“Cardinal Smithers! Release the hounds….”
Sorry, but I just couldn’t resist.
I know I’m a bit behind on the nooz cycle in my posting but hot dawg I think B-16 caught everyone flat-footed with the extent of his new effort to bring Anglicans back within the fold of Holy Mother Church. (The rumor had only been that a certain Anglican splinter group was going to Rome. Nobody, I mean nobody, thought that the Vatican was declaring open season on all disaffected Anglicans.) Go on over to Damian Thompson for all the latest news, including the (admittedly) heh-inducing fact that it looks like ArchBish Rowan Williams got totally pawned in this process. (Note to Canterbury: Either lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.)
What all this means for ordinary Anglicans and Palies, nobody yet seems to really know. So far as I understand it, the new arrangement will involve the actual conversion of Anglicans that want it to gen-u-ine Catholicism, with all the attendant theological trappings, and not the continued practice of Anglicanism under a Papal seal-o-approval. At the same time, there is language that under this new regime that certain aspects of Anglican liturgical and spiritual tradition will be preserved. Heck if I know what that means.
Anyway, we shall see.
The Port Stands At Your Elbow 
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October 22, 2009 at 3:57 pm
MCNS
Robbo, for your interest, here is the website of the Anglican-use congregation in Boston ~ Perhaps there is a model for what may come elsewhere ~ Their newsletter “Contra Mundum” is very good.
http://www.locutor.net/
October 23, 2009 at 10:39 am
The Abbot
Benedict has studied the Anglican issues and was impressed by Newman’s writings — more so than John Paul II was. I think the fact that Newman could discover the Catholic strand in Anglican thought and follow it back to the Tiber indicated to Benedict that there was still much that was Catholic in the Anglican church. But the twentieth century has not been kind to Anglicanism — starting with birth control at 1930 Lambeth, the whole issue of sexuality has led the Anglican church onto the rocks. Benedict is offering a big lifeboat. I think the Anglican communion splits into thirds — the liberals, who remain in the Northen part of the Anglican communion, the Anglo Catholics, who depart and reunite with Rome while keeping their rubrics, and the Evangelicals, who set up yet a third Anglican communion.
I’m curious how the global south goes. I’m betting Akinori eventually wears red, but there may be a Catholic/Evangelical split in the global south.
October 23, 2009 at 3:50 pm
ScurvyOaks
Dear Abbot,
I share your curiousity about the global south, specifically from my perspective as a member of the Reformed Episcopal Church, who is thus in communion with the Church of Nigeria but not the Church of England. My sense has been that Akinola is a low-church evangelical, but he’s said he’s studying that Benedict has put out. No telling, at this point.
I read recently that Newman said it was unwise to try to make Englishmen Roman before making them Catholic. That’s a shrewd insight, which this tremendously intelligent Bishop of Rome is putting to good use. I gotta admit that I’m intrigued, and a bit tempted — although I suspect that the doctrinal differences are still more than I could swallow, at the end of the day.
October 23, 2009 at 11:10 pm
The Abbot
Great stuff, Scurvy — especially the part about Englishmen needing to become Catholic before they can become Roman. It reminds me of the book “The Stripping of the Altars” — a great book on pre-Reformation England — England was once profoundly Catholic, though perhaps never fully Roman. There are, or were, a few writers who impressed me with both their Englishness and their Catholicism — Chesterton, Tolkien, Charles Williams, and C.S. Lewis — though in his case it is “catholicism” with a small C. I think it has something to do with language. The English language, properly used, can handle subtlety of thought that no other language can manage, and in discussing theology, subtlety is called for. England is more capable of being Catholic than any other country because its language comes closest to expressing the fullness of truth.
The dilemma for an Anglican looking at Rome is the theology, particularly around two issues — the Eucharist and the role of Mary. If a person can accept transubstantiation, the Immaculate Conception, and the Assumption, then that person is already so profoundly Catholic that the rubrics of Anglicanism are, well, just gravy. If a person cannot accept the theology, then Benedict’s offer makes no sense — but it is still a nice gesture.