VATICAN CITY (Zenit.org) - A priest at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is affirming that the newly established Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, the Ordinariate of the United Kingdom, is "very important" to Benedict XVI.
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"In the area of ecumenism it strengthens the Catholic Church's approach in two ways," the priest noted. "It promotes sincere dialogue with a Christian defense of life and the promotion of peace."
He stated: "The goal of the ecumenical movement is complete visible union with one Christ and with Peter in one Church. We must cooperate and grow together."
"Unity is built on two pillars, love and truth," the priest added.
True ecumenism promotes unity through mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation amongst those of different faiths. The game of so-called "ecumenism" as played by the Roman Catholic Church is the same old, same old, my way or no way. Unity means becoming one of them.
What we see in the statement here is a bit more truth-telling and a bit less covering up of the true purposes of ecumenism as defined by the RCC. In the end, the members of the so-called "Anglican" ordinariates will be Roman Catholics and no longer Anglicans.
And poaching by any other name still stinks.
Thanks to Ann V. for the link.
I could quote you documents from the 1950s that say EXACTLY the same things.
ReplyDeleteIt's like Vatican II never happened.
Considering that the last two Popes were so shaped by the Cold War, they have a lot of Stalinesque-type history erasures!
[I studied Eastern Europe as an undergrad. I've never forgotten a story, I think by Milan Kundera. An Eastern Bloc bigwig was giving a speech on a balcony (y'know, the kind w/ the tanks passing below). It was a cold, windy day, so his underling removed his own fur hat, and placed it on the bigwig's head.
Shortly thereafter, there was a purge. The underling was erased from all the photographs of the balcony speech. The only thing left was his hat on the bigwig's head!]
It's like Vatican II never happened.
ReplyDeleteYes, indeed. Perhaps John XIII might even be erased from the list of popes. He made a good bit of mischief for the popes who followed. Unfortunately, the popes who came after John XIII did not follow in his footsteps. What a dear man of God he was.
How many ways is the Pope NOT the successor of St. Peter?
ReplyDelete1. There's no evidence that Peter was ever in Rome. Legends of his martyrdom there trace only to the 2d century. (Yes, in 1950 some bones were found under the Vatican, wrapped in an important looking cloth, and declared, without further evidence, to be those of Peter. Not proven.)
2. Peter didn't found the church in Rome -- it existed when Paul wrote his letter to it.
3. Peter wasn't the first bishop of Rome -- there were no bishops in his lifetime.
4. Even if Peter had died in Rome, it would confer no necessary mantle on later bishops there. The bishop of Memphis, Tenn., doesn't succeed Martin Luther King, Jr., because Dr. King was martyred in his see.
Church continuity is nice to contemplate, but we shouldn't forget: the Reformation wasn't wrong about Roman pretensions.
I had a conversation a few years ago with a Roman Catholic priest who had been ordained - as I was - in the early 1970s. We both had a deep sense of the loss of the ecumenical hope that we had had when we were first ordained. I had served in the 1980s in a parish with a covenant relationship with our neighboring Roman Catholic parish. The early promise of such relationships has, for the most part, been lost.
ReplyDeleteI so know what you mean, Fr Dan.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up in California in the 60s, 70s and 80s, it was a VERY ecumenical milieu. [As an undergrad in the early 80s, I sometimes attended Mass at the Newman House, and didn't think TWICE about receiving Communion---and the leaders KNEW I was Episcopalian!]
Especially around peace issues in the 80s, religious participation was VERY ecumenical on the part of RCs (inc. priests and even bishops!). All that is long gone now...
John XXIII, not John XIII! I never was good with Roman numbers.
ReplyDeleteIn the 1970s a RC priest and an Episcopal priest regularly celebrated the Eucharist together. Of course, there was no official approval. The policy was don't ask, don't tell, but the Eucharists were certainly no secret.
In his autobiography "Hannah's Child," the theologian Stanley Hauerwas, who is not RC, talks about regularly attending Mass and receiving communion in the '70s-'80s at Notre Dame when he was teaching there. No one had a problem with it.
ReplyDeleteMove along folks, move along. Nothing to see here...
ReplyDeleteSee my paper on the models of ecumenism favored by Huntington and the Vatican -- going back to the turn of the previous century and before!
John XIII was no John XXIII.
ReplyDeleteTobias, I read your paper, which I found quite interesting. The account of the history of the Quadrilateral included much that I did not know. As I read, I thought, "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
Of course the ordinariates are important to Benedict, just as the petard is important to the sapper.
ReplyDeleteBut the ordinariates will not amount to much of anything, Mark. They're Benedict's babies, for now, but they will fade into the shadows quite soon.
ReplyDeleteBut the ordinariates will not amount to much of anything, Mark. They're Benedict's babies, for now, but they will fade into the shadows quite soon.
ReplyDelete