Økumenikk

Jeg skrev i forgårs om de tre tidligere anglikanse biskopene som ble tatt opp i Den katolske Kirke 1. januar. Nå sies det at de allerede 13. januar og 15. januar vil bli ordinert til katolske diakoner og prester.

I have received information to the effect that … the former Anglican bishops received into the Catholic Church this morning will be ordained to the diaconate on January 13th and then to the priesthood two days later on January 15th, all pointing towards the setting up of an Ordinariate for England and Wales in the first half of January. Let’s see. As others have put it: «It’s actually happening.»

Vi merker oss her at den prosessen som vanligvis tar minst ett år (hvis biskopen dispenserer så mye som mulig), og for gifte menn (som disse er, der paven selv må gi dispensasjon) vil ta i alle fall tre år (ofte mer), i dette tilfellet vil ta bare to uker. Men så er det også en ekstraordinaær situasjon, og det er jo pave Benedikt selv som har tatt initiativ til at anglikanere kan bli tatt opp i Kirken på denne måten, og få beholde en hel del av sin arv. Disse mennene som nå snart blir ordinert, skal også lede den man kaller det anglikanske «ordinariatet» innen Den katolske Kirke i England. Men de vil ikke bli bispeviet, siden den eldgamle regelen om at bare ugifte menn kan bli biskoper, ikke skal/kan brytes.

OPPDATERING 4/1:
Disse opplysningene blir bekreftet hos the Catholic Herald.

Her kan vi lese om messen i Westmintser Cathedral i London i dag:

One of my jobs is that of teaching Church History in a seminary, and it is a awesome (in the correct sense of the word) thing to be actually present at an event which my successors will be teaching about.

I was present today in Westminster Cathedral when three (not the five that had been prophesied) former Anglican bishops were received into full Communion with the Catholic Church.

The whole thing was very low-key, really. I turned up early, and was saying a prayer at the shrine of Our Lady of Pew when I was joined by a man in a purple tie. He asked for assistance in a small matter, and I recognized John Broadhurst … Mass duly began. There was absolutely no reference whatever to the elephant in the room (the reception of these notables) from the celebrant (and former Tibernaut) Bishop Alan Hopes or anyone else. It was simply a Mass for the feast of the Mother of God; a little note in the service sheet simply observed that there would be a reception in the middle. Finally, once he had preached, Bishop Hopes said a word about what was happening.

The reception itself was very low-key. The journalists turned out to be photographers, and put their heads over the screen behind the choir stalls, setting the volume of their shutter clicks to Maximum and Extremely Distracting. Only the three active flying bishops were received, all modestly and humbly in ties, together with some members of some of their families, plus the three sisters from Walsingham. …

the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) har følt seg litt tilsidesatt de siste månedene; det var de som aller tydeligst spurte pave Benedikt om hjelp, men så har de kommet litt i skyggen av «moderkirken» i Engalnd. Fra Catholic Culture:

The leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) has disclosed that over 150 clerics in his group, including 17 bishops, hope to enter ordinariates within the Catholic Church in the coming year.

Anglican Archbishop John Hepworth, in a message to members of the TAC, expressed high hopes for the success of the ordinariates—although he revealed that the past year’s negotiations have not always proceeded smoothly.

“There have been exquisite difficulties this year,” Archbishop Hepworth conceded. “We have discovered how little detailed knowledge we have of the way the Catholic Church does things, and Catholic officials have discovered, I believe, their need to acquire a better and more profound knowledge of contemporary Anglicanism.” …

Erkebiskop Hepworth skriver selv følgende:

The creation of the first Ordinariate for Anglicans under the Apostolic Constitution of Pope Benedict XVI has been announced. As anticipated, for a host of symbolic and historical reasons, the first Ordinariate will be in England. ….

Wlliam Oddie skrev i går et nytt innlegg om dette, kalt: Why we waited 15 years for an Ordinariate: the inside story. Her er noe av det han skriver:

….. appeared in my book The Roman Option some time after the whole thing had been torpedoed by the opposition of certain English Catholic bishops, as a result of which Cardinal Hume – who in the negotiations had been entirely supportive of the Anglican negotiators – lost his nerve and withdrew his support. The scheme foundered and sank, some thought without trace. In Rome, Cardinal Ratzinger asked “what are the English bishops afraid of?” Pope John Paul asked the former Bishop Leonard: “Why are the English bishops so unapostolic?”

