Celebrity Converts – Will They Stay or Will They Go?

May 4, 2010

I will admit that I have had little time – or desire – to be active on the blog world as of late, whether reading or posting. I suppose this is because my life is very active, as I happily take on more responsibilities at work. I also have become a bit agitated with the nitpicking nature of some blogs, but alas that is another post. I have also been enjoying reading more as of late, so I can be found curled up with a good book more often than I feel like being on the computer.

Nonetheless, I read a few days ago that Daniel Herzog, cradle-Catholic turned conservative Episcopal bishop turned Catholic is now back to being Episcopalian again. In the past, I probably would have been disappointed to lose one of our “celebrity” converts, but these days, it really doesn’t bother me. This is not to say I don’t want more solid Anglicans to join our fold (after all, they usually bring great music, worship, and education with them), it is just that I am no longer into the “we can produce more celebrity converts than you” mentality. The Church will survive whether the Daniel Herzogs, the Scott Hahns, or even the lowly David Bennetts decide to leave (not that Scott Hahn or I have any intention or leaving; it is just that the Church will survive if we do). We have plenty of hard-working, pious, saints in our midst who just do Christ’s work for others without the press or blogosphere getting worked up about it. I wish Herzog well, I really do, but honestly, I am not that concerned if somehow our “celebrity convert factor” has been reduced.

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Posted by David Bennett

Church of England to Move Ahead With Female Bishops

February 9, 2010

Here.

My view: I disagree, but let’s be honest. If you have women priests, it only makes sense to have women bishops. At least Catholics and Orthodox are consistent.

While Catholic ecclesiology, as practiced by Orthodoxy and Catholicism, does not permit the changing of Apostolic Tradition (even the pope can’t do it), Protestant ecclesiology permits it, so long as “due process” is observed (basically, what John always points out). If Anglo-Catholics are bothered by these innovations, then I would think they would do more than simply request “flying bishops,” which, IMHO, is a rather unCatholic option. Isn’t Anglo-Catholics requesting flying bishops a bit like saying “we want our own personal Catholic bishops so we can still be good members of a Protestant denomination?”

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Posted by David Bennett

John Lipscomb Becomes a Catholic Priest

December 5, 2009

Former Episcopal bishop John Lipscomb has been ordained a Cath0lic priest. He just seems to be relieved to be in a position to serve God quietly, instead of being the head of an Episcopal diocese in one of the more divisive times in Anglican history. Honestly, I can’t blame him.

1 Comment | Anglican Use, Anglican and Episcopal | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by David Bennett

To Divide or Not to Divide, That is the Question

December 3, 2009

I have made some comments over at Kendall Harmon’s blog related to whether women’s ordination and sexuality issues are “first order” or “second order” issues, and whether you can simply “believe the creed” and be considered catholic.

My first comment states that I don’t believe you can divide belief from morality. The ante-Nicene church had far more developed and uniform moral standards than doctrinal ones, so the early precedent emphasizes that both faith and action are essential to being Catholic. The idea that one can simply believe certain tenets and not worry about things like sexuality and valid orders is foreign to a Catholic way of thinking. Since our souls and bodies are joined, and since we are not Manichean, who we are, and what we do with our bodies, matter. For Catholics and Orthodox, simply mentally assenting to a truth doesn’t mean one has been, and is being, transformed into someone more like Christ. Now, I will grant that a case can be made for women’s ordination and for the blessing of same-sex unions. However, to say that since neither is mentioned in the creed, neither are important, misses the point.

My second comment relates to the fact that it is not just conservatives that believe women’s ordination and human sexuality are “first order,” church dividing, issues. It is common to blame conservatives for “overreacting” to developments in mainline Protestantism, and get on them for trying to “divide” various churches based on their opposition to recent developments. However, I think this is unfair, although I admit conservatives can be an angry and loud lot, but so can progressives. As I mention in my comment, many progressives have pushed and pushed for the acceptance of women’s ordination and the acceptance of same-sex relationships, even openly defying canons and rules of their respective churches for years. This shows that who can preside at the Eucharist, and what we do sexually, are, in reality, “first order” issues for both sides. Both sides get worked up over them; it is just that acceptance of WO and gay clergy is now the status quo in many mainline churches, so who is doing the protesting has changed. Perhaps there are a few moderates and latitudinarians left who truly do believe such issues are “second order,” but let’s not blame conservatives for taking a page from the progressives and angrily and adamantly believing their views are correct!

