Sentire Cum Ecclesia

UPDATE: Sorry that the comments were off. Don’t know what caused this. Fire away!

Thanks for everyone who contributed to our lively discussion on the traditional Catholic doctrine of Mary’s virginity “in partu”, ie. the teaching that (as the Second Vatican Council put it rather tenderly) the firstborn Son of Mary “did not diminish his Mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it” (Lumen gentium, n. 57).

In my initial comment, I put it rather more bluntly. The “virgo in partu” doctrine requires us to believe – as a matter of historical fact – that Jesus’ birth was miraculous not only in the fact that Mary experienced no pain as she gave birth, but that furthermore Jesus passed through her vagina in such a way that her hymen was not broken.

Josh was, understandably, scandalised by such blunt language, even though he valiantly defended the “virgo in partu” doctrine itself by producing numerous scriptural, patristic, scholastic and magisterial testimonies to demonstrate the truth of the doctrine.

Stephen and Tony were also scandalised by the discussion. They agreed with my initial sense that the doctrine could lend itself to a docetic interpretation, and that furthermore it was in danger of confusing the pre- and post-resurrection attributes of the body of Christ, but above all they were scandalised by the fact that this was a discussion that was entirely conducted (both in Christian tradition and on this ‘ere blog) by men. They too thought the discussion utterly distasteful.

Following these discussions, this is my current thinking:

1) The doctrine that Mary remained a virgin “ante partum, in partu et post partum” is simply an exposition of the phrase in the Creed that Jesus Christ was “born of the Virgin Mary”. All orthodox Christians affirm the virginal conception of Jesus. While not quite in the same category as the bodily resurrection of Jesus (the Scriptures are obviously more concerned with the latter than the former), it is way up there as one of the classic “fundamentals” of Christian dogma. Catholics and Orthodox and many other Tradition-minded Christians such as some Lutherans and Anglicans also affirm the perpetual virginity of Mary in the sense that she had no other children after Jesus, leading to the conclusion that she had no sexual relations with Joseph after Jesus’ birth either. That takes care of the “ante partum” and the “post partum”. The latter is controversial only for some Protestants.

2) But the doctrine that Mary was a virgin “in partu” points to something quite strange that hasn’t been properly reflected upon. For the ancient and medieval Christians, this doctrine appears to have been as universal and as certain as the doctrines of her “ante-” and “post-partum” virginity. But for modern Westerners, for whom the definition of virginity is “not having had sex”, the doctrine of Mary’s virginity “in partu” makes no sense. Using the modern Western definition of virginity, the doctrine of “virgo in partu” seems to say that that Mary not only did not have sex either before or after Jesus’ birth, but she didn’t have sex while giving birth. This is preposterous, of course, and leads us to conclude that the ancients had an entirely different understanding of what virginity meant, and hence what it meant to call Mary a “virgin”.

3) This difference in meaning is referred to by euphemisms in the Church’s tradition, usually along the lines of saying that Jesus’ birth was miraculous (nb. there is agreement on this: since the infant Jesus’ body did not have the same attributes that the body of the risen Jesus had, it must have been a miracle) in that it took place while “preserving his mother’s virginity intact” or “without violating his mother’s virginal integrity”. “Intact” and “integrity” are euphemisms for an unbroken hymen.

4) This seems to us today to be an utterly scandalous and shameful discussion only because we do not live in the same sort of “honour/shame” culture that Jesus and Mary and most Christians and Jews practically up till the last century or so lived in (nb. Muslims still mainly live in just the same “honour/shame” culture that existed in 1st Century Palestine). In the “honour/shame” culture of the first century, the very discussion we have been having – and which has seemed to be a matter of shame to proponents of both sides of the argument – was in fact a matter of honour for both families and prospective brides. Sure, they used euphemisms such as “intact” and “inviolate”, but what they took great pride in was being able to present their young daughter as a “virgin” to her prospective husband precisely in the sense that her hymen was intact. Conceivably, even the girl in question could take pride in this. Conversely, if an examination proved it to be otherwise (and such examinations did take place – I can remember that it was said that when Diana Spencer was engaged to Prince Charles, she had to undergo a medical examination to “verify her virginity”. This was in our own lifetime!), conceivably both the girl and her family would be shamed. In this society, virginity was not about something you had done or not done, but about what you were – virginity was a physical state.