(several years later) …. One day, I received a phone call from Rome. It was from a member of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, whose former prefect was now Pope. I was asked for an undertaking to mention to nobody either the name of my interlocutor or, at that time, even the fact that the conversation had taken place. Things were at an early and delicate stage, he said: but there was a real possibility of movement along the lines of the former negotiations. They had read my book. Could we talk?

I told them that I wasn’t as closely in contact with the Anglican side as I had been, for obvious reasons. But there was one thing I was sure of: that the whole thing would be sunk unless the English bishops were kept firmly out of the loop: they should be told nothing. There was a silence. “Your remarks are noted,” he said. But it was clear to me that if the English bishops hadn’t been told yet, that was a decision that had already been made.

Time passed again, though less of it, this time. To the astonishment and dismay of some Catholic bishops Anglicanorum coetibus was published. …

… I have explained in previous blogs why I think this is an entirely desirable development. I just have one question. Why could this not have happened 15 years ago? And what is the answer to Pope John Paul’s and the then Cardinal Ratzinger’s questions: What [were] the English bishops afraid of? And, a tougher question: why [were] the English bishops so unapostolic?

Perhaps things are different now. We must all earnestly pray that they are.

Vår egen biskop var på Den norske kirkes kirkemøte i går, og snakket varmt om de menneskelige relasjonene så nå fins mellom katolikker og lutheranere i Norge:

… Jeg forlot Den norske kirke i 1977, og efterhvert forlot jeg også Norge, for godt trodde jeg selv. Da jeg kom tilbake, noe forbauset, var det ikke bare et gjensyn med egne trosfeller og til nye oppgaver med dem; det var til noe mer enn et høflig gjensyn med Den norske og lutherske kirke: Til et liv og, langt på vei, felles mål med dere. Å overse den kristne tradisjon som samler det store flertall av folket, ville være dumt og arrogant; det skjønte jeg faktisk av meg selv.

Det som overrasket meg var at de par prosent av befolkningen jeg representerte, var verd mer enn positiv oppmerksomhet fra deres side. Jeg opplevde sterk kollegialitet og mennesklig støtte – langt utover hva høflighet skulle tilsi – om det var med biskop Kvarme eller den nyss avgåtte preses, Skjevesland, eller hvem det nå var av biskoper, andre geistlige eller lege. Jeg ble nesten urolig av å føle meg så hjemme blant dere. – Da min forgjenger, biskop J. W. Gran, oppsøkte sine lutherske kollegaer tidlig i 1960-årene, ble han høflig mottatt, men på et par unntagelser nær hadde han følelsen av at de ikke helt skjønte hva han ville.

Den mennesklige side av dette er viktig nok, men viktigere var erkjennelsen av å komme til noe felles. Det katolske er ikke lenger uten hjemstavnsrett, noe som i verste fall kunne forstyrre en protestantisk og nasjonal kirkelig tradisjon ved kunstnere og akademikeres konversjoner. Det virker som om dere håper at katolisismen kan gi dere mer enn prosesjonskors og votivlys uten at de lutherske prinsipper rokkes. …

Sitatet er fra biskop Eidsvigs hilsen på møtet, som kan leses her (pdf). Og her kan man lese mer om møtet.

La meg begynne med et eksempel som ligner en del: Når ortodokse kirker ønsker fullt fellesskap med paven og Den katolske Kirke, så må de forandre sine synspunkter på pavens plass, hvordan Kirken ledes, og underlegge seg dens struktur og disiplin. Men de kan beholde 100% av sin liturgiske tradisjon, teologi og sine biskoper. Når protestanter søker enhet med Den katolske Kirke (og nå tenker jeg mest på anglikanere og lutheranere), må de selvsagt oppgi en hel del mer, men det skulle også være mulig å la dem få beholde mye fra sin egen tradisjon.

Etter Vatikankonsilet var det samtalene med anglikanerne (bildet over er fra 1966) som kom raskest i gang (og man må nok i dag kunne si at man var overoptimistiske), mens samtalene med lutheranere kom mer gradivis, men ble etter hvert svært fruktbare. Og til noen anti-økumener som av og til kommeneter på denne bloggen: Man misforstår nok pave Paul VI når man tolker hans uttrykk «united but not absorbed» som noe annet enn det jeg har skrevet over – at man på alle punkter godtar den katolske lære, men samtaidig kan få beholde tradisjoner som er forenlige med denne lære.

Det er det jeg har har introdusert så langt, som William Oddie skriver om i et innlegg i The Catholic Herald:

Some cradle Catholics still just don’t get it. Why do they want their own little enclave: if they want to be Catholics, why don’t they just join? What is this stuff about an Anglican “patrimony”? Isn’t that just what they want to get away from?

The first thing to say about the usage of Anglican “patrimony” is that it wasn’t coined by an Anglican, but by Pope Paul, in the days before the aspiration of an eventual corporate reunion of Canterbury and Rome (always, with the benefit of hindsight, an impossible dream) had been rudely shattered by the Anglicans’ unilateral decision fundamentally to redefine their orders in a way impossible for Catholics ever to accept.

But in those days, the ordination of women seemed a very distant – and unlikely – possibility which many (I was one of them) chose to ignore. The way forward to reunion seemed to be open; the pace seemed to be quickening. At the beatification of the English and Welsh martyrs in 1970 (which offended many Anglicans at the time), Pope Paul went out of his way to make an overture to the Anglican tradition (of which he was a genuine admirer: he used to listen to LPs of Anglican church music in moments of relaxation). “There will,” he said, “be no seeking to lessen the legitimate prestige and usage due to the Anglican Church when the Roman Catholic Church … is able to embrace firmly her ever-beloved sister in the one authentic communion of the family of Christ…” He made it clear that what he called the “worthy patrimony” of Anglicanism would be preserved in a united Church. A few years later, he said that he believed that “these words of hope ‘The Anglican Church united not absorbed’ are no longer a mere dream”.

Alas, he was wrong. The wholesale reunion of Canterbury and Rome was always a mere dream; and soon it was brutally shattered. But Pope Paul’s vision of an Anglican “patrimony” united with the Catholic Church but (like the Eastern Catholic patrimony) not wholly absorbed, were not forgotten, either in Rome (where Cardinal Ratzinger remembered them) or by those Anglicans who for nearly two decades have been talking, firstly to him at the CDF, and then to his successors at the CDF who have remained in charge of the process throughout: it was their decision, entirely justified, that the English bishops should not be consulted, since they would have done everything they could to wreck it, as they had once before in the 1990s.

Dr. William Oddie skriver i The Catholic Herald og ga i 1997 ut en bok som heter The Roman Option, som forteller om hva som skjedde etter at hundrevis av anglikanske prester i England ble katolikker (og mange av dem deretter katolske prester) i 1992. Skulle disse måtte glemme alt de hadde gjort tidligere i livet og fra første stund bli helt vanlige engelske katolikker (også sosialt og liturgisk), eller skulle man i større grad ønske velkommen deler av den anglo-katolske tradisjonen (ting som ikke bryter med katolsk lære)? Jeg leste boka da den var ganske fersk, og den gjorde ganske sterkt intrykk på meg siden jeg opplevde lignende ting selv i Norge fra 1994.

Vatikanet, representert først og fremst ved kardinal Ratzinger vil gjerne være generøse, og ville la disse personene ta med seg fruktbare ting fra sin egen tradisjon. I England virket det som bare kardinal Hume støttet en slik holdning, men han måtte gi seg da nesten alle andre biskoper og katolske prester i England ikke var enige. Og det er med denne historiske kunnskapen i bakhodet at Dr. Oddie skriver om det som nå holder på å skje i England for andre gang – med veldig mange nye konvertitter.

På Amazon kan man lese mer om denne boka, og bl.a. se denne anmeldelsen:

… … The book actually has quite a different object: to discuss the circumstances in which bodies of Anglo-Catholics might move collectively to Rome rather than having to convert one by one. In Oddie’s view there were serious possibilities of such collective conversions following 1992 but the opportunity was lost, mainly through the timidity of English Roman Catholics. The great appeal of this book is the nuanced way in which Oddie sketches the many and various versions of, and perspectives on, the so-called «Roman Option»; he keeps all the balls in play with considerable skill, using them to form a narrative that gradually builds (as the Roman Option appears more and more likely) before reaching an impasse that the reader knows from the start will eventually block further progress. To maintain our interest in a somewhat arcane subject matter when the denouement is thus predetermined would be impossible were Oddie’s writing not commendably precise and energetic at the same time.

It helps, of course, that his real story moves quickly away from the specific issue of women’s ordination to embrace such central issues as authority within the church and such questions as the meaning of Catholicism itself. That Oddie is so helpful on these huge topics, whilst keeping their coverage within bounds as a framework for his main narrative, is another tribute to his skills.

I have described the story of this book as being that of the Roman Option following the decision of 1992, but Oddie is at pains to place this story within the context of a broader «realignment of English-speaking Christianity»: one in which those of Catholic mind enter into full communion with Rome, but also one in which mainstream English non-conformism reunites with a Church of England that, in Oddie’s view, is now irreconcilably Protestant (if, for the moment, reluctant to see itself in such terms).