In the Sunday Times David Starkey weighed in with The Pope wants his church back.
In the Sunday Independent Peter Stanford asked After 500 years, has the Pope outfoxed the Archbishop?
In the New York Times A.N.Wilson wrote Rock of Ages, Cleft by the Pope.
In the Telegraph George Pitcher says Sex is a stumbling block for Anglicans on the road to Rome.
Cif belief has started a Question of the Week series, So long and thanks for all the priests?
First up is Austen Ivereigh with A boost for Catholic-Anglican dialogue.
“England’s Church has managed an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ situation in which those who do not like female bishops (or the bishops who ordained them) can owe obedience to so called Flying Bishops, upholders of the traditional faith who ‘fly’ from parish to parish, regardless of the boundaries of diocese. These bishops, and others who think as they do, have been prime movers in shaping the Vatican’s new offer” – A.N.Wilson: New York Times’ article – Precisely! And it is these extra-terrestrial visitors the ‘flying Bishops’, a truly alien entity and foreign to catholic ecclesiology, which have persuaded the anti-women bishops… Read more »
Starkey’s piece is over-summarised history into journalism. The sources of the movements for change he gives are far broader and fuzzier. For example, rationality and the move towards capitalism (that included miracles, the material, printed biblical fundamentalism we’d see it as) produced those middle class chapels like boxes as much as the chapels like boxes produced capitalism. The rediscovery of the romantic again has deep rural English roots, that was an antidote to all that rationality. Theology wasn’t suddenly born under Michael Ramsey! The factions started with the Oxford Movement, with the Oxford and Cambridge liberals, and were invented traditions,… Read more »
I think Peter Stanford is wrong about this Pope and a big Church. You have to go back to his background. He’s alongside Hans Kung and along comes 1968, which in West Germany has overtones of rejecting those still in power who were in power in the Nazi period. Hans Kung understands this and carries on, Ratzinger understands it but is frightened by its Godless modernity. So Ratzinger moves towards a highly bureaucratic, closed Church, that has overtones that might be unwelcome in Germany – to produce a ring fenced Catholicism. Coming after the charismatic right wing anti-communist John Paul,… Read more »
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/10/26/from_vatican_a_tainted_olive_branch/
This article is the clearest expression I have found of Roman Catholic disgust at the Pope’s behavior.
“Equally damaging, the Vatican’s preemptive exploitation of Anglican distress explicitly ducks the large and urgent challenge facing every religion and every religious person, which is how to positively reconcile tradition with the massive changes in awareness, knowledge, and communication that come with the scientific and technological breakthroughs that daily alter the meaning of existence.” – James Caroll, Boston Globe article – James Caroll gets to the heart of what needs to happen in the Christian enterprise in our world of today; ‘To positively reconcile tradition with the massive changes that come with the scientific breakthroughs that daily alter the meaning… Read more »
Austen Ivereigh has a piece in ‘America’ in which he quiotes from a Zenit interview with Msgr William Stetson, an Opus Dei canonist who is secretary to the Ecclesiastical Delegate of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for the Pastoral Provision for former Episcopal priests. He is sceptical about whether the ordinariates will have a contnuing married priesthood: “On the question of whether ordinariate “houses of formation” for seminarians would allow for future married priests, Mgr Stetson is sceptical. “The specifics have not yet been made known on this question. At the very least I would assume that… Read more »
Many thanks, Spirit. It’s a great piece, from – presumably – an RC of Irish descent. Sad, though, I again remark, that the people most concerned to give pastoral support to distressed Anglicans are renegade RCs.
In case you haven’t seen “The Daily Show” take on this story:
Ecce No Homo
The Vatican attempts to lure Anglicans to the Catholic Church just like a cell phone provider reaches out to new customers.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-october-26-2009/ecce-no-homo
Richard Dawkins, the Voice of Reason, has also entered the fray: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/richard_dawkins/2009/10/give_us_your_misogynists_and_bigots.html
Just to say ‘thankyou’ to Simon for keeping us all up to date with all of this commentary/conjecture. We’re all going to look like idiots if nobody ends up going.