5) Mary’s early Christian family (the Church!) was convinced that the most exalted daughter of Israel was completely without shame, completely honourable, and thus physically-virginally “intact” not only before Jesus’ birth, but even (and this is precisely the force of the “in partu”) during his passage out of her womb (which required a true miracle) and also ever after (which required another kind of miracle on Joseph’s part!). So they did not find any shame in discussing this matter, even if they used euphemisms for the blunt fact that they were talking about whether or not Mary’s hymen had been ruptured.

6) Now, today, this all seems quite preposterous to us. With the change in the definition of virginity, the doctrines of “ante-” and “post-partum” still make sense (even if they are contended by some), but the “in partu” doctrine seems wildly out of place. Nevertheless, because it is a part of the Church’s Tradition, the Church is sticking to it like glue – as both the magisterium of the Second Vatican Council and John Paul II make clear. They don’t make a big point of it, but it is there, and cannot be ignored.

7) So the question is: what do we do with it today? Do we try to get back to an earlier cultural understanding in which honour was taken in what we today would find shameful? Do we have to rethink our definitions? How do we do justice to our original concern not to appear docetic in our teaching of the Incarnation? What, in short, is the authentic heart of the doctrine that Mary the Mother of God was integrally a virgin “ante partum”, “post partum”, but also “in partu”?

If you have been on the Ignatius Press mailing list, you cannot have missed their promotion of Abby Johnson’s new book “un-Planned”. Yesterday, the online edition of Catholic San Francisco was running this story: Former Planned Parenthood Director to convert to Catholicism.

From that story:

Abby Johnson, 30, who will speak at the 11 a.m. Walk for Life West Coast rally in San Francisco Jan. 22, is preparing with her husband Doug to enter the Catholic Church in her native Texas within the next few months. The couple has a 4-year-old daughter.

“When we went to the Catholic Church for the first time we knew that was where we were supposed to be and we have been there ever since,” said Johnson, who said she particularly loves the church’s reverence for Mary as the mother of God. “The more we started learning about the beliefs of the church and the Eucharist and everything, it seemed like this was what had been missing our whole lives.”

After eight years as a Planned Parenthood volunteer and employee, Johnson walked away from her job as director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan/College Station, Texas, Oct. 6, 2009 during a prayer vigil by 40 Days for Life. Johnson, who had two abortions at 20 and at 23, first began working as a clinic escort while a student at Texas A&M University. Assisting with an ultrasound during an abortion in September 2009 turned her into a pro-life advocate.

Johnson’s embrace of Catholicism was a natural development after she became pro-life but was precipitated by her pro-choice Episcopalian community’s vocal rejection of her change of heart, she said. Even before the dramatic experience of assisting in an ultrasound abortion, Johnson said God had been calling to her for several months through the penitential rite of the Episcopal service, which is similar to the Catholic prayer. With the Episcopalian Church one of the largest donors to the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Johnson said she and her husband were not going to remain at the church anyway.

But, like me when I realised that in conscience I had no choice but to seek communion with the Catholic Church, there is a problem:

Johnson is in the process of obtaining an annulment of the marriage to the man who was her husband at the time she had her abortions, so that she and her husband Doug can convalidate their marriage and enter the church. “We are ready to come into the church as soon as we are able,” Johnson said.

I know from personal experience what this “soon as we are able” means. It means a long wait with no certainty of the outcome. Annulments are not “church divorces” – you don’t get one just because you apply for one. And in the case of converts, this means you may be facing a situation where you meet a road-block in your earnest desire to enter the Catholic Church. There are alternatives, of course. If it turns out that the Church says your first marriage was valid, the Church is effectively calling you to repentance and to a life of sexual celibacy within your second marriage. Not an easy call.

I thank God that I didn’t have to face this decision. If I had, I think I would have been caught in a half-way house, because I don’t think I could have – or indeed would have – embraced such a call to celibacy. Not just because of my own desires – in fact least of all for that reason – but also because of the pledge I made to my wife when I married her. Yet I would not have turned away from the Catholic Church. I would have chosen to live like one the Catechumens in the early Church, fully participating in the life of the Church but without the benefit of the sacraments.

