Great encouragement to your congregation and readers, brother. First, as your brother, I send greetings to your wife and children, and wishes for a happy new year.
Second, as an Anglican priest who, with high ideals but considerably lower savvy, “poped” back in 1997, all I can say to those who may be thinking likewise is this: Unless you know in your heart you can believe in such super-added dogmas as papal supremacy and infallibility (very late inventions), that Jesus did not need to possess “faith” during his earthly years (to which I respond, was he or was he not fully human?), and that the bread and wine physically change into his body and blood during the Eucharist without any palpable evidence of it; unless you can believe in Mary’s “Immaculate Conception” (an unnecessary and unverifiable belief, if ever there was one), her bodily assumption, and so on, then I would urge you to stay put. You already have everything you need, and, what Rome would add to you, you not only do not need, but should positively avoid weighing yourselves down with. Anglicanism is doctrinally sound and blessed with great forms of worship. Rome is neither. As for Rome’s claims to a vastly superior moral authority — well, I would venture to say that after such revelations as clerical sexual abuse on an international scale and their bank’s money-laundering, the lie has been put to that.
No, don’t make my mistake. I wouldn’t make it again myself, and, as it is, I’m making my way out the Roman door.
Just a word to the wise.
(Hat tip: WT)
Each person must follow his or her own conscience, so of course Fr Addison Hart must do what he believes to be right. At the same time I was left taken aback by the strong emotional undertow of the language he uses here. I also remembered what Dietrich Bonhoeffer says in The Cost of Discipleship namely, that if we enter a community then we have to let go our image of what it should be like. It will never live up to our ideal – and anyway, our it is strangely difficult to separate our ideal community from an enlarged picture of ourselves.
Yes, the Marian doctrines in particular can be troubling. I was a cradle Catholic who, having not grown up with a large emphasis on Marian devotion, later had many questions about the origin of these teachings and found the church’s answers unsatisfactory. For these and other reasons, I had no choice but to leave the RCC if I were to remain honest.
And, on this day, I’m much happier celebrating the Holy Name of Jesus instead of the Solemnity of Mary. I mean no disrespect to the Blessed Mother but she is that — the Blessed Mother, the human vessel, not to be venerated like a minor female deity.
Many of the doctrines regarding Mary are indeed extra-biblical. However, I find that I cannot reject them in totality without rejecting the power of God to accomplish these things. I cannot attest to the veracity but I hear that the Hart brothers are an “interesting” lot.
I find it stunningly incomprehensible that anyone could convert to Rome without actually believing their doctrine and dogma.
???
I’m a lay peon. There are only a few possibilities that I can come up with as to how that could happen with an informed priest. 1) The convert is too shallow to care all that much about theology. Surely that can’t be correct. 2) The convert has decided to go to Rome for reasons other than theology. 3) The convert actually really has never investigated the theology of Rome and has just toddled over blindly. Again — surely that can’t be correct. Or . . .
???
Something else?
Maybe others can weigh in on possible reasons.
Do I detect here what has been absent from Anglican discourse for a hundred years? That is the beginning of an apologia, a defense of the Anglican way, even a positive discourse over against what our forebears called “the errors of the Church of Rome.” (Martyrs Memorial, Oxford)
If so, a welcome development. I particularly appreciated, “You already have everything you need, and, what Rome would add to you, you not only do not need, but should positively avoid weighing yourselves down with.”
Nikolaus,
Oh, indeed, all things are possible with God. Faith, by its very nature, does not demand absolute proof. But Mary was a mere mortal and not much of the NT tells us a lot about her, which is the point. Our focus is meant to be on her Son and I suspect that’s the way she would want it, too. I think that the Anglican view of Mary presents a healthy balance.
The cult of Mary in the RCC comes a bit too eerily close to goddess status for my taste, which may have been part of the point when Christianity was brought to the pagans.
Sarah,
It’s likely your second possibility. Politics.
I really don’t understand those who say they’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. Well, nothing was stopping them so why didn’t they go sooner? Those who are priests and bishops didn’t feel comfortable enough with the RCC to go alone so they waited until they had a structure by which they could go in groups, buffered from the common RC rabble and looking victorious?
And that’s precisely the problem I have with this. People act on conscience all of the time and God bless them in their endeavors. But this seems more to me like some sort of political move than a spiritual one.
Advice to Catholics tempted (as I initially was) to unholy glee at this person’s departure: it must reflect pretty badly on whatever catechesis he received prior to his reception into the church as well as subsequently. Had it been adequate, perhaps a good deal of harm might have been prevented.
