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| Altarpiece at the new church of Our Lady of Walsingham, Houston, TX |
What Anglicans will receive from entering into full communion with the Catholic Church:
- Ecclesial unity with the Bishop of Rome - The Pope!
- Communion with over a billion Catholics worldwide
- Validity of orders and sacraments
- Marian apparitions
- Evelyn Waugh, G.K.Chesterton, Flannery O'Connor, Hilaire Belloc
- Unity rather than schism
- The truth about Henry VIII
- Peace rather than continual strife
- Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Divine Mercy
- Italy, Spain, France, Poland, Ireland, Bavaria, Austria.
- New understanding and sharing in Catholic spirituality
- Chartres, Mont St Michel, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur
- Belonging to a church that transcends culture and class
- Relics
- Solidarity with Catholic bishops and clergy
- The Sistine Chapel
- New relationship with global Christianity
- The Infant of Prague
- Santiago de Compostella
- Holy Cards
- Communion with all the Catholic saints
- Michaelangelo, Raphael, Carravagio, Leonardo da Vinci
- A new understanding of English history
- A final authority
- Cohesive and comprehensive doctrinal and moral teaching
What Roman Catholics will receive from Anglicans who are entering into full communion through the Ordinariate:
- An appreciation of English language, culture and history
- The English choral tradition
- Wesley's hymns
- Ad orientem celebration of the Mass
- The General Thanksgiving
- George Herbert
- Preaching tabs, academic hood and preaching scarf
- Choral Evensong
- The Coverdale Psalter
- T.S.Eliot and C.S.Lewis
- The General Confession
- Well educated clergy
- Julian of Norwich
- Lace and Incense
- Our Lady of Walsingham
- Needlepoint kneelers
- The Caroline Divines
- Altar rails
- Anglican chant
- Charles I - King and Martyr
- The Prayer of Humble Access
- Nine Lessons and Carols
- Altar frontals
- John Donne and George Herbert
- Tea and biscuits
I think we're going to need training in bunfight strategy.
ReplyDeleteFather, I think you have left out one of the most remarkable and perhaps little known blessings that the Anglicans are going to bring with them - the incredible and beautiful Prayer of Humble Access.
ReplyDeleteThat the Protestant and semi Calvinistic Cranmer ever wrote such a prayer, is itself inexplicable and only can attributed to the Holy Spirit. For the Anglican Use this prayer has been slightly adapted in its conclusion, but it is a truly beautiful prayer and one I always say before I go up to Communion.
I think I continued to say this prayer to myself for 20 years after I became Catholic, only stopping when I had too many children with me at mass to have that kind of concentration. I still have it memorized. Now that my kids are grown, I attend the eastern rite, and I am busy saying their very long prayer before communion. Only if the church is large and the wait for communion long can I slip in the Prayer of Humble Access as well.
ReplyDeleteVeritas, I am not sure why you think this is atypical of a Protestant/SemiCalvinist. Surely they also think of themselves as "not worthy to gather up the crumbs under thy table." If they believe their unworthiness is covered by Christ so far as justification goes, they still know they are unworthy. Right?
Susan Peterson
No, it's there (the Prayer of Humble Access, I mean, just in case there are more comments in line between veritas and me)! And I was going to mention it, as it's literally the one thing I still really miss these days. I had to strike "altar rail" off my list two years ago, when our parish had one installed -- that would have been the other thing.
ReplyDeleteThanks Veritas. I've added it. I knew I was forgetting something!
ReplyDeleteAs an English Catholic may I respectfully point out that, much as I welcome the Anglicans coming home, we already have had several of the things on your list from, for example, Our Lady of Walsingham to tea and biscuits, from time immemorial.