Of course, a major difference between the divorced and remarried Christian convert seeking communion with the Catholic Church is that they have already been baptised, and this sacramental character and grace would have been what I would have had to rely upon in my Christian life. Of course, that is still true today, even though I have had the grace of completing Confirmation, the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the Eucharist since. It is in fact an irony that the it is because the Catholic Church recognises Christian baptism performed in ecclesiastical communities not in full communion with her that former marriages celebrated in these Churches between baptised Christians require annulment. Things would be easier – but wrong – if we were like some Orthodox communties that do not recognise baptism performed “outside the Church” (as they call it).

This photo of the new Ordinary for the “Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham” is interesting for a couple of reasons that Rocco Palmo points out:

Two days after his ordination to the Catholic priesthood — and, with it, his papal appointment as head of the groundbreaking Personal Ordinariate for former Anglicans in England and Wales — Fr Keith Newton (left) held a press briefing yesterday on the new structure, whose 14-month trajectory from Vatican plan to ecclesial reality remains fairly breathtaking by Roman standards.

Reflecting both his prior life as an Anglican bishop and his new status as the leader of an entity with the juridical status of a diocese (including financial votes in the episcopal conference), in keeping with the special provision of Anglicanorum coetibus for prelates-become-priests, the new cleric donned a pectoral cross and — in another first-of-its-kind moment (at least, this side of Canterbury… not to mention Milingo) — an episcopal ring on his right hand alongside the wedding ring on his left.

To be strictly correct, the provisions referred to are actually in the Complimentary Norms for the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, rather than in the Constitution itself. The relevant paragraph is:

§4. A former Anglican Bishop who belongs to the Ordinariate and who has not been ordained as a bishop in the Catholic Church, may request permission from the Holy See to use the insignia of the episcopal office.

One assumes that Fr Newton has actually requested and been given this permission – although it may be his perogative “by right” rather than by “permission”, since we note that the “decree of erection” of the Ordinariate (again helpfully provided by Mr Palmo) actually states that

6. The Ordinary is a member by right of the Episcopal Conference of England and Wales, with deliberative vote in those cases in which this is required in law.

Again, the Complimentary Norms also state that:

§3. A former Anglican Bishop who belongs to the Ordinariate may be invited to participate in the meetings of the Bishops’ Conference of the respective territory, with the equivalent status of a retired bishop.

So as Ordinary, it appears that Fr Newton assumes an episcopal status “by right” which can be extended to the other ex-Anglican bishops also, but by “invitation” and “permission” rather than “by right”. So while sacramentally not a bishop, he legally exercises all the perogatives of a bishop. I wonder if this isn’t perhaps rather akin to the status that an abbot traditionally has. Don’t abbots also wear pectoral crosses and the ring? Is that an analogy?

There. That was my attempt at a sensationalist headline. I immediately invoke John L. Allen’s advice that

any news item with the word “Vatican” in the headline [should] carry the following proviso: “Warning: The following story may be bunk.”

.
But let’s not make light of a what is an important story, the revelation (in an Irish TV report aired on January 17 by the RTE network called “Unspeakable Crimes”) that:

In 1996, the Irish bishops had devised a new set of policies for handling such allegations, including a mandate to inform law-enforcement officials of all credible reports of abuse. But in January 1997 the apostolic nuncio serving in Ireland, Archbishop Luciano Storero, sent a letter to the Irish bishops, conveying the decision of the Congregation for Clergy that the policies should not be carried out.

In particular, Archbishop Storero— a veteran Vatican diplomat who was nuncio in Ireland from 1995 until his death in 2000—said that the policy of mandatory reporting “gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature.” The letter from Archbishop Storero, which had previously been kept confidential, was apparently furnished to the RTE investigation by an Irish bishop.

Those two paragraphs come from this analysis of the story at Catholic Culture, which analyses the findings and claims of that TV report. (HT to Jeff Tan for this).

