As an anglophile who has the highest hopes for the Personal Ordinariates envisioned by the Pope for the salvaging of all that’s good in Anglicanism and replanting it within the Roman Communion, a question keeps recurring among those Anglicans who are seriously contemplating taking the Holy Father up on his offer. In his Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, Pope Benedict calls “the Anglican Patrimony” a “treasure to be shared” with the entire Church.(1) The difficulty for Anglicans, however, is that most are unsure what precisely “the Anglican Patrimony” (henceforth AP) is. Having discussed the matter at some lengths with some of the Anglicans and Episcopalians that I respect and having listened to the recordings of the latest conference on this subject that recently convened at Oxford University,(2) I would like to bring to your attention four possible, mutually enriching answers to this question. I encourage all of you who would like to pursue the matter further, to listen to the recordings of the conference in full to hear learned men with really posh accents bringing forth their answers to this question. In the meantime, here are the answers that seem to me to have the most validity:
1. The AP is a distinctive way of celebrating the liturgy which draws on The Book of Common Prayer for its inspiration and texts.
2. Closely connected to #1, the AP is the rich Anglican tradition of choral music.
3. The AP is a predominantly married clergy.
4. The AP is that position of privilege Anglicanism enjoys in England to re-evanglize and minister to society at large, afforded by establishment.
In my next few articles, I shall take up and analyze these answers in order. But do notice something astonishing first: Most Anglicans today are unsure what their patrimony is! Secondly, we should note that whatever answers we bring to the question, the Holy Father certainly has in mind elements of Anglican identity and practice that are compatible with Catholic (i.e. Roman) doctrine. Whatever is explicitly heretical in that identity and practice must be rejected, whatever is orthodox may be imported, and whatever floats in-between must be analyzed by our theologians with a fine-toothed comb.
-------------------------------------------------------
Footnotes:
(1) Complementary Norms, Article 10, §1, §2; Anglicanorum Coetibus, III, VI §5.
(2) Available at http://www.theanglocatholic.com/2010/04/anglicanorum-coetibus-conference-presentations/
4 comments:
I think that's an excellent summary, and all four of those points are certainly important to me as an Anglican, especially #2. Closely connected to #1 and #2 is the greater importance many Anglicans attach to [our version of] the Daily Office. The Eucharist may have supplanted Morning Prayer as the main Sunday morning service for most Anglicans, which is OK with me, but Evensong, especially Choral Evensong, remains an important part of Anglican life. Whereas I get the idea that most lay Catholics go to church for mass and that's it.
While many Catholics are vaguely aware that Anglicans cherish "good music," I suspect that most non-Anglicans (and these days, all too many Anglicans) are unaware of much of the vast treasury of the Anglican choral tradition. I know I was until I discovered the Saint Thomas Fifth Avenue webcasts in 2006. It is not just that Anglican choirs often sing Latin polyphony ironically largely neglected by the Church for which it was written and which we are unwilling to replace with Haugen, Haas, or Joncas, but that we also cherish great repertoire of our own in ["archaic"] English, most of which was written for Morning or Evening Prayer. A really successful incorporation of this patrimony into the Roman Catholic Church would need, among other things, to take all this into account. The Mass is the most important service, but it is not the only service.
As a traditionalist, I've recognised it's high time to stop fantasising about clerical asceticism (and also to face legal and theological reality) and scrap compulsory celibacy.
A growing number of traddies are coming to the same realisation.
Priests, as such, are not monks, and should not be subjected to monastic obligations.
Anonymous,
Homosexuality isn't solved by allowing priests to marry...
The Church ought never to abandon the idea that clerics on account of their sacred character have much more of an obligation for sanctity than lay monks. Besides the near-impossible giving of oneself to both parish and family (just loook at how exhausted the saints were simply with the former and how much more they would have done if they had the time or strength), married clergy is an innovation and a relaxation in the traditional Apostolic discipline. This has come to light more and more in recent years to the chagrin of Easterners who consistently tried to claim this was a later development solely in the West. The last thing the modern clergy need is another relaxation in asceticism. So many are already entirely bankrupt of any spirituality, and with the growth of "ministry" upon "ministry," they have little time for prayer as it is. It would simply be impossible to do it. Besides, this would prevent daily Masses (but who really would think such people would take seriously an obligation to abstain before offering the sacred mysteries, who are not even willing to give up the one thing that more than any other brings man's mind down from contemplating higher things, whether intellectual or spiritual, as S. Austin saith--for the Anglophiles), which are already all too infrequent (and almost universally parish priests must say multiple Masses on Sundays and sometimes during the week). There are innumerable objections to the proposal at all, and the two you propose are far from sufficient.
Sorry, there's lots of patristic evidence that clerical marriage is the original practice.
Among other things, refer to Vogels' "Celibacy: Gift or Law?"
There are insuperable legal and theological hurdles to any alleged "law" of celibacy.
25 years ago, I would have agreed with you.
However, I've done a lot of research since then.
Oh, and why bring up homosexuality? I didn't even mention it.
Post a Comment