At Lambeth, Cardinal Kasper Calls for Another Newman

He was the most famous of the converts to the Church of Rome. The pope's representative at the conference of Anglican bishops asks them to return to the model of the apostolic Church. No to women bishops, and to gay bishops. The complete text of the address

by Sandro Magister
 

chiesa anglicani

ROMA, July 31, 2008 – The Lambeth Conference, the meeting held once every ten years among the bishops of the Anglican Communion from all over the world, heard yesterday from Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the pontifical council for promoting Christian unity.

The complete text of his address is presented further below. Kasper highlighted the growing distance between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, especially since some of the Anglican provinces began ordaining women to the priesthood in 1974, and to the episcopate beginning in 1989.

Another reason for the estrangement emphasized by Kasper concerns the authorization to bless homosexual unions, and the ordination as bishops of persons in same-sex relationships.

But apart from relations with the Church of Rome, these decisions have created dramatic divisions above all within the Anglican Communion itself. The strongest opposition comes from the developing world, especially from Africa. Of the 44 provinces that make up the Anglican Communion – Kasper noted – 28 ordain women to the priesthood, and 17 allow the ordination of women to the episcopate as well. The others do not. Each province decides for itself, and opposes those that decide differently. To such an extent that – in Kasper's words – "we now need to take account of the decision of a significant number of Anglican bishops not to attend this Lambeth Conference."

The fragmentation within the Anglican Communion is so serious that Casper asks:

"In such a scenario, [...] who will our dialogue partner be? Should we, and how can we, appropriately and honestly engage in conversations also with those who share Catholic perspectives on the points currently in dispute, and who disagree with some developments within the Anglican Communion or particular Anglican provinces?"

In effect, those in the Anglican Communion who do not accept the ordination of women and the legitimization of homosexuality often enter the Catholic Church.

But the attraction to Catholicism is also of a more general nature. It has to do with an overall understanding of the Church and of Christian tradition since apostolic times until today, which some see as being more faithfully realized in the Catholic Church.

In his address, Cardinal Kasper recalled the "ecclesiological arguments" that convinced the most famous of the 19th century converts, Cardinal John Henry Newman, to embrace Catholicism. And he expressed the hope that there might emerge in the Anglicanism of today a new Oxford Movement, the movement of return to the tradition of the apostolic Church inspired by Newman.

Since 1980, when the Church of Rome established rules for men ordained to the priesthood or episcopate in the Anglican Communion to enter the Catholic Church, it is calculated that more than 80 of them have taken this step, often followed by large portions of their respective dioceses and parishes.

The latest ceremony to welcome an Anglican minister into the Catholic Church took place privately, last December 1 in Rome, in the papal basilica of St. Mary Major.

On one side was the American cardinal archpriest of the basilica, Bernard Law. On the other was the former Anglican (or Episcopalian, as they are usually called in the United States) Jeffrey Steenson, former bishop of the diocese of Rio Grande, which covers New Mexico and part of Texas, accompanied at the ceremony by the Catholic archbishop of Santa Fe, Michael J. Sheehan.

Steenson, 55, married with three children, was ordained a priest in the Catholic Church, which does not recognize Anglican orders as valid. He will teach patristics at the seminary, a subject in which he is an expert.

About a dozen other Episcopalian ministers from the United States are waiting to be welcomed as priests into the Catholic Church. Three of them are bishops emeritus: John Lipscomb, of the diocese of southeast Florida, Clarence Pope, of Fort Worth, and Daniel Herzog, of Albany.

But within the Anglican Communion, there are many more who are sympathetic toward the Catholic Church than those who "cross the Tiber" and convert.

For example, these Anglo-Catholic sentiments were expressed in Sydney by the Anglican bishop Robert Forsyth, who last July 18, welcoming Benedict XVI to his city, described the Church of Rome as "a rock in the rapids." And he explained:

"Were it not for Rome's strong insistence upon Christ as the only Saviour of the world, upon the 'Catholic faith', the nature of the Triune God, the divinity of Christ, the importance of sacred Scripture and of the objectivity of Christian morality, then the life of other Christian churches would have been so much more difficult, certainly for us here in the West."

Another Australian, Archbishop John Hepworth, is primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, a branch of Anglicanism that has made the formal proposal to the Holy See to enter into a "corporate reunion" with the Catholic Church. On July 25, the apostolic nuncio in Australia, Giuseppe Lazzarotto, delivered to Hepworth a letter from Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, pledging that the Holy See will examine the proposal with "serious attention." The Traditional Anglican Communion numbers about 400,000 members, in many countries.