THE MCJ

"But of course simply to ask the Anglicans to make a decision of this nature is to illustrate a lack of understanding of the nature of Anglicanism. George Bernard Shaw said that England and the US were two countries divided by the same language. Catholics and Anglicans are the same, two denominations divided by the same religion."

Gledhill is weak here. First, the Catholic Church is not a denomination as denominationalism implies the same teachings simply repackaged differently. The very issues that are rocking the Protestant denoms now cause narry a ripple in the Catholic world. Catholicism stands apart.

I dont think Kasper nor the Vatican misunderstand Anglicanism. They simply are asking it to do what they know it will not do, just as a boss does with his secretary just before he fires her. (or she/him). There is an impossible ultimatum being made which will simply highlight the weaknesses of Anglicanism and the strengths of Catholicism as the ecumenical venture is about to be jettisoned and the TAC is welcomed.

I believe this statement is signalling that the relationship between the AC and the CC is about to be changed definitively by open efforts to bring willing Anglicans into communion with Rome.

Of course, I could be wrong.

Although the Anglicans gave in to divorce, the Catholics charge you for one - put down a few hundred bucks and you can get an anullment.

Traditionally, Catholic Bible teaching is inferior - many parishes don't have Bible classes or adult education. (These two items were told to me by Catholics)

There's a lot to cheer and to jeer with both Catholics and Protestants.

To try to compare your apostasy in abandoning the express commands of our Lord with an honest search for the truth is ignorance at best. Apparently an investigation to determine whether a valid sacrament actually occurred is a concept beyond your meager capacity to grasp.

I have pointed out some of the facts about annulments both here on MCJ and other places. If you want to know about the subject and are not just making an ignorant and malicious swipe I recommend Ed Peters’ book on the subject.

I don't know if Cardinal Kasper's goal here was to bring Anglicans into communion with Rome and I don't much care. To me, he seemed to suggest that Catholic relations with the Anglican world would be much better if the Anglicans would just clarify who they are, even if that's Protestant. Rome, after all, gets on quite ecumenically well with certain Protestant churches. So the main thing the Cardinal seems to be saying is that the Anglicans have to stop playing games. Stop being so Laodicean, if you like.

Yes, Rome is fine working with traditional Protestants. After 500 years, Rome understands them well. However, TEC is not just another denomination of Protestantism. TEC is making itself and perhaps all of Anglicanism not more classically Protestant, but rather an agent of the secular agendas of sexual libertinism and theological relativism (the non-exclusivity of Christ). That is, TEC and perhaps all of Anglicanism has become Rome's enemy in the crucial issues of our time.

Kasper doesn't really need to know if Anglicanism is more Catholic or more Protestant. That is an age old and rather academic question. What Kasper and Benedict and the world need to know is whether Anglicanism is classically Christian at all. For its innovations now smack of some kind of new revelation, to be dramatic about it. Call it the Spirit's "new thing."

Kasper's use of catholic v. protestant terminology is just polite diplomatic speak for: "Rowan, choose already: Christian or Unitarian?, Friend or Foe?, People of God or People of the Lie?"

Episco have their homosexuals trying to get married

Catholics have their often homosexual clergy

I fear jumping the Tiber only to end up in the same mess i'm in now.

The Catholic Church has now prohibited the ordination of homosexuals since about 2005 when it was clear that the vast majority of the minors abused were adolescents, not children. In other words, the crisis has not been about pedophilia but about homosexuality. Catholicism is fixing her problems. Can the same be said for TEC/Anglicanism? Are you really suggesting a moral equivalence in the leadership of RW and B16? Please....

Is the Anglican Communion going to be anchored by Scripture and their articles of faith or is doctrine going to up for a vote every few years?

Heh, heh. I think there are some Reform Protestants who would be delighted if the Anglican Communion chose Catholicism. On the other hand, I think there are some Catholics who will be delighted if the Anglican Communion chose Protestantism.

Of course, it's a false binary choice since TEc and the Anglican Communion under the ABC's "leadership" will choose heresy and apostasy under the guise of relationship, the Listening Process, and the Prime Directive of: "The most important thing is to worship together."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEZjJ_4A_MU&feature=related#

Thanks (I hope).

Will do. I actually meant "avoids the question" anyway. ;-)

Let's clarify one thing immediately: the choice is not between ancient Catholicism and liberal Anglicanism. I belong to a vibrant Anglican church now under the Province of the Southern Cone. The teaching is orthodox reform catholicity - no praying to the saints, no indulgences, no millenium development goal eucharists, no re-sacrificing of Christ, no same-sex unions.

Anglicanism at its best is excellent - someone should suggest to Cardinal Kasper that perhaps the Roman Catholic church could learn a few things from us. But wait, the RC church has been learning from the reformers, on and off, ever since Luther and Calvin and Cranmer. And good for them - they had lots to learn.

The key lesson the RCs need to learn: place the authority of the Word of God clearly and unequivocally above the traditions of men (ref Mark 7:8). Thus for example, when Hebrews 7:27 makes it clear that Jesus' sacrifice was "once for all" the church must be willing to re-evaluate ancient church traditions of "re-sacrificing" at the communion table. But is the RC church able to do that? (I understand that tradition holds equal authority with scripture, though it is assumed to extend but never contradict scripture.)

Now, if the Cardinal was inviting TAC to choose between apostasy and faithfulness (as exemplified imperfectly in the ancient churches of Rome and Orthodoxy) then I would be very much on-side with his invitation. But he seems to be implying that Anglican should reverse the reformation and rejoin the ancient church. I think that would be a retrograde step.

Now if the RC and Orthodox churches were open to some reform of their own, then wouldn't that be wonderful? Then we could all join together and learn from each other. Or does he think that the whole Anglican Church is like Ingham and Schori and Spong?

I also think the hopes some have for the TAC to be receives as a uniate body are unlikely to be realized. There are already Anglican Use parishes as part of the Roman Church. Why would the Vatican approve another arrangement?

Where in the teaching of the Catholic Church on the Eucharist do you find anything contrary to the doctrine that Jesus' sacrifice was "once and for all"?

I haven't looked very far, but it took me less than a minute to find the following, from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

'Leo XIII, on the other hand, in union with the whole Christian past, had in mind in the above-mentioned Bull [Apostolicae Curae]nothing else than the Eucharistic "Sacrifice of the true Body and Blood of Christ" on the altar. This Sacrifice is certainly not identical with the Anglican form of celebration.'

Am I misunderstanding this?

Anyway, it's the 481st Anniversary of the Sack of Rome, and the new recruits have been sworn into the Swiss Guard Long live the Pope! ;-)

1328 The inexhaustible richness of this sacrament is expressed in the different names we give it. Each name evokes certain aspects of it. It is called:

1329 The Lord's Supper, because of its connection with the supper which the Lord took with his disciples on the eve of his Passion and because it anticipates the wedding feast of the Lamb in the heavenly Jerusalem.

The Eucharistic assembly (synaxis), because the Eucharist is celebrated amid the assembly of the faithful, the visible expression of the Church.

The Holy Sacrifice, because it makes present the one sacrifice of Christ the Savior and includes the Church's offering. The terms holy sacrifice of the Mass, "sacrifice of praise," spiritual sacrifice, pure and holy sacrifice are also used,150 since it completes and surpasses all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant.

1331 Holy Communion, because by this sacrament we unite ourselves to Christ, who makes us sharers in his Body and Blood to form a single body. We also call it: the holy things (ta hagia; sancta) - the first meaning of the phrase "communion of saints" in the Apostles' Creed - the bread of angels, bread from heaven, medicine of immortality, viaticum. . . .

I also leave it to the Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters who comment here to tell you more about the Holy and Divine Mystery; I have an idea they don't think of it as magic either :-)

In other words, there is a spectrum of opinion regarding the Eucharist in Anglicanism that is not possible or permissible in Catholicism. If Anglican A can hold a belief as near as dammit to transubstantiation and Anglican B can hold a belief in a simple symbolic memorial meal, and both views are equally valid, neither more privileged over the other, then whatever is going on when the Anglican ritual is performed, it is not the same as when the Catholic Mass is celebrated. I think we can all agree on that?

The teaching is orthodox reform catholicity - no praying to the saints... no re-sacrificing of Christ,

put down a few hundred bucks and you can get an anullment

We have some differences in theology, but it's good to someone who can stand up for proper usage of "begging the question." I'll bet you properly distinguish flaunt and flout, too. :-)

Anyway, I don't see the problem with the quote from the CE. It does not contradict the current teaching that the one sacrifice of Christ is made present in the Eucharist. As to the CE's opinion that this is different from Anglican teaching... can you blame a Catholic of a hundred years ago for being unclear on what Anglican teaching is?

The Catholic Encyclopedia can be a useful document, but its treatment of non-Catholics is often shockingly bad. On Wikipedia I've edited some articles on Eastern Orthodox topics drawn from that source, and trust me, it's awful.

I'm sorry Fr. J, et al, but Ruth Gledhill's statement just sends me into fits of laughter every time I read it.

That being said, I have been encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church's willingness to reconsider their actions against Luther, to make new Scriptural Stations of the Cross, and to reach out to the gathering of Anglicans at Plano.

Most of all, I was encouraged enormously by Pope Benedict's visit, by not only his words to the Anglicans and Protestant denominations abandoning the plain teachings of Scripture, but by the Pope taking his own bishops 'to the woodshed' and showing them how to confess sin, wash feet and care for the flock entrusted to them by meeting and praying with the sexual abuse survivors, admitting and owning the terrible destructiveness and evil of that sin.

Too late, Katharine! Okay, let me parse out what I think Cardinal Kasper may have meant. "Is Anglicanism Catholic or Protestant?" Is Anglicanism indeed a world-wide communion of linked churches, with a defined doctrine and discipline, looking to a central authority (whether the Archbishop of Canterbury or a Synod of Bishops) that has the power to make binding decisions, or is it a loose grouping of individual churches that can, at their own will, split off and do their own sweet thing? Is it like Brother Billy-Bob falling out with the Reverend Micah and deciding to set up, himself and his family and a few friends, the Third Pentecostal Baptist Free Will Bible-Believing Pure Word of Grace Apostolic Church of the Little Wayside Shelter?

