Commentary > Op-eds
Pope Benedict Putting Church On Path To Unity
By JAMES G. WILES, For The Bulletin
By coincidence, when word came of Pope Benedict’s initiative towards the Anglicans, I was re-reading Father Basset’s history of the English Jesuits.
The day before, I had viewed "A Man for All Seasons" and recalled the paintings in the London Oratory. One of my prized possessions is a beautifully printed account of the English martyrs of the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem Hospitaler, a gift of Professor William Tighe of Muhlenberg University. When I took my wife to Ireland for the first time in 1994, we spent more time wandering through ruined abbeys than we did in the pubs.
For someone with that kind of personal background, it was impossible not to think of Psalm 126: “When the Lord turned against the captivity of Sion, then were we like unto them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter.” The music of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd played in my head.
Like the falling of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the possibility that the Catholic church of the English might finally come home to Rome in my lifetime was paralyzing. I was struck by the notion that, like the Soviets and their allies who’d sought to kill Pope John Paul II, instead had seen their Communist empire collapse around them, the shades of Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII might now be watching from hell as the Archbishop of Canterbury sat with the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and listened to His Eminence announce the Holy See’s terms upon which Anglicans could return en masse to the Catholic fold. Somewhere, William Shakespeare, that recusant Catholic, was smiling.
The Holy Father’s Apostolic Constitution was not, the archbishops agreed, an act of papal aggression. It was, instead, an ecumenical gesture. Like the same Pope’s attempted reconciliation with the breakaway Society of Pope Pius X, it was an act of charity.
It was impossible to keep a straight face.
This is an earthquake. For two reasons:
First, this is Pope Benedict’s latest initiative in what is now clearly a papal policy of trying to rally the vibrant, sacramental Christian churches around the Papacy in response to the collapse of the other mainline Christian churches and the on-coming threat of jihadi Islam, especially in Europe. As such, by offering concessions in exchange for lost sheep returning to the Church and the Sacraments, the Holy Father is seeking to build up a new Christendom and to gather in the still-faithful remnants of the collapsed Protestant Churches – hierarchy, clergy and laity together. The intended symbols of this new, united Christendom, in my estimation, will be the Papacy and the Mass, including the newly revived Extraordinary Rite of the Mass, which now under Benedict’s motu proprio, is required to be the liturgy celebrated at all international gatherings.
It may be a century before our descendants know if this papal policy is a success. However, the dead end of the Reformation is now apparent for all to see in the spectacle of the American Episcopal Church and the disappearance of the Anglican Church in the United Kingdom. The break from Rome and fidelity to Scripture and the Sacraments has led precisely nowhere.
There is, thus, every reason for Pope Benedict to seek to sweep together the embers and blow hard upon them. It appears that that’s exactly what he is doing. As with the Easter fire, it will be for later Popes to build this small blaze into a full blown conflagration.
The second possibility is more elusive because we haven’t yet seen the text of the Apostolic Constitution.
Will the new structures contemplated by the Pope and his men establish a precedent for the Orthodox, Lutheran and other Christian churches which have the Mass, are hierarchically-based and sacramentally-centered, to become “sister churches” to Rome? In the Uniate Churches, for instance, Eastern Rite Catholics retain their liturgies, vestments, art, liturgical languages and music, church structures and titles. Yet, some of their patriarchs are also members of the Sacred College of Cardinals.
The answer is that it’s simply too early to tell. A precedent may not even be what is intended.
In the meantime, a trajectory has been established toward unity. And the talking heads of five years ago have been proven wrong.
This old, piano-playing Bavarian is not who they thought he was. The man who was called Pope John Paul II’s Rottweiler, the feared head of the Holy Office, the “German Shepherd” who, as a teenager, “saw the gates of hell open” and who, as Pope, adopted the name of the Apostle of Europe who had established the monastic system to convert the barbarian invaders and restore Christian civilization to Europe, turns out, instead, to be a uniter. Indeed, Benedict VII promises to become as central a figure in Christendom as Pope Pius X. May he be as successful.
A light has cut through the darkness and we have something to celebrate. As they come in, whether en masse or one-by-one, let us welcome our Anglican brothers. And let us learn from them, too.
