Buildings

The Anglican Cathedral at Christchurch New Zealand was savagely destroyed recently, although the greater tragedy was the loss of so many lives. The Dean is already talking of rebuilding it, while other voices are suggesting that such a stone building is never going to be safe from earthquakes.

The old Cathedral was striking, and looked historic in the centre of Christchurch. It also served as a focus for New Zealand's Anglicans. Generations have received spiritual comfort from it, but sadly it was not fit for purpose. The Bishop, Victoria Matthews spoke on radio about "accumulating weakening" in the church.

Surely there is a message here for us all.

Something sensible and real...

Australian bishop: Have no illusions about classical Anglo-Catholics
By Anthony BarichCatholic News Service

PERTH, Australia (CNS) -- Traditionalist Anglicans who remain in the Anglican Church rather than taking up Pope Benedict XVI's offer of an Anglican ordinariate are wasting their time and spiritual energy clinging to a dangerous illusion, said the Vatican's delegate for the Australian ordinariate.

Melbourne Auxiliary Bishop Peter Elliott, a former Anglican, urged Anglicans at a Feb. 26 festival in Perth to take up the pope's offer of "peace."

"I would caution people who still claim to be Anglo-Catholics and yet are holding back," he told The Record, Catholic newspaper of the Archdiocese of Perth, Feb. 26. "I'd say 'When are you going to face realities?' because there's no place for a classical Anglo-Catholic in the Anglican Communion anymore."

In November 2009, Pope Benedict announced his decision to erect personal ordinariates for former Anglicans who wanted to enter into full communion with Rome while preserving liturgical and other elements of their Anglican heritage, including a certain amount of governing by consensus.

Those coming into the ordinariates are the "last fruits" of the Anglicans' Oxford Movement started in 1833 by Blessed John Henry Newman to restore Catholic identity in the Anglican Church, Bishop Elliott said. But he warned that times have changed and events have taken a "new and confronting turn."

"These realities seem to be lost on some Anglo-Catholics who are tempted to make a desperate last stand by just staying where they are," he told the festival, which drew more than 100 people, including the Archbishop Barry Hickey of Perth and his auxiliary, Bishop Donald Sproxton.

"Permit me to suggest that it is a waste of time and spiritual energy to cling to such a dangerous illusion. Valuing the Catholic faith should not be confused with polemics," Bishop Elliott said.

"Let me quietly invite you to lay down weapons of controversies that are now pointless, to set aside endless intrigues which lead nowhere, to walk away from futile conflicts which cannot build up the body of Christ in charity. Accept the invitation of the vicar of Christ on earth.

"The gentle man who reaches out to you in 'Anglicanorum Coetibus' has no ulterior motives," he said, referring to the apostolic constitution that set up the ordinariates. "His apostolic offer is clear. There is no deception here. He calls you to peace."

The prelate also dismissed suggestions that the pope's offer would hinder ecumenism. Rather, it has kick-started it, he said.

"Recently it has been announced that the ARCIC (Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission) process will continue. Anyone tempted to add 'in spite of the papal offer of the ordinariate' should reflect whether in fact it is the papal offer that has kick-started ARCIC once more," he said.

"With reference to these ongoing conversations, I would argue, as I have said elsewhere, that, far from damaging ecumenism, the ordinariates will provide a lively stimulus for better relations between Anglicans and Catholics.

"In this regard let us pray that the forthcoming ARCIC discussions on the church as communion and Christian ethics will go well," he said.

Bishop Elliott added that the ARCIC conversations and the fruit of these conversations will also be honored in the new ordinariates.

Australian Anglo-Catholics hope to establish their ordinariate by Pentecost, June 12, by which time up to 60 Anglican clergy from Australia and the Torres Strait islands hope to have been ordained Catholic priests.

Momentum is gaining among traditionalist Anglicans across the world to take up Pope Benedict's offer.

Australian Archbishop John Hepworth, primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, which claims 400,000 members globally, has asked the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to appoint bishop delegates for India, parts of Africa, Latin America, the Torres Strait, Puerto Rico and Japan following decisions of Anglicans there to enter the Catholic Church through ordinariates.

END

"Continuing Anglicans"

What a load of claptrap these "Continuing Anglicans" speak.

Hep Speak

Those of you who have read 1984 by George Orwell may well remember "New Speak." It fit well with "double think" and the rewriting of history by "minitrue" (short for "the Ministry of Truth"), based on the Oceania government's position that "he who controls the past controls the future." "Hep Speak" combines all of these ideas into one nice package. Defending his best efforts at tyranny and at being a school yard bully, Archbishop Hepworth continues to rave like a drunken man who cannot establish a reasonable premise for his own brand of logic. Every time I see a statement by John Hepworth I see glaring errors of fact, superficial theology at best, and all with the clear intention of destroying the Continuing Church, at least any part of it that he can.

David Virtue, no doubt allowing the Ordinariate club to have just enough rope that they make their true colors visible, has created an "ordinariate" section on VirtueOnline. There, we see a statement by the Australian Primate, a statement in keeping with all that the word "primate" suggests.

Let's look at a few examples of Hep Speak. "It was agreed that those involved could stay in their own parishes, but under the episcopal jurisdiction of a bishop entering the Ordinariate." Right. So, now Hepworth proposes that local rectors and diocesan bishops should have to put up with members of respective parishes rebelling against the established church authority at home, answering instead to a foreign bishop in a foreign jurisdiction. They may thumb their noses at rectors and bishops, and create disorder in their own churches, all by pretending to have some legitimacy from some outside authority. Individuals in a parish have been given permission to create confusion and to be destructive. They may thus let all things be done indecently and out of order. In the same statement Hepworth has the temerity to say, "Christian Unity is not an option for the Church." Apparently, and ironically, he is saying that he has removed the "option" of allowing a parish to experience its own unity on a local level by asserting himself, in bully fashion. What "unity" is he for, considering that he has attempted in this same document to tear up and divide local parishes? And, what does he mean by unity? He means that a small number of former Anglicans convert to Roman Catholicism. In no way can that movement, from one denomination to another, unify the Church. And, what good is political unity anyway without charity? What kind of unity is it when it is simply forced on people by some legal status? "The tragedy of Continuing Anglicanism - and indeed of the Anglican Communion - is the absence of Eucharistic Communion with anyone but itself." What is this clown smoking? That has never been true of the Anglican Communion, and neither is it true of Continuing Anglicanism. We have never forbidden non-Anglicans from receiving the sacrament. But, it is most certainly true that both of the Two One True Churches forbid the sacrament to anyone but their own.

It is tragic that so many people who fled for refuge to a church body, in which they sought refuge according to the Affirmation of St. Louis, have found themselves bullied, lied to, and pressured to destroy their identity by assimilation. Hepworth continues to use his disguise as an Anglican Archbishop, a pretense if ever there was one, to heap insult upon insult to our carefully considered and most deeply held convictions. He continues to invoke the word "unity" in the most deceptive manner, meaning only that people should betray their own consciences and ignore their beliefs so that they may join another denomination. At the end of the day, when all of the people who plan to swim the Tiber jump in, the Church will not be any more unified than it was before. After all, individuals have always gone from one to the other, and that will not cease to be the case. The good news is, Hep Speak is failing, and his voice gets weaker every day, some day to be forgotten as we have forgotten the words of Alexander the Coppersmith. Soon, this latest threat to our mission as Continuing Anglicans will have passed, and we can concentrate on real unity among ourselves. Then we can get on with our mission, and allow no more idiotic distractions. That is, once we can actually say with St. Paul, "Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices." II Cor. 2:11