Christianity in exchange for some sort of vague Anglican-style acknowledgment of the Pope as first among equals… because those hopes (held by many Anglo-Catholics since 1833) were never realistic in the first place. For nearly 500 years, the minimum standard for reconciliation has always been something along the lines of [i]Anglicanorum coetibus[/i] as a transitional stage to absorbing former Anglicans into the Roman Rite.
The same is pretty much true of Eastern Orthodoxy as well–there has never been any realistic prospect that Anglican moderates, much less Evangelicals, would be willing to reject Western theological distinctives, and no prospect that the Orthodox would be any more likely to accept those doctrines from Anglicans than they have been willing to accept them from Rome since 1054. The only choice for Anglicans who seek full communion with the Orthodox is now what it has always been, to join an Orthodox church.
#6. Thank you.
Re #6
Dale,
In general I concur with your well written comment. My only quibble would be that there was a time when some of the Orthodox churches were in very serious discussions with Anglicans about communion. This was generally in the first half the last century, mostly before the Second World War. At one point several of the local Orthodox churches had voted to recognize Anglican sacraments. Now in fairness I would note that these churches were dealing almost exclusively Anglo-Catholic high church types. And it is doubtful if the synods had any really serious knowledge of the radical theological diversity within the Anglican Communion. Had they such knowledge it is impossible for me to believe they would have extended recognition to the AC’s sacraments.
In any event, this is now water under the bridge. No Orthodox jurisdiction today accepts Anglican orders or sacraments with the occasional exception of Baptism.
Well, I read the whole thing and found it indeed, as Sarah said, a beautiful talk, and a moving, even inspiring one. However, I’m afraid that I can’t agree with #1 that it represents a strong rebuke of recent Anglican tendencies since his audience was a Catholic one, not an Anglican one, and the whole tone of the speech expresses genuine appreciation for the Anglican tradition at its best, and sadness, more than anger, at how the AC has betrayed its own heritage.
I particularly relished Cardinal Levada’s apt citation of the clear and forthright condemnation of homosexual behavior in the ARCIC II document from 1994, “Life in Christ.”
“Both (communions) affirm that a faithful and lifelong marriage between a man and a woman provides the normative context for a fully sexual relationship. Both appeal to Scripture and the natural order as the sources of their teaching on this issue. Both reject, therefore, the claim, sometimes made that homosexual relationships and married relationships are morally equivalent, and morally capable of expressing the right ordering and use of the sexual drive. Such ordering and use, we believe, are an essential aspect of life in Christ” (paragraph 87).
Hmmm. How times have changed! That agreed statement came out in 1994, although as Cardinal Levada rightly reminds us, it was merely the jooint statement of a group of elite theologians, and that ARCIC II statement was never officially evaluated or approved by either communion.
But IIRC, ironically, the Anglican chairman of ARCIC II was none other than that infamous prevaricator, +Frank Griswold, the pro-gay former PB. After all, if he could lie through his teeth to his fellow Anglican primates as he did, surely he could have no scruples against lying to his Roman Catholic counterparts on ARCIC II.
That’s why I partially agree with Sarah, in that for many in TEC and the liberal bodies in the AC, such international ecumenical dialogues are indeed just a game really. A postmodern sort of game where words mean whatever we wish them to mean.
But I suspect it’s different for our RC friends. Note how Cardinal Levada keeps quoting important Catholic documents as if they had real authority, such as [i]Lumen Gentium[/i] from Vatican II, or the new Catechism of 1992. For Catholics, such documents have enduring value as genuine theoligical norms.
Alas, it isn’t so for all too many Anglicans. Just look at the Windsor Report. It came out in 2004, and already it’s a dead letter, blithely ignored by the ABoC himself, who refused to take its recommendation that he not invite the TEC bishops who consecrated Gene Robinson to Lambeth in 2008. For liberals, the vaunted Windsor Report, that proud participant and co-author +NT Wright called “the gold standard” in recent Anglican discussions, might as well have been written on toilet paper. For that’s all they think of it.
The Roman Church still cherishes the dogmatic tradition of the Church, and rightly so. Sadly, Anglicanism in the Global North has become proudly anti-dogmatic, glorying in what they should be ashamed of. And that makes all the difference.
David Handy+
Fervently and unashamedly anti-Antidogmatism
While the clarity of Dale Rye (#6) is refreshing and for which I too am grateful, there is still – I trust! – some room for the Holy Spirit to create opportunities that even B16 has not quite imagined to date.