This is where John Allen’s advice comes in. To say that this was a “Vatican” directive can be misleading because – while the directive obviously DID come from someone in the Holy See (most likely, according to the Catholic Culture analysis, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos who was the head of the Congregation for the Clergy) it gives two false impressions:

1) that there was a united Vatican policy on this. The CC analysis highlights the debate – not about whether but – about when (ie. how early) Cardinal Ratzinger adopted his own very different stance to Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos.

2) that this directive in someway came from Pope John Paul II himself. Admittedly (and I haven’t seen the actual TV program), this second claim is not (as far as I know) made in “Unspeakable Crimes”, the impression can be left whenever something is said to come “from the Vatican”.

The CC analysis also points out that even if the Nuncio did issue such a directive on behalf of the Congregation for the Clergy, it certainly should not have stopped any particular bishop from dealing with any matters that came to their attention in other ways.

As they say, the investigation continues.

A question in relation to the Semper Virgo dogma has been niggling away in the back of my mind during our previous conversations on the topic – and I would like your responses on this.

I was listening to an episode of Catholic Answers the other day in which a caller asked Karl Keating whether a necessary component of the dogma (to which all Catholics must give assent) was the tradition of “ante partum, in partu and post partum” doctrine in the sense of Mary remaining “physically intact” in the birth of Jesus, ie. that her her hymen was not ruptured in the birth. Keating was not able to give a definitive answer on that one.

The idea of course relates to the ancient (and currently still widespread Middle Eastern) understanding of virginity as involving the rupture of the hymen, rather than simply the question of the act of sexual intercourse. Thus the Fathers saw the birth of Jesus as a miraculous event not only in terms of the virginal conception, but also strictly (in this physical sense) as a virginal birth. They taught that the birth was without pain (since pain in childbirth was a punishment for sin – Gen 3:16) and that it was possible for the body of the infant Jesus to pass through his mother’s hymen without breaking it in the same way that after his resurrection, his body miraculously passed through the locked doors of the upper room (John 20:19).

Up front, I have to admit that I have rather more difficulty with this way of teaching the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity than with the simple belief that she did not have sexual relations with her husband either before or after Jesus’ birth, and that hence she had no other children. To me this makes the best sense of both the Scriptures and the Church’s tradition. And in this sense, the perpetual virginity of Mary is a dogma which can be supposed to have a primarily historical rather than a theological basis (nb. I don’t believe that it can be theologically true unless it is also historically true), in that it was something that could have been known by the early Christian community.

On the other hand, the question about whether or not Mary experienced pain or the breaking of her hymen in giving birth to Jesus seems to me to be a conclusion primarily based on theological ideas (and, in respect to the hymen question, cultural ideas). I guess that, if Mary experienced no pain in giving birth to Jesus, this is something that could have been known by the early Christian community, but it boggles the mind how anyone could have known for certain one way or another whether her hymen was ruptured. It seems to me that this way of teaching the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity is dangerous on two grounds: A) With regard to the pain of childbirth, it seems dangerously docetic. Mary DID experience pain in her life (eg. Luke 2:35 – even if this refers to a pain of the soul) and perhaps also death (according to one valid tradition regarding her final departure), which seems to me to show that it is not necessary to postulate a painless birth as a logical outcome of Mary’s own immaculate conception. B) With regard to Jesus passing through Mary’s hymen without rupturing it, this cannot be defended with reference to the attributes of Jesus’ body AFTER the Resurrection. Jesus’ post-Resurrection body was a glorified body and therefore quite different in attributes to his conception-till-burial body.

Anyway, these are my thoughts. I am keen to hear what other Catholic readers think of this. Our separated brethren and sistern may sit this one out – I am really interested in what Catholic doctrine on the matter is.

I have only just finished reading the final report of the US Catholic Lutheran Dialogue “The Hope of Eternal Life” – which, while not “perfect in every way”, is a very thorough study of a number of matters relating to eschatology, and incorporates a good deal of Pope Benedict’s teaching in Eschatology and Spe Salvi. Thus his teaching is already being incorporated into the magisterial kitbag that Catholic ecumenical theologians take to the dialogue table.

Actually, “The Hope of Eternal Life” gives most consideration to Ratzinger’s Eschatology under the topic of the Immortality of the Soul, in which it gives a big tick to “dialogical immortality” as a paradigm that can assist Lutherans and Catholics together to affirm this doctrine – in passing, I would say that this same “dialogical” perspective is important in the doctrine of Purgatory also, and this seems to be confirmed by the latest development in BXVI’s magisterium.

Which is this contribution from his most recent Wednesday Audience Catechesis on Saint Catherine of Genoa (full translation not yet available):

Catherine’s thought on purgatory, for which she is particularly known, is condensed in the last two parts of the book mentioned at the beginning: “Treatise on Purgatory” and “Dialogues on the Soul and Body.”

It is important to observe that, in her mystical experience, Catherine never had specific revelations on purgatory or on souls that are being purified there. However, in the writings inspired by our saint purgatory is a central element, and the way of describing it has original characteristics in relation to her era.

The first original feature refers to the “place” of the purification of souls. In her time [purgatory] was presented primarily with recourse to images connected to space: There was thought of a certain space where purgatory would be found. For Catherine, instead, purgatory is not represented as an element of the landscape of the core of the earth; it is a fire that is not exterior but interior.

This is purgatory, an interior fire. The saint speaks of the soul’s journey of purification to full communion with God, based on her own experience of profound sorrow for the sins committed, in contrast to the infinite love of God. We have heard about the moment of her conversion, when Catherine suddenly felt God’s goodness, the infinite distance of her life from this goodness and a burning fire within her. And this is the fire that purifies, it is the interior fire of purgatory.

Here also there is an original feature in relation to the thought of the era. She does not begin, in fact, from the beyond to narrate the torments of purgatory – as was usual at that time and perhaps also today – and then indicate the path for purification or conversion. Instead our saint begins from her own interior experience of her life on the path to eternity.

The soul, says Catherine, appears before God still bound to the desires and the sorrow that derive from sin, and this makes it impossible for it to enjoy the Beatific Vision of God. Catherine affirms that God is so pure and holy that the soul with stains of sin cannot be in the presence of the Divine Majesty. And we also realize how far we are, how full we are of so many things, so that we cannot see God. The soul is conscious of the immense love and perfect justice of God and, in consequence, suffers for not having responded correctly and perfectly to that love, and that is why the love itself of God becomes a flame. Love itself purifies it from its dross of sin.

Theological and mystical sources typical of the era can be found in Catherine’s work. Particularly there is an image from Dionysius the Areopagite: that of the golden thread that unites the human heart with God himself. When God has purified man, he ties him with a very fine thread of gold, which is his love, and attracts him to himself with such strong affection that man remains as “overcome and conquered and altogether outside himself.” Thus the human heart is invaded by the love of God, which becomes the only guide, the sole motor of his existence.

This situation of elevation to God and of abandonment to his will, expressed in the image of the thread, is used by Catherine to express the action of the divine light on souls in purgatory, light that purifies them and elevates them to the splendors of the shining rays of God.

Dear friends, the saints, in their experience of union with God, reach such profound “knowledge” of the divine mysteries, in which love and knowledge are fused, that they are of help to theologians themselves in their task of study, of “intelligentia fidei,” of “intelligentia” of the mysteries of the faith, of real deepening in the mysteries, for example, of what purgatory is. […]

To relate these comments to his earlier teaching in Eschatology and Spe Salvi, Benedict identifies the “interior fire” which he sees in St Catherine’s teaching with nothing other than the post-death encounter of the human soul (the human person/self as “The Hope of Eternal Life” likes to say) with the saving and judging presence of Christ himself:

47. Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God.

Thus, at the end of life, all human souls encounter Christ. How that judgment takes place – whether it is primarily a saving encounter or a judging encounter – depends on the personal situation and state of each individual human being in relation to Christ. And thus we can also see how this “dialogical” theology of eschatological experience opens the door to ecumenical understanding on the doctrine of purgatory as well as the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

Update: It might be helpful if at this point I provide the “common affirmation” on the doctrine of purgatory from “The Hope of Eternal Life” for readers who don’t want to wade through the whole document:

5. Common Affirmations

206. When misconceptions are stripped away and the continuing reflections of our churches are taken into account, the difference between our churches on the doctrine of purgatory is seen in a new light.

