Universalis, your very own breviary in pixels...

Wednesday 9 July 2008

Would he at least toss'em a life preserver?

I find this unutterably sad, and if this Gerald Warner person actually said anything so stupid and uncharitable he is an osteocraniite.
Oh, stop pussy-footing around, he's a jackass.
And the reprehensible behavior of the bishop toward an Anglican Use parish described in the article sounds all too credible.
Ugly, just ugly...

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8588
Many Roman Catholics Misunderstand Orthodox Anglo-Catholicism
by William A. Wheatley
Special to VirtueOnline 7/9/2008
Yesterday's newspapers carried articles reporting that the General Synod of the Church of England approved the creating of female bishops. This morning's newspapers carried articles reporting that conservative Church of England bishops have been in talks with Rome regarding the possibility of taking themselves and their flocks into communion with.
Many Roman Catholic clergy, particularly those who did seminary in the 1960s, do not understand why anyone would want to be in communion with the Pope and not be Roman Catholic.
In particular, a recent article by Gerald Warner, "The Barque of Peter Should Not Pick Up Anglican Boat People," is a case in point. He writes,
The news that Anglican bishops have had private talks with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is a provocative development. Any collective negotiation suggests that these disgruntled prelates envisage the possibility of some kind of corporate adherence to the Catholic Church.
The barque of Peter should immediately hoist the signal: not wanted on voyage." The tag line under the header to his article states, "Gerald Warner is an author, broadcaster, columnist and polemical commentator who writes about politics, religion, history, culture and society in general. If it is an exaggeration to say that he believes the world has gone to the dogs, it is only a slight hyperbole.
He proceeds to argue that they would be poor converts - that Anglicans do not possess all the fundamentals of the Catholic Faith, do not possess a true church, and that therefore organic union should be opposed.
He posits that their faith is defective because they have long served alongside female priests, despite the infallible declaration by the Pope in 1992, "We declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgement is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful." He argues that Anglican clergy have long "accepted" the existence of female priests in their church, and are only now moving to approach Rome because female bishops are in the works for the Church of England. This proves, in his view, that their move is "church politics and not conversion."
Many Roman Catholics don't understand us "bitter" Anglicans "clinging" to our guns and religion - and especially to our liturgy. They think that if someone is going to be Catholic, the only way is the Roman way. From their viewpoint, you're either an Anglican, in which case you are part of a pseudo-church, or you are Catholic, in which case you're part of the only True Church (although they would admit that the Eastern Orthodox churches are legitimate Churches, they would argue that the Orthodox are out of communion with, and therefore not a part of, the True Church. It's sort of a Roman Catholic "exceptionalism." They're happy to receive "converts" from the Anglican world, but do not consider them to be "returning" to communion.
They don't understand that we are already Catholic in our faith and just want to restore communion. From their view, the purpose of ecumenism is so that those outside the Roman Catholic Church will come to sufficient understanding of Roman Catholicism to be able to convert from their non-churches and their non-Catholic faith to the One True Church and the Catholic Faith. These same prelates tend to be the ones who are modernist in tendency.
The conservative Roman Catholics, on the other hand, admire the Anglican liturgy for its beauty, just as they admire the Tridentine Mass for its beauty. They admire the conservative Anglo-Catholics for their steadfastness to the Catholic Faith and encourage us to re-establish communion with Rome so we can serve as an example of good English-language liturgy and good conservative theology to the English-Speaking Roman Catholic world.
I have some history in this matter. I studied in Roman Catholic Seminary in the 1960's, but was expelled because my idea of reforming the Roman Catholic Church didn't square with that of the faculty, many of whom were openly homosexual. ...
I discovered that there was a parish of Anglican liturgical use in the Roman Catholic diocese, prospering under the Pastoral Provision established by Pope John Paul II. I became a very happy member of that parish, having become utterly frustrated by the lack of good liturgical practice in the Latin Rite parishes near my home.
... Under the Pastoral Provision, a former Episcopal Parish that becomes a Roman Catholic Parish of the Anglican Use falls under the jurisdiction of the local Roman Catholic Bishop, who may not be friendly. In at least one case with which I am familiar, the local bishop accepted the "conversion" of the parish because he had to, but refused to give it the status of a parish, keeping it as a "mission." He moved the priest to a Roman Catholic parish, put in one of his own priests as pastor for the mission, and required the use of Rite II, the modern-language English rite used in the Episcopal Church that corresponds almost verbatim to the Roman Rite used in US Roman Catholic parishes. He further required that mass be said facing the people, generally made it into a mission that bore no resemblance to what we think of as good Anglican liturgy. The mission withered away, and then he didn't have to deal with it any more.

....There is no "Pastoral Provision" for Anglicans outside the United States. It has not worked that well in the United States because many U.S. Roman Catholic bishops oppose it, thinking it will draw the faithful away from liberal Roman Catholic theology and "feel-good" Roman Catholic liturgies that lack doctrinal content and ritual solemnity. Thus we have the Traditional Anglican Communion in talks with Rome, and we have the newly-revealed group of Church of England bishops and clergy in talks with Rome. It might be possible for something akin to a Uniate Rite to be established within which Anglican liturgical practice can continue, unimpeded by local Roman Catholic bishops, and in communion with Rome. Many conservative Roman Catholics think this would be a good thing. Obviously, Gerald Warner does not.
END

3 comments:

Mary Jane Ballou said...

I'm with you on this one. Gerald Warner's implication is that one already has to be a "Catholic" prior to conversion.

Lucky that I got in!

George Tarasuk said...

I for one, am walking a tight rope - practicing Catholicism over here while playing music over there!

Thanks for sharing these stories.

Anonymous said...

After reading a bit of this Warner person's blog, I gather he's a professional curmudgeon who tries to be provocative in an old fogey way.
I just think this crossed the line (is there a line?)

Save the Liturgy, sav the World!