Anglicanism and Catholicism (reconcilation)

[phil19034]

Ordinariates

I like the Ordinariates and I think they are the only bridge for Anglicans. They have their own Liturgy.

The Catholic Church will never unify with Canterbury because they will never give up female priests & bishops.

So the Ordinariates gives the high Church Anglican a way into the Church without giving up all their traditions.

God Bless

 

[phil19034]

A good friend of mine takes the position that within enough time and by numbers, there could be a strand of Anglicanism that finds itself as a rite of the Church. Me personally I’m not entirely sure on it. I think he’s coming from the point of view as an idealistic Catholic.

That would be the Ordinariates.

 

[phil19034]

My point was that they are member of the same Rite as Roman Catholics, not members of another Rite in communion with the Pope, like the Eastern Rite.

Technically, yes you are correct.

However, you have to keep in mind what a “Rite” is in the Catholic Church.

The Anglican Liturgy is based on the Roman Rite with some influences from English Uses of the Roman Rite.

Use of Sarum , also known as the Sarum Rite or Use of Salisbury had a major impact on the Anglicans. However it was a Use of the Roman Rite - even though it was often called the Sarum Rite.

The Use of York was another Roman Rite Use in England before the reign of Henry VIII, but it was suppressed during Henry VIII’s reign in favor of the Use of Sarum

Finally, the Rite of Durham was a fusion of the Roman Rite and the Gallican Rites.

There was also the Celtic Rite, but it was really just in Wales, Cornwall, Scotland & Ireland. Wasn’t really English.

Finally, all of these Rites it Uses, along with the Roman Rite are part of the Latin Rite family.

Catholic particular churches and liturgical rites - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

God Bless

 

[joyfulandactive]

As an atheistic teenager aged 17 in England, when I wanted to start to explore the vaguest possibility there might be a God I only wanted to do that in the context of the Catholic church.

Although the Church of England was probably the most accessible to me, in that they had churches everywhere and I had very occasionally been in them for a special school event, I had no desire to explore those questions there.

Mostly because culturally they seemed really wimpy, always going along and never making a stand on anything. Also I felt they didn’t have any answers for me because they didn’t seem to have a clue what they believed themselves. They were mocked by the general population for one of their bishops stating that there was no such thing as the Virgin Birth. It seemed you could believe whatever you wanted or nothing at all and be Anglican.

They also seemed snobby, clearly aesthetics meant a lot to them but more for class reasons than anything else. Their leaders always seemed from comfortable upper-middle class backgrounds. Life seemed very unchallenging for them, they weren’t remotely radical. It was a “more tea vicar” scenario, they had no interest in getting their hands dirty, it never seemed to occur to them.

At the time I was going through a very difficult period of loss as my mother had died. The Anglicans were not prophetic while the Catholics were visibly persecuted in our extremely secular society because they actually BELIEVED in something. I also noticed they were very much engaging with suffering people everywhere in the world.

I am 50 now so I apologize for my teenage lack of charity and general ignorance of the church but those were my reasons for initially entertaining Catholicism over Anglicanism. I was baptized and entered the Catholic church two years later.

 

[HopkinsReb]

This is certainly true of some Anglicans, but these are generally folks who have rejected the core teachings of Anglicanism. They’re not really Anglicans; they’re liberals, and they’re not really distinguishable from the liberals in the Presbyterian, Lutheran, or even Catholic communions. I spent part of my Christmas vacation with a Catholic cousin who thinks the Church needs to come around to secular morality on homosexuality, and she’s a cradle Catholic who attends mass every Sunday. There are loads of Catholics who support women’s ordination, gay “marriage,” etc. I don’t hold James Martin and his ilk against Catholics writ large, and Catholics shouldn’t hold liberal Anglicanism against Anglicans writ large. If you want to hold anything against us, hold our history of Calvinism and Caesaropapism against us

Plenty of us do care about right doctrine, thus the existence of continuing Anglican communions like the Anglican Church in North America. The fact that we tolerate disagreement on some matters of doctrine is not indicative of believing that the truth is unimportant or unknowable; it’s a tolerance for disagreement grown out of the history of the Anglican Church. After all, Calvinists and Anglo-Catholics can both reasonably claim to be following the historic Anglican Church. I think the Reformed wing of the Anglican Church is flat-out wrong, and they think I’m flat out wrong for being an Anglo-Catholic. But we now think tolerating those disagreements and discussing them is preferable to, say, locking people in the Tower of London.

 

[Eric_Hyom]

I am happy to live where I do, we have a pro active Churches together in our town. We meet monthly, we pray together, pray for each other and pray for our town. Amazing things keep happening from these meetings. There are so many initiatives which are just too big for any one church to take on.

In the last ten years we have created two homeless shelters for ten people, opened up a basics food bank, Street Pastors, Christian Against Poverty helps people out of debt, we run a course for addiction. We witness together in our town and more.

