The Monday Funnies: Last Papal Breakfast

Thanks to Grace Cangialosi for passing this along.

The next Pope? How about a nun?

I have several friends who are Catholic nuns. While the speculation is running rampant about where the next Pope will be from (Europe? Asia? Africa? The Americas?), the nuns I know are a little more jaded on this topic.

The male hierarchy have been bested by the sisters in recent years on issues like health care and advocacy for the poor. The men have been pushing back on the nuns of late. But the sisters are a resilient bunch. One them put this cartoon on her Facebook this morning.

The Monday Funnies: Extra Edition

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Postscript: Reactions across the spectrum to Vatican's bid to lure Anglicans

Was it such a big earthquake? A number of my conservative friends think not (and, yes, I have a few conservative friends and they try very hard to keep me honest, thank you very much). I thought I'd offer a roundup of reactions across the board from the last few days, some that agree with mine and some that don't.

To back up, as you may recall, last week the Vatican did an end-run around its own ecumenical office and announced it was establishing a new office to receive disgruntled Anglicans into the fold of Roman Catholicism.

For a factual summary of the Vatican's move, a good place to start is with a Q&A published by the UK Independent. You can read it by clicking HERE.

Now to the commentaries and analysis:

A few friends tell me they believe that the Pope's offer is a needed pastoral response by the Vatican, and they believe it was graciously accepted by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Vatican's move, they believe, will allow for a more orderly exit of "traditionalist" Anglo-Catholics than we have heretofore seen (subtext, they had planned to go anyway). They may be right, and I applaud their willingness to find pastoral concern, not politics, as the primary motivation for Benedict's move.

That said, most commentators are finding this thick with church politics, and a few are finding a subtext of politics beyond that.

Oddly enough, much of the commentary in the Anglican world is consistent across the liberal and conservative divide. Many, but not all, are blasting Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams for allowing himself to be roped into a joint press conference with a Roman Catholic archbishop announcing the move.

Martin E. Marty, the preeminent Lutheran theologian of our time, said in a column Monday that the Vatican "blindsided" Williams, and Martin characterized the episode as "anti-ecumenical" by seeking to "pluck" Anglican priests. Martin nonetheless has sympathy for Williams' predicament:

Archbishop Rowan Williams, though embarrassed by the surprise announcement of dealings behind his back, was characteristically Williamsian and old-style Anglican, as he reacted not in anger but with patience. The Anglican communion for centuries aspired to promote “comprehension,” doing what it could to prevent heresy and schism but in a spirit of openness. The papal visit next year will occasion fresh thinking and policies.

To read Martin's full column, click HERE.

Rowan's participation in the press conference, and his tacit endorsement, seems out of character with his usual emphasis on exhaustive dialogue and careful process, leaving him open to charges that he is far more concerned with placating Rome than in talking with members of his own communion. The UK Financial Times' correspondent David Gardner had this to say:

As takeover bids go, it cannot be said to lack ambition. In some
respects it bears more the hallmarks of a coup d’état than the
acquisition of market share. Pope Benedict’s all-but-unilateral
publication of an Apostolic Constitution to bring high church
Anglicans into full communion with the Roman Catholic church should
“in no sense at all” be seen as “an act of proselytism or aggression”
said Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, his body
language belying his soothing tone.

Yet, this head of a church that withdrew from the Catholic fold nearly
five centuries ago was not given even five days warning of the papal
decree. “I was informed of the planned announcement at a very late
stage”, he told the Anglican faithful apologetically. No one saw the
Roman tanks until they had ringed Canterbury.

To read Gardner's full analysis, click HERE.

By most reports, the Vatican move may have its biggest impact in luring Church of England priests to Rome. The impact on luring Episcopalians in the United States appears considerably less. As one of my conservative friends said to me, "We are closer to Dallas than to Rome," a reference to a meeting many of them attended in the Dallas suburb of Plano a few years back that set them on their current course. A number of former Episcopalians have set up their own church structures, they are fighting hard in courts across the land to keep Episcopal church property, and they do not appear enticed to go under the cloak of Rome.

And then there are those persnickety issues of the Reformation. Most of my conservative friends are quite Calvinist and evangelical. While they may agree with Rome on a few (but not all) social issues, most of them fundamentally disagree on deeper theological issues of salvation, the nature of the sacraments, and ecclesiastical issues about the structure of the Church.

Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, the most visible of the "global south" of Anglican bishops dissatisfied with the U.S. Episcopal Church and the Archbishop of Canterbury, reportedly slammed the door shut on the Vatican's offer over the weekend. You can read about his response by clicking HERE.

Other African bishops are also rejecting the offer. You can read the reaction by the Kenyans, for example, by clicking HERE. Dissing both the Vatican and Canterbury, the All Africa News put it this way:

[Archbishop Eliud Wabukala] added that the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams had sent letters welcoming the offer but he was essentially dealing with local England context and does not apply to other provinces.

For some conservatives, it comes down to ordination -- who gets ordained, who doesn't, and who controls it. I am not prone to promoting David Anderson, the rightwing ex-Episcopal priest who received an irregular ordination as an Anglican bishop and who heads up the American Anglican Council. But Anderson had this to say about the Vatican's move and he urges everyone to examine the fine print:

The details are still sketchy, and much finally depends on the details, but there are clearly some trouble spots even for those Anglicans who are keen about the idea. Those clergy who were baptized and confirmed as Roman Catholics, then left Roman Catholicism for Anglicanism, were then ordained in Anglican orders, and are married, will probably find it difficult if not impossible to bring their Anglican orders into the new Roman Catholic option. In the past, married Anglican priests who were originally baptized and confirmed as Roman Catholics haven't been able to bring the orders and a wife into Rome. The issue is having a wife and a prior relationship with Rome.

Another sticking point is for married Anglican bishops who may wish to take advantage of this new option. Pending disclosure of the new rules and the small print, neither Eastern Orthodoxy nor Rome currently have married bishops, and haven't had for most of their history. Anglican bishops who are married and have no earlier sacramental relationship with Rome may only be able to take the new option as a priest.

There has been considerable commentary in recent days in various secular publications. Martyn Minns, leader of the Virginia breakaway Episcopalians, was quoted in The New York Times and The Washington Post as saying, "I don't want to be a Roman Catholic... There was a Reformation, you remember."

Maureen Dowd, the veteran columnist of The New York Times who was reared Catholic, commented that the Vatican's move should be seen as part of a wider campaign to reign in nuns and fight feminism in the pews. Dowd noted this on Sunday:

As the Vatican is trying to wall off the “brides of Christ,” Cask of Amontillado style, it is welcoming extreme-right Anglicans into the Catholic Church — the ones who are disgruntled about female priests and openly gay bishops. Il Papa is even willing to bend Rome’s most doggedly held dogma, against married priests — as long as they’re clutching the Anglicans’ Book of Common Prayer.

“Most of the Anglicans who want to move over to the Catholic Church under this deal are people who have scorned women as priests and have scorned gay people,” [author Kenneth] Briggs said. “The Vatican doesn’t care that these people are motivated by disdain.”

To read the rest of Dowd's column, click HERE.

Another commentator in The New York Times, A.N. Wilson, opined that Benedict's move will be the death knell of the Church of England. I think he overstates the case (The CofE has a habit of hanging on despite reports of its demise), but his point is worth noting:

The numbers of practicing Catholics in England is greater than the number of practicing Anglicans. Within a generation, there will probably be more Muslims than practicing Anglicans in the British Isles. Britain will no longer be able to endure the absurdity of the laws relating to the religion of the monarch, the Act of Settlement and Royal Marriages Act, which among other things forbid the sovereign to marry a Catholic. Or the Coronation Oath, which promises to uphold the Protestant religion.

To read the full column, click HERE.

Other commentators see it quite differently, not as the demise of the Church of England but as something more ominous in larger geopolitics. In a column the The New York Times Sunday, columnist Ross Douthat began by noting:

The Church of England has survived the Spanish Armada, the English Civil War and Elton John performing “Candle in the Wind” at Princess Diana’s Westminster Abbey funeral. So it will probably survive the note the Vatican issued last week, inviting disaffected Anglicans to head Romeward, and offering them an Anglo-Catholic mansion within the walls of the Roman Catholic faith.

Douthat wrote that Benedict's real agenda is confronting Islam in Europe, and to do so he is willing to gloss over differences among Christians:

But in making the opening to Anglicanism, Benedict also may have a deeper conflict in mind — not the parochial Western struggle between conservative and liberal believers, but Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam...

There are an awful lot of Anglicans, in England and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader who takes Benedict’s approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one, if they want him.

This could be the real significance of last week’s invitation. What’s being interpreted, for now, as an intra-Christian skirmish may eventually be remembered as the first step toward a united Anglican-Catholic front — not against liberalism or atheism, but against Christianity’s most enduring and impressive foe.

To read Douthat's column, click HERE.

Author James Carroll, a former Catholic priest, writes in The Boston Globe that the Vatican's move is part of its larger war on the modern world and science:

Last week’s anti-Anglican salvo from Rome shows how far the Catholic leadership has fallen from the heights of Vatican II. The invitation to “disgruntled’’ members of the Church of England’s extended family to abandon the Thames for the Tiber is a rejection of contemporary human experience, a resounding response of “No!’’ The church against the modern world, after all.

To read Carroll's column, click HERE.

On the other hand, a few media commentators, and a few friends, have noted that Benedict's move could have the unintended consequence of allowing Protestantism to creep in under the Catholic tent, and in the long-run, that may prove more revolutionary than the short-term earthquake in Anglican-Roman Catholic relations. The Washington Post ran a lengthy analysis on its op-ed page Sunday that is far more nuanced than anything I have written. Headlined "Is Pope Benedict a closet liberal?" author David Gibson, who has written a book about Benedict, makes the following point:

More important, with the latest accommodation to Anglicans, Benedict has signaled that the standards for what it means to be Catholic -- such as the belief in the real presence of Christ in the Mass as celebrated by a validly ordained priest -- are changing or, some might argue, falling. The Vatican is in effect saying that disagreements over gay priests and female bishops are the main issues dividing Catholics and Anglicans, rather than, say, the sacraments and the papacy and infallible dogmas on the Virgin Mary, to name just a few past points of contention.

That is revolutionary -- and unexpected from a pope like Benedict. It could encourage the view, which he and other conservatives say they reject, that all Christians are pretty much the same when it comes to beliefs, and the differences are just arguments over details.

And that could be the final irony. For all the hue and cry over last week's developments, Benedict's innovations may have glossed too lightly over the really tough issues: namely, the theological differences that traditional Anglicans say have kept them from converting, as they could always do.

You can read Gibson's full column by clicking HERE.

Also, some in the secular press see this as part of the larger struggle for gay and women's rights. Notably, the Los Angeles Times gave that assessment in an editorial last week, marking it as the position of the newspaper:

This week's announcement that the Roman Catholic Church will welcome disaffected Anglicans en masse is of primary interest to members of the two Christian communions. But this religious realignment is also a reminder to supporters of equality for women and gays and lesbians that they must literally preach to the converted if they are to win believers to their cause.

To read the editorial, click HERE.

Finally, there is Bishop Dan Edwards of Nevada, who may be the wisest among us. He had this to say Monday:

I am just emerging from Diocesan Convention, so this is my first chance to respond to those who have wanted to hear my thoughts on the Vatican Statement inviting disffected Anglican congregations to become Roman Catholics, but the priests can still be married and they can use Anglican liturgies.

I really think it's perfectly fine. Some disaffected Anglicans are focused on issues where they will line up better with the RC Church -- particularly those who are opposed to the ordination of women. They will have to come to terms with some of the hot button issues in the RC Church, but if they can do that, their unity with a larger group of Christians will sustain their faith, help them be financially viable, and generally promote the gospel mission. We wish them well. We wish the Roman Catholic Church well. It is a good thing.

Other disaffected Anglicans are of a more evangelical persuasion and may not find the RC Church to be a good home. That will be for them to discern and not for us to judge.

Meanwhile, we will continue to seek reconciliation and greater unity with all our fellow Christians.

Lastly, if you are new to this blog, you may want to read my commentary on this HERE. Or maybe you've had quite enough of this, thank you, and it is time to move onto a poem or Autumn leaves something else. I couldn't agree more.

Vatican trying to lure Anglicans: What does this mean to us?

Church politics is like geology: the deep earth plates grind slowly, and eventually they set off earthquakes. What is on top of the earth is left crumpled and is never the same again.

This week we've seen another earthquake in the Church, and it is probably 7.2 on the Richter Scale. The aftershocks are continuing, and it will take years before we fully see what this quake hath wrought.

Pope Benedict XVI announced Tuesday he has formed a special office to receive disgruntled Anglicans into the Roman Catholic Church. Under the pope's scheme, Anglicans may keep their distinctive form of worship, and men priests may keep their wives. Such priests must be re-trained and re-ordained since the Vatician has always considered Anglican orders to be "absolutely null and utterly void."

Amplifying the earthquake, the Vatican got Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams to participate in a press conference announcing its move to scoop up Anglicans. You can read about Williams' participation and the reaction to Williams by clicking HERE.

Williams' participation must rank as one of the most boneheaded moves of his troubled episcopate. He said later he had been warned only a short time before by the Vatican about what it intended to do, which means he had more than an inkling of what was to transpire. In the very least, he should have declined to participate until fully understanding what Rome was up to. There are already calls in Britain for his resignation, and those calls may soon reach a roar across the Anglican globe, and rightly so.

To have lured the Archbishop of Canterbury to such a press conference was clearly intended to show at least tacit approval by the archbishop. The Vatican should be roundly criticized not just for this breach of Christian unity, but for taking advantage of Williams' best intentions of creating unity. The Vatican made him look gullible and spineless.

The Pope's move is predatory. Though advertised as pastoral, the timing betrays its intent. The Church of England is soon to vote on ordaining women bishops; a report recommending such ordination was issued only last week. The Vatican is clearly seeking to capitalize on the divisions within the Church of England, the Anglican Communion and our own Episcopal Church (the Diocese of South Carolina is set to vote on leaving the Episcopal Church this weekend). Some Catholic commentators (see The Washington Post on Wednesday by clicking HERE) are speculating that this is a sly way for the Vatican to pick up some married priests and thus fill a few of its empty pulpits (and I doubt the Vatican is looking to pick up property; it has plenty of buildings that need clergy).

None of this should surprise us. This move is coming from a Roman Catholic Church that is charging backward at warp-factor speed to pre-Vatican II liturgy and theology. The Roman Catholic Church still officially considers Protestants to be heretics; the incumbent pope, with none of the pastoral or public relations touch of his predecessor, dredged up the official Catholic stance that Islam is a "Christian heresy" (think of the audacity of that position for a moment: Islam is not even its own religion according to this pope). This also comes from a pope who welcomed back into the fold a Catholic bishop who denies the Holocaust. Benedict has demonstrated that he has no intention of ecumenical or interfaith dialogue except on his own terms. Meanwhile, the once vibrant theological and intellectual dialogue and scholarship within the Catholic church is heading underground. It was only recently that the Vatican repented of the wrong rendered to Galileo for having the audacity to prove that the earth is not at the center of the universe (and Rome is not at the center of the earth). Rome still has some catching up to do with the rest of us.

As for being Anglican, let us not forget that our church broke with Rome 500 years ago, and there were very good reasons for that beyond the divorce of King Henry VIII. We stood on the side of Martin Luther in our belief that we are saved by faith alone, not by our works. We are Protestants of the large tent who remain catholic in the sense of believing in the universal church that is truly universal.

Benedict is not our pope, and he is not one of our bishops, but he is our brother in Christ even if he does not recognize the same in us. We have long since moved on from Rome, and whatever illusions anyone had of reunifying with Rome will, at best, need to wait for another pope, perhaps in another century.

Where does this leave Anglicanism?

Benedict's move probably shreds Rowan Williams' effort to forge a "two-track" Anglicanism with the conservatives on one track and the progressives on the other. Rome just hijacked the first track, and bumped the archbishop off. Williams' effort at forging an "Anglican Covenant" now appears very hollow indeed. Perhaps we should thank Rome for putting the nail in this ill-conceived notion.

If anything, the Pope's move will have the unintended consequence of making it easier for us to move ahead with building an inclusive Anglicanism that truly embraces the gifts of all the baptized. An estimated 1,000 Church of England priests may soon leave for the Roman church, taking with them their votes, and that will make it easier on the Church of England to begin ordaining women bishops and openly gay people. Those whom Williams is desperately trying to keep are leaving, and that will make it harder for him to declare that the American Episcopal Church is "out of communion." If anything, the Church of England will look more like us. An inclusive Church of England might even grow when not dragged down by endless church infighting, and that can only strengthen our communion in the long run.

Meanwhile, what Benedict may soon discover is that a bunch of crabby Anglicans have now become crabby Roman Catholics. Those not satisfied with one church are not likely to be satisfied with another. It rarely works that way.

I don't know if anyone has kept track, but I would be willing to bet that in the last 30 years more Roman Catholic priests have become Anglican than the other way around. Benedict's move does nothing to stem that slide, and if anything, the continued rigidity of his church will only continue to chase people out. Perhaps we should set up a special Anglican office to receive Roman Catholics? Maybe Rowan Williams should have said something like that at the press conference. He is too decent to be that snide, but it would have made the point.

Interestingly, the news outlets in the United States report that none of the break-away bishops in the Episcopal Church are interested in joining Rome. They have gone too far down their own road, and I rather suspect they enjoy their new found independence and have no intention of handing it over to a headquarters in Rome. Why should they? They were never much interested in unity with those different from themselves to begin with. Quite probably, this move by the Vatican will only increase their isolation, rendering them neither Anglican nor Catholic, but rather a new denomination of Protestantism.

The Vatican will say that this move is pastoral in its intent. Let us pray it will turn out that way. It is my hope that our brothers and sisters who are unhappy with the Episcopal Church will find a home better suited to them. They are still our brothers and sisters in Christ. I have a very conservative friend in the Central Valley of California who renounced his Episcopal ordination to join the Roman Catholic Church as a lay person. He is still a friend and still a servant even if we disagree on many issues. The Central Valley desperately needs Roman Catholic priests. I hope he is able to reclaim his vocation. But he might have done that anyway without all the histrionics from Rome.

Finally, I am reminded of an amazing historical fact that I learned when taking church history from the Rev. Dr. Rebecca Lyman at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. Here is that fact: For two-thousand years, despite all of the patriarchal church hierarchy, despite all of the church in-fighting and schisms, despite all of the tragedy, oppression, inquisitions, despite all of the malicious or merely stupid bishops, despite all of that, the Holy Spirit always finds a way to emerge in the hearts and minds of God's people. The Holy Spirit finds us in our every day life, and finds us in churches of every stripe and in faith communities of every sort. The Holy Spirit blows where it will.

All we need do is open our eyes to see and our ears to hear, and maybe stand somewhere to feel the breeze. The Holy Spirit is always in the midst of us, and is even in the Roman Catholic Church.

Photo of Archbishop Rowan Williams, left, and Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, right, at Tuesday's press conference. Photo by Matt Dunham, Associated Press.