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Posted by David Bennett

ACNA Bishop: Offer from Rome “Offensive”

November 13, 2009

stain glass row

One would expect the reaction from liberal Anglicans to Rome’s offer would be less than positive, but many conservative Anglicans have also been up in arms about the offer, including bishop Don Harvey of a network of conservative Canadian Anglicans associated with ACNA (Anglican Church in North America). Personally, I find the generous response of evangelical Anglican Matt Kennedy to be better. His response is basically, “even though I don’t agree with the pope, this is a generous and courageous offer for those Anglicans that do happen to agree with the pope.”

Bishop Harvey is not so impressed, and lets his frustration be known:

“Apart from being an intrusion at the very highest levels of one major church into the internal affairs of another, under the guise of being ecumenical, this invitation offers very little that is new,” Bishop Don Harvey, moderator of the Anglican Network in Canada, told the group’s annual synod Thursday morning…

“I find the words in the official joint communique referring to ‘the Catholic Church and the Anglican Tradition’ offensive in the extreme and reporters who suggested that this may be a solution to the Network’s needs are not really aware of what we truly profess,” he said.

I do understand why some conservatives would dislike this offer. Even though the pope’s offer to Anglicans was precipitated by a request by the Traditional Anglican Communion, it still can be seen as “cutting in” on the game of traditional Anglicans, who, let’s face it, are not exactly unified in their response to TEC’s liberalism. There are various options available to those who oppose TEC, which include joining ACNA and staying in TEC. Adding another option, from Rome no less, into the mix, cannot be great news for conservative bishops who are having trouble shepherding the faithful.

On the other hand, Bishop Harvey and anybody else who speaks of ecumenism these days need to understand a certain reality about ecumenism: the old way of doing ecumenism is dead (except perhaps in some quarters of the Academy and in the offices of some church administration buildings). Spending loads of money and time to utter niceties to one another, coming up with nebulous statements of common belief, is out. Watering down churches’ beliefs until no church believes anything meaningful anymore, is the way ecumenism used to be done. It is not the way postmoderns do ecumenism, because it isn’t very genuine.

Serge has a good take on ecumenism, and I wrote about my approach a few years ago which is very similar to his (which I call “blog level ecumenism”). Personally, I would much rather do “on the ground” ecumenism with an Orthodox Christian who tells me he wants me to join the true Church (in his eyes, the Orthodox Church), than an official mainline ecumenical officer who will feed me some line about what they believe, only to publicly deny such a belief later. I respect churches and faiths that stand for things (peacefully and charitably, of course), whether Catholic, Orthodox, Calvinist, or whatever. Bishop Harvey  needs to understand that Rome does ecumenism differently, which is to say, we view ecumenism as both evangelization and working toward unity. It’s not the way the mainlines do it, but then again, Catholics aren’t mainline Protestants.

So basically, I understand the negative reaction to this offer, but on the other hand, I would not be offended if Calvinist Anglicans made a similar offer. After all, if Calvinist Catholics (!) approached the head of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church about accommodating them, I would expect the head of that church to help them out, and would not be offended because of that.

6 Comments | Anglican and Episcopal | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by David Bennett

It’s Here: Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus Released

November 9, 2009

The Vatican has released the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, as well as Complementary Norms for the same document, which provide the guidelines for incorporating Anglicans into the Catholic Church. I will look over the document more fully later, but wanted to make it available for our readers. We certainly live in exciting times!

Update: Brother Stephen has some very informative initial thoughts.

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Posted by David Bennett

Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio: It’s Time for Same-Sex Blessings

November 8, 2009

My former Episcopal diocese, the Diocese of Southern Ohio, is now instituting same-sex blessings. The diocese of Southern Ohio used to have a pretty strong conservative presence. Now, the ranks have been decimated. I thought it would take longer for this to happen in the diocese of Southern Ohio, but then again, many of the leaders I knew there were just waiting for the diocese to catch up with the other mainline Protestant churches.

Fr. David Bailey,  a friend, and priest in the Southern Ohio diocese has fought within the system to prevent this, or at the least, allow the traditional voice to be heard within the diocese. Fr. David is NOT given to exaggeration and histrionics, so when he says conservatives barely had a voice in the discussion on this decision, then I believe it to be true. But honestly, there probably isn’t much to discuss anyway, since most Episcopal leaders and influential laity, nationally and probably in Southern Ohio, are happy to have same-sex blessings.

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Posted by David Bennett

Anastasia: The Pope’s Generosity and Charity On Display

October 22, 2009

Anastasia, an Anglo-Catholic Anglican, has a great take on this recent Vatican gesture toward Anglicans: Benedict XVI is being extremely charitable and ecumenical:

I’ve spent a good deal of time in the last couple of days reading and having conversations with other Christians about the the Vatican creating a new structure for Anglicans. Huge pieces of the conversation are premature since we don’t have the actual document outlining the plan yet–where is that, by the way?

