English Wisdom: Triumvirate… Really?
June 18, 2012 14 Comments
I think my family and friends in Britain have been blest greatly with a triumvirate at the head of your Ordinariate in Britain. While one must necessarily be appointed to make the final decisions, having a council of three at the top is a far better situation than having one leader in isolation. Even if in Britain this is more ad hoc than a canonical structure, I would hope this sort of triumvirate model would become the norm for the Ordinariates. Msgr. Newton has shown great, great wisdom through it.
Of course, it would be different in North America and in Australia. My family and friends in Australia might imagine the Ordinary being named and then two others raised up (as Monsignors of the Protonotary Apostolic or something like it) who would perhaps be former bishops in TAC, the Australian Anglican Church or former priests of the same. It would be incredibly wise to create from the marvellous incoming Church in Torres Strait such a Monsignor to serve in this triumvirate.
In North America it would make sense to create such a triumvirate under Msgr. Steenson as well. The territory is vast, and the Ordinariate is not the only expression of the Anglican Patrimony in the Catholic Church in North America. By way of example, a former Anglican Catholic bishop in Canada would make an excellent choice as another Monsignor with oversight for the Canadian deanery. And it would be prudent and very wise to make the senior pastor of the Pastoral Provision parishes also a Monsignor with similar oversight responsibilities among those in the Pastoral Provision but serving in concert with his brother in Canada and together with Msgr Steenson’s leadership of the Ordinariate.
I offer these thoughts to my family and friends who are far more influential than I. No one seems much interested in what a lay hermit in Texas thinks of these things. So I entrust the ideas to you if they are worthy. The one thing that has become clear to me is that a single Ordinary with a Vicar General and an office assitant is an irreduceable minimum that should have been given more provisions for the journey by Rome. It is too small an organisational model to be effective with so great a missionary task.
I know some will say, But look here! In North America, the Ordinary has got health insurance for us this May. And look at all of the men being ordained through the training programme he developed. I am in no way trying to take away from these stellar achievements. One should applaud the Ordinary right heartily for being willing to take up a task where Rome provided no money and the USCCB offered no immediate help with Insurance from the get go. We see that as an historian and a scholar he is absolutely the right person for all of these tasks at the onset. There are other considerations though where he would be well served to have brothers — a Msgr. ‘Canada’ and a Msgr. ‘Pastoral Provision’ with which to work in this common mission.
What has developed in England from Msgr. Newton’s excellent leadership and vision is clearly a model worth repeating. And it really is worth reapting everywhere an Ordinariate is established or where they might be a mixed situation like that in North America … say in India for example. My family in India have some very clear thoughts about these things, but sadly… and it is sad that this is the case across the board, there is only the most limited collaboration with the Laity in Christ of the Anglican Patrimony, a matter that should be corrected post haste. Bishops and priests don’t make the Church. Jesus Christ and all of His Faithful make the Church.
Perhaps it’s just that the harvest in England and Wales was envisaged to be bigger than in other (future) Ordinariates? Or maybe the Holy Father intended – and made – a decisive statement with the initial appointment of the three as Monsignors? One has to believe that even though Msgr Steenson, and now Fr Entwistle following, have to cover a far wider geographic expanse than that overseen by Msgrs Newton, Broadhurst, and Burnham in the UK, they do also enjoy and have the support of the already existing Catholic diocesan structures. Moreover, it must be pointed out that Msgr Keith Newton is the Ordinary; Msgrs Broadhurst and Burnham are ‘Assistants to the Ordinary’, one holding the financial portfolio, and the other responsibe for liturgical provisions and the formation and training of candidates for Holy Orders.
Personal Ordinariates are delimited geographically. One would thus expect them to work more closely with the Conference of Catholic Bishops, the canonical entity governing the territory in which the Ordinariate exists and operates, than they would with one another. Additionally, I (and help me here if I’m wrong) can see absolutely no reason why the Catholic Bishops should not be working very closely with the Ordinary (the fact that this is so seems to be Christian Clay Columba Campbell’s main gripe over here). They are, after all, of One Church. So as the respective Ordinariates continue to grow and become more and more self-supporting, it is reasonable then to expect further appointments and/or autonomous organisation.
About Fr Stephen Smuts
Yes, you are right Fr. Stephen. But those Americans, and particularly Mr. Uher, want everything to happen right now, the way they want it to happen, and to work perfectly well… The problem is that the real world (the real Church) does never work like that, and so they are beeing childish, complaining loudly and ever and ever that things don’t work the way they want them to.
+ PAX et BONUM
Yes, it’s one Anglican mannerism that they will need to, for want of a better phrase, de- learn, should they still wish to be accepted into an Ordinariate.
The Catholic Church is a unified One, governed by authority in the form of an Ordained hierarchy. These men, under Christ, will lead His Church forward.
In fact I would go as far as to humbly suggest that the Ordinary will do well to guard against the divisive squabbling and me-ism that has become an hallmark of Anglicanism in many parts.
Mr Vincent Uhur is a former Anglican clergyman who is now a parishioner at Out Lady of Walsingham in Houston. Don Henri may be being just a tad unfair to Mr Uher, who has a great interest in matters liturgical as may be seen from his “Tonus Peregrinus” blog – and to my mind anyone who can extoll the virtues of the Coverdale Psalter has his heart in the right place as may be seen in his latest post.
But sadly, even in that post, he writes:-
“Surely, this Liturgy should be at least reviewed for study by the liturgical Working Group… whose membership no one seems to know for certain. (A bad sign and easily remedied by posting their names on Ordinariate websites i.e., ‘Our Delegates to the Working Group’ et al.)”
As a liturgist at the heart of the COP Ordinariate in whose principal church he worships, Mr Uhur ought to be well placed to make enquiries on matters liturgical.
Even if he were not able to ascetain that information locally, anyone who runs a blog ought to be capable of doing an internet search and from that finding out that Mgr Burnham of the OLW Ordinariate is on the committee working on the Ordinariate liturgy and moreover that there is about to be published the Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham (Joint Editors Mgr Burnham and Father Aiden Nichols OP) and that, suprise, surprise, the Coverdale Psalter will be used as will be traditional prayerbook language shorn only of the ambiguities and worse introduced by heretics.
Regrettably, it does seem as if there are some within the more prosperous and well established Anglican Use parishes who are bent on throwing thier toys out of the pram. One might say that they have forgotten the struggles their parishes went through before they became established and are behaving rather like older siblings who resent the arrival of a little brorother.
Why shouldnt the Roman bisops be working closely with the ordinariates? Too many of them are heretics that is why. Too many are hostile to any desire for traditional liturgy and too many do not like Catholics in communion with them but not under their control in their individual fiefdoms. Can anything good come from the USCCB? To many chanceries are filled with rot, with unbelief, with hostility to things Catholic. Too bishops cannot be trusted. It is not an American demand for everything exactly how they want it when they want it. It is rational distrust. Bishops are not deities not to be questioned. One people one church one bishop is not a Catholic slogan.
But the ordinariate can’t work toward the Catholic hierarchy as the SSPX does, or the Continuing anglican churches do toward the Episcopal Church, that is, beeing an ecclesiola (little Church) doing its stuff alone.
And no, most Catholic Bishops aren’t heretics, this is a gross carricature, and now let me tell you that now that the ordinariate has as its head someone who is a member of the episcopal conference, it will be really hard for any Bishops to refuse any collaboration with him (collegiality pushes hard toward collaboration). You talk about “fiefdoms”? But Bishops are the head of the local churches, they are perfectly entitled to control what’s happening on the territory of their dioceses!
Rational distrust…. Never heard such a stupid thing! My Bishop isn’t particularly good to mu criteria, but he is my Bishop, and as a Catholic it is my DUTY to trust those appointed by the Church of God for having the care of my soul.
Let us model our lifes on Saint Mary McKillop, who being even excommunicated never distrusted the Bishop who actually excommunicated her for fallacious reasons.
If you still see only heresy and hate toward things Catholic in the Catholic Church (!!) trough your prejudice-tinted glasses, join the sedevacantists! They think exactly the way you do.
+ PAX et BONUM
Don Henri, I respectfully disagree with the idea that “Bishops are the head of the local churches, they are perfectly entitled to control what’s happening on the territory of their dioceses!”
This, of course, was the attitude that has led to a lot of anguish for the Eastern Catholics in the US and other areas of their diaspora. This idea that if it happens in my “territory”, it’s my purview. But that is not strictly true.
Bishops, as ordinaries, have responsibility (which can manifest as control, at times) of those whose communion with the Church Universal is guaranteed by their communion with him. That is the very heart of the term “ordinary”. Monastics are united via their communion with their abbot; secular clergy and laity by their communion with their diocesan bishop; and ordinariate clergy and laity by their communion with their ordinary.
None of this is to endorse Edmond’s rationale for “rational distrust”. But going to the opposite extreme and defining a diocesan bishop’s authority in terms of “control” of a territory is too much like the Prince Bishops of the Holy Roman Empire and too little like the Gospel mandate that “whoever would be first among you must be your slave”.
What is stupid is lumping those who do not trust the bishops with sedevacantists. The bishops are not the Church. To say that there are too many bishops hostile to things Catholic is not prejudiced tinted glasses. It is reality. A duty to trust the local bishop? When was that defined? That is a new one on me. So it is for you a matter of one people one church one bishop. You realize that most likely was more interesting sounding in the original German. Bishops cant refuse collaboration? Just watch. They can. How many projects have bishops not done their best to undermine and drag their feets on, and do their best to put obstacles in the way of? It is idiotic to think otherwise. And thank you someone else for pointing how the eastern Catholics were treated by the Irish hierarchy in this country in the past. Or shall we discuss how the bishops handled the sex abuse scandals. Not that you are interested but except for some excellent settings,which I can get at a number of anglo catholic churches when I am travelling,the extraordinary form dors not interest me.
Not too fond of Americans, huh? It is because of the bad qualities of Americans that we can think for ourselves? It was the good old USA that defeated Hitler. No surrendering in 6 weeks for us. Given the family history of my father’s-even as Catholic he still does not allow shellfish or pork into his house he sticks to his own family ways on that-I am not into anti-semitism. The Church can do without it. It can do without heel clicking too.
@Edmond.
“It was the good old USA that defeated Hitler. No surrendering in 6 weeks for us” That’s an exceedingly cheap shot and moreover one which is not accurate. Others, including the Russians, played their part.
The USA may have taken over from the British Empire as the world’s greatest military power, but in fact it was pretty late in stepping up to the plate both for World War I, and for World War II. If you care to think about it, it probably suited the America First lobbies to see Britain and its Empire stand alone aginst the Nazi and bankrupt itself in the process. How many American corporations did profitable busines with Herr Hitler while his aircraft were bombing England?
If the Roosevelt Administration had not been so anti-Semitic, how many more European Jews might have escaped the holocaust? If the Trueman Administation had not been so blind, might the survival of Palestine as a multi-racial and multi-religious community been possible? Would you say that the the USA has exactly covered itself in glory in its recent adventures in Vietnam or Afghanistan or Pakistan, or Iraq?
Americans have many good qualities of which you can be justly proud. But many of them were inherited. We British for example gave you our language and your legal system which you have built upon (not always wisely), Your founding fathers were the product of the learning of the European Enlightenment. Your Bill of Rights was a development of ours – and an improvement. We gave you the abomination of slavery – but we abolished it before you did. We are still waiting to see the USA catch up and abolish the death penalty.
When the USA has acquired a little more more history to reflect upon, I suspect it may come to realise, as we Brits have had to do, that there are many episodes in the excercise of secular power, both at home and more particularly abroad, of which one should have every reason to be very deeply ashamed. The USA is no exception to the general rule that all power corrupts and the more easily so when it is exercised abroad than at home.
Russians were the ones who defeated Germany. The U.S. didn’t enter until Pearl Harbor and had no real reason to enter Europe until Hitler declared war on the U.S. (even though he had no reason to do so, as well.) But this entire conversation regarding history is irrelevant. If we are members of the Catholic Church, and we take into consideration what our Church has been through in all of its 2,000-year-old history, it is as Monty Python’s Black Knight declared: “‘Tis but a flesh wound!”
Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves; let us have the Spirit of patience, so that those who have none will learn to have it as well… Many cradle Catholics don’t know anything about the Ordinariate, and so they really can’t participate in discussions about these issues as we are right now; on one hand, I’m glad, because there are many ignorant Roman Catholics who have their opinions despite not knowing anything. (I consider myself one of those, to some extent. But I will try to give what little I have, and to learn from those who are in the know.) But on the other hand, There is a promotion of a “Ghetto” mentality that I fear will overtake those who are members of the Ordinariates. I would be really, really, profoundly saddened by such a future, because the Ordinariate for me represents the true intent of Vatican II; not banalized liturgy; not compromised truths; no liberalization, but placing Sacred Tradition where it belongs, rightly at the forefront of the Church.
I a question for the Ordinariates is: “What now?” You have your priests, you have your ordinaries, your congregations, your jurisdictions… Is it just a matter of resolving loose ends, or will there be a descent into politicking and power struggle in these new communities?”
I was watching Dr. Peter Kreeft’s lecture on winning the Culture Wars, where he listed seven ways that we Catholics can lose the Culture Wars and for Catholics to commit spiritual suicide. 1.Politicization of the Faith. 2.Happy-talk 3.Worship of Organization, treating religion like a business. 4.Neo-worship, worship of new fads and fashions. 5.Egalitarianism at the price of excellence. 6.Yuppiedom, worship of Mammon 7.Spirituality over Sanctity.
The lecture is relevant to this discussion, I think, because there is always the danger of Politicizing the Faith, that is, using the faith for political ends or even as a way to further a career; the obsession in treating the Catholic Church like an organization, rather than as a living, pulsating organism that is the Mystical Body of Christ of which we are a part, the thing which plagues the Church of England, from what I’ve read; and maybe the tendency to think that the Church is a democracy… The Ordinariates are holy, it is something really special, in my opinion, like the preciousness of a newborn baby, but at the same time, something ancient and worthy of respect; so I also think that the Ordinariates have a reason to fear the banalization of what the Orthodox call the “Orthopraxy” and turned into the vague “Anglican Spirituality” at the hands of local bishops… (This is something I might investigate myself in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, where we have Eastern Catholics with long histories seem to coexist without scandal or issue with the Roman Rite.)
I am not sure what any of the more educated and informed commentators can get from that lecture and how you would interpret and apply it to any discussion regarding ecclesiological issues of the Ordinariate. But I am certain that it would not hurt to listen to the lecture. Here is a Youtube link:
I think Edmond should re-read “Lumen Gentium”, the Dogmatic Constituion on the Church.
After expounding the teaching of the Church on the Mystery that is the Church and the nature of the People of God, Chapter III of Lumen Gentium teaches us about the hierachical nature of the Church and about the episcopate.
“18. …..Jesus Christ, the eternal Shepherd, established His holy Church, having sent forth the apostles as He Himself had been sent by the Father; and He willed that their successors, namely the bishops, should be shepherds in His Church even to the consummation of the world.
…And in order that the episcopate itself might be one and undivided, He placed Blessed Peter over the other apostles, and instituted in him a permanent and visible source and foundation of unity of faith and communion….
And all this teaching about the institution, the perpetuity, the meaning and reason for the sacred primacy of the Roman Pontiff and of his infallible magisterium, this Sacred Council again proposes to be firmly believed by all the faithful. Continuing in that same undertaking, this Council is resolved to declare and proclaim before all men the doctrine concerning bishops, the successors of the apostles, who together with the successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the visible Head of the whole Church, govern the house of the living God”
The dichotomy is that the Bishops are first and foremost “shepherds” of their dioceses and “servants” of the people of God” and the Pope is described as the “Servant of the Servants of God” – but still the power of governance is vested in the Bishops and the Pope.
So the ancient usage by which we refer to bishops as our “Fathers in God” is entirely apposite. A good father not only loves his children, but for their own good he corrects them when need be.
No-one says that bishops are always right, always wise, or always just. But they are placed in authority. The Church is a hierachy and not a democracy. There are canonical processes which provide recourse where a bishop is in error, but bishops are not to equated to secular politicians who are answerable to an electorate.
One of the problems of the CofE has been is that in the ultimate analsyis its doctrines, beliefs and discipline are not even entrusted to its bishops but are decided by Parliament (a power presently delegated by Parliament to the General Synod of the CofE – but delegated legislation may always be undone by Parliament).
This state control many have bumbled along well enough while the Test Acts provided that only communicant members of the CofE could be elected to Parliament and the CofE was ofen spoken of as “the Tory Party at prayer”, but today Parliament is composed of people of all faihs and of none.
Where does this leave the CofE? Parliament declares that the doctrine of transubstantiation is a heresy, so be it. The Synod declares that women may be priests, so be it. And should Parliament declare that the doctrine of the Trinity is in error ?
Clergy in the CofE are now faced with the looming prospect of (i) female bishops and (ii) a legal requiremement to conduct same sex marriages in their Churches because by a quirk of the status of the CofE, any resident of the UK (of any faith) has a right to be married in the CofE parish of his residence. A same-sex exemption for churches may not be effective.
So, I hope that Edmond, upon reflection may come to reconsider the nature of the relationship between the laity and the episcopate.
I do not mean any offense, Mourad, but the relationsip between the laity in theory and the one in practice are totally different matters. Should we not be honest about ones bishop? Why pretend? And yes, my family has at least 150 years of lessons in learning that distinction. Yes, I’ll grant the 6 week comment was a cheap shot, however it was in response to the eternally cutted an pasted anti-American tirade of our French friend. There are plenty of Catholics in Pa who have long memories. They wont be put in their place. Ask the previos bishop of Scranton about that one. I know one Slovak parish about an hour away where the first couple of anti-Slovak pastors have disappeared from their list of clergy. Their list starts a number of years after the church opened. The one that kicked St Nicholaus out of te church is one of the missing clerics. These days they dont only have to deal with the clergy who never wanted their traditions or their churches to exist, but years of having a pro gay rights activist psychiatrist screen ordination candidates amongst other lovely characters the diocese has picked up. Remember that Troutman or is that Troutperson came in as conservative minded cleric. He wanted to come down on pro-choice politicians and though that cross is bizarre he stopped the sacking of the cathedral his predecessor planned. Now look at him. Keeping the rot from th previous bishop changed him and not for the better. Again how the relationship should be and how it is in reality are not the same.
Those with more internet savvy (and patience) than I ought to search the internet for details of the case of Williamson v Regina (or Regina v Williamson) of 1994, in which the English High Court justices declared that “the doctrine of the Church of England” is whatever Parliament legislates it to be.
For a related, ancilliary, case, see:
http://www.infotextmanuscripts.org/vexatiouslitigant/vex_lit_queens_bench_williamson.html
which provides an outline of the original case.