For example, his own declared desire for “gesturesâ€, tokens among us that create degrees of ‘space’ hitherto not available, is one way of gauging [i]Anglicanorum coetibus[/i]. And while even this move surely has its centre of gravity firmly within the Church who claims that in her “subsists†the one true Church – no surprises there, despite some fond imaginings initially! – there remains, for example, the entire movement of Inter-Church Families. See http://www.interchurchfamilies.org/
We are NOT going to go away; we stand quite simply as those whose marriages are prophetic gestures indeed that love and faithfulness are possible across divides others still negotiate with difficulty. True; often these “others†have created and continue to create other sorts of difficulties for us – and for us all! But when Rome dares to follow its own theo-logic regarding the Nuptial Mystery that pertains to both the Church and the union of husband and wife – and then applies this (again logically!) to intercommunion for Inter-Church families, then we might be on the road which opens up real “gestures†and yet further opportunities.
So; it’s good to see Levada continuing to highlight the central role of the Eucharist. Perhaps we could also see the one who so favours the due roles of human reason (ala Regensburg) continue to apply this rich resource to follow through on his own charitable, ecumenical desires, ones Christ himself seeks – [i]Ut unum sint[/i]!
Dale,
The Catholic Church also generally recognizes the validity of the sacrament of marriage in Anglican churches, so long as neither party is a Catholic according to Canon Law.
“Its no longer about restoring communion. Its now about improving understanding and peaceful co-existence.”
Well Ad Orientem, perhaps Cardinal Levada shouldn’t just lie and say such things as this: “Such a step [Arcic III] is a sign of hope and a commitment to pursuing the path to full corporate union on the part of our two Communions.â€
The whole thing is silly and I wish it would stop, personally. But I wish a lot of things would stop.
And we certainly don’t need Arcic’s in order to improve understanding and peaceful co-existence. We already have that in spades. Why jump through the contorted hoops of ARCIC and engage in such mutual pretences and games? It makes real efforts lose immense respect.
RE: “Since the 1530s, it has quite consistently hoped for the reconciliation of Anglicans with the Catholic Church—the submission of Anglicans to papal authority and to Vatican-approved standards of doctrine, discipline, and worship—and it has worked towards that goal. The RC Church has never, ever, held out any prospects for restoring communion except on those terms.”
Agreed — but the RC Church must proceed in those lines because of their own doctrine and dogma. And they’ve been frank and forthright about it too. So the folks on the Anglican side participating in such sham exercises of futility have to either 1) pretend as if they don’t know what the RCs are talking about when they talk about “unity” or 2) be willing to actually give up and jine up the Anglican Communion with the RCs and cave to the RC church’s theories about itself. My personal theory is that it’s option 1 — which makes it all even more ridiculous still.
RE: “The 1896 declaration that Anglican orders are invalid, and thus that there is no valid sacramental life (aside from baptism) in the Anglican communities, was quite consistently followed by the 2000 declaration that those communities are not churches, but merely “ecclesial bodies.â€
Right — but I see that, again, as completely in step with the Roman Catholic church’s *consistent claims about itself* down through the centuries. Obviously, I don’t grant those claims, and think them illusory, but when one lives in an illusion about one’s entity, there we are.
I should also add that I have as much concern about the declaration of Anglican orders being invalid and churches being named as ecclesial entities as Tom Bombadil had for the ring of power — he laughed, tossed it into the air, slipped it on his finger, and remained completely visible and unused by its power. ; > )
I don’t think they meant such declarations as insulting [although certainly some RCs and even EO’s *hope* that they are] — it simply fit with their theology of their ecclesial entity. And it can’t insult people like me, who don’t believe their theology of their ecclesial entity anyway.
Sarah–Exactly!
Chris Molter–While it is true that the RCs recognize the sacrament of matrimony among Anglicans, that is because they have always held that the sacrament is celebrated by the parties themselves, not by the church or ecclesial body to which the parties belong. Any man and woman who enter into an agreement to immediately undertake the obligations of marriage (as the Church understands them) are thereby married. Since the Council of Trent, the presence of a priest and the performance of a nuptial blessing is required for the regularity of any marriage in which one of the parties is Roman Catholic, but that is a disciplinary matter. The Council, of course, had no authority over the Church of England, which continued to recognize nonceremonial and even unwitnessed clandestine marriages until 1753. Thus, the RC disciplinary rule does not apply to Anglicans or other RCs, only the Catholic sacramental understanding of marriage as a bilateral covenant before God. Marriage was not affected by the declared invalidity of Anglican Orders any more than baptism was.
Oops… “does not apply to Anglicans or other [b]non-[/b]RCs,”
All this talk of “marriage†in previous posts underlines why it is so crucial to pursue this avenue – rather than say the matter of orders, Bulls re orders, etc. If the Roman Church were truly to follow its own insights regarding the Nuptial Mystery (and JP2’s “Theology of the Body†has given this a huge boost – as have the writings of say von Balthasar and Scola), genuine “gestures†would thereby open up indeed!
So what’s holding them back …?