Anglicans vs The Pope

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They are working to restore communion with the Catholic Church. We do recognise the Anglican Communion. The terms of all that are clearly spelled out in ARCIC…a long time ago.

Because they do have an authority, which Catholics recognise, in spite of the issue of Rome over apostolic succession. Joseph Ratzinger has made that issue abundantly clear across decades.

Here is a small text from Unitatis Redintegratio, one more time, diagrammed with numbering with ecclesiological questions that follow
Moreover, some and even very many of the significant elements and endowments which together go to build up and give life to the Church itself, can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church [1]: the written word of God; the life of grace; faith, hope and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit, and visible elements too. All of these, which come from Christ and lead back to Christ, belong by right to the one Church of Christ [2].

The brethren divided from us also use many liturgical actions of the Christian religion [3]. These most certainly can truly engender a life of grace in ways that vary according to the condition of each Church or Community [4]. These liturgical actions must be regarded as capable of giving access to the community of salvation [5].

It follows that the separated Churches and Communities as such, though we believe them to be deficient in some respects, have been by no means deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation [6]. For the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation [7] which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Church [8].
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[1] Do you confess, as the world’s Bishops authoritatively taught that “even very many of the significant elements and endowments which together go to build up and give life to the Church itself, can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church” – and therefore, for example, in the Anglican Communion?

[2] Do you confess, as the world’s Bishops authoritatively taught, that “all of these” visible elements which we find – be it with the Orthodox, the Anglicans, the Lutherans or wherever they are found – “come from Christ and lead back to Christ” and that they “belong by right to the one Church of Christ” in spite of, as Pope Saint John Paul II would subsequently articulate it, historical and canonical divisions.
 
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[3] Do you confess, as the world’s bishops authoritatively taught, that liturgical actions of the Christian religion occur outside the visible boundaries of Catholicism, including in what we term “Communities” and not “Churches” for theological reasons?

[4] Do you confess, as the world’s bishops authoritatively taught, that these actions, which are liturgical, can “truly engender a life of grace in ways that vary according to the condition of each Church or Community” – which means that what Anglicans do well beyond baptism and marriage – engenders a life of grace in Anglicans and that they can attain the perfection of charity and the heights of sanctity, as their lived reality clealry shows?

[5] Do you confess, as the world’s bishops authoritatively taught, that it is precisely by the ministry of Anglicans to Anglicans that they are attain to salvation in Heaven…because that is what this line in Unitatis Redintegratio is saying.

[6] Do you confess, as the world’s bishops authoritatively taught, that Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans and other Reformed Christians retain significance and importance in the mystery of salvation regardless of not being in communion with Rome or those Particular Churches in communion with Rome…because that is the positive formulation of that sentence in Unitatis Redintegratio.

Most importantly because it is the foundation point

[7] Do you confess, as the world’s bishops authoritatively taught, that the Spirit of Christ – at this very moment – is using Orthodox, Anglicans, Lutherans and other Reformed Christians to bring salvation to the human family all over the world?

When I greet a Bishop of the Anglican Communion or a Lutheran Bishop who has come to visit, my first thought is always that by the action of the Spirit of Christ, he OR she, this Bishop, is the conveyor of Christ’s grace to a a vast number of souls I will know only in eternity.

[8] Do you confess, as the world’s bishops authoritatively taught, that the various actions done outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Church? The Spirit of Christ is using them and it is from the treasury that Christ entrusted to His Church that these other people are drawing from as they give the grace of Christ to whomever the Spirit of Christ wills.

This is only one small aspect of ecclesiology today.
 
twf said:
Father is more familiar with the more, let’s say intellectual, branches of Protestantism in Europe.
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This is not a matter of who I encounter. It is not a matter of who others encounter in the course of their daily lives.

It is a matter of the teaching of the world’s Bishops in ecumenical council. That is an absolute.

Regarding all non-Catholic Christians, “For the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Church” – thus evangelical missionaries are being used by Christ to bring His Gospel and His salvation…and the effect of what they do is drawn from the Church that Christ founded.

As the Bishops have categorically said: that is our reality.
 
