Zealous Commentating
October 26, 2012 10 Comments
JC Ryle once noted:
Not all zeal is right – it may be a zeal without knowledge.
Now blogger Deborah Gyapong seems to have fallen foul of one particular zealot, a Patrick, who goes by the handle: Patrick-TAC. Regrettably, he writes:
Foolishness,
I dont know what your name implies about you, however I recalled relating unhappyness with Roman Catholic decision to join only to Deborah and I indicated how instead of thinking about Ordinariate but her efforts are to judge TAC Bishop’s decisions. Let me help you here the letter was seeking communion and please read the difference between communion and absorption, you talk of repudiation of offer and yet you think signing of CCC of Rome binds people. I do not know why dont you ask your auhorities as to why do they give an offer to people whom they own if its what you think of your CCC has. They must teach you why they gave an offer if CCC binds TAC Bishops who requeste communion please do not be naive, why are your athorities not seeking redress to take our finances and buildings if they own our Bishops. Please think again and understand the contents of the letter from TAC to Roman Catholics.There is no new TAC you are instead diminished in your understanding of faith and think that your opinion is the one that is better to anyone if you think Roman Catholic is the only true Catholic Church.I hope you will take back your hepworth and make him your Priest again as he belong with you.The same TAC which declined your Roman Catholic Church’s offer is going forward in faith and does not bother about what Roman catholics are doing but is instead focusing more like never before on its mission of preaching the Gospel of Christ. You act like the rest of figitives who are not haappy in their choices, who thought TAC was finished like your athourities, HA HA HA think again the TAC is young vibrant and is stronger like before.It is still the same TAC thats why it responded to decline the offer, as it is the same TAC which requested only COMMUNION and not absorption.
As you can see, the above comment clearly lacks grace and charity, it cannot be condoned, and serves only to scratch open wounds. Deborah responds to him over here. The whole thing is stinging and so very unnecessary. Nothing will ever be resolved like this.
Speaking from experience, Patrick is one fanatically committed person. He has been on my blog before, and from what I can gather, hails from this neck of the woods (South Africa). Sadly however, when one is arrogant, rude, exclusive and patronising, you are in effect, unconstructive and unhelpful. And this is the sad net result of his zeal:
Maybe some day the TAC will grow up back to the stature it had reached in 2007 before its implosion and reconstitution as just some other Continuing Anglican Church.
In the meantime, I am happy to see Bishop Gill is going to be ordaining new priests and deacons and I hope many come to Christ through the evangelizing of the new TAC’s clergy and people.
I guess, too, we who have joined Ordinariates, have to show the world we have not been absorbed, but are flourishing within the Catholic Church with our Anglican patrimony beautifully nourished and protected.
If the new TAC wants me to stop discussing the new TAC, then move on, focus on evangelization, stop trying to rewrite history, and stop coming over here and commenting on my blog! If what I write here upsets you, then please stop reading, making assertions that cannot be left to stand and inspiring me to write more.
About Fr Stephen Smuts
The bitterness all round – while perfectly understandable, given the ways things have worked out – is a sure sign of the Devil’s displeasure. But apart from prayer, there are ways to deal with it – forcing ourselves to be courteous is one; if, while on the net, saying things no more nastily or forcefully than we would in person is another. Some things to indeed have to be denounced – but let us do so as though the person we were berating was actually present, and allow our natural cowardice to kick in! We all behave better in real life because we fear the consequences if we do not.
The comments by Patrick -TAC cannot in any circumstances be sanctioned or condoned.
However, the following statement by Ms. Gyapong is not only provocative, but is also not true.
” I understand Hepworth has tried three times to get in writing what the exact charges are and still has not heard. ”
The process server in Adelaide who delivered the documents in person to Bishop Hepworth on 30 July 2012 just after 2pm might be amused.
While the comments by this Patrick, presumably a parishioner of some TAC Church somewhere, were rude, I think there ought to be some understanding of his feelings
Were I to be a member of a separated church, I would, I think, be hopping mad if some prelate or other decided for me that my allegiance should be switched to some other church.
There is, of course, an unfortunate precedent in the manner in which the originl schism which created the Church of England came about , but surely the TAC bishops could not have thought it appopriate to proceed like a Tudor Sovereign.
Each of them should have had enough theology to understand that the Church would require each individual coming into communion to do so by a individual act. Was nothing done to prepare the individual parishioners for this prospect before the Declaration and Petition were executed with so much solemnity at Portsmouth?
Further, I have still seen no satisfactory explanation from those bishops who signed the documents at Portsmouth as to why they decided to rat on their commitments. After all, one must presume that all of them would have read the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church they were commiting themselves to join. They must be taken to have known and understood the meaning of Lumen Gentium at 14:-
This Sacred Council wishes to turn its attention firstly to the Catholic faithful. Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism(124) and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.
They are fully incorporated in the society of the Church who, possessing the Spirit of Christ accept her entire system and all the means of salvation given to her, and are united with her as part of her visible bodily structure and through her with Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops. The bonds which bind men to the Church in a visible way are profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical government and communion.”
Putting aside my personal view that it was an act of near lunacy to elect Hepworth as Primate, it does rather seem as if those prelates who ratted on Portsmouth now view him as a handy scapegoat for their own pastoral deficiencies.
If you belong to a church in which the bishops determine faith and morals, then those lay people who were members of the Traditional Anglican Communion after it adopted the Catechism of the Catholic Church as its doctrine were already members of a church that shared the same teachings as the Catholic Church. If they dissented, they were similar to those cradle Roman Catholics who want women priests or birth control or whatever. If the Orthodox come into communion with the Holy See is each individual orthodox member going to have to go through RCIA? I doubt it. Of course, with the question of Holy Orders up in the air for the TAC, as much as it tried to get valid Apostolic Succession, there had to be individual confirmation and ordination to the Catholic priesthood which the Orthodox would not have to go through. The TAC was not a congregational church when it came to faith and morals. As for the election of Hepworth as primate—-I can understand why he was elected. There was no one else who had his vision, his energy, his passion for the mission of unity. No one knew about the devastating sexual abuse he had suffered back when he was elected. No, Hepworth was the man for the hour and history will be kind to him.
I wish someone from the Roman Curia would clear up this mess! I thought it would be necessary for people coming into the Catholic Church to be confirmed (reconfirmed?) to be considered in communion. Very confusing.
The short answer is: The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral declarations are incorporated into the fundamental principles of the TAC by the Victoria Concordat and those declarations require that we seek inter-communion with, but not be absorbed, by other Catholic denominations.
With respect, that isn’t the answer, it encapsulates the problems: (1) the Catholic Church does not regard the TAC or any other separated body as “Catholic”. (2) “Inter communion” is not a Catholic concept.
Therefore none of the TAC concepts to which you refer were compatible with what the TAC bishops signed at Portsmouth. So how do your bishops explain that?
This link might be helpful, and paints a somewhat different picture than Mr. Mourad!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_ecumenism
Even I have more class and less grammatical and typographical errors than this man.
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