The pope and the archbishop prayed together last weekend, a rare event at Westminster Abbey meant to show the fundamental closeness of Catholics and Anglicans, their churches separated in doctrine by few degrees and each battered by secularism and division. The signal sent was that, someday, a more formal union would strengthen both.
But beyond the smiles, the prayers and the self-conscious focus on the things the two spiritual leaders share, Benedict XVI’s four-day visit to Britain was more than a moment of reconciliation, underscoring that the two churches that split during the Reformation over issues of papal authority are as divided as ever.
Everyone was polite, including the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, not allowing the dissent to show much publicly. Still, it did not go unnoticed that Benedict broke his own rules and personally presided on Sunday over the beatification Mass of Cardinal John Henry Newman, a 19th-century thinker and writer who left the Church of England to convert to Catholicism. He had said earlier in his papacy that he would celebrate Mass only for canonization, the final step of sainthood.
That’s the NYT hack job, isn’t it – I wonder if ++Williams has now said all that needs to be said in response (see later post of his interview by Vatican radio):
“Q……yet the public perception remains of deep divisions and contrasting viewpoints between the two churches – it must be a great worry to you?
A: It is. And [b]conflict always makes a better headline story than harmony.[/b] But as many people have said to me just this evening, when you think of how utterly unimaginable this would have been 40 or 50 years ago, even as the 2nd Vatican Council was beginning, clearly something has happened- and part of that something is a return to the roots, something about which the Pope and I again spoke about privately (some of our theological enthusiasms in common there), the heritage of the Fathers, and again praying together at the Shrine of Edward the Confessor, looking back to that age when the boundaries were not what they are now between Christians – all of that I think is part of a very positive picture. And I think it’s a pity the world only sees the quarrels. It’s as if that tiny 6 inches about the surface is what matters and the immense weight of routine prayer and understanding and love and friendship just goes unnoticed. “
Of course it’s good to see harmony. But the trouble with Anglicans is that that have so many facets that nobody, even other Anglicans, can tell what entity they are dealing with.
Take the vespers in the Abbey, for instance: lovely music, traditional ceremonial, incense all over the place (far from the norm in the Abbey). The Church of England puts on a Catholic face to make nice with the Holy Father. You can be sure that, within days, the liberal/revisionist establishment will be supporting some enormity that runs completely contrary to Catholic teaching. Or the Diocese of Sydney will be pushing for lay presidency again.
Beady eyes noted that Benedict XVI wore the stole of Leo XIII to Westminster. That was the pope who declared Anglican orders “absolutely null and utterly void” in the encylical Apostolicae Curae of 1896. I don’t think it was an unconsidered choice, however charitable and conciliatory the Pope may have been. He’s not making false promises or trying to mislead. Not sure one can say the same for the CoE bench.