SVII, Would this be the same Boston Globe that a few years ago was forced to retract a completely fraudulant story it had published that slandered Newfoundlanders? I honestly don’t think it was deliberate, they just didn’t bother to check the reliability of their source. I know this is an op ed piece, but is there any evidence the Globe has developed a more respectful attitude to the truth than it showed 3 or 4 years ago? Because if not, I’m not sure how to read this piece. For all I know, it might be just as baseless as the… Read more »
Because the Roman Catholic clergy framing these documents have no real personal investment as unmarried and allegedly celibate, they may find little to concern themselves with in the proclamations regarding human procreation e.g. Humane Vitae. By contrast, those Anglicans transferring might want to re-think their decisions, unless closeted gay, their thoughts about the discipline of the Roman Church and which of its proscriptions they are willing to abide. In that light I draw attention to the draft of the US Catholic Conference of Bishops on marriage dated next month: http://ncrnews.org/documents/marriage_divine_plan.pdf In particular the following statement on contraception at lines 360-362:… Read more »
Randy Cohen of the NY Times has a very original and novel take on the Rome-Canterbury Anglo Catholic business, an insight that can probably be made only by an outsider. He points out that if a major corporation like Exxon made an arrangement with another like Citibank at the expense of women executives and gay employees similar to the one between Rome and Canterbury, there would be a huge public outcry over its bigotry and injustice.
He asks if religions and religious institutions should be ethically accountable the same way all the rest of us are.
http://ethicist.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/can-we-talk-about-religion-please/
Pluralist….Your statement regarding what Ratzinger’s time frame do do “what the other Pope wanted to do” misses a little. JPO2 may have so wanted but that does not mean that Ratzinger didn’t and has always wanted to do. Please recall Ratzinger’s Congregation of the Faith, the demolition of the Catholic universities in the early 70ties, people like Charles Curran and Hans Kung. The later reapproachment, with Kung anyway, if you would call it such, was only after the Cardinal’s theological views were well entrenched. There is nothing new here. Cardinal Ratzinger has been working a right wing agenda for thirty+… Read more »
Ford,
Since that false article a few years ago, the Boston Globe was bought by the New York Times. Presumably the new management has raised the journalistic standards.
James Carroll, I think, is a former RC priest and a longtime Globe op/ed writer, particularly on matters of religion and the church.
Of course there are those like my friend Peter, a conservative RC layman, who accuse the Globe of deep-seated anti-Catholic bias and blame it for the downfall of Cardinal Law.
On the money David Keen! Excellent article!!!!!
I wonder if the root of the matter,at least for the Church of England, lies in the appointments system.
By far those who have a clergy/laity electoral system seem to favour Women Bishops.
Does the present Established position of the Cof E simply entrench the “Old Boy” system?
And is this realy a response to the Gospel or simply clinging to the wreckage of the past?
Wayne
Dawkins has read this right.
Dawkins usually is right. In this case, though, he forgets that Rowan Williams has no backbone, no loyalty to friends, no courage, and no credibility.
Professor Dawkins demeans himself and the Post with his vulgar rant. That said, that is the first time I have seen him lavish praise on the Church of England. I wouldn’t brag about having such a fickle admirer. He has amply indicated that if the RCC disappears tomorrow, the CofE will be next in line for his charges of culpable ignorance, pervasive moral turpitude, and running a criminal enterprise for profit. Be careful of prophets. They can turn on you. There are many church members in England. I hope he doesn’t have to meet or deal with any. It sounds… Read more »
No. No, it wasn’t a rant. Dawkins is a confidence shill. A huckster. A snake-oil salesman. He’s good at it. But, the problem is, it isn’t that those he’s peddling his nostrums to are stupid, it’s that he’s very intelligent. Simply put, Dawkins couldn’t peddle his patented cure-all unless he saw some feeling of disease to exploit. It’s not a rant. Rants mean anger, or hate, or loathing. This was *disdain*, because he doesn’t need to consider this creature “The Roman Catholic Church” to be a real threat. Certainly, his disdain implies, any half-way intelligent person would recognize its abuses,… Read more »
MarkBrunson, that’s very much it, isn’t it? It amazes me how little humility there is in some Church quarters for past wrongs. Yet there is change. The Anglican Church of Canada came to an agreement to redress the emotional and physical abuse suffrered by FirsNAtions children in church rin residential schools. It was an attempt to accept responsibility and atone for the sins of the past. It wasn’t perfect, but it was something. But at the same time we have the spectacle of an RC church that locally hid pedophiles for decades, was proven just last month to have hidden… Read more »
Anglicans who believe the RCC is corporately guilty of child abuse have no business joining it, especially if the child abuse is ongoing and sanctioned, which there is no reason to believe it isn’t. So this is an important issue for them to resolve before taking up the Pope on his offer of safe haven.
“this is an important issue for them to resolve before taking up the Pope on his offer of safe haven.”
I rather suspect that this isn’t even on their radar. Im mean, it wasn’t on anybody’s radar for over ten years after we went through it, until it happened in the US and then it became A BIG DEAL. But even then, it wasn’t A BIG DEAL for long.