The Anglican Catholic patrimony which the ordinariate will bring has been enriching us for years

John Mason Neale continues to influence the Catholic Church through the Sisters formerly of the Society of St Margaret, which JMN founded in 1855, and who are now members of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.

I agree and would go so far as to say it is the CofE and world Anglicanism which should have the Ordinariate to which Roman Catholics could be admitted. Instead of the other way around. Rome’s theological patrimony married to Anglican culture, music, arts, letters, the English language, and progressive, largely tolerant thought. Civilizing the world in ways Rome has never done.

Dear Aging Papist/Neville Devilliers: have you (both?) inadvertently blown your cover, not least in that your acceptance of the simplistic and derisory Anglo-centric generalization (“Civilizing the world in ways Rome has never done”), reveals a breathtakingly sweeping disregard for historically verifiable fact?

Mindful of the Latin origins of the very word ‘civilization’, it is sad that myths and falsehoods about Rome’s past perpetuate, which contrive to ignore the civilization it promoted and continues to foster, preferring instead to represent the Church as backward-looking, malign or even evil.

Yet an undistorted political or artistic history shows that for most of the past two millennia (and counting) it was Catholic Rome that enabled, for example, the vision of the city to continue to be seen as the centre of culture, learning, neighbourliness, religious practice, virtue and, yes, civility (there’s that word again…).

For century after century, Rome’s influence in shaping the potential for beauty in thought, deed and aspect on the face of Europe can be seen progressing (albeit not always flawlessly) from one era to the next. From St. Jerome’s Vulgate (unacknowledged in the King James Version) to St. Thomas’ synthesis of philosophy and faith; from Gregorian chant to the music of Vivaldi ; from the art and architecture of the great cathedral and humble parish church, to the works of Raphael and Michelangelo and beyond; a legacy and patrimony that continues right up to the present day.

Indeed, I wonder where post-18th century Enlightenment Europe would be today if, for example, the Anglo-Protestant insistence on the literal interpretation of Scripture as the only source of truth had not been resisted by the Roman Catholic insistence that it wasn’t?

It bears repeating: much complacency of thought today still stems from self-serving propaganda, from the 16th to 19th centuries, which professed that the Roman Catholic Church was irretrievably corrupt – a politically compromised cliché which prevails even to this day from shibboleths about the Inquisition (which, contrary to the uncivilized institution of myth, was, by the standards of the times, a comparatively merciful one) to those which derogate the Church’s attitude to science (e.g., the re-cycling of distorted narrative, such as that surrounding Galileo, which makes science appear incompatible with Roman Catholic faith – which, of course, it wasn’t and isn’t) whilst ignoring the literally hundreds of scientists, including priests, religious and lay, not to mention the many major figures, whose contributions to science have not been compromised by either their allegiance to their faith or to Rome.

In the interests of balance, to the usually named trio of Wilberforce, Clarkson and Newton (who was a slave ship’s captain before becoming a clergyman and writing ‘Amazing Grace’) might I add the often over-looked William Roscoe (1753-1831), Liverpool philanthropist, polymath, MP and abolitionist.

Among the most celebrated works of this author, artist, lawyer, banker and botanist were his lives of Lorenzo de Medici and Pope Leo X, which contributed to renewed English interest in Italian art and culture. A non-conformist himself, he also championed the rights of the oppressed Roman Catholic minority, making himself doubly unpopular with many fellow Englishmen and Anglicans who were, unsurprisingly, in the majority the main financial beneficiaries and proponents of the slave trade here in Britain.

As for the Catholic Church’s position, Popes who condemned the slave trade include:

- 1741 (almost a century before full abolition in British territories): Benedict XVI condemned slavery generally.

-1815: Pious VII demanded of the Congress of Vienna the suppression of the slave trade, which Pious IX branded “the supreme villainy (summum nefas) of the the slave traders”.

-1839: Gregory XVI condemned the continuing slave trade in ‘ In supremo apostolatus’.

-1888: Leo XIII (ditto) ‘In plurimis’.

Catholic Rome that enabled, for example, the vision of the city to continue to be seen as the centre of culture, learning, neighbourliness, religious practice, virtue and, yes, civility (there’s that word again…).
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Read the history of the papacy. One of corruption, greed, warfare, anti-Semitism,and the denigration of personal rights, from the early Churh to 1870. The shabby history of the Church fighting modernism and progress on all fronts. Nowhere is this in greater evidence than in Spain and South America. Still enslaved today. All you can cite are strictly artistic and cultural contributions which I concede are considerable, but there it ends.

Unfortunately, Catholicism weakened itself in the 30 years war and was destroyed in England following the Wars of the Roses and the 100 Years war. The Counter Reformation was a signal failure in attempting to destroy Protestantism. Great music and architecture yes, but that’s it. A Church was formed obsessed with uniformity and control. Permitting Protestant Holland, Britain, Germany, and always the independent thinking French, to pick up the torch of learning, discovery, and to become the stage for the Enlightenment. The Jesuits,while successful in eastern Europe and France, failed in England. They’re a pitiably pale shadow of their former glory today.

The university system largely succeeded on it’s own without papal support at all. Superstition, autocracy,and the desire to control the minds of the incurably incurious have become the Church’s heritage and hallmark, with very few exceptions. The Roman Church is sliding into irrelevancy and corruption again. As a result, we see the next Reformation taking root today.

The Age of the Laity is rising fast even if Benedict XVI in unable to traverse the 16th century and come into the 21st century. As in the case of the last reformation 500 years ago, he and the Church are being dismissed. Just as the toadies flocking about Benedict continue to tell him all is well and that the Church of the status quo will triumph.

As an interesting addendum to this discussion regarding the contributions of Anglicanism I would like to cite a recent nomination of that bastion of Christian sensibility, the New York Times. In an article published on March 5, it asked the question: “Who, since the time of Jesus and his apostles, has brought more people to Christianity than anybody else?” It suggests a few possible candidates such as the emperor Constantine and Pope Urban II but then comes down on the side of an Anglican layman, C. S. Lewis, “who moved more hearts with a pen than others have with armies.” This is an opinion about Lewis that many Catholics can wholeheartedly endorse and a testament to the way the Spirit blows where it willst.

Read the history in Scripture; one of mass murder, wholesale and aggressive racism, disregard of ‘human rights’ for any who aren’t on the inside, not to leave out greed, corruption and sexual misdemenor. Of course, one might rather look at the history of the English empire and its church which has at times been one of mass murder, wholesale and aggressive racism, disregard of ‘human rights’ for any who aren’t on the inside, not to leave out greed, corruption and sexual misdemenor. Or if the term ‘empire’ seems to distance the point from modern man, consider the history of the WASPish United States of America, both national and imperial; this too has at times been one of one of mass murder, wholesale and aggressive racism, disregard of ‘human rights’ for any who aren’t on the inside, not to leave out greed, corruption and sexual misdemenor.

Slavery is still all but rampant in areas dependent on the commercial empire built up by England and the US – tying the poorest of the poor to poverty so that cheap clothes and food can fill Hypermarket stores .. only to be thrown on the scrap heap when these (souls, food and clothing) are no longer required; it needs no more than a read of Dickens to show this. No one who walked through the Civil Rights disputes in America and N. Ireland in the 1960s can have any but the most vivid pictures of second class citzenry, de-enfranchised subjects, or resident alien status peoples shut out of the In-Crowd. These empires of money-making fact also imposed opium taking on foreign states even by means of war, they have sent gun boats to enforce diplomatic access to markets on their terms, and still invade the bad-boy rogue states they have found inconvenient or in opposition to them.

It is foolish to believe that Anglicans, Baptists, My-Own-Church-ists et al formed no part in this. That they were and also often remain at the very heart of the decisions that uphold this system of first, second and third worlds – even in one country – is plain for any to see: if one makes the slightest effort to see it. And, moreover, that although their part is never rigorously explored by the mass media – historically and at present – they do indeed have the same mired hands which can be seen in the history of the papacy; except in this, the popes, and the catholic orthodoxy of the West in particular, have a developed singularly consistant scrutiny, regard and drive for the better or even to do the best for the commonwealth of all men .. England, America, Iraq (whether or not they also fail frequently in this betterment).

The Aquarian Age – that of people against authority – has waned, and is fast disappearing along its own vanity. That it had no place in the Christian Faith, let alone running rampant through it, is not a matter of one saintly man imposing some imaginary 16th century model, it is precluded by God’s will. True, the Class War antics of the Soviet/ Capitalist Cold War has vapoured away already, yet its by-products have not .. some of them will overshadow generations for centuries to come .. nonetheless, this spirit of divisionism is still at work among way too many Catholics of the West and with the same vitriol that marked the initial drive for their enslavement to a worldly-wise error.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deputy

“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.” Heb 13 : 17.

God bless, Nat.

PS: Obedience in Christ is never blind to confusion, mistake and error in pastors. It is, however, insightful to all truths that they seek advance .. even if they do so in flawed or faulty ways. The constant opposition of the popes to slavery, of wild, brutal, illegal punishments, and the folly of disregard for reasoning – even among their own number - is easier to wish away than it is to obliterate from historical record.