Some people involved in efforts to promote full Anglican-Roman Catholic unity said the pope’s special provisions were essentially an admission that full unity was virtually impossible because of the ordination of women priests and bishops and positions on homosexuality in some parts of the Anglican Communion.
Speaking to the Catholic bishops, though, the pope said his provision “should be seen as a prophetic gesture that can contribute positively to the developing relations between Anglicans and Catholics” by promoting unity while accepting differences.
The Rev. David Richardson, director of the Anglican Center in Rome and the archbishop of Canterbury’s representative to the Vatican, said the idea of the ordinariate was initially billed as a “pastoral provision” for disaffected Anglicans and appears to offer benefits to them, but “seems to contribute nothing to the full visible unity” of the Anglican and Roman Catholic communities as a whole.
Full unity can only be achieved through formal dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion as a whole, Rev. Richardson told Catholic News Service.
Re “seems to contribute nothing to the full visible unity”: I think it will be clear to the unclouded intellect that the “full visible unity of the Anglican Communion as a whole” is a necessary condition of full visible unity between it and the Catholic Church (which term in this post I use to designate that visible church on earth which professes unity with and obedience to the see of Peter).
Of course, some will point out that whatever unity exists within the Catholic Church is manifestly imperfect. So it is. But catholics do believe that unity is the vocation of the Church, and that the office of the Pope is what Christ willed for us as an essential means to that end.
If there is anything that will serve to persuade non-Catholics that this (albeit imperfect) unity is desirable – not merely desirable, indeed, but a vital and necessary characteristic of authentic life in the Gospel – it is the spontaneous manifestation of joy that Catholics exhibit when the Pope is around. This (as many will understand) is not mere hero-worship, nor the idolatrous substitution of an earthly figure for the transcendent Person of Christ our King. The source of this joy is the unity of which the papacy is a kind of sacrament.
I am writing this in part to thank the many members of the Church of England who did so much to contribute to (and, I hope, participate in) the joy we recently experienced in the UK when Pope Benedict visited us. To me, personally, and to the Holy Father himself I’m sure, it was a particular joy to watch the beautiful ecumenical service in Westminster Abbey. All Catholics will have appreciated the respect and consideration that was shown to Pope Benedict on that historic occasion. We must acknowledge that this was not only charitable, but courageously so. (I read a letter in today’s paper from someone angry (incensed?) that incense had been used in the Abbey, supposedly contrary to some Act of Parliament that prohibits such popish fripperies in Anglican churches. Many others, I am sure, are seething at this or that.) I may be fanciful, but what came across to me was genuine respect for the Pope, not something feigned, and in that respect, a manifestation of genuine desire for unity.
I know that for many of my Anglican brothers and sisters the division between our churches is, if not an agony, at least a dull ache. Occasions like the Westminster service remind us that there are many in the Anglican fold who desire unity with us, and unity with the Pope, as much as we do.
It pains me, therefore, to have to say that [i]pace[/i] the Rev. David Richardson, unity will not come “[i]only[/i] … through formal dialogue”. Metanoia is needed, and we should look more in the direction of Westminster Abbey, and Cofton Park, to see how that is going to happen.
Agreed that the ordinariates are not, at first, going to be seen as a way forward. And as many here will know, they were not intended as a response to current members of the Canterbury Anglican Communion. I believe and hope, though, that the Catholic experience of Westminster Abbey and similar encounters in the past and, please God, in the future, will (a) engender in Catholics a lively appreciation of the tremendous value of the Anglican patrimony and a desire that this may find a full place in the life of the wider church; and (b) that this appreciation will reassure Anglicans that they are not seen as second-class or that they will be seen as second-class Catholics.
I hope that when hard-line papists such as myself point out that there are, of course, deal-breakers (the authority of the church to ordain women, for example), it will not be seen as if we don’t want union: rather, we cannot avoid seeing it as a symptom of rejection of the unity which, for Catholics, is a reality, albeit tantalizingly imperfect, in our Christian life.
Ut unum simus!
Thank you for a thoughtful and charitable comment CPKS. I have no more wish to become a Roman Catholic than I suspect you wish to become an Anglican, yet, that ecumenical service showed as HH put it more unites than divides us. I found the jointly attended services, Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral very moving.
We should be, as we say over here, ‘churches together’.