"The greatest, most ancient Church"

Anglicanism's debt to the See of Rome is profound.  Cranmer's majestic collects are, for the most part, translations and revisions of those from ancient Roman sacramentaries.  The Apostles' Creed used at Matins and Evensong is the Roman church's ancient baptismal profession of faith.  And, despite the controversy over Anglican orders and the Holy See's definitive judgment, The Preface to the Ordinal accepted the need to preserve the orders received from the Latin church - "that these Orders may be continued". 

The 1662 revision of the Book of Common Prayer implicitly acknowledged this debt when, for the first time since the Reformation, it restored the commemoration of Pope Gregory the Great to the liturgical calendar.  St Gregory, of course, initiated the missionary effort that resulted in the creation of the See of Canterbury.

Imperfectly, hesitatingly, the Anglican tradition - despite the rupture of the Reformation - has been shaped by the faith and tradition of the ancient and apostolic Roman church.  It is this historical reality which allowed the Holy See to proclaim Anglicanorum Coetibus, providing a means for Anglicans to be reconciled to the See of Peter and to thereby recover the fullness of our heritage as Latin Catholics.

Which brings us to today's commemoration of the Holy Proto-martyrs of the Roman Church.  This commemoration reminds the Universal Church that the primacy of the Roman church is built on the witness of its martyrs.  In his Epistle to the Corinthians, Clement I points to the witness of the proto-martyrs alongside the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul:

To these men who spent their lives in the practice of holiness, there is to be added a great multitude of the elect, who, having through envy endured many indignities and tortures, furnished us with a most excellent example.

To acknowledge the primacy of the Roman church is to accept the witness of Peter, Paul and the holy proto-martyrs.  It is to share in the confession of St Irenaeus - "the greatest, most ancient Church, the Church known to all, the Church founded and established in Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul ... With this Church, because of its more excellent origin, every Church must agree" (Adversus Haereses III 3, 1-3).  Anglicanorum Coetibus is a gift which allows Anglicans to share this confession.

"He stood for the Church's universality and unity"

St Augustine's sermon on the feast of the martyrdom of Peter and Paul reminds us that the Petrine ministry is one which serves communion and unity.  Peter, Augustine proclaims, "stood for the Church's universality and unity":

Before his passion the Lord Jesus, as you know, chose those disciples of his whom he called apostles. Among these it was only Peter who almost everywhere was given the privilege of representing the whole Church. It was in the person of the whole Church, which he alone represented, that he was privileged to hear, "To you will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven." After all, it is not just one man that received these keys, but the Church in its unity. So this is the reason for Peter’s acknowledged pre-eminence, that he stood for the Church’s universality and unity, when he was told, "To you I am entrusting," what has in fact been entrusted to all. To show you that it is the Church which has received the keys of the kingdom of heaven, listen to what the Lord says in another place to all his apostles: "Receive the Holy Spirit; and immediately afterwards, Whose sins you forgive, they will be forgiven them; whose sins you retain, they will be retained" (John 20:22-23).

Quite rightly, too, did the Lord after his resurrection entrust his sheep to Peter to be fed (Jn. 21: 15-19). It is not, you see, that he alone among the disciples was fit to feed the Lord’s sheep; but when Christ speaks to one man, unity is being commended to us. And he first speaks to Peter, because Peter is the first among the apostles.

Augustine's understanding of the Petrine ministry provides an insight into the crisis of contemporary Anglicanism.  Without the Petrine ministry, Anglicanism vocation to universality and unity is fundamentally flawed.  The ARCIC agreements on 'Authority in the Church' have at least implicitly recognised this, urging Anglicanism to undergo a "recovery and re-reception" of the "universal primacy by the Bishop of Rome" (The Gift of Authority III, 62).

It is in this context that the authentically ecumenical promise of Anglicanorum Coetibus can be seen.  To quote from Fr Aidan Nichols' homily at the first Mass of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham:

It is nothing less than the reconfiguring of Anglicanism by union with the Petrine centre and its criteria of orthodoxy. 

For universality and unity, we need Peter.  This is what Anglicanorum Coetibus offers the Anglican tradition.  For Anglican pilgrims on the path of reconciliation with the See of Peter, this is what we can celebrate on today's feast.