If anyone can call him, her, or itself Anglican and do whatever they like, then there's no point in trying to tease out what we and they have in common or trying to agree on common definitions or shared beliefs, because Bishop N, M or P is perfectly free to get up on his hind legs and say "Of course, when we say 'resurrection', we don't mean anything so crude as a conjuring trick with bones".

For myself, I think it would be more honest and straightforward, should I wish to be Roman Catholic, to go join without hedging my bets.

But the problem is that they believe they are the correct and prophetic expression of a New Christianity. They do not see new age claptrap as being antiChristian but as new revelations to be embraced by the enlightened few, then shared with the rest of the ignorant sloths of oppressive patriarchal Paulist legalism.

They like Catholic dissidents do not want to secede they want to destroy what they see as barriers to self glorification and paradise on Earth. They want the Garden back and a few serpents here and there are worth it. After all the serpent was just being true to its authentic self, can't fault a creature for that.

I sat through an RCIA class a few years ago. The priest told another woman that her annulment would come through -- they always do, he said; and he told us how much he admired Matthew Fox. I realize this is not typical or approved. It does testify to the fact that there are big problems there as well, but at least the head of the organization isn't apostate.

I’m speaking my own opinion here so take it as that. However, what possible justification could there be to grant sui iuris status to the TAC or any Anglican group? Like it or not, Anglicans and their worship stem from the Latin Rite - no matter how bastardized it became in the various BCP incarnations. There is no separate Anglican Rite that developed historically analogous to the various Eastern Rites (Byzantine, Syrian, etc.). There was not even a separation of a “true, particular church” such as the See of Seleucia-Ctesiphon becoming the Assyrian Church of the East or Byzantium and related sees becoming the Eastern Orthodox. The Church of England was and is a political construct that was put in place by the crown after it suppressed by force the true Church in England.

Similarly, what venerable customs and traditions are there in Anglicanism that would require sui iuris status to preserve? Anglican hymnody doesn’t need it’s own Rite to be preserved; it should be capable of standing on it’s own merits. The only thing left is married clergy and I don’t think any of us are naive enough to think that that will be allowed to continue beyond the first generation. Currently converting Anglican clergy are dispensed from the discipline of celibacy if they seek ordination in the Catholic Church but you won’t see their sons given the same dispensation if they want to become priests. Celibacy is the discipline in the Latin Rite and unless it changes for the whole Latin Rite there will not be a special exception from it made for a particular Use. Also, marriage following ordination will never be allowed as it has never been allowed in the Easter Rites and Churches either.

In my opinion (which along with $27 will get you a vente carmel machiado) the best that the TAC and other Anglican groups will get is their own order. Various religious orders have their own uses within the Latin Rite. Similarly there are parishes that are traditionally staffed by certain orders. An Anglican group might be established in their own order with their parishes to be staffed by that order and to utilize an Anglican usage of the Latin Rite. There will be no Anglican Rite bishops and the former Anglicans will be under the jurisdiction of the local Catholic Ordinary. Let’s face reality folks.

The "sixteenth century" groups referred to by Cdl. Kasper do not claim an episcopate based on apostolic succession.

Cdl. Kasper is asking the Anglican Communion to abide by its own statements regarding its own polity. Given the widespread apostasy in Anglicanism, it isn't likely that the entire AC would choose to do so, but the Christian component might. If the Christian component of Anglicanism does assert a Catholic/Orthodox understanding of apostolic succession and if that component separates itself from the apostate component, progress toward greater unity between Anglican Christians and the Catholic (and perhaps even the Orthodox) Churches looks very promising during this century. On the other hand, if the Christians in Anglicanism chose to emphasize more of the classical protestant ethos or if Anglican Christians continue in institutional relationship with the apostates, questions of greater unity are deferred.

Gregg the Obscure: Anglicanism has long claimed apostolic succession for its episcopate...

Gregg is correct, Anglicans “claim” apostolic succession. However, the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches (along with the Oriental Orthodox and Assyrians) actually have it.

Now scream at me all you want about how the “Dutch Touch” has now invalidated Apostolicae Curae and how y’all can trace your succession through the Old Catholics, etc, etc, ad nauseam. We ain’t buying.

What the good Cardinal is saying is not “Are you one of us or one of them?” Rather, he’s saying “Make up your damn minds on your own theology and ecclesiology because your schizophrenia is driving us batty.” You know what or get off the pot.

There is a big difference between a well-read Anglican who is wants to be received after a long and arduous decision process and a pagan who knows little about the faith. An Anglo-catholic who has realized the fundamental flaws of Anglicanism is a different bird than a free-church Evangelical who’s never heard of liturgy and thinks that Jesus actually drank grape juice at the Last Supper. Given the disintegration of Anglicanism and main-line Protestantism us Catholics should be prepared to receive well-formed Christians who require minimal instruction in a more