Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

Selection from Adrian Fortescue's "The Early Papacy"

From "The Appeal to Antiquity", Chapter One of The Early Papacy to the Synod of Chalcedon in 451 | Adrian Fortescue | Ignatius Insight

Quite a number of Christians of all denominations now discuss the possibility of healing, at last, the schisms that are the tragedy and the scandal of Christendom. It seems that the war of 1914-1918 had something to do with the spread of this feeling. The war in no way really affected the question. The scandal of our unhappy divisions was just as great before 1914. Yet it must count as some good out of so much evil if the soldiers, perhaps especially the army chaplains who returned, became more   conscious of it. They saw in the Allied armies groups of men, all professing to follow the same Master, yet, even in the face of death, unable to say their prayers together.

Much of this discussion concerns a possible amalgamation of Protestant bodies. So far it does not affect Catholics; except that we can, we must, sympathize with any attempt to heal any schism, at least in the hope that such movements may lead eventually to the reunion that alone really matters.

From whichever camp a man approaches the question of reunion, he must see that no reconciliation can be anything like adequate unless it involves that communion, by far the largest of all, which obeys the Pope of Rome. One party in the Church of England is specially conscious of this: the Romanizing section of the High Church group. In this section there are men, clergymen, but laymen too, who have come around in an astonishing way from the ideas of the Reformers. They not only long for reunion with the Holy See; they are prepared to accept the Pope's primacy, to accept it, within limits, as being of divine right.

Continue reading...

Against What Do We Fight? On Cardinal Dias at Lambeth

Against What Do We Fight? On Cardinal Dias at Lambeth | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J. | Ignatius Insight | August 19, 2008

"Of course, we must always be alert to proclaim Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:4), in whom everyone may find the fullness of religious life, and in whom  God the Father  has reconciled all things to Himself." -- Ivan Cardinal Dias, "Evangelization challenge: be exemplary Christians" July 22, 2008.

I.

Ivan Cardinal Dias is the former archbishop of Mumbai (Bombay) and currently the head of the Vatican Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. He seems to be a rather outspoken gentleman, considered by some definitely papabile. One web site shows him burning incense at a Hindu Shrine, while another report has him amusingly telling the Anglicans that they are suffering from "spiritual Alzheimer's disease!"

Read the entire essay...

Foot traffic reported from England heading toward Rome

As you likely know, the Church of England is officially all for bishopettes. And enough is enough for some Anglicans, as Damian Thompson of The Telegraph reports:

The Bishop of Ebbsfleet, the Rt Rev Andrew Burnham, is to lead his fellow Anglo-Catholics from the Church of England into the Roman Catholic Church, the Catholic Herald will reveal this week.

Bishop Burnham, one of two "flying bishops" in the province of Canterbury, has made a statement asking Pope Benedict XVI and the English Catholic bishops for "magnanimous gestures" that will allow traditionalists to become Catholics en masse.

He is confident that this will happen, following talks in Rome with Cardinal Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Cardinal Kasper, the Vatican's head of ecumenism. He was accompanied on his visit by the Rt Rev Keith Newton, Bishop of Richborough, the other Canterbury "flying bishop", who is expected to follow his example.

Bishop Burnham hopes that Rome will offer special arrangements whereby former Anglicans can stay worshipping in parishes under the guidance of a Catholic bishop. Most of these parishes already use the Roman liturgy, but there may be provision for Anglican prayers if churches request it.

Anglican priests who are already married will not be barred from ordination as priests, though Bishop Burnham would not be able to continue in episcopal orders, as he is married and there is an absolute bar on married bishops in the Roman and Orthodox Churches.

The Vatican responds to the news from the C of E, as reported by Catholic World News:

In a statement released after the Anglican synod vote, the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity said that the Church of England was making "a break with the apostolic tradition maintained by all of the churches of the first millennium." That step, the statement continued, constitutes "a further obstacle to reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Church of England."

Cardinal Walter Kasper (bio - news), the president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, had warned Anglican leaders that the approval of female bishops would jeopardize dialogue "which had up until now borne fruit," the Vatican statement noted.

Cardinal Kasper delivered that warning in June 2006, when he spoke to the bishops of the Church of England at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The cardinal has been invited to address Anglican leaders once again when the Lambeth Conference convenes later this month.

Meanwhile, one Catholic is less than thrilled that Anglican bishops who went along with priestettes are now setting sail toward the barque of Peter:

Only now, 14 years later, when it is proposed to promote priestesses to the Anglican episcopate, are these prelates moved to approach Rome. This is church politics, not