Fr Robert Mercer: Anglicans Tend to Know Little About Anglicanism…

Fr. Robert Mercer, CM, writes in the Edmonton Update:

Anglicans tend to know little about Anglicanism. How many are aware that the Archbishop of Canterbury’s coat of arms displays the pallium? How many know what a pallium is? It is a Y shaped vestment, woven from lamb’s wool, marked with crosses, worn by the archbishops of ancient, important or primatial dioceses. It hangs down back and front from the shoulders like a yoke over the chasuble. It is conferred on archbishops by the Pope and indicates the strong bond between himself and them. But the Archbishop of Canterbury is not in communion with the Bishop of Rome. Quite so. The arms of Canterbury therefore lie!

But as I say, the majority of Anglicans are ignorant of this lie. I myself am not offended. The lie is a reminder of what once was. The first Archbishop of Canterbury was sent to England by Pope Gregory the Great in 597 (when he brought with him the consecration prayer which we of the Ordinariate use at the eucharist). The lie I see as an expression of hope, or if not of hope, as an expression of what ought to be. The Archbishop of Canterbury ought to be in communion with the Bishop of Rome. The church should be one: bishops should express such unity by being in communion with all other bishops. They are, after all, supposed to be the ministers of unity. And a universal church needs a universal primate, president, presiding servant. Who can this possibly be if not the Bishop of Rome? The Eastern Orthodox recognize this and one Russian has added, “What use is primacy without jurisdiction?” What does the Archbishop of Canterbury do to foster unity? He advocates policies which drive the two churches further and further apart, the ordination of women, gay marriages, and he is evasive about the human right to life.

Then again, how many Anglicans know that off and on for some four hundred years there have been some modest attempts at Anglican Roman Catholic rapprochement? Admittedly such attempts have been more off than on. But Canon Bernard Pawley of St Paul’s cathedral in London and his wife Margaret have published a history of these attempts, Canterbury and Rome Through Four Centuries…

Read the full article in this month’s Update.

HT (and source) Stephen Cavanaugh

 

More Anglicans Cross the Tiber

Introibo ad altare Dei has this short post, with a point:

Four new priests were ordained last weekend to serve in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in Great Britain. One of them was Fr Brian Gill who had served as Vicar General the Traditional Anglican Church (TTAC), a part of the Traditional Anglican Communion in the United Kingdom, from 2003 to 2009. Mgr Robert Mercer, who had been ‘Bishop’ of this break-away Anglican group joined the Catholic Church at the end of March. The Traditional Anglican Communion of which the TTAC has had a vision of corporate union with the Holy See for several years, long before the well-known converts from the Church of England.

 

Fr Robert Mercer’s Accommodation Making the News

At the risk of sounding  tabloidish over here, it seems as if Fr Robert Mercer’s accommodation is coming under scrutiny in the British media now that he has become a Ordinariate Priest. It all seems rather petty to me, but here’s the issue:

An Anglican monastery struggling for funds bought a flat for a member who  later converted to Catholicism.

The Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield yesterday defended its support  for Father Robert Mercer – who left the Church of England because he opposed the  ordination of women priests.

The monastery bought a £160,000 flat in Worthing near Brighton to allow him  to be close to his sick sister.

But the community is also trying to raise £2m for a major revamp of its home  on Stocksbank Road.

The Examiner was contacted by a source who is unhappy with the  arrangement.

The complainant said: “This fully ordained Roman Catholic priest who, as a  Roman Catholic cannot recognise the legitimacy of the Anglican Eucharist,  remains a brother of an Anglican religious community.

“He continues to live in the apartment, which is now effectively being used  for Roman Catholic purposes.

“The Community of the Resurrection has been endeavouring to raise some £2m  for the refurbishment of its church.

“The refurbishment has gone ahead, but only because the community used funds  which were set aside for the building of a new monastery on the site.

“It continues to try and recoup these funds through its appeal, which so far  has raised some £650,000 – the vast majority provided by its companions and  friends.

“They are being asked to make financial sacrifices from their own pockets and  are raiding their own assets to give things to the community’s auctions.”

Fr Mercer joined the monastery in 1962 but left Mirfield in the late 1960s to  work at one of the group’s priories in Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe.

Father George Guiver, superior of the 22-strong community, explained that the  monks had decided not to expel him when he left the Church of England more than  20 years ago.

Fr Guiver said: “He used to  belong to the Anglican Communion but in 1988 he joined a breakaway church called  the Traditional Anglican Communion.

“He made the move because he was opposed to the ordination of women.

“The community doesn’t have a view on it, there are those who support  ordination of women and those who are against.

“At that time we made the difficult decision about his membership of the  community because he had moved to a separate church.

“It was a difficult decision to make but the community felt that we should  keep doors open rather than closed when it comes to church unity.”

Fr Mercer retired in 2006 and the community bought him a flat on the south  coast so he could be close to his sick sister.

Fr Guiver said: “When he retired, he hadn’t lived in the community for nearly  40 years.

“Returning after so long would not be easy.

“He had a very ill sister in Worthing who had to flee from Zimbabwe with next  to nothing.

“She needs constant care, he wanted to be near her so we invested in a flat  for him in 2006 round the corner from her.

“He maintains the flat – the boiler broke recently and he paid for the  replacement.”

Fr Mercer was ordained as a Catholic priest last month.

Fr Guiver said monks had once again decided to allow him to remain a  member.

“We again considered all of this very carefully and we felt there were no  really new issues in addition to those we considered in 1988,” he said.

“He’s 77 and has no other income except for his pension. We can’t turn an old  man out on the street.

“He’s a very keen member of our community, he comes to stay with us for  several days, several times a year.

“He’s been a member of the community for 50 years, he’s very much one of our  brothers and a religious community is like a family.”

If push comes to shove, I suppose that the Catholic Church would have some alternate accommodation for Fr Mercer. But for now, the Mirfield Fathers at least seem to be sticking to their guns.

Come to think of it, a Commentator on this blog said (last month):

This man continues to be a Brother in the ANGLICAN Community of the Resurrection and continues to live rent free in accommodation owned by and provided exclusively for him by that Anglican Religious Community.

To which I said at the time:

I’m sure the Catholic Church has plenty of accommodation – ‘rent free’ – should he need it.

 

Fr Robert Mercer on Apartheid, the Ordinariate, the Traditional Anglican Communion and Unity

Former Anglican Bishop Turned Catholic Priest is Star of Anti-apartheid Musical.

That’s the headline in the Catholic Herald on Fr Robert Mercer who was Ordained in the Catholic Church at the start of the week. We posted the news here on this blog. Bolding is mine:

A former Anglican bishop ordained a Catholic priest is one of the stars of an anti-apartheid musical in South Africa, it emerged today.

Fr Robert Mercer, 77, was deported from South Africa in 1970 for his stand against apartheid, along with several other Anglican priests.

He and other members of the Anglican Community of the Resurrection defied segregation laws by running a multi-racial parish.

They were, says Fr Mercer, “deemed to be a corrupting influence on students” at Stellenbosch University, where they worked as chaplains. One of the Anglican priests was jailed.

Their stand has been dramatised in a multi-media pop musical called Brothers, which ran for five nights at Stellenbosch University, the country’s top Africaans university.

The musical was performed in September 2010 in a mix of Africaans and English and was directed by playwright Peter Krummeck.

Fr Mercer, who grew up in Zimbabwe, went on to become Bishop of Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, in the Anglican Province of Central Africa, in the midst of a civil war.

He was bishop for 11 years before leaving the Anglican Communion to join the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, part of the worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion. He served as metropolitan bishop from 1988 to 2005, when he retired to England.

Fr Mercer became a Catholic in January and was ordained a priest for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham on Monday.

He said today that Pope Benedict XVI’s offer of an ordinariate to Anglicans in 2009 was “an answer to our prayers, to our dreams”.

He said he had been longing for Christian unity since the early 1980s, when Pope John Paul II and Robert Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, issued a joint declaration thanking God for “the progress that has been made in the work of reconciliation”.

He and his clergy in Zimbabwe began working through ARCIC documents and even met Vatican officials in Rome.

In 1985 Fr Mercer met Cardinal Johannes Willebrands and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to talk about the prospect of Anglicans reconciling with Rome.

Fr Mercer said that Cardinal Ratzinger was “the humblest, gentlest, most sympathetic person I think I’ve ever met”. He said: “I could never understand, therefore, all the talk of ‘the Rottweiler’ and ‘Panzer cardinal’… I came away thinking if ever I had done wrong and wanted to tell someone about it, it would be him I’d want to tell.”

Fr Mercer said: “I couldn’t see then why Anglicans couldn’t be in communion [with Rome].”

Three years later he joined the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), an umbrella group of breakaway Anglicans, serving as a bishop in Canada.

There, he said, parishes had to start “from scratch”, meeting in homes and trying to build or buy churches. “I was so impressed by the commitment of the lay people,” Fr Mercer said. “It was a great pleasure and privilege to be with them.”

In 2007 Fr Mercer was one of about 30 leaders of the TAC who signed a letter to Rome asking to be received into full communion with the Catholic Church.

He and the others signed the letter and a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the altar during a service in Portsmouth, England.

Weeks ago, however, a majority of the TAC’s bishops announced that they would not be joining a personal ordinariate and would be staying “fully Anglican”.

Fr Mercer said more than half a dozen TAC priests and bishops in Canada, the US, Australia and even Japan were still “in the pipeline” to be received into full communion with the Catholic Church, along with their parishes.

He said that, while in a sense the Pope’s offer of an ordinariate in Anglicanorum coetibus was “wonderful and sudden and too good to be true”, it was also the “fulfilment of 400 years of prayer and aspiration and hope and idealism”. “One day,” he said, “I hope the Anglican Communion will be reconciled with the Bishop of Rome.”

Amen, Father… Amen!

UPDATE:   See also Ex-Anglican bishop becomes Catholic priest but remains member of Anglican religious order in The Times [Subscription required - thanks to Rupert Murdoch].