March 25, 2011
Syro-Malankara Catholic bishops at the Angelicum
The bishops of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church were in Rome this week for their ad limina visit “to the threshold” of the shrines of Peter and Paul, and to meet with their successor, Benedict XVI. There are a total of 13 of them, including the Major Archbishop-Catholicos, symbolically representative of Christ and the Twelve. (Also symbolizing Christ and the Twelve are the distinctive headcovering with thirteen stitched crosses, one large and twelve small.)
The Syro-Malankara Catholic Church has about 500,000 members, predominately in Kerala state, India. It follows the west-Syrian Rite and the liturgy of St. James of Jerusalem, and forms part of the Thomas Christians who trace their initial evangelization to the Apostle Thomas in about the year 52 AD. From at least the 8th century, the Metropolitan of the autonomous Thomas Christian Church was a hierarch in the Assyrian Church of the East, their closest ecclesiastical neighbors. The Thomas Christians held that communion was maintained, if communication lost, with the Catholic/Orthodox world until the arrival of Tridentine-era Portuguese missionaries at the end of the 15th century, who began a program of Latinization. Resistance to the imposition of western culture and ecclesiology culminated in 1653, the symbolic date for the breaking of communion and the eventual breaking of the once-unified Christian Church in India into its current situation, divided among those in communion with the Assyrian Church of the East, the Syrian Orthodox Church, Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church (Anglican), the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. The latter traces its origin to the corporate reunion of some Malankara Orthodox Syrian bishops and faithful starting in 1930.
The bishops met with Pope Benedict XVI this morning, and this afternoon were gathered at the Angelicum for a lecture offered by one of their number, Bishop Thomas Mar Anthonios, entitled, “New Evangelization: The Mission and Role of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church”. The text is basically a synopsis of the lineamenta prepared for the first-ever Major Archiepiscopal Assembly scheduled for later this year. Thiers will be the first episcopal conference or church sui iuris to address the theme of the New Evangelization in plenary.
Before the beginning of the lecture, His Beatitude Major Archbishop Moran Mor Baselios Cleemis greeted the assembled students and guests, and made a special point to recognize his dissertation director, Fr. Fred Bliss, SM, from his days as an Angelicum student. As I sat surrounded almost entirely by Indian Catholics, the chanted prayer that began the seminar was one of the more moving spiritual moments I’ve experienced in recent weeks (I am not even sure if it was Hindi or one of the other languages, such as Tamil or Malayalam, I should ask).
Questions and challenges to be addressed in the new evangelization noted by Bishop Thomas included the relationship of evangelization and interreligious dialogue, individualism and secular culture (referred to as a “darkness”), the success of genuine inculturation, the necessity of Christian unity for effective evangelization, and the obstacles to freedom placed before the church both by the Indian state and the Roman curia (an issue which we were assured Pope Benedict had promised this morning to take under serious consideration). Pastoral lethargy was also noted as a challenge, “Communities should be shaken from their present slumber of maintenance to a renewed consciousness of mission.”
[The text of the Holy Father's address to the bishops can be found at Vatican Radio here]
Chanted Prayer with Syro-Malankara bishops
March 6, 2011
Salomè Holly, In Memoriam
It has been 12 years, but sometimes, like today, I feel the loss as if it were yesterday: On 6 March 1999, my friend Salomè Holly was murdered, along with her mother and sister, by her step-father of five months, Dayva Cross. I spent the day on a road trip from Indiana to Florida with three friends for spring break, and had meant to call Salomè the night before – but decided I would send a postcard from Orlando after I arrived. I found out later, too, that she had already bought me a card for my 21st birthday the following week, which was found in her room.
My friends (Brian, Jesús and Miguel) and the university, particularly in the person of my rector Fr. Tom Doyle, were of immense help in getting me home by the end of the week so I could participate in her memorial service, which was held the weekend of my birthday. When I returned to Indiana, Jesus drove 2 ½ hours to pick me up at the Indianapolis airport, and then drove me back two hours to the Notre Dame campus, where a group of nearly 20 friends were waiting in a surprise birthday/consolation ‘party’ – I do not know if any of them realized how much all of that meant to me.
Salomè and I were in the band together, but we really started talking when we found ourselves in line next to each other during Homecoming my senior – her freshman – year. She had come alone, and my date had wandered off to be with friends (in truth, I would have wandered off on me too; I was even more socially awkward back then and probably not a very interesting date!). Later, I meant to ask her to prom, but was prevented by three considerations: our prom was scheduled during the Easter Vigil; I had no money; and, I figured, as a newly accepted seminarian for the archdiocese, my priority should be the Vigil. Over the next three years, I would come home from college and we would talk religion and politics until wee hours, playing Risk or solving the world’s problems with other friends; one summer we helped on the congressional campaign of a neighbor whose campaign manager was one of these friends. Sometimes, we would be up until dawn, her and me, just talking.