In a sense, I can’t help but be involved and invested given that this Vatican initiative is directed at me. It says, why hello, Catholic leaning Anglo-Catholics! We want you! I have to pay attention.

Okay, now…it was the result of a series of requests from groups wanting to come into Rome and I was not part of any of those groups. So, no. Not directed at me. And yet, in a grander sense, yes. This is about me and people who think like me.

I wrote in my previous post on patrimony that the Holy Father is hitting the right notes in terms of evangelism.* He has my attention. He has me rethinking (again, yes) whether or not I can accept RC dogmas. I’ve been blogging about it and discussing it with the incomparable Literacy-Chic over email and had just come around to “RC dogmas….yeah, I don’t think so.” I went from “I don’t think so” to “You know…I think I could” in 20 seconds flat upon reading the headline: Vatican Creates New Structure for Anglicans.

It’s easy enough to read this uncharitably. I’m too stupid to realize this still means accepting RC dogmas. Or maybe His Holiness has nearly tricked me into accepting his primacy (bwahahaha) by giving me a case of the warm fuzzies.

I don’t think either is the real appeal for me. I wrote about the in terms of patrimony, but there’s another way of saying it. I’ll get to the pithy statement, but let me lay out some pieces before I do.

First, let us take note that the Pope is being nice. Holy crap, when is the last time Christians tried that as a strategy? This is way nicer than just about any Catholic has approached me as far as the relative value of Anglicanism. He’s focused the discussion around the grace and beauty present in my traditions, rather than, say, pointing out the deficiencies and telling me my problem is that I”m too proud to submit…Read it All

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Posted by David Bennett

My Take on the New Catholic Gesture to Anglicans

October 22, 2009

There have been some fine analysis about the recent gestures from the Vatican toward Anglicans. Kendall Harmon and others have made some excellent observations. I would like to add some of my own observations.

1. The Anglican Communion is a mess. This is not to say the Catholic Church has its house in complete order, but, considering half the Anglican Communion is not in communion with the other half, and the list of re-alignned acronyms of conservative groups seems to grow larger by the day, the communion is in a rough spot. Living in this situation can’t be easy, and the pope recognizes this.

2. The Episcopal Church is going in a very liberal direction. With conservatives leaving, and progressives celebrating victories, TEC’s moral and theological vision is looking more like just another mainline Protestant church than anything Catholic or Orthodox. Of course, many liberal leaders and laypersons of TEC are absolutely fine with having more in common with liberal Presbyterians than with the ecumenical Patriarch (just go over to Fr. Jake’s blog). Anglo-Catholics don’t think this way, which creates a problem.

3. Rowan Williams, while (in my humble opinion) a decent theologian and thinker, is not the type of leader the communion needs to deal with this crisis. In the Academy you can nuance an issue to death and synthesize the position of all sides, but in the real world, the communion needs leadership that provides real direction. The pope has provided leadership. Some could argue the Anglican communion is not his business, but the pope saw a mess, and provided a generous way to help people (who want out) get out of it. It seems to me that the Vatican has put more real, concrete, work into dealing with this crisis than the Archbishop of Canterbury has.

4. Anglo-Catholics are struggling to find a home among conservative groups. It is strange (at least to me) that many Anglo-Catholic groups and leaders stood strong in TEC against women’s ordination and sub-Catholic ecclesiology, yet, these same Anglo-Catholics have joined up with fellow “conservatives” in ACNA and in other dioceses throughout the world, who support women’s ordination and have a Calvinist view of the Church. To me, unifying under the banner of  “we think TEC is wrong” is no way to have any sort of long-term unity.  The majority of conservative Anglicans worldwide are evangelical Calvinists. How long an Anglo-Catholic can handle “re-alignment” Anglicanism probably depends on the individual. ACNA seems to me to be just like what got TEC to this point: a loose unity of groups holding mutually exclusive positions, and failing to agree on fundamental issues like ecclesiology.

5. The pope is offering to accommodate Anglicans (primarily the Traditional Anglican Communion, who asked for this), but the offer stands for those Anglicans who wish to accept the Teachings of the Catholic Church. In other words, the Catholic Church isn’t going to be accepting the 39 Articles any time soon.