ReplyDeleteFr Longenecker: In my last few posts on your Blog I have been rather uncharitable, but nonetheless this Blog post of yours may need some clarifications on my part, but I really don't wish to do that right now, as I no longer consider myself Anglican. I don't know if you know this but I was Baptised, brought up and Confirmed as a Roman Catholic. I have spent the last 25 years as a non-Roman Catholic, twenty of those years as an Episcopalian 1993-1995/Anglican (Reformed Episcopal Church/ACNA 1996-recently). Last Friday I went to see the Catholic Priest at the local RC Parish with every intention of asking how I could “formally defect from the Roman Catholic Church”. Whether or not I softened my position, or for whatever reason it didn't come out quite that way at first. I told him that I was Baptised and Confirmed Catholic, that I was going to an Anglican Church, he knew all about the ACNA, so that saved me the trouble explaining that situation, I told him that I still miss many things Catholic etc, and he asked why don't I just return to the CC. So I told him, that there were many Church Dogmas that I can't accept and I quickly added that I agree with the Church's moral teaching on Abortion, Contraception, Gay Marriage, and no Women Priests, so he asked which Dogmas so I told him that I simply can't accept:
ReplyDelete1. Papal Infallibility
2. Purgatory
I thought of bringing up the Catholic Church's teaching on Justification but I still needed to think and study some more on that one so I did not mention it. So Father asked me if I believed what the Creeds said and if I had any trouble with the Sacraments I said no and he told me that all I needed to do was receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation and I would be back in the Church, I asked him if I could receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation so I did so, received my Penance. I asked him even though I can't accept those two dogmas I mentioned could I still receive the Eucharist he said I could. I then told him that there are some Catholics that would tell me I am “not really a Catholic” unless I accepted everything the Church teaches, he told me that I should not allow others to define who is and is not Catholic, only the Church can do that. Since he is a Priest and is a valid representative of the Church then what he said trumps what an unqualified IE no academic or pastoral credentialed layperson has to say. I then mentioned that my original intention was going to be to ask him how I could “formally defect from the Roman Catholic Church” he said that God had other plans. So Fr. Longenecker I speak as the most reluctant Catholic in Christendom (to borrow from a line C.S. Lewis used) when he became a Christian from being an atheist.
I agree with you Father, apart from Anglican Chant. The psalms should be chanted using a form of music that does not follow a time signature, unlike Anglican chant. This allows the natural speech rhythm of the words to be expressed, as in plainsong or Orthodox chanting. Secondly, the notes for psalmody should be modal rather than being in a key signature. Anglican chant is one thing I would not welcome.
ReplyDeleteCan the Anglicans bring elevensies and daily afternoon tea with them, too? I miss that part of being in England.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't mention the Anglicans will bring outfits with fur trim. A deacon I know thinks it may be squirrel, but I'm going with fox.
ReplyDeleteI have to chuckle as I read this because if I talk about it to my protestant friends....they are going to say it confirms the "end" is near...the "rapture" is coming because when the world begins to align with Rome and form a one world religion is the prophecy!
ReplyDeleteI always ask about the passage of Scripture where Jesus prays for us to be One....only the devil wants us divided...but they've been brainwashed by so many...as well as fallen away Catholics...can only pray as they begin to "panic".
Hello John, thank you for letting me know about your decision and I think it is pretty marvelous news. I admire your obedience and humility.
ReplyDeleteMy own view is that it is perfectly fine for a person to be in the Catholic church and have serious reservations about particular doctrines. I make the distinction between absolute denial of a doctrine and a kind of agnosticism or difficulty with a doctrine.
Take purgatory for example. One can say, "Geesh, I don't know about purgatory. I doubt it, but I'm not going to deny it. I'll just leave it be. If the church says so, okay, but I personally have my doubts..." That's okay. They can be Catholic.
But if they say, "Purgatory. That's a load of hogwash. I utterly deny such an imagined foolishness..." Well, in my opinion that won't do.
You have always struck me as a man of goodwill, good intellect and honesty. I'm sure you'd be in the first category not the second--and if so, much more honest (and a much better Catholic) than someone who just goes along for the ride and never once thinks things through at all.
WELCOME ANGLICANS!!!!
ReplyDeleteJohn, while I can't say I understand your aversion to those particular dogmas (they don't bother me at all) I had considerable difficulties with Mary. When I came back to the Church I made an appointment with my (IMHO) quite liberal pastor and told him there was something I just could not get over, and I'm sure he thought it was contraception -- he seemed very surprised when we met and I told him it was "the whole Mary thing." He asked me if I accepted the Church's views on everything else, and I said yes, and then he said something to the effect of "Well, do you think you could just say, I may not understand it but I'm willing to accept it and figure it out some other time?" That is NOT what I wanted, I wanted him to explain it all to me right then and there. But I very reluctantly said okay. And it was exactly the right thing for him to say. It took me a couple of years to really figure out Mary. I'm telling this story because maybe you are at a similar place in your life, and what you need to do right now is trust that you will understand those dogmas later and that you don't have to know everything NOW. After all, you can always leave at any time!
Fr Longenecker, thank you for your response. Based on what you wrote I guess I would fall into the 1st category of gee I doubt it, but I don't say its total hogwash either, like I told Fr. "B' at my now Catholic Parish that when I was in CCD we were read stories where Purgatory came across as a sort of "Divine Prison/Torture place". Now if you could say that Purgatory is like what Pope Benedict XVI said it was then it becomes a non-issue for me and sounds more consistent with a God who cares for His children.
ReplyDeleteBTW my Parish Church actually looks like an Anglican Church, both inside and out, you know something like those medium sized English Country/Town Parish Churches right down to the fine woodwork half walls in the interior and the Fieldstone Mortar exterior. Construction was started in 1902 and finished in 1904.
Not to "over comment" on your blog Fr. but perhaps you could add a 26th item on what Catholics will get from the Anglicans, perhaps, prose wise and one could argue a very accurate Bible and certainly an English Classic, The Authorised Version of 1611 AKA "King James Version" (with Deutero-Canonical books included of course)
ReplyDeleteI think it's safe to say that Caholics (at least us Southern ones) already drink tea and we certainly eat cookies. As for Lessons and Carols, Catholic churches have been doing that for years. As for the rest of it; it sounds nice.
ReplyDeleteThe eighth sacrament. Coffee hour. After EVERY Mass.
ReplyDeleteisaacsface, I don't think Anglican chant *does* follow a time signature. It's been a while since I sang it regularly, but as I recall, while AC uses harmony, the verses are pointed as they'd be in any form of chant, and are sung basically in the cadences of spoken language.
ReplyDeleteMost American Catholic parishes, I would venture to guess, are already using quasi-Anglican Chant in the form of the (admittedly frequently drecky) contemporary psalm settings from imprints like Respond and Acclaim. I can see this, now that I think about it, as a reason to dislike Anglican Chant on the face of things . . . and of course it's not Gregorian chant, the mother tongue of our sacred music. Still, I'd see Anglican chant, with better translations of the psalm texts, as a vast improvement over what we're singing currently in our own parish (better psalm settings are on the list for the coming year, once we've managed to persuade the congregation to sing the new settings of the Mass music with us).
Anyway, I think I'm probably with you on the "no time signature" thing, because it's hard to imagine Hebrew poetry working that way (you can't write the 23rd Psalm as a hymn, for example, without a degree of paraphrase -- "The King of Love My Shepherd Is"). Not so sure that I think the Psalms have to be set in neumes. I love chant, and of course it's our patrimony, but it's not *all* our patrimony. I'd love to be able to sing both the Missa de Angelis and . . . I don't know, Gounod's Mass in C, which we also used to sing regularly in our Church of England parish. Why shouldn't the varied riches of a long tradition be ours?
If you can have surplice, academic hood, preaching tab and tippet, then you can have chimere and rochet for the bishops! (of course the time will come when the Ordinariates will have a celibate man for a bishop from their ranks!)
ReplyDelete"That the Protestant and semi Calvinistic Cranmer ever wrote such a prayer, is itself inexplicable and only can attributed to the Holy Spirit."
ReplyDeleteBloody hell!
@ John
ReplyDeleteIt has been said on various blogs several times, apparently authoritatively, that the Authorized Version will not be allowed in the Ordinariate. It is a mercy that the Coverdale Psalter will survive, however.
(Anglican Chant: done properly it is beautiful - expressive, flexible, and in speech rhythm. It originally developed out of plainsong, I believe, "in Quires and Places where they sing".)