MOTIONS, GOING THROUGH THE
Last Friday, What’s-His-Face, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, met with Pope Francis I. These meetings are an ancient Christian tradition that dates back to the 1960′s when Pope Paul VI first met with some Archbishop of Canterbury or other. Like me, William Oddie at the Catholic Herald can’t for the life of him figure out why popes still go through with this little ritual or why anyone thinks that it matters or should matter:
Hot on the heels of my disobliging remarks last about Archbishop Justin Welby’s Uriah Heep-like cringing to the government even as he told them in the Lords how disastrous their gay marriage legislation was going to be, comes the announcement that this Friday, Archbishop Welby is to meet the Pope.
The real question is why? Why are we still going through the ecumenical motions with the Anglicans, for all the world as though they had (or had some possibility of gaining) the same kind of ecclesial reality as the Orthodox? Why does the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) still meet, as though Anglican ordinations to their episcopate of openly gay men living with their partners, and also of women to their priesthood and episcopate, despite the warnings of successive popes of the fact that these steps would erect insuperable barriers to unity with the Catholic Church, why do we still carry on with the farce of behaving as though these insuperable barriers just did not exist at all?
His Grace got all pissy about Oddie’s questions.
There is no point talking about women priests: the two churches simply do not agree. If the Pope of Rome sees that as a barrier to unity, so be it. The Archbishop of Canterbury similarly sees the Council of Trent as a barrier to unity, and so be that, too. As the XXXIX Articles declare, ‘The Church of Rome hath erred.’ We do not agree on so very much, and that’s a fact.
But surely we can work together where we do agree. Surely we can both love our neighbours? Surely we share the same concerns about poverty and the global economic crisis? Surely we agree on the imperative of restoring dignity to the poor and hope to the marginalised?
Roman Catholics and quite a few other people, Christian and non-Christian already agree on all that and always have but for some reason, don’t require special meetings to agree to “work together” to advance all these wonderful things.
In an era when popes are photographed with practically anybody (I mentioned once before that Benny Hinn used to include in his show’s introduction a photograph of him shaking hands with John Paul II), there is something kind of pathetic about the relentless Anglican insistence on being Taken Seriously.
After all, most Christian leaders who meet popes don’t feel the need to be considered the pope’s contemporary. They’re quite happy to be photographed shaking the hand of the occupant of the Chair of St. Peter, exchanging a few words, praying a short prayer with him and moving on. It’s only the Anglicans who desperately need to have their leader perceived as, well, an Anglican pope.
Hey, the Archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual leader of 77 million Anglicans world-wide. Except for the fact that What’s-His-Face’s broccoli-shaped predecessor, Whatchamacallit, finally finished that one off at the 2008 Lambeth Conference when he decided that the culture would determine Anglican “principles” from here on.
It’s easy to meet and talk with people who have actual principles, even if those principles contradict your own.
It’s impossible to meet with people who have no principles at all.
Hot on the heels of my disobliging remarks last about Archbishop Justin Welby’s Uriah Heep-like cringing to the government even as he told them in the Lords how disastrous their gay marriage legislation was going to be, comes the announcement that this Friday, Archbishop Welby is to meet the Pope.
The real question is why? Why are we still going through the ecumenical motions with the Anglicans, for all the world as though they had (or had some possibility of gaining) the same kind of ecclesial reality as the Orthodox? Why does the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) still meet, as though Anglican ordinations to their episcopate of openly gay men living with their partners, and also of women to their priesthood and episcopate, despite the warnings of successive popes of the fact that these steps would erect insuperable barriers to unity with the Catholic Church, why do we still carry on with the farce of behaving as though these insuperable barriers just did not exist at all?
His Grace got all pissy about Oddie’s questions.
There is no point talking about women priests: the two churches simply do not agree. If the Pope of Rome sees that as a barrier to unity, so be it. The Archbishop of Canterbury similarly sees the Council of Trent as a barrier to unity, and so be that, too. As the XXXIX Articles declare, ‘The Church of Rome hath erred.’ We do not agree on so very much, and that’s a fact.
But surely we can work together where we do agree. Surely we can both love our neighbours? Surely we share the same concerns about poverty and the global economic crisis? Surely we agree on the imperative of restoring dignity to the poor and hope to the marginalised?
Roman Catholics and quite a few other people, Christian and non-Christian already agree on all that and always have but for some reason, don’t require special meetings to agree to “work together” to advance all these wonderful things.
In an era when popes are photographed with practically anybody (I mentioned once before that Benny Hinn used to include in his show’s introduction a photograph of him shaking hands with John Paul II), there is something kind of pathetic about the relentless Anglican insistence on being Taken Seriously.
After all, most Christian leaders who meet popes don’t feel the need to be considered the pope’s contemporary. They’re quite happy to be photographed shaking the hand of the occupant of the Chair of St. Peter, exchanging a few words, praying a short prayer with him and moving on. It’s only the Anglicans who desperately need to have their leader perceived as, well, an Anglican pope.
Hey, the Archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual leader of 77 million Anglicans world-wide. Except for the fact that What’s-His-Face’s broccoli-shaped predecessor, Whatchamacallit, finally finished that one off at the 2008 Lambeth Conference when he decided that the culture would determine Anglican “principles” from here on.
It’s easy to meet and talk with people who have actual principles, even if those principles contradict your own.
It’s impossible to meet with people who have no principles at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment