It may seem an absurd paradox, but somehow the event, a Latin Tridentine Mass, seemed the very epitome of the Anglican tradition as we have appropriated and preserved it since the Catholic Revival.He was speaking of his 40th ordination jubilee Eucharist. I have to say I enjoyed looking at his blog; it is both erudite and witty, as is typical of so much of the Anglo-Catholic movement. I wish him much joy at his anniversary, and I hope he won't take it amiss if I add a prayer that he may one day find his place in communion with the Holy See.
Tuesday, 10 June 2008
Extraordinary use of the Extraordinary Use
Thanks to a link on the Puppy of Heaven blog, I came across this Anglican site. The following paragraph particularly caught my eye with a sort of surreal jolt…
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I think I may say with confidence that Fr Hunwicke will NOT take your final comment amiss; indeed he will share your sentiment. The Anglican Church has been far quicker to embrace ecumenism than has the Roman Catholic Church (I say with all respect), and don't forget that all of the last three Archbishops of Canterbury have publicly stated the ultimate goal of our Anglican Communion as being back in Communion with the Holy See; and indeed there has been much talk in the Anglican world of how we might accept a form of primacy from Rome even before full visible unity is achieved. The faithful of the Anglican world are very conscious of their history, and the prayer for our full restoration to unity with the Holy See is offered up at our altars many thousands of times every day around the Anglican world.
Of course, the longer that unity is not present, the more difficult it becomes to achieve (a divided family easily grows apart) and there is perhaps some element of reflection on this problem in the Archbishop of Canterbury's 2006 observations (after his visit to Rome in that year) that children grow up, and move from dependence on their parents to friendship with them. (Watch the Archbishop making these comments at this uTube location: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwjVtoMrdCU).
Like many Anglicans I grew up on a liturgical diet of three-minister, eastward-facing, Roman-rite, high mass, mixed with a healthy amount of Anglican chant at Mattins and Evensong. We did so (I am 40) in a time when such a diet was denied to most Roman Catholics. This tradition has never been lost, even though mainstream Anglo-Catholicism is probably more 'modern catholic' (Vat II) today. It is interesting to see, under the present Pope, the return to more traditional ways in the Vatican, and their gradual authorisation for the wider RC church; after so many years of post-conciliar life in the Roman Catholic Church, I wonder if you are destined in the near-future to experience more of the broad spectrum of liturgical and theological existence that is the hallmark of Anglicanism?! Be warned, it is expensive to have to maintain a high-church parish, and a middle-of-the-road parish, and a low-church parish in every town! Seriously though, being a broad church really does bring many advantages and blessings. The Catholic Revival of the Oxford Movement (building on that thin tradition of 17th and 18th century high-church thought and the later Anglican divines, who kept catholic theology alive through largely puritanical days in the Church of England) which has brought Anglicanism firmly back to her present position (where her liturgical life is firmly eucharistically-centred, and reservation of the sacrament [practiced in every English cathedral, even if not yet in every parish church!] is seen as the right of the priest and people in every eucharistic community) was (in my humble opinion) partly such a success, with such a profound influence on later church life, because it arose hand-in-hand with the evangelical revival (Clapham Sect, etc) which did so much to restore standards in preaching and biblical teaching. The modern Anglican tradition, which is far less interested in the divides of tags like 'high-church' and 'low-church' than is the media, benefits enormously from the fruits of both the liturgical and sacramental re-birth through Tractarianism, and the biblical and homiletical understanding of the evangelical revival.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying, that whilst daily prayers for the Pope at mass may only be found in the traditionalist Anglo-Catholic wing of Anglicanism, a real desire for the full visible unity of the Church is widespread, and for the vast majority of Anglicans that means now, as it has always meant, a restoration of communion with the Pope. So do indeed offer your prayers for Fr Hunwicke, but also for the other 80 million Anglicans as well, please. We don't want Fr Hunwicke to go on his own - we all want to come with him, when the time is finally right.
Dear Anonymous, that's exactly why I linked to Fr Hunwicke on my blog.
As an Anglican I must say I have no desire to be in communion with the Roman pope - closer ties with Orthodoxy yes but not with Rome.
Oh dear...signs of another schism brewing. Seriously though prayer for unity is most important for ecuminism to come to any sort of fruition.
Happy Birthday for tomorrow Father!
Thanks, Miles, and thanks for the, er, holy water.
I fail to understand why you condone these crazy Anglo-Catholic fantasies. Their time is over and has been ever since the General Synod of the Church of England voted to ordain women 'priests' in 1992. Even then, their time was long past. Tractarianism, the Oxford Movement, Anglo-Catholicism was a period of experiment which yielded remarkable fruits but ultimately failed and is long over. The fact that the rump that remains in an alien body clings to the fantasy of being received as a residual group shows how deeply un-Catholic their thought is. They know that this will be impossible, yet maintain the fantasy in order to stay where they are. The better among them have long become Catholics (clerical and lay) and the steady stream into the Church continues on an individual basis.
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