Agreements

207. Catholics and Lutherans agree:

1. During this life, the justified “are not exempt from a lifelong struggle against the contradiction to God within the selfish desires of the old Adam (see Gal. 5:16; Rom. 7:7-10)” (JDDJ, 28; cf. Trent DS 1515 and 1690 and LC, Baptism, paras. 65-67236).

2. This struggle is rightly described by a variety of categories: e.g., penitence, healing, daily dying and rising with Christ.

3. Borne in Christ, the painful aspects of this struggle are a participation in Christ’s suffering and death. Catholic teachings call these pains temporal punishments; the Lutheran Confessions grant they can, “in a formal sense,” be called punishments.

4. This ongoing struggle does not indicate an insufficiency in Christ’s saving work, but is an aspect of our being conformed to Christ and his saving work.

5. The effects of sin in the justified are fully removed only as they die, undergo judgment, and encounter the purifying love of Christ. The justified are transformed from their condition at death to the condition with which they will be blessed in eternal glory. All, even martyrs and saints of the highest order, will find the encounter with the Risen Christ transformative in ways beyond human comprehension.

6. Christ transforms those who enter into eternal life. This change is a work of God’s grace. It can be rightly understood as our final and perfect conformation to Christ (Phil 3:21). The fire of Christ’s love burns away all that is incompatible with living in the direct presence of God. It is the complete death of the old person, leaving only the new person in Christ.

7. Scripture tells us little about the process of the transformation from this life to entrance into eternal life. Categories of space and time can be applied only analogously.

London SCE commentator, Adam, noticed a lacuna in my reporting on SCE – I haven’t said anything about the ordination of the former Anglican Bishops. He has written up this report for us, which gives a personal “I was there” view:

15 January 2011

Dear David

You do not have anything on your blog as of today re the remarkable event that occured this morning in London at Westminster cathedral, so I thought I would send you these comments should you choose to put them on your site.

I rose early in order to be at the mother church of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales this morning. There was going to be a very historic liturgy taking place at Westminster Cathedral. On arrival just before 10am the cathedral was half full. By 1030 as the liturgy commenced, it was packed to capacity with over 2000 people present. There was a long procession of priests and 5 bishops, led by Archbishop Nichols along with the ordinandi, the three former Anglican bishops who became Catholics only two weeks ago, January 1st. Two days ago they were ordained deacons at the London seminary.

I noticed a number Anglican bishops moving around with their wives in the cathedral and thought ‘were they also contemplating crossing the Tiber’? Well we will have to see.
It was a remarkable Mass, led by Archbishop Nichols who read out the decree from Cardinal Levada establishing the Ordinariate under the name of Our lady of Walsingham and patronage of Blessed John Henry Newman.

But amidts the obvious joy of the whole liturgy you could fee the historic importance being celebrated. The Archbishop told us all that this was indeed ‘Church history in the making’ and as I looked towards the sanctuary filled with priests and bishops loads of thoughts rushed through my mind. Henry VIII must be turning in his tomb; Cranmer must be recollecting himself. But above all I marvelled that on the sanctuary were three men who only weeks earlier had been bishops in the Church of England. Now as ‘infant Catholics’ of only 14 days, they were being ordained as priests, promising obedience and respect to their Ordinary.

At the rite of clothing the new preists with their chasubles, their wives (3) came forward from the congregation and handed them over to the newly ordained and kissed their priestly husbands. That in itself was historic.

The archbishop gave a very moving homily pointing out the historic nature of the ceremony and how the Cathedral had never seen anything like it before.

But there was a very moving moment at the end, just before the procession left the sanctuary. The archbishop removed his mitre and handed over his crozier, then knelt on the carpet. each newly-ordained former bishop stepped forward and blessed the kneeling arhcbishop. It was a very incredible moment (this usually takes place out of the public eye after ordinations).

As the long procession made its way to the great door, a huge round of applause went up from the congregation. It continued until the bishops reached the end of the long aisle.