James Wiles is a Philadelphia lawyer. He can be reached at jwiles@thebulletin.us
The day before, I had viewed "A Man for All Seasons" and recalled the paintings in the London Oratory. One of my prized possessions is a beautifully printed account of the English martyrs of the Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem Hospitaler, a gift of Professor William Tighe of Muhlenberg University. When I took my wife to Ireland for the first time in 1994, we spent more time wandering through ruined abbeys than we did in the pubs.
For someone with that kind of personal background, it was impossible not to think of Psalm 126: “When the Lord turned against the captivity of Sion, then were we like unto them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter.” The music of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd played in my head.
Like the falling of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the possibility that the Catholic church of the English might finally come home to Rome in my lifetime was paralyzing. I was struck by the notion that, like the Soviets and their allies who’d sought to kill Pope John Paul II, instead had seen their Communist empire collapse around them, the shades of Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII might now be watching from hell as the Archbishop of Canterbury sat with the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster and listened to His Eminence announce the Holy See’s terms upon which Anglicans could return en masse to the Catholic fold. Somewhere, William Shakespeare, that recusant Catholic, was smiling.
The Holy Father’s Apostolic Constitution was not, the archbishops agreed, an act of papal aggression. It was, instead, an ecumenical gesture. Like the same Pope’s attempted reconciliation with the breakaway Society of Pope Pius X, it was an act of charity.
It was impossible to keep a straight face.
This is an earthquake. For two reasons:
First, this is Pope Benedict’s latest initiative in what is now clearly a papal policy of trying to rally the vibrant, sacramental Christian churches around the Papacy in response to the collapse of the other mainline Christian churches and the on-coming threat of jihadi Islam, especially in Europe. As such, by offering concessions in exchange for lost sheep returning to the Church and the Sacraments, the Holy Father is seeking to build up a new Christendom and to gather in the still-faithful remnants of the collapsed Protestant Churches – hierarchy, clergy and laity together. The intended symbols of this new, united Christendom, in my estimation, will be the Papacy and the Mass, including the newly revived Extraordinary Rite of the Mass, which now under Benedict’s motu proprio, is required to be the liturgy celebrated at all international gatherings.
It may be a century before our descendants know if this papal policy is a success. However, the dead end of the Reformation is now apparent for all to see in the spectacle of the American Episcopal Church and the disappearance of the Anglican Church in the United Kingdom. The break from Rome and fidelity to Scripture and the Sacraments has led precisely nowhere.
There is, thus, every reason for Pope Benedict to seek to sweep together the embers and blow hard upon them. It appears that that’s exactly what he is doing. As with the Easter fire, it will be for later Popes to build this small blaze into a full blown conflagration.
The second possibility is more elusive because we haven’t yet seen the text of the Apostolic Constitution.
Will the new structures contemplated by the Pope and his men establish a precedent for the Orthodox, Lutheran and other Christian churches which have the Mass, are hierarchically-based and sacramentally-centered, to become “sister churches” to Rome? In the Uniate Churches, for instance, Eastern Rite Catholics retain their liturgies, vestments, art, liturgical languages and music, church structures and titles. Yet, some of their patriarchs are also members of the Sacred College of Cardinals.
The answer is that it’s simply too early to tell. A precedent may not even be what is intended.
In the meantime, a trajectory has been established toward unity. And the talking heads of five years ago have been proven wrong.
This old, piano-playing Bavarian is not who they thought he was. The man who was called Pope John Paul II’s Rottweiler, the feared head of the Holy Office, the “German Shepherd” who, as a teenager, “saw the gates of hell open” and who, as Pope, adopted the name of the Apostle of Europe who had established the monastic system to convert the barbarian invaders and restore Christian civilization to Europe, turns out, instead, to be a uniter. Indeed, Benedict VII promises to become as central a figure in Christendom as Pope Pius X. May he be as successful.
A light has cut through the darkness and we have something to celebrate. As they come in, whether en masse or one-by-one, let us welcome our Anglican brothers. And let us learn from them, too.
James Wiles is a Philadelphia lawyer. He can be reached at jwiles@thebulletin.us
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