From May 3 to 14, 2020 there will be a pilgrimage from North America to the United Kingdom and Italy as part of Anglicanorum coetibus 10th anniversary celebrations.

More information on registration and further details will be available later this month, but what I know so far is this:  the pilgrimage will include stops in Oxford, Norwich, Walsingham and London.

In London, pilgrims from America will meet up with pilgrims from the UK and Australia.  Then the three groups will go to Rome.

And, a reminder about Symposium 2019 taking place Oct. 15 in Rome, an academic conference that will examine the liturgical, historical, ecumenical and canonical implications of Anglicanorum coetibus now that it is ten years old (as of November this year).

Symposium 2019 is free of charge but you must register and spaces are limited.  It would also be a good idea to book accommodation in Rome.  You can find details about the Symposium here.

Of course, everyone awaits news on when Blessed John Henry Newman will be canonized.  I am hoping it takes place either Oct. 13 or the following weekend, so I have planned my stay to include both of them just in case.

On May 21, Fr. Stephen Hill of Our Lady of the Southern Cross in Australia celebrated a public Vigil Mass at the Minoritenkirche in Vienna, Austria according to Divine Worship, the Missal of the Personal Ordinariate for Catholics of Anglican tradition.

Fr Hill from Australia, Fr  James Bradley and Fr. Daniel Lloyd from the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in the UK,  and Alexis Kutarna from Texas and the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter were in Vienna as  doctoral students of the liturgical scholar Hans-Jürgen Feulner of the University of Vienna to publicly present their doctoral research projects on Divine Worship.  Professor Feulner said they were accepted.  Kutarna provided the music for the Mass. Continue reading →

Every now and then, I come across a piece of writing that delights me for its craftsmanship, clarity, and insight.  That happened yesterday when I came across this article in the Catholic Herald by Andrew Petiprin, a former Episcopalian canon who came into the communion of the Catholic Church with his family on Jan. 1.  This man can write!

In  We’ve come a long way since Cranmer called the pope the antichrist , Petiprin takes a look at relations between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church and how they’ve evolved over the years.  Please read the whole thing to enjoy how he has structured his essay.  I’m going to zero in on what he says about Anglicanorum coetibus.

 With the advent of the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church in the late 1970s, many faithful Anglicans whose spiritual forebears had remained when Newman left saw the writing on the wall. By the 1990s the same innovations were washing over the Church of England. The high-profile conversion of the Bishop of London, Graham Leonard, was further proof that the result of ecumenism would prove to be different from its original goal. In 2001, the now Mgr Graham Leonard was asked whether “concessions should be made in the ecumenical dialogue to attain unity more easily”. His reply was in the fashion of Newman: “Truth is not discovered through negotiations, but in obedience.”

And yet, Rome has not abandoned ecumenism in favour of conversions. As Unitatis Redintegratio teaches, “When individuals wish for full Catholic communion, their preparation and reconciliation is an undertaking which of its nature is distinct from ecumenical action. But there is no opposition between the two, since both proceed from the marvellous ways of God.”

So what are the goods of ecumenical action from the Catholic perspective? Present circumstances are proving that the ecumenical movement’s greatest gift to Catholics may turn out to be a more generous vocabulary for welcoming newcomers into the one fold – to help make obedience ever more appealing. And in this way, Anglican-Catholic dialogue continues to be a particularly prominent success story.

The publication of Anglicanorum Coetibus in 2009 and the establishment of the personal ordinariates by Benedict XVI have brought the seed sown in the meeting between Ramsey and Paul VI to its full flourish. Even diocesan priests outside of the ordinariates are now able to use the Anglican-influenced Divine Worship where there is a pastoral need.

Please read the whole thing.

Years ago, a Catholic friend of mine from an Anglican background told me that had he already been Catholic he doubted whether he would ever have been able to start a classical Christian school that flourishes to this day.

Some of it had to do with the attitude towards lay initiatives.  In the Protestant world, one just takes initiative and gets one’s project up and running.   In the Catholic world, one must obtain permission and sometimes it’s hard to get access to the bishop or his delegates to obtain it.  I’m not saying this is a bad thing—-and I have seen the positive effects on lay apostolates that have successfully obtained the blessing of their bishop—but the process does seem to create a culture that can stifle initiative.  It can have the same effect on a parish level, where even holding a Bible study in one’s home might need  permission from the priest.

Interestingly, Adam DeVille is calling for a change in Church governance based on a more traditional model that is against the centralization of power in the papacy and other structures.  In Everything Hidden Shall Be Revealed: Ridding the Church of Abuses of Sex and Power DeVille, a former Anglican who is now an Eastern Catholic,  addresses the problem of clericalism.

David Clayton reviews the book over at The New Liturgical Movement.  He writes:

What he proposes is likely to challenge both traditionalists and liberals in the Church, but I think that it is worthy of consideration and discussion, at least.