I agree Father. What I was getting at is that the attitudes of certain posters may be “soured”, for lack of a better term, by encounters with the sorts of North American Evangelicals I was raised with… who profess that the Catholic Church is the “whore of Babylon”. I had the same sort of anti-ecumenical zeal as a young convert to Catholicism because I was dealing with relatives who sincerely believed I had embraced the Antichrist. Of course, I’ve adopted a much more nuanced approach in more recent years. I applaud my sister for since embracing Anglicanism and my parents for since embracing Lutheranism because we now share so much more common ground than we had previously.
 
It’s always formulated as, “outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church.”

Conversely, wouldn’t that mean these protestant churches participate, to some degree, invisibly within the boundaries of the Catholic Church.

Protestant baptisms (most) are valid. They are baptized into the Church (Catholic). Thus, protestants are, in a sense, Catholic whether they acknowledge it or not.

Per “invincible ignorance” they are possibly excused from not acknowledging it and formally becoming Catholic.

Any thoughts on this line of reasoning?
 
My understanding is (and Fr Ruggero will, I hope, correct my errors) that the Catholic Church believes Anglican ordinations are not valid, but does not believe that Anglican priests are, as you suggest, counterfeit, fake, phony or bootleg.

The Catholic Church believes that, since Anglican priests are not validly ordained, sacraments which require a valid minister are not validly effected by Anglican priests, but the Catholic Church does not believe that these sacramental actions are therefore worthless, or that God does not move and act within Anglican churches.

So the situation is more nuanced than you imply, and the days are long past, thankfully, when leaders of Catholicism and Anglicanism used the sort of language about each other that you have used in some of your posts.
 
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You know, I think I’ll just peruse this thread. I got enough going on.

But…
 
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More specifically, it was the Leventine prohibition against marrying a brother’s widow that Henry hung his hat on, claiming it was of Divine law, not the Church, and thus was ultra vires, beyond the Pope’s power to dispense. The point was not firmly settled in the day. And that made no never mind as to whether Arthur was dead or not.

The better case, as Wolsey told Hank, was the undispensed (though diriment) impediment against the justice of public honesty, which in the situation given, needed to be specifically dispensed.

And there was the dynasty issue, another point related to Henry’s loins, which was driving him. But whatever he had put forward, he was not going to get a suitable decree. An engaged Emperor, with a Pope in hand, trumps a King.
 
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PickyPicky said:
My understanding is (and Fr Ruggero will, I hope, correct my errors) that the Catholic Church believes Anglican ordinations are not valid, but does not believe that Anglican priests are, as you suggest, counterfeit, fake, phony or bootleg.

The Catholic Church believes that, since Anglican priests are not validly ordained, sacraments which require a valid minister are not validly effected by Anglican priests, but the Catholic Church does not believe that these sacramental actions are therefore worthless, or that God does not move and act within Anglican churches.

So the situation is more nuanced than you imply, and the days are long past, thankfully, when leaders of Catholicism and Anglicanism used the sort of language about each other that you have used in some of your posts.
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Precisely.

Indeed, in the United Kingdom, when an Anglican Cleric was received into the Catholic Church and granted a rescript for ordination as a Catholic Priest, there was a prayer incorporated into the Rite of Ordination that was an Act of Thanksgiving for his years of ministry as an Anglican Cleric to formally acknowledge that this man was, in fact, a minister of Christ – sometimes for decades – before the day he was ordained as a Catholic Priest and that was borne public testimony to by the ordaining prelate.
 
I wouldn’t go so far as “cringeworthy”, but basically if a church is not in communion with Rome to the point where I can go to a service there and fulfill my Sunday obligation, then I see this as a problem with that church, and NOT as a problem with the Roman Catholic Church. I accept that the other church may be in harmony with us on some things, such as baptism, and I have no problem with people from the other churches perhaps going to heaven as I think there are good people of all faiths and of no faith, but they are to some degree separated from us and that’s just the way it is. I am not going to pretend we are all totally one, when obviously that isn’t the case as of today.
 
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Boler said:
Protestant baptisms (most) are valid. They are baptized into the Church (Catholic). Thus, protestants are, in a sense, Catholic whether they acknowledge it or not.
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Yeah, I tell Presbyterian husband this about once a week. “You’re already basically a Catholic so why don’t you just admit it and join up.”
 
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