6. Nonetheless, the pope is recognizing the rich spiritual and liturgical heritage that Anglicanism offers, and recognizes that the Catholic Church will benefit from this heritage. Heck, I think we will benefit from this across all rites. A friend and I were talking on the way to a meeting yesterday how we would love establishing an Anglican-Use service at our parish.

7. Converting is difficult. It is not as easy as “Anglo-Catholics should have gone to Rome years ago,” as some evangelical Anglicans have suggested. The struggle to become Catholic (or any change in belief) is more difficult than some people think. The triumphalist convert often just thinks “The Catholic Church is so great, why don’t Anglo-Catholics just convert already?!” Such is not life, and denies the complexity of conversion.

5 Comments | Anglican Use, Anglican and Episcopal | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by David Bennett

More Details on the Vatican Anglican Announcement

October 20, 2009

I came across some more details about the recent Vatican gesture towards Anglicans which provides some exciting information about the steps Rome is willing to take to accommodate Anglicans (from America). Details are below:

The new canonical structure has the technical name of a “Personal Ordinariate”, which according to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) “will allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony”. The Ordinary — canonically, that means the one with power of governance — would normally be “appointed from among former Anglican clergy”, the CDF says.

The Apostolic Constitution establishing these Personal Ordinariates offers “a single canonical model for the universal Church which is adaptable to various local situations and equitable to former Anglicans in its universal application”, the statement continues. Among its features:

1. The Ordinary can be either a priest or an unmarried bishop;

2. The Ordinariate provides for the ordination as Catholic priests of married former Anglican clergy;

3. The Ordinariate allows seminarians to be trained in separate houses of formation in order “to address the particular needs of formation in the Anglican patrimony”.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster told journalists this morning that the new Apostolic Constitution was a response to various approaches made in the past three or four years by groups in the United States, Australia and the UK. Some were in communion with Lambeth, while others — such as the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), which claims 400,000 members worldwide — were not.

The Personal Ordinariates would allow for the pastoral care of lay people, clergy and religious in a corporate body under an Ordinary, but in collaboration with existing dioceses. Their geographical scope would correspond to the territory of a bishops’ conference. It would be a “cumulative jurisdiction”, meaning that the jurisdictions would overlap — insofar as the activity pertained to the wider Church, the authority would rest with the bishop of that diocese; insofar as it pertained to an internal activity, it would be a under the Ordinary of the Ordinariate. The process of reception of married Anglican priests would be unlikely to differ much from the current system, he said. Nor would he expect transfers of church property as part of the process of corporate reception.

The new structure allows for the safeguarding of Anglican traditions of liturgy and rites — but approval of the Holy See would be needed for separate liturgical texts and rites that differed from the Roman norm. Archbishop Nichols said the Constitution was an attempt to achieve a “balance between a corporate identity and the need to be embedded locally”, but stressed that the details of this could only be worked out once an Ordinariate were established. In the event of an application being made to establish such an Ordinariate in England and Wales, he said, “we will work very closely with colleagues in the Church of England. It is important that we do this together”.

Knowing all of this, I take back what I said earlier about this possibly seeming small to some people.  This is big, and the implications are big. Anglicans have converted to Rome before, but there has been no official, worldwide, structure to accommodate Catholic-minded Anglicans in the Catholic Church. It seem such a structure is now in place.

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Posted by David Bennett

Vatican Creates New Structure for Converting Anglicans

October 20, 2009

The Vatican announced plans to allow for the greater and easier conversion of Anglicans to Catholicism, apparently expanding the Anglican Use provision available in the U.S. According to the announcement, Anglicans who convert (including married priests) will be given their own pastoral supervision. The press release also indicates the Catholic Church hopes to preserve important aspects of Anglican spirituality:

“In this Apostolic Constitution the Holy Father has introduced a canonical structure that provides for such corporate reunion by establishing Personal Ordinariates which will allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony.”

Wow. This may seem small, but it is a pretty significant gesture.

6 Comments | Anglican Use, Anglican and Episcopal | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by David Bennett

Big News About Anglicans from the Vatican?

October 19, 2009

Book of Divine Worship

Reportedly, the Vatican will announce important news tomorrow relevant to Anglicans. Could this be information about bringing in the Traditional Anglican Communion into communion with the Catholic Church? Could it be, as Tito suggests, setting up an Anglican Use throughout the whole world (as opposed to just in the U.S.?). I guess We’ll have to wait and see until tomorrow!

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Posted by David Bennett

A Blog About the Episcopal Southern Ohio Diocese

October 16, 2009

A new blog has sprung up, dedicated to the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio. It is called the Episcopal Oysters of Southern Ohio. Having been in the ordination process in this diocese, and having resided there in the past, I still take an interest in the diocese.