Peter - "bearing witness to the truth, he serves unity"

In the week in which we celebrate the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, it is appropriate to reflect on words from Blessed John Paul II's encyclical Ut unum sint on the Petrine primacy:

The Bishop of Rome is the Bishop of the Church which preserves the mark of the martyrdom of Peter and of Paul: "By a mysterious design of Providence it is at Rome that [Peter] concludes his journey in following Jesus, and it is at Rome that he gives his greatest proof of love and fidelity. Likewise Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, gives his supreme witness at Rome. In this way the Church of Rome became the Church of Peter and of Paul" (90) ...

With the power and the authority without which such an office would be illusory, the Bishop of Rome must ensure the communion of all the Churches. For this reason, he is the first servant of unity. This primacy is exercised on various levels, including vigilance over the handing down of the Word, the celebration of the Liturgy and the Sacraments, the Church's mission, discipline and the Christian life. It is the responsibility of the Successor of Peter to recall the requirements of the common good of the Church, should anyone be tempted to overlook it in the pursuit of personal interests. He has the duty to admonish, to caution and to declare at times that this or that opinion being circulated is irreconcilable with the unity of faith. When circumstances require it, he speaks in the name of all the Pastors in communion with him. He can also—under very specific conditions clearly laid down by the First Vatican Council— declare ex cathedra that a certain doctrine belongs to the deposit of faith. By thus bearing witness to the truth, he serves unity (94).

Mindful of the crisis of orthodoxy and orthopraxis within contemporary Anglicanism, we can see with a renewed vision the evangelical vocation of the Petrine ministry to build up the Church's unity and communion.  It is precisely the absence of this Petrine ministry within Anglicanism which has created the circumstances which have given rise to a succession of ecclesiological crises, led to impaired communion and resulted in significant divisions (Continuing, AMiA, CANA, GAFCON, and now AMiE). We have cut ourselves off from Peter and his vocation to build up the Church's unity and communion.

Those Anglicans prayerfully reflecting on Anglicanorum Coetibus can then re-receive the truth that, as Ut unum sint proclaims, the Petrine primacy has its foundation in the Gospel:

In the New Testament, the person of Peter has an eminent place. In the first part of the Acts of the Apostles, he appears as the leader and spokesman of the Apostolic College described as "Peter ... and the Eleven" (2:14; cf. 2:37, 5:29). The place assigned to Peter is based on the words of Christ himself, as they are recorded in the Gospel traditions.

This Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, I continue my journey towards reconciliation with the See of Peter, mindful of the commission given to Peter and his successors by the Incarnate Word, the Crucified and Risen Lord.

The Ordinariates and the Psalter

In the catechesis at his general audience on Wednesday of this week, the Holy Father spoke of the Psalms as "the book of prayer par excellence".  His comments emphasise the significance of the Psalter to the daily office:

The Psalms teach us to pray ... In them, the Word of God becomes the word of prayer. ... People who pray the Psalms speak to God with the words of God, addressing Him with the words He Himself taught us. ... Through these words it is also possible to know and accept the criteria of His actions, to approach the mystery of His thoughts and His ways, so as to grow and develop in faith and love.

And it is in the Paschal Mystery that the Psalms are provided with their "ultimate interpretation" - it is in light of the Cross and Resurrection that the Church prays the psalms in its daily prayer:

Equally important and significant are the manner and frequency in which the words of the Psalms appear in the New Testament, where they assume and underline that prophetic significance suggested by the link of the Book of Psalms with the messianic figure of David. In His earthly life the Lord Jesus prayed with the Psalms, and in Him they reach definitive fulfilment and reveal their fullest and deepest meaning. The prayers of the Book of Psalms, with which we speak to God, speak to us of Him, they speak of the Son, image of the invisible God Who fully reveals the Father's face to us. Thus Christians, by praying the Psalms, pray to the Father in Christ and with Christ, seeing those songs in a new perspective which has its ultimate interpretation in the Paschal Mystery.

Benedict's words should recall us to pray the Psalms in Christ and with the Church in the daily office.  Restoring such a patristic use of the Psalter was the intention of Cranmer in his reform of the daily office.  In his preface to the Book of Common Prayer, "Concerning the Service of the Church", he noted of the Psalms, "now of late time a few of them have been daily said, and the rest utterly omitted".  Perhaps the Ordinariates and Anglican-Use communities in the Catholic Church, reflecting the Anglican tradition of  Evensong and of the whole people of God joining in the Office, have a vocation to exemplify such a praying of the Psalms outside of a monastic context.