It was truly an historic day for the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom and indeed for the global Church.

Adam
London

(there is very good coverage and comment as usual in The Daily Telegraph by Damian Thompson)

Thanks, Adam! Any time you want to provide us with some updates on these matters from your own perspective, we would be most glad to publish your contributions.

Damien Thompson also appears in this Ruth Gledhill report:

This coverage

I also ask readers of SCE to keep retired former Anglican Bishop of Ballarat, David Silk, in your prayers. David and his wife Joyce have already been received into communion with the Catholic Church. He will be ordained a deacon on 15th February and a priest on 18th February.

A little while back, John Allen had a piece called “Only Benedict could go to China”. His basic argument was

Precisely because of those credentials [viz. “Benedict XVI is unquestionably a “conservative”], however, the old American axiom that “only Nixon could go to China” fits Benedict XVI like a glove. Because of who Benedict is and what he represents, every once in a while he can do things a more “liberal” pontiff either wouldn’t dare or couldn’t pull off without splitting the church apart.

I think that applies perfectly to the latest announcement that Benedict will go to Assisi for the 25th anniversary of John Paul II’s famous 1986 Interfaith Peace gathering in the home town of St Francis. There have been various criticisms, including that of the leader of the SSPX. Fr Z. even admits that he is cool about such “ecumenical” occasions (nb. he is using the term “ecumenical” incorrectly here; those of us in the “business” make a clear distinction between ecumenism, which is about seeking unity among Christians, and interfaith relations, which is about getting along with everybody else).

The 2011 meeting at Assisi will not be a replay of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, an event in which I participated officially when it was here in Melbourne in 2009. Much that the latter event achieved was good and wholesome, but there were certainly aspects of it with which I could not agree. There is something called the “Interfaith Movement” which is decidedly syncretistic, but that is entirely different from the aims and methodology of Catholic interreligious dialogue. Between 1986 and 2011 we have the 2000 statement “Dominus Iesus”, which was authored by Joseph Ratzinger (inter alia) and signed by the same pope who inaugurated the Assisi gatherings, Ven. (soon to be Blessed) John Paul II. There is much about the 1986 gathering that could be criticised in hindsight, but, also in hindsight, we must interpret 1986 through the prism of “Dominus Iesus”.

One thing that I have noted about the Catholic Church is that it is confident of its own identity and faith. So confident, that it is not afraid to encounter people of other religions on a level playing field (the field may be level, even if the teams aren’t!). There is little argument today – and in fact was little argument in 1986 – that the Roman Pontiff is the foremost religious leader in the world today. No other religious leader carries the clout that he does. Only the Pope could call such a meeting and expect the world’s religious leaders to come at his invitation. Given that he has such clout, it is clear that Papa Benny intends to use it for the good of humanity as a whole and the welfare of the Christian family in particular. Calling a gathering of world religious leaders (and all people of good will) to pray for peace and religious freedom is precisely the sort of thing that Catholic interreligious dialogue is all about.

There is no reason to fear this new meeting in Assisi. On the contrary, there is everything to hope for it and from it. It is a good thing.

For further reference see:

Fr Z. on William Oddie’s piece.
Fr Z. on Bishop Fellay’s reaction.
Sandro Magister on this and other matters.

Which is kind of a translation of “beato subito”. This is just in from Vatican Radio:

Vatican announces beatification of Servant of God John Paul II

On Friday the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints published the decree for the beatification of the late great Servant of God John Paul II. Below we publish the full text of the decree

Click the link to go to the decree! (HT to Rocco Palmo)

Interesting that the rites will be performed on 1st of May – for a whole number of reasons.

May is the month of Mary, to whom Ven. JPII was particularly devoted.
It is International Workers Day – specially celebrated by the Socialists whom JPII helped overcome.
Christianised, this is also the feast of St Joseph the Worker.
It is also a Spring festival, and JPII often spoke of his confident hope in the future of the Church as a “springtime”.

Now, time for the first SCE Poll! Which icon do you like the best?

More holiday merriment. HT to Pastor Matt Harrison.

At least they’re all singing from the same (if only one) hymn sheet! And I wish we did get Gregorian Chant when we go to mass…