He describes the problem as one of clericalism in which power is too centralized and is steadily pushed upwards from the laity onto the priests, and from there onto the hierarchy and popes. This, he says, attracts people who have a particular psychological profile characterized by a desire to exercise power over and dominate others, and are skilled political players. (He draws on his academic background in psychology for this.) So many of the problems we see today are interconnected, and in response, the Church must be reformed so that there can be new structures of local accountability. This, he says, is deeply traditional, and a return to root practices that structured much of Catholic life for centuries.

His argument is for a three-fold ordering of the Catholic Church: the laity, the clerics, and the hierarchs, all existing together, each with voice and vote in the councils of governance of the Church – from the lowly parish council through to diocesan, regional, and international synods. All three orders are necessary, he says, for the Church to flourish; each of the three acts as a check on the others, ensuring that none can run totally roughshod over the others.

Read the whole thing.  Not sure if I agree with all of DeVille’s ideas as outlined in this review but I do believe the universal call to holiness and call for a greater role for the lay faithful of the Second Vatican Council has not been worked out enough.  We from the Anglican tradition might have some interesting perspectives to bring to the table on how to bring this about so as to encourage lay initiatives without letting it devolve to congregationalism, something we have gladly left behind.

Your thoughts?

Cardinal Willem Eijk, Archbishop of Utrecht, gave a talk at the Rome Life Forum May 16 on the threat gender theory poses not only to objective moral reality, but also to the proclamation of the Christian faith.  Here he is, above, with Cardinal Raymond Burke during a question and answer session May 17.

Here’s a link to my story on the talk now published at The Catholic Register.

Here’s a link to the entire talk, posted at Voice of the Family, organizer of the event.

Cardinal Eijk also spoke of the damage the dissociation of gender from biological sex does to an understanding of the priesthood and the necessity of the priest’s being male, because Jesus is male, and of the spousal relationship of Christ to His Church.

For many of us former Anglicans, it was the tampering with Holy Orders by various national bodies of the Anglican Communion to allow the ordination of women that revealed the necessity of coming into the Communion of the Catholic Church.

Cardinal Raymond Burke also gave an excellent talk on the virtue of Patriotism.  His answer to a question related to large-scale Muslim immigration won the headlines, but this was probably the best talk I have heard Cardinal Burke give and I learned a great deal from it.   So often patriotism and nationalism—which gets a bad reputation—are conflated, and in this talk he explained how patriotism, and the honoring of one’s homeland, is related to the fourth Commandment to honor one’s father and mother.

Voice of the Family has links to the other talks at the 6th annual Rome Life Forum here.  

My visit to Rome will soon end.   Among the highlights was meeting Patrick McCain, our seminarian for the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter who is living at the Pontifical North American College and studying at the Angelicum, the Dominican university in Rome.

Patrick comes from a Southern Baptist family background, and, upon stumbling across a Book of Common Prayer, was led into the Episcopal Church.   He said he found it just Protestant enough to keep him there as he began his journey into the Catholic faith.  Eventually, as he was exposed to more and more of the Anglo-Catholic tradition, he knew he had to become Catholic.  He was catechized for entry into the Church by Fr. Dwight Longenecker, a well known Catholic priest-blogger and former Anglican.  He entered the Catholic Church in 2008.

He’s 33 and worked for four years in social services in Florida, before discerning the call to the priesthood.

Patrick expressed his enthusiasm and hope for the future of the Ordinariates.

I met him at the North American College where I was struck by the quality of the young men there.  They seemed joyful, purposeful, confident in their faith (Patrick included!).  Before attending Vespers, he took me on a tour of the college, including its view of the city of Rome.

My French was good enough to get the gist of what Cardinal Sarah said on May 14 at the launch of his most recent book Le soir approche et déjà le jour baisse, but not good enough to try to translate it.

Thus, I am grateful to see that Sandro Magister has reported on it today.

Cardinal Robert Sarah took everyone by surprise on the evening of May 14 in Rome, in the auditorium of the cultural center of the church of St. Louis of the French, when everyone was expecting him to present his latest book, entitled “Le soir approche et déjà le jour baisse,” on the Church’s crisis of faith and the decline of the West.

Because instead, the cardinal said right away, “this evening I will not talk about this book at all.” And the reason – he explained – is that “the fundamental ideas that I develop in it were illustrated, presented, and demonstrated brilliantly last April by Pope Benedict XVI in the ‘notes’ that he had composed in view of the summit of the presidents of the episcopal conferences on sexual abuse convened in Rome by Pope Francis from February 21 to 24.”

Cardinal Sarah continued:

“His reflection has revealed itself to be a true source of light in the night of faith that touches the whole Church. It has prompted reactions that at times have bordered on intellectual hysteria. I have felt personally struck by the wretchedness and coarseness of several comments. We must be convinced that once again the theologian Ratzinger, whose stature is that of a true father and doctor of the Church, has seen correctly and has touched the deepest heart of the Church’s crisis.

He has posted the entire text of Cardinal Sarah’s talk here in French.