The voice and the Word

I live close to a major town in Northern Ireland with numerous Anglican parishes (at least 8 between my home and the far end of the town).  Not one will be celebrating the Holy Eucharist on this Feast of the birth of St John the Baptist.  Thankfully a small handful of Anglican parishes in Belfast have a Eucharist on this day.  It is another, however, illustration of the failure of the Church of Ireland to live out key patristic, catholic practices - it is clear from St Augustine that the Church celebrated this feast in his day. 

Today we celebrate the Forerunner, the voice who pointed to the Word.

The Church observes the birth of John as in some way sacred; and you will not find any other of the great men of old whose birth we celebrate officially. We celebrate John’s, as we celebrate Christ’s. This point cannot be passed over in silence, and if I may not perhaps be able to explain it in the way that such an important matter deserves, it is still worth thinking about it a little more deeply and fruitfully than usual.

John is born of an old woman who is barren; Christ is born of a young woman who is a virgin. That John will be born is not believed, and his father is struck dumb; that Christ will be born is believed, and he is conceived by faith ...

Zachary is struck dumb and loses his voice, until John, the Lord’s forerunner, is born and releases his voice for him. What does Zachary’s silence mean, but that prophecy was obscure and, before the proclamation of Christ, somehow concealed and shut up? It is released and opened up by his arrival, it becomes clear when the one who was being prophesied is about to come ... The tongue is released because a voice is being born ...

John is the voice, but the Lord in the beginning was the Word. John is a voice for a time, but Christ is the eternal Word from the beginning.

From St Augustine's sermon on the Feast of the birth of St John the Baptist.

Corpus Christi - 'be what you see and receive what you are'

Only a small handful of Irish Anglican parishes will be celebrating Corpus Christi - a sobering reminder of the reality of Irish Anglicanism and its distance from an authentically catholic understanding of the Holy Eucharist.  For those of us who value the richness of the Anglican tradition but who also seek its completion and fullness in catholic communion with the See of Peter, today's feast can be another step on our pilgrimage.

May the words of St Augustine of Hippo encourage us on our journey:

You see on God's altar bread and a cup.  That is what the evidence of your eyes tells you but your faith requires you to believe that the bread is the body of Christ, and the cup the blood of Christ ...

It is the sacrament of yourselves that is placed on the Lord's Table, and it is the sacrament of yourselves that you are receiving.  You reply 'Amen' to what you are, and thereby agree that such you are.  You hear the words 'The body of Christ' and you reply 'Amen'.  Be, then, a member of Christ's body, so that your 'Amen' may accord with the truth ...

Be, then, what you see, and receive what you are.

The Ordinariates and the Body of Christ

On the eve of the feast of Corpus Christi, thoughts from The Anglo-Catholic blog on those among the cloud of witnesses praying for the Ordinariates:

On this week when we recognize the feast of Corpus Christi, it is quite fitting for us to think of those with whom we have communion in Heaven. It is important to remember that everything we are doing in entering the Ordinariates is for the sake of communion. The preservation of our Anglican heritage is not for our sake alone, but for the sake of the Kingdom of God. Why are we going through these struggles? It is for the sake of that most blessed of gifts; the Holy Sacrament of the Altar. It is for the glory of Christ and for the conversion of the lost that they too make partake of His very body and blood. This is what the "witnesses in Heaven" are praying for and it is what we should be praying for also ...

Whether it be Blessed John Henry Newman, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, or Our Lady of the Atonement, they are members of that very same cloud of witnesses. They long to see the growth of the Anglican heritage within the Catholic Church, and it is their voices that are being lifted up onto the altar of God along with ours as a sweet incense. They are the "spirits of just men made perfect" (Heb 12:23) whose presence we enter during every liturgy. Let us take heart in knowing that whatever challenges lie in our path, whatever delays may occur, and whatever confusion we may have, that there is an innumerable company of the "souls of the faithful departed" who continually behold the face of our Lord Jesus Christ and are petitioning Him for our good, both today and forever.

To which this Irish Anglican prayerfully reflecting on Anglicanorum Coetibus adds, St Augustine of Hippo and St Augustine of Canterbury ora pro nobis.