"A signification of our humble and grateful acknowledgment of the benefits of Christ"

There is much to deeply regret and utterly disown in the text of the Black Rubric.  Admittedly the 1662 version was something of an improvement on that of 1552:


It is hereby declared, That thereby no adoration is intended, or ought to be done, either unto the Sacramental Bread or Wine there bodily received, or unto any Corporal Presence of Christ's natural Flesh and Blood (1662);


We do declare that it is not meant thereby, that any adoration is done, or ought to be done, either unto the Sacramental bread or wine there bodily received, or unto any real and essential presence there being of Christ's natural flesh and blood (1552).


1552 was an explicit denunciation of the catholic understanding of Christ's presence in the Eucharist.  The deletion of the text in 1559 and its re-wording in 1662 were attempts to moderate this and reconcile Anglicanism to the patristic affirmations of the change in the bread and wine effected by the Eucharist.


Even then, it falls far short of St Irenaeus' teaching:


the mixed cup and the manufactured bread receive the Word of God and become the Eucharist, that is to say, the Body and Blood of Christ ... For just as the bread which comes from the earth, having received the invocation of God, is no longer ordinary bread, but the Eucharist.


Perhaps nothing so clearly illustrates Anglicanism's need of the teaching of the great Latin Church in order to be authentically catholic.  There is, however, one aspect of the Black Rubric that demonstrates how the Anglican patrimony can contribute to the renewal of the Catholic tradition:


Whereas it is ordained in this Office for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, that the Communicants should receive the same kneeling; (which order is well meant, for a signification of our humble and grateful acknowledgment of the benefits of Christ therein given to all worthy Receivers ...).


Rejecting the practice of the Reformed tradition in sitting to receive the Holy Eucharist, even at the height of Reformation controversy Anglicanism affirmed the catholic practice of kneeling to receive.  Benedict XVI has, of course, encouraged the Latin Church to re-embrace the practice.  Now the head of the Congregation for Divine Worship has also urged a return to kneeling:


Spanish Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera recently recommended that Catholics receive Communion on the tongue, while kneeling.


“It is to simply know that we are before God himself and that He came to us and that we are undeserving,” the prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments said in an interview with CNA during his visit to Lima, Peru.


The cardinal’s remarks came in response to a question on whether Catholics should receive Communion in the hand or on the tongue.


He recommended that Catholics “receive Communion on the tongue and while kneeling.”


Receiving Communion in this way, the cardinal continued, “is the sign of adoration that needs to be recovered. I think the entire Church needs to receive Communion while kneeling.”


While Anglican worship has mirrored many of the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms, kneeling to receive the Eucharist has remained the norm within Anglicanism.  The Ordinariates will almost certainly continue this practice and thereby aid the 'reform of the reform'.  It is, perhaps, a sign of the workings of grace that even the Black Rubric can contribute to a recovery of the Church's sense of mystery and adoration before Holy Eucharist.

To heal, not accuse

Amidst the ongoing, emotive debate in Ireland on aspects of the confessional, a reminder from Blessed John Paul II on the healing nature of the Sacrament of Reconciliation - words that will reflect the pastoral experience of those Anglicans who benefit from this Sacrament:

As it reflects on the function of this sacrament, the church's consciousness discerns in it, over and above the character of judgment in the sense just mentioned, a healing of a medicinal character. And this is linked to the fact that the Gospel frequently presents Christ as healer, while his redemptive work is often called, from Christian antiquity, medicina salutis. "I wish to heal, not accuse," St. Augustine said, referring to the exercise of the pastoral activity regarding penance, and it is thanks to the medicine of confession that the experience of sin does not degenerate into despair.

"The greatest Father of the Latin Church"

With many thanks to SPCK, a book which should be required reading for those reflecting on Anglicanorum Coetibus - Great Christian Thinkers: From the Early Church through the Middle Ages.  It is a collection of addresses by the Holy Father on key figures from the Tradition. 

Considering that this blog is under the patronage of St Augustine, perhaps I can be forgiven for quoting from addresses included in the collection on the bishop of Hippo:

We speak now of the greatest Father of the Latin Church, St Augustine ... I wanted to ideally conclude my pilgrimage to Pavia by consigning to the Church and to the world, before the tomb of this great lover of God, my first encyclical, titled Deus Caritas Est.  I owe much, in fact, especially in the first part, to Augustine's thought ... I wished to devote my second encyclical to hope, Spe Salvi, and it is also largely indebted to Augustine and his encounter with God.

Anglicanism's experience of the Reformation was in many ways a rediscovery of Augustine.  Such rediscovery, however, was incomplete, marred as it was by both the political circumstances of the era and a failure to give due attention to Augustine's belief in the catholicity of the Church.  It is fitting, therefore, that an explicitly Augustinian successor to Peter has provided the means for the reconciliation of the Anglican tradition to the See of Peter.

"The form of the Church ... is the form of the Cross"

From a lecture given by Archbishop Chaput in Slovakia last year, addressing the challenges facing the Church in an age of de-christianisation:

So what does this mean for us as individual disciples? Let me offer a few suggestions by way of a conclusion.

My first suggestion comes again from the great witness against the paganism of the Third Reich, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “The renewal of the Western world lies solely in the divine renewal of the Church, which leads her to the fellowship of the risen and living Jesus Christ.”