When I was an Episcopalian, the bishop of the diocese, Herbert Thompson, was a known conservative, although not as conservative as say Robert Duncan or Keith Ackerman. However, the clergy of the diocese were not nearly as conservative as the bishop, and it figured that the diocese would go in a more liberal direction after Thompson’s death (and after the departure of many conservatives in the diocese to either Rome or Anglican break-off groups). Episcopal Oysters of Southern Ohio chronicles the fight for orthodoxy within the Episcopal diocese of Southern Ohio.

1 Comment | Anglican and Episcopal | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by David Bennett

More Outdated Theology and Science from John Spong

October 13, 2009

Bishop Spong is at it again.

When I was an Episcopalian, after they found out I was studying theology, many well-meaning older priests and laity would bring up John Spong. “Oh, isn’t he great” they would say, or something similar that implied how cutting edge Spong was, and that being young, I must really love the guy. Umm, no. In fact, I strongly believe that Spong should not be a bishop of any church, period, let alone a bishop in one that says the Nicene Creed weekly. To me, this is basic boundary keeping. Most organizations and entities would not allow someone who denies the most basic beliefs of that entity to have a leadership role, and most people wouldn’t be so vain as to think they should even be a leader under such pretenses.  But then again, even priests I know who like Spong have told me the guy has an ego the size of a basketball (exact quote), so that explains that.

Setting aside Spong’s personality and position, his science and theology are typical enlightenment rationalism taken to the extreme, a trend popular in the 1960s and 1970s. For example, read this excerpt from the article, and you might be wondering what position Spong is actually arguing against:

But such notions [of an afterlife, etc], he says, cannot survive the insights of astronomer Galileo, physicist Isaac Newton and evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin. Through them, says Spong, we discovered that the Earth is not the centre of the universe and that there’s space (not heaven) above us, that the workings of the world are due to basic physics (not Godly intervention) and that humans evolved from other creatures.

“We are related to the plankton, the cabbages and the great apes,” says Spong.

Instead of the traditional concepts of heaven and hell, he takes a fresh reading of the Christian gospels – particularly John – and concludes our eventual demise makes it more important to think about this life than the next.

“The goal of religion is not to prepare us for the next life,” he writes. “It is a call to live now, to love now, to be now and in a way to taste what it means to be part of a life that is eternal. … It is the presence of death that actually makes my life precious.”

Spong rarely gives traditional Christians any credit, and seems to be in a constant battle with the fundamentalism of his youth. The cosmology of some ancients (in which heaven is “up” and hell “down”) is really irrelevant as to whether there is an afterlife. Even my junior high students grasp that  although we use spatial language to describe afterlife “locations,” heaven really isn’t “up,” since we live within space-time, and God does not. It often “makes their brain hurt” to think about possible reality outside of the space-time continuum, but they tend to understand it, and that is that. It’s not a big deal. And physics? Don’t get me started. As I have studied physics (I read the Elegant Universe and the Physics of Consciousness over the summer), I have found the universe far more dynamic and amazing than I  ever imagined. The Big Bang (basically hypothesized by a Catholic priest), the behavior of quantum particles (or strings, if you accept that premise), in my humble opinion, points to a creator, not away from one.

The false dichotomy John Spong creates between science and faith doesn’t really hold true for most Christians who have moved beyond a fundamentalist/black-and-white-approach to the faith, one that, unfortunately, Spong himself and some of his fundamentalist skeptic buddies, have not moved past. If Spong and his ideas are so relevant, then why are churches that embrace his ideas dying faster than my garden after the first killing frost?

5 Comments | Anglican and Episcopal, News | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by David Bennett

Queen Dissatisfied; Shows Catholic Sympathies

October 8, 2009

The Telegraph is reporting that the Queen is unhappy with the recent craziness in the Anglican Communion and is a behind the scenes supporter of traditionalist movements. This should not come as a surprise for many reasons. The article also mentions that she has grown very sympathetic to Catholicism.

None of this really counts as news since many, many Anglicans are unhappy with the direction of the communion and find Catholicism a nice alternative. However, also like many disaffected Anglicans, this does not mean that the Queen is on the verge of converting. If Tony Blair’s conversion had potential to be messy, imagine the Queen! Still, it would be an amazing event to see the Queen of England formally become Catholic in my lifetime. The first Elizabeth had an opportunity to reconcile England with Rome, but didn’t take it. It would be excellent if another Elizabeth did.

2 Comments | Anglican and Episcopal, Catholic, General | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Jonathan B

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