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For most of the world, "Anglican" will be the title of some obscure sect that they no little about, other than that the Holy Father, in paternal love, has worked out a manner in which as many of them as want to can return to the bosom of Peter without having to compromise principles which HH the P believes are on the other side of his line in the sand.
They can have their own liturgy and Ordinaries who are not Bishops (at least in the manner Catholics and Orthodox understand Bishops); they don't have to be subsumed into Latin Rite dioceses; they simply have to acknowledge a Catholic understanding of the Petrine Ministry and accept what (until the end of the 60s) everybody would recognise as "what every Catholic believes".
There is a mood abroad which suspects that this is also an invitation to the SSPX to see that what has been written on a small scale with Tridentine Latin Rite Communities is at least potentially writable large.
But I wonder whether one of HH's eyes might not have been facing East. There is an interesting message to the Orthodox Churches that says that this Pope's exercise of the Petrine Ministry is that of a loving father, and not that of an absolutist monarch.
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8 comments:
Yes Tony, I too think that the Holy Father may well have had more than just the Anglicans in his sights when he opened his arms to them in this way.
Let us hope and pray that this will indeed be a very wide net which draws in a huge catch.
JARay
I'm sorry to rain on your parade, Ttony, but I'm sure HH knows very well that this initiative is quite without significance or interest in respect of Orthodoxy. Anglicans (at least the Anglicans in question) are wayward Latin-rite Christians who, in returning to communion with their patriarch, will be required to sign up to the various innovations and additions Rome imposes on the rest of its flock. These remain an absolute obstacle to any kind of "union" with the Orthodox; nor can the division even be boiled down to a question of this or that dogmatic statement. Even if the filioque were suppressed, and Vatican I solemnly repudiated, a kind of radical incompatibility of outlook and spirituality remains which cannot be made to vanish by the signatures of hierarchs on pieces of paper.
Parade unrained on!
My badly made point is that any Orthodox who is watching what is going on might be thinking that this Papacy feels (in matters of Chruch governance) more and more like a pre-Pius IX pontificate that anybody would have believed possible.
We won't share communion in our lifetimes, but at least the Barque is beginning to change course.
this Papacy feels (in matters of Chruch governance) more and more like a pre-Pius IX pontificate that anybody would have believed possible.
Oh, undeniably - and in more than Church governance! Who would have thought, a mere 50 years after Pius XII's ticking off in Humanae Generis ("I am the Fathers") that the Pope would be routinely introducing the Greek Fathers, so as to allow them to speak for themselves? I've said it before - he's the most remarkable occupant of his office in many hundreds of years.
Yesterday Archbishop Anatoly came down to celebrate Divine Liturgy at our local Russian Monastery. The usual excellent lunch was served afterwards, to about thirty of us. The only discussion of these developments was between me and another ex-Catholic (Orthodox since 1963). My (Greek) parish priest asked me what we were discussing.
"Rome has announced the development of arrangements to receive Anglicans with their own traditions and canons."
"Really?" asked Father, eyebrow raised, "- business must be bad!"
Well Ben, there's still room for you.
Mind you, you would have to sign up for the "filioque" clause because that's exactly HOW IT IS.
And you know why that's how it is!
JARay
Ben: the comparison would have to be with a bunch of Catholics and expecting them to know anything about the Russian Orthodox Church's attitude to the Estonian Orthodox Church. But I expect a few people in the Vatican to notice and to care.
(Notwithstanding the fact that Anglican business is bad at the moment, and they are lucky that there is a Pope who cares.)
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