We can only be thankful that nobody with such an impoverished view of Catholic doctrine could ever have passed the stringent vetting procedures that are brought into play in the case of candidates for Holy Orders!
Is Hart returning to Anglicanism, or converting to Orthodoxy?
I don’t necessarily disagree with you T-Time. But I do think the almost complete dismissal of Mary by Protestants diminishes the Faith overall. She was indeed a mere mortal but her profound faith in accepting God’s plan is an inspiration to the rest of us mere mortals.
Given his statements above New Troll I would certainly hope he is returning to Anglicanism. While Orthodoxy differs from Catholicism on several of these issues, Harts statements are certainly inconsistent with Orthodoxy. He will find himself just as ill at ease there as he was with Catholicism.
Re #9
NewTrollObserver
Mr. Hart has proclaimed his rejection of doctrines firmly held within the catholic tradition. He is returning to Protestantism.
Perhaps Fr. Hart’s motives for leaving are not political or theological, but rather that he became utterly disgusted and nauseous with the stench that surrounded him as news of sexual abuse, cover-up and homosexual practice by clergy at even the highest levels and now the news of mafia money-laundering has spilled into the atmosphere.
Father Crocker said (#5.),
“Do I detect here what has been absent from Anglican discourse for a hundred years? That is the beginning of an apologia, a defense of the Anglican way, even a positive discourse over against what our forebears called “the errors of the Church of Rome.†”
I think that when we begin to compare the “Anglican Way” to the “Roman Way,” that we need to be aware of the total history of the peculiarites of the “Anglican Way” that go back over 2000 years.
It is/was not just about the Marianites or Henry VIII’s machinations, it was also about such things as Rome’s interfernce in secular government, a concern that came to a head in the 1300s (Praemunire or Praemunire facias, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praemunire>) or the suppression of the existing British (proto-Anglican) Christians by Augustine when he and his cohorts seized control of British Christianity through unChristian involvement in secular politics and warfare (using marginally/nominally converted pagans to attack Christians) starting in 597 AD. Christianity in Britain was over 500 years old at that time.
There has been so much of “the pot calling the kettle black” in the the discussions of the Roman relationship to the Anglicans over the total 2000 year history of that relationship that its discussion has become emotionallly visceral for many and the need for historical honesty has ‘thrown out of the window.’
Far better for him to be Anglican (where one can get along quite well NOT particularly believing in anything), than being a “Cafeteria Catholic” systematically destroying Catholicism.
midwestnorwegian said (#13.),
“Far better for him to be Anglican (where one can get along quite well NOT particularly believing in anything),….”
You are painting all Anglicans with a broad brush.
You statement is both inaccurate and uncharitable.
#14 AnglicanFirst – Then we disagree. It is accurate, therefore charitable.
Wow, midwestnorwegian, your statement is inaccurate, uncharitable and serves the Kingdom very poorly. Quite a bit pent up there, it seems to me. I am not RC and disagree with many of the doctrinal tenets, but have the charity to believe my RC brothers and sisters are following Christ as the Holy Spirit leads them. While the RC Church has taken a better line on many aspects of the outworking of faith than some Anglican provinces, that is not universally true from archdiocese to archdiocese or even within dioceses. Keep a watch on your passions, brother.
Hmm…seems to me that Anglicanism is chock full of folks who believe that Holy Commmunion is strictly a memorial activity, then there are those who accept that Jesus is present spiritually, but not physically, and there are those who believe that he is truly present -Body, Blood, Soul & Divinity – in the Blessed Sacrament. James Pike denied the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and his brother bishops could only shrug their shoulders and tut-tut. John Spong teaches all manner of heresy with the “imprimatur” of the House of Bishops. Katharine Schori doesn’t think that Salvation is by Christ alone and seems to espouse an extreme form or works righteousness. Bishop Jenkins of Durham denied the Resurrection. I’ve sat in adult education classes with ordinarity laity who are convinced that the “Gospel of Mary Magdalen” was surpressed chauvanists.
Perhaps AnglicanFirst and montanan can explain why they think Midwest is inaccurate.
Coming late to this thread. Without getting into motives or the accuracy of what’s laid out as his rationale, the first question that popped into my head and refuses to leave is “Why did this fellow become a Roman Catholic in the first place?” The second is “How could this person have been been ordained in the RCC?” Inertia can be powerful with “lifers” but this fellow had to make a choice as an adult (and under much more scrutiny).
Of course I cant speak to the case of Mr. Hart, but I always find myself a bit shocked at how someone such as ordained minister, whose commitment requires perpetuity, can skip along from one jurisdiction to the next.