From Monsignor Andrew Burnham's sermon at the Solemn Evensong and Benediction at Oxford yesterday:
Those of us who have already become Catholics, under the ægis of Anglicanorum cœtibus, have recognised, and are attempting to be agents of healing of, the undoubted rupture and discontinuity to be found in the history of the theological idea of ‘a kingdom of priests’ ...
A proper understanding of ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ is possible only within the particular Israelite Covenant context or, within the New Covenant, in the Catholic doctrine of the Church. Only in the Catholic doctrine of the Church is the Holy Eucharist, the Eucharist offered within the Sacrifice of the Mass, and as worshipped in Benediction, inevitably and indubitably the focus of our devotion. Only within the Catholic doctrine of the Church is a eucharistic people fully and indubitably empowered to embark on living out the Covenant as handed down on Sinai and expounded at the Sermon on the Mount. The kingdom of priests is not a bunch of priests, still less a bunch of lay folk who have no need of a ministerial priesthood, but a holy people, chosen to ‘declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light’. This holy people, as prophetically recognised by Anglicanorum cœtibus, is enriched – ever so slightly, for there are not many of us and may never be many of us – by the liturgical forms and musical expressions that have developed their own life within Anglicanism and which, whenever they speak of continuity and not rupture, are now usefully and beautifully restored to their ancient roots.
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