The world urgently needs a re-awakening of the Church in our actions and in our public and private witness.  The world needs each of us to come to a deeper experience of our Risen Lord in the company of our fellow believers. The renewal of the West depends overwhelmingly on our faithfulness to Jesus Christ and his Church.

We need to really believe what we say we believe. Then we need to prove it by the witness of our lives. We need to be so convinced of the truths of the Creed that we are on fire to live by these truths, to love by these truths, and to defend these truths, even to the point of our own discomfort and suffering.

We are ambassadors of the living God to a world that is on the verge of forgetting him. Our work is to make God real; to be the face of his love; to propose once more to the men and women of our day, the dialogue of salvation.

The lesson of the 20th century is that there is no cheap grace. This God whom we believe in, this God who loved the world so much that he sent his only Son to suffer and die for it, demands that we live the same bold, sacrificial pattern of life shown to us by Jesus Christ.

The form of the Church, and the form of every Christian life, is the form of the cross. Our lives must become a liturgy, a self-offering that embodies the love of God and the renewal of the world.

Chaput's words address the context in which the Ordinariates are coming into being.  Beyond all the institutional challenges facing the Ordinariates (see Damian Thompson on this), the defining challenge will be how the Ordinariates respond to the call to share in the new evangelisation.  What does it mean for the form of the Ordinariates to be the form of the Cross?  What does it mean for the Ordinariates to lead people in our secularised societies to what Archbishop Chaput termed "a deeper experience of our Risen Lord" in the communion of the Catholic Church?  What can the Ordinariates contribute to the Church's public witness?  Such questions, it is to be hoped, will be at the heart of the life of the Ordinariates.

Scotland and the Ordinariate

Last Wednesday, Fr. Len Black - formerly a priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church and Regional Dean of Forward in Faith - was ordained a Catholic priest by Bishop Philip Tartaglia of Paisley.  Bishop Tartaglia's words on the Ordinariate's contribution to the ecumenism are worth noting:

Although the group in Scotland is very small, when taken along with considerably more groups and clergy in England and Wales and with ordinariate arrangements coming into place soon in the US and possibly in Australia later, this begins to look like a new and visionary way of re-creating Christian unity after years of ecumenical stalemate, and it is marked by the striking originality, simplicity, and generosity of a Pope Benedict XVI initiative.

Members of the Ordinariate in Scotland were previously received into the Catholic Church during the Easter Vigil.

The mystery of primacy in a time of crisis

Even in the best of times, it would not be easy for an Irish Anglican to consider Anglicanorum Coetibus.  The cultural and historical divisions on this island are such that the theological rationale for any Anglican seeking to enter communion with the Catholic Church will face suspicion from both traditions.

In the dramatic circumstances created by the response to the Cloyne Report, however, those Irish Anglicans prayerfully reflecting on Anglicanorum Coetibus face an even more difficult situation.  It is, therefore, appropriate to consider some words from the Orthodox theologian Olivier Clement's work You are Peter:

I don't care much for Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome ... The true Saint Peter's is underground, and to grasp this is to understand how, during the first centuries, the church of Rome was venerated as the church of the martyr-apostles Peter and Paul, then as that of the martyr-bishops, and that its true role could only be one of martyria - in the special double sense of witness and martyrdom.

Here, then, is the mystery of the primacy of the church at Rome, the primacy which the ARCIC process urged Anglicans to re-receive and which Anglicanorum Coetibus makes possible for those from the Anglican tradition.  Beyond the shame of the child abuse crisis, beyond the actions of the Curia, a prayerful reflection of Anglicanorum Coetibus will reaffirm the mystery of this primacy - the mystery of the gift of the church of the martyrs Peter and Paul.

Beyond the old paradigm: Chaput and the Evangelical Catholics

George Weigel has a fascinating interpretation of the much commented on move of Chaput to be Archbishop of Philadelphia:

Archbishop Chaput put it best himself in an exclusive interview with Catholic News Agency: “The biggest challenge, not just in Philadelphia but everywhere, is to preach the Gospel. . . . We need to have confidence in the Gospel, we have to live it faithfully, and to live it without compromise and with great joy.”

That formulation — the Gospel without compromise, joyfully lived — captures the essence of the Evangelical Catholicism that is slowly but steadily replacing Counter-Reformation Catholicism in the United States. The usual suspects are living in an old Catholic paradigm: They’re stuck in the Counter-Reformation Church of institutional maintenance; they simply want an institution they can run with looser rules, closely aligned with the Democratic party on the political left — which is precisely why they’re of interest to their media megaphones. Archbishop Chaput, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, and other rising leaders of the Catholic Church in the United States are operating out of a very different paradigm — and in doing so, they’re the true heirs of both the Second Vatican Council and Pope John Paul II ...

The old warhorses of the post–Vatican II debates, on either end of the Catholic spectrum, don’t get this; they’re still mud-wrestling within the old paradigm. But Archbishop Charles Chaput gets it, big time. That, and the effective work of his predecessor, Cardinal James Francis Stafford, is what has made the archdiocese of Denver what is arguably the model Evangelical Catholic diocese in the country: a Church brimming with excitement over the adventure of the Gospel, a Church attracting some of the sharpest young Catholics in America to its services, a Church fully engaged in public life while making genuinely public arguments about the first principles of democracy.