R E S O U R C E S
R E S O U R C E S
By Msgr. Dennis L. Mikulanis
On the night before He died, Jesus met with His Apostles for the Last Supper. The Gospel of John relates a lengthy series of discourses from Jesus to His followers, and one of them is His prayer for the unity of God’s people. John 17:20-21 has been used since the beginning of the ecumenical movement to encourage Christians to work together so that the Church may be united and the Gospel be more effectively preached. In His prayer to the Father, Jesus says: “I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, so that they may all be one as you, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, that the world may believe that you sent Me.”
For the first thousand years of Christianity, with a few exceptions, the Christian Church remained united in the Faith. Over time, however, the Christian family became divided into so many factions, with each one disavowing the other, that the Gospel of Christ became almost mute among the human family. That situation not withstanding, brave men and women of every Christian tradition saw the sin of separation and worked hard to overcome the divisions. Roman Catholics and Anglicans especially made great efforts to bring their respective churches to a better understanding of one another with the hope of reconciliation and reunion.
The first of the great attempts at reconciliation between the two came at the Malines Conversations under the guidance of Désiré Cardinal Mercier and Lord Halifax in the early part of the 20th century. At these conversations, Dom Lambert Beauduin developed the then-daring statement: “The Anglican Church united but not absorbed.” For his ecumenical efforts, Dom Beauduin was exiled from his monastery for 24 years before eventually being restored. In all that time, he never wavered in his faith and his work on behalf of Christian unity.
With the coming of the Second Vatican Council, ecumenism was acknowledged as a vital necessity to the life of the Catholic Church and, in the Decree on Ecumenism, the Anglican Communion is singled out among the ecclesial communities in the West as occupying a special place. Since that time in 1964, dialogue and understanding between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion has grown tremendously. To this day, Anglicans and Roman Catholics meet formally on international, national and local levels, achieving a remarkable degree of convergence and agreement on previously divisive issues.
While Anglicans and Roman Catholics have not yet achieved the fullness of unity we once had, we do not despair of someday finding the way that leads to unity. This is not to say, however, that there are not serious issues which still divide us. Patience not being a greatly exercised human virtue, some in our communities seek ways to satisfy their personal spiritual longings by looking at and accepting the life, teaching and traditions of the community other than that in which they were raised. That being the case, some Roman Catholics have become Anglicans (in the United States, Episcopalians) and some Episcopalians have become Roman Catholics.
In 1980, to accommodate those Episcopalian priests who wished to become Roman Catholic, a pastoral provision was granted by the Holy See to ease the transfer from the Episcopal Church to the Roman Catholic. To date, a fair number of former Episcopalian priests have acted on the pastoral provision and have become ordained priests in the Roman Catholic Church and, in some cases, entire congregations have come into the Catholic Church under the pastoral provision. Likewise, in the past 40 years, a good number of men ordained as Roman Catholic deacons or priests have subsequently joined the Episcopal Church. For the most part, these transfers were done in good conscience to fulfill the spiritual longing and need of the individuals involved.
Recently, the Holy See issued the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus (“Providing for Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans”) in response to groups of Anglicans who, the constitution states, petitioned “... repeatedly and insistently to be received into full Catholic communion individually as well as corporately.” In effect, the Holy See was responding to the legitimate, open requests of some Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church, who agree that we are one in faith (which has always been the underlying premise of any Anglican/Catholic reunion) while retaining the rites, prayers and ethos of their Anglican traditions. When one considers the many requests made and the response of the Holy See to those requests, one cannot help but think of Dom Beauduin’s principle of “The Anglican Church united but not absorbed.”
This constitution has caused a good deal of concern and debate in Anglican and Roman Catholic circles. Some decry Rome’s action as proselytism at its worst, “sheep stealing,” to use a common phrase. To do that, however, totally ignores the fact that Rome was offering a gracious response to requests made of it by a good number of Anglicans for their own spiritual welfare, prompted by teachings within the Anglican Communion with which they can no longer give free and honest consent. Nor should one overlook the fact that a considerable number of former Roman Catholics have been embraced by the Anglican Church because, for them, Anglicanism is a more comfortable fit than the teachings held by the Catholic Church. How many Anglicans will take advantage of the offer of the Holy See to join the Roman Catholic Church remains to be seen, but it is generally assumed that it will have a greater impact in England rather than here in the United States.
What is the future of Anglican/Roman Catholic relations in light of this offer from Rome to Anglicans? Hopefully, we will all step back and take an objective look at what has been asked and what has been offered in response, then continue our dialogue with one another to find the path to the unity of the Church. In fact, the Third Anglican/Roman Catholic International Commission for Dialogue has just been initiated. Regardless, with whatever happens, we must not let the lies of the Evil One deflect us, but rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to continue to guide us in our dialogue with one another so that, someday soon, we may fulfill that hope for which Jesus so earnestly prayed at the Last Supper: “That all may be one.”
The Southern Cross
This commentary first appeared in the December 2009 issue of The Southern Cross.