Before Salomè, I had lost grandparents and other relatives to old age, I had had friends killed in car accidents, known people to die of cancer, and a boss who died from complications of MS. By the time I was 21, I had known 21 people – friends, relatives, and acquaintances – who had died, and I had been to more funerals than weddings. Each was a loss, and were some more tragic than others: one friend since fourth grade, Rob, was killed in a construction accident five weeks after we graduated high school, expecting a child with his girlfriend. I gave his funeral sermon.
To lose someone to murder is something else entirely; it hits you in a way unlike other losses of life. (At least, in terms of the ‘how’ of the loss. As to someone loosing a child or spouse, i can only imagine these likewise hold their own unique pain). Especially, I think, since there seemed no rationale, no excuse of robbery-gone-awry or to silence someone-who-knew-too-much, just the actions of a depressed drug addict with an unstable personality. A friend at ND, Adrian, let me know I was not crazy in feeling this way, having experienced the same thing himself – all the consolation of friends who meant well was accepted in kind, but none knew how different a thing it was to lose a friend to murder than to another kind of death, except him. I probably never let him know how much I appreciated that.
At no point did I support the death penalty for Dayva Cross. He tried to commit suicide just after his arrest; he wanted to die, but denying him his wish was not my only motivation for objecting to it. My faith would not allow it. I do not mean the rules of my church, though its clear and consistent pro-life teaching does not allow for capital punishment (despite widespread dissent on this issue), but I mean my faith in God and his role as judge over our lives. I also mean that everyone deserves the time they need to truly face what they have done, atone and repent – we can neither deprive them of that more excruciating punishment nor of that opportunity for redemption by taking their life in response. More urgently, though, I think I knew instinctively that if I held on to the anger at him, it would do more damage to me than his execution could heal. He still sits on death row in the Walla Walla State Penitentiary, one of eight awaiting execution by lethal injection or by hanging (we are one of only two states with that option).
I know I can still talk with Salomè, though it is not the same; I know she listens and perhaps intercedes on my behalf from time to time. My belief in the communion of saints also means I will see her again, and indeed, the one request I have of the Lord of Life is that when I meet my death, I can be there to greet her when she meets hers.
Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, in an instant, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
For that which is corruptible must clothe itself with incorruptibility, and that which is mortal must clothe itself with immortality. And when this which is corruptible clothes itself with incorruptibility and this which is mortal clothes itself with immortality, then the word that is written shall come about:
“Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
1 Corinthians 15.51-55
March 4, 2011
Colloquium on Anglican Patrimony in light of the Apostolic Constitution: A Canon Law Perspective
After class on Friday, my professor and I walked down the hill from the Angelicum to the Anglican Centre in Rome to join a group of canon lawyers from the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church engage in a presentation and a conversation on the nature of Anglican Patrimony in light of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.
In the wake of the 2009 apostolic constitution making provision for the establishment of personal ordinariates, questions have been raised about the exact nature of the “Anglican Patrimony” which is named in the text of the constitution and its appended general norms. Cardinal Levada’s answer to the inquiring Anglicans was, “we are hoping you can tell us!” To begin answering that question, the Anglican Centre in Rome is coordinating a series of meetings this year on the theme Anglican Patrimony in light of Anglicanorum Coetibus.
There were 22 participants in the workshop: Three lay women, four lay men, and fifteen priests – Most of the participants were members of the standing colloquium of Anglican and Catholic canonists, who chose to have their annual meeting in conjunction with this workshop.
Questions raised and observations made included the following:
What exactly is “patrimony”? Canonically the term is used in the Latin code only in reference to the charism of religious orders and the particular customs of local churches in the formation of priests. In the Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches, it more clearly refers to the liturgy, theology, spirituality, and discipline of a particular church (CCEO 28, 39, 405). If the model of religious order charism is an example, it was noted by a Franciscan friar present that it took Clare 40 years to get the rule she wanted approved by Rome, a constant give and take, debate and discussion between the founder’s vision and the hierarchy’s presumptions – and we are only 16 months from the announcement of the Apostolic Constitution and six weeks from the establishment of the first actual Ordinariate. We may not know for some time what this received Anglican Patrimony will actually be.
There was some discussion that the ordinariates are apparently not limited to Anglicans and former Anglicans. [Though, in rereading the text, it does seem to be limited] Indeed, many of the traditionalist Anglicans attracted to it are former Catholics – canonically still considered Catholic by the Latin code. But does this mean that Lutherans, Baptists, et al. can join the Catholic Church as part of the Ordinariate? What/who defines an “Anglican group” that can corporately join the Ordinariate? Four of the provinces of the Anglican Communion are in fact united churches, local ecumenical unions between Anglicans, Reformed, and other denominations. Could a Presbyterian elder of one of these united churches join and become an Anglican Ordinariate priest? Many of these members of united churches are part of the Anglican Communion but do not think of themselves as Anglican.
Why was the model of the pastoral provision not simply adopted more widely? (Where personal parishes would be set up allowing for use of Anglican rites and lead by former Anglican clergy) In this case it was thought that the patrimony would not be sufficiently preserved, and Pope Benedict finds the Anglican patrimony to be worthy of preservation within the Catholics Church, not just by the Anglican Communion. (This observation lead to an entire conversation about the locus and determiners of Anglican patrimony).
What would be the approved liturgical use in the Ordinariate, and would this be up to each Ordinariate individually? Someone had heard the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, which had been approved for use by the Episcopal Church in the US but rejected by Parliament for use by the Church of England, would be the model. This was unconfirmed, and others noted that most Anglo-Catholics, in England especially, are already using the Roman rite anyway and would likely continue to do so.
This lead to the speculation that there could be an Anglican Ordinariate in which no particularly Anglican Eucharistic rite was celebrated, somewhat ironic when one considers that most people probably think of Anglican patrimony in primarily liturgical terms.
Why not establish an Anglican Catholic Church sui iuris, like the Eastern Catholic Churches? The thought here was the mention in the constitution of seeing the Anglican Church as a particular expression of the Latin Church, its rites as variation of the Roman rite – as well as not wanting to do any more to appear to be bringing back uniatism as a form of ecumenism, something which has been rejected by the Catholic Church in its agreements with the Orthodox.
Since the Anglican Communion officially recognizes two sacraments, how will the other five be celebrated in an Anglican Ordinariate, since the Catholics Church accepts seven? This question was ‘corrected’ as someone else noted that the Anglicans do, in fact, recognize all seven sacraments and both churches, as agreed in ARCIC I, recognize a hierarchy of sacraments – the two dominical sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist holding a pride of place among the seven sacramental acts, for both churches, though this is expressed differently in parts of the Anglican Communion than others.
Candidacy for ordination, in the personal ordinariates, will be determined by the Governing Council – but this is neither Catholic nor Anglican, for both communions currently put this decision in the hands of the ordaining bishop, though with appropriate consultation.
Some noted that there had been popular speculation that the exception to celibacy would only be granted pro tempore, however, this would have been made clear in the text if that was the intent. Each will be appealed on a case by case basis, as celibacy remains the ideal for those who were not already ordained in the Anglican church, but it remains a real, practical possibility.
Married bishops are a part of Anglican Patrimony, based on scripture, yet the Official Commentary on the Apostolic Constitution, written by Jesuit Father Gianfranco Ghirlanda, Rector emeritus of the Gregorian, has “absolutely excluded” the possibility of married bishops “given the entire Catholic Latin tradition and the tradition of the Oriental Catholic Churches, including the Orthodox tradition…” The VIS communiqué on 15 January announcing the erection of the first Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham for England and Wales, went so far as to say, “For doctrinal reasons the Church does not, in any circumstances, allow the ordination of married men as bishops.”
Given all of that, the question was asked, how much a part of the Anglican patrimony are married bishops, and what reasons could there be to exclude them? It was noted that despite the VIS announcement, there are no doctrinal reasons for not ordaining married men to the episcopate, only disciplinary reasons. It is suspected, given the wording of Fr. Ghirlanda’s commentary, that this could be out of ecumenical concern for our relations with the East – but also noted that the traditions of Latin and Eastern and Oriental churches have always differed, and the Orthodox would likely not be concerned whether we had a different discipline in the West vis a vis married bishops or not. Strangest of all, some noted, was that though the married former Anglican bishops would only be ordained to the presbyterate, especially those serving as ordinary are still allowed the use of pontificals, the symbols of episcopal office such as the pectoral cross and ring.
What will the role of priest’s wives be in the Ordinariate, if any? What role do Anglican clergy spouses have now? This varies in the Anglican Communion, depending on the cultural context, and would likely vary as well in the Ordinariates. In some places the priests wife is treated as the ‘first lady’ of the parish, and the bishops wife even called “mama bishop” and treated as the first among these. In others, they have no role unless they are also a theologian or minister in the church, or volunteer like any other parishioner.
Final comments came from two Anglicans. The first shared that he had initially thought this “pastoral response” was anything but ecumenical, but as he reflected on it, the idea formed that the Anglican patrimony to be received by the Catholic Church in the Ordinariates was the people themselves. In this way, by receiving them, we are receiving some part of Anglicanism, and this may eventually turn out to be one more way in which the ground was prepared for the full-scale reception of each other in full communion down the road.
The other, who also stated considerable concern, shared that he was afraid that this would in fact have some rather negative ecumenical results, again by reason of the people received through the Ordinariate – the Anglicans may be all to happy to see them go, and he fears we Catholics may not be all that happy to receive them, once we get to know them!
On that note, we broke for drinks.