 

[tafan2]

I do not agree with your single vision of Ecumenism. There should be a difference of reuniting with Orthodox Churches and with protestant sects. The difference is that the Eastern Orthodox are true Churches, protestants are not, they are simply schismatic sects/denominations. Ecumenicism between the Orthodox and the Catholic churches would be the various Churches coming back together as a universal Church. Ecumenism with Protestants, and with Anglicans, while it should certainly include dialogue and a better mutual understanding, is ultimately about them coming back into the fold of the Roman Catholic Church and the Catholic Church providing a path that makes that as painless as possible. That is exactly what the Ordinariates do.

 

[Dovekin]

How do you reconcile your position with the quote I posted from Unitatis Redintegratio? It describes the reconciliation of individuals as “distinct from ecumenical action.” The Ordinariates seem to me to be more like the reconciliation of individuals than it is like the mutual recognition of one another that is ecumenism.

This is not a perfect analogy, but let me try it. Imagine a married couple that splits up. The mother has another child, and then she disappears. The father, with others, decides that he wants to raise the child with the family of siblings that was created when the parents lived together. This is a happy decision, a loving gift that benefits everyone. But it is not the same as the parents reconciling with one another. The family, with siblings united, may be as good a result as can be imagined, but it does not have the sacrament of marriage. It is a wonderful result, but it is not the unity of marriage.

I can see no way that the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion can reconcile. But I hope for that reconciliation, and not just the creation of a larger family of siblings. It may be a foolish hope, but it is a requirement of our faith.

 

[Edmundus1581]

This is certainly true of some Anglicans, but these are generally folks who have rejected the core teachings of Anglicanism. They’re not really Anglicans; they’re liberals, and they’re not really distinguishable from the liberals in the Presbyterian, Lutheran, or even Catholic communions. I spent part of my Christmas vacation with a Catholic cousin who thinks the Church needs to come around to secular morality on homosexuality, and she’s a cradle Catholic who attends mass every Sunday. There are loads of Catholics who support women’s ordination, gay “marriage,” etc. I don’t hold James Martin and his ilk against Catholics writ large, and Catholics shouldn’t hold liberal Anglicanism against Anglicans writ large. If you want to hold anything against us, hold our history of Calvinism and Caesaropapism against us

Plenty of us do care about right doctrine, thus the existence of continuing Anglican communions like the Anglican Church in North America. The fact that we tolerate disagreement on some matters of doctrine is not indicative of believing that the truth is unimportant or unknowable; it’s a tolerance for disagreement grown out of the history of the Anglican Church. After all, Calvinists and Anglo-Catholics can both reasonably claim to be following the historic Anglican Church. I think the Reformed wing of the Anglican Church is flat-out wrong, and they think I’m flat out wrong for being an Anglo-Catholic. But we now think tolerating those disagreements and discussing them is preferable to, say, locking people in the Tower of London.

Thanks for the fine explanation of your position, @HopkinsReb.

I’m happy to leave it there.

 

[tafan2]

I reconcile it because there are literally 100s of Protestants sects, there only way to restore Christian unity with them is via one person, group, or perhaps small section at a time, and they come back into the fold of the Roman Catholic Church.
With the Eastern Churches, it is much different, there we have to meet them half way, or further. We have to I’ve them the automacy they deserve, we have to make sure the Petrine ministry is not a hindrance. Nothing if the sort can be done with the Protestants.

 

[Dovekin]

Nothing if the sort can be done with the Protestants.

I would say instead: Nothing of the sort makes sense with the Protestants.

Ecumenism makes demands that make no sense to me. I accept them solely on the basis of hope, that God will shine a light to guide us. Newman’s Lead Kindly Light sets the tone. That is why it is distinct from the pastoral process of accepting smaller groups of people into the Church.

That hope includes hoping that the Ordinariates will help us to accept and welcome all Anglicans. That has not always been the case wih structures like this, though the monks of Graymoor remain dedicated to the larger ecumenism. It is possible.

 

[BartholomewB]

Thanks for the reference to Edwin Hatch and the “Broad Church”. That makes sense as, possibly, the historical roots of what I’ve observed.

Taking as his text Gal 6:15, “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature”, Hatch preached a sermon in 1876 that was later published under the title, “The Place of Controversy in Christian Life” (link below). I suspect that in this paragraph he may have given away more than he intended to about the aims and motivation of the Broad Church faction within the C of E. It looks to me like what you might call reductionist or minimalist theology.

The one absolutely necessary thing to us as Christians — to us as children of God into whom the spirit of God is breathed — is not that we should be technically right in this or that practice, not that we should be theoretically right in this or that doctrine, but that we should be “new creatures”; that we should have risen above the lower, earthly, brutish part of us, the sensual, degrading, animal impulses, into a better and higher life, to a nobler and holier creed, to a diviner and more spiritual temper. The one paramount precept of the Christian religion and of all religion, is – Be better than you have been: be purer, be braver, be sincerer, be truer, be kinder, be less of the animal and more of the man, have less of the old Adam and more of the new – be, in short, “new creatures.”

Memorials of Edwin Hatch .. : Hatch, Edwin, 1835-1889 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive