Be united with one another, and God will bless
you. But let it be by the charity of Jesus Christ, for any union which is
not sealed by the blood of Our Savior cannot perdure. It is therefore in
Jesus Christ, by Jesus Christ, and for Jesus Christ that you ought to be united
with one another. The Spirit of Jesus Christ is a spirit of union and of
peace. How can you attract people to Christ if you are not united with
one another and with him?
Almighty God, You have made blessed Bonaventure Illustrious in the virtue of obedience and in love for neighbor. Through his prayers and example grant us to comply with Your precepts, to rejoice in spirit, and to advance on the way of perfection.
They sang, O Lord, Your holy name and praised in unison Your conquering hand.
He did what we are encouraged to do today: preach on the Prophets and Wisdom books of the Bible. The Catholic encyclopedia’s entry on Saint Peter may be found here and the Wiki article may be read here.
I frequently
stand in awe of people who, like Pope Benedict, can draw my attention to the
essentials of faith, reason and culture. His audience on Wednesday where he
speaks about St. Bernard is one of these instances because he shows me the
beauty of St. Bernard, the purpose of theology study, life with the saints, and why we have to suffer some things for the Kingdom. For example, the Pope
offers a corrective in my work as a seminarian.
Here are a few germane sentences with emphasis added: In one place in the talk Pope says: “Faith is above all an
individual and intimate encounter with Jesus; it means experiencing His
closeness, His friendship and His love.” He continues “St. Bernard, solidly
based on the Bible and on the Fathers of the Church, reminds us that without a profound
faith in God, nourished by prayer and contemplation, by a profound relationship
with the Lord, our reflections on the divine mysteries risk becoming a futile
intellectual exercise, and lose their credibility. Theology takes us back to
the “science of the saints,” to their intuitions of the mysteries of
the living God, to their wisdom, gift of the Holy Spirit, which become the
point of reference for theological thought.”
And given that I think there’s much discussion
in a seminary work, sometimes too much discussion, I am leaning St. Bernard as
he says, “but perhaps He can be sought better and found more easily with
prayer than with discussion. We put an end here to the book, but not to the
search.”
(Pope Benedict XVI,
Wednesday General Audience, October 21, 2009)
It is a dramatic slap-down of
liberal Anglicanism and a total repudiation of the ordination of women,
homosexual marriage and the general neglect of doctrine in Anglicanism. Indeed,
it is a final rejection of Anglicanism. It basically interprets Anglicanism as
a spiritual patrimony based on ethnic tradition rather than substantial
doctrine and makes clear that it is not a historic “church” but
rather an “ecclesial community” that strayed and now is invited to return
to communion with the Pope as Successor of Peter.
The Vatican was careful to
schedule simultaneously with the Vatican announcement, a press conference of
the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster and the deeply humiliated Anglican
Archbishop of Canterbury to enable the Anglicans to save some face by saying
that this recognizes the spiritual patrimony of Anglicanism and that ecumenical
dialogue goes ahead. That is like George Washington at Yorktown saying that he
recognizes the cultural contributions of Britain and hopes diplomatic relations
flourish. The Apostolic Constitution is not a retraction of ecumenical desires,
but rather is the fulfillment of ecumenical aspirations, albeit not the way
most Anglican leaders had envisioned it.
The press, uninformed and always
tabloid in matters of religion, will zoom in on the permission for married
priests. They will miss the most important point: that this reiterates the
Catholic Church’s insistence that Anglican Holy Orders are invalid, and
perforce so is their Eucharist. These married Anglican priests have to be fully
and validly ordained by a Catholic bishop. Following Orthodox custom, they
are allowed to marry only before ordination and not after. And no married man
may become a bishop. (Thus, any Anglican bishop joining one of these
“ordinariates” would no longer be recognized as a bishop. Under
special provision, Anglican bishops would have some right to pastoral authority,
but would not be bishops.)
It remains to be seen how many Anglicans
(Episcopalians in the USA) will be received into the Catholic Church under
these provisions, but it is a final nail in the coffin of the rapidly
disintegrating Anglicanism at least in the West and will radically challenge
Anglicans in other parts of the world. Perhaps most importantly, it sets a
precedent for reunion with Orthodox churches whose Holy Orders the Catholic
Church already recognizes as valid. I should not be surprised if the Anglican
Archbishop of Canterbury eventually is received into the Catholic Church, at
least when he retires and gets a patent of nobility and a pension.
Fr. George
Rutler is pastor of The Church of Our Saviour in New York City and is a convert
to Catholicism from the Anglican Communion.
We are weak, O God, and capable of giving in at the
first assault. By your pure loving kindness you have called us; may your
infinite goodness, please, now help us persevere. For our part, with your
holy grace, we will try with all our strength to summon up all the service and
all the faithfulness that you ask of us. So give us, O God, give us the
grace to persevere until death. This is what I ask of you through the
merits of Our Lord Jesus Christ with confidence that you will remember me.
The 18th century was a nasty time in history, it is also the time in which Blessed Josephine gave her life for Christ and the Church because of her call to the monastic life. A note on her background.