Thursday, July 10, 2008

Many Roman Catholics Misunderstand Orthodox Anglo-Catholicism

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=8588

[VirtueOnline] 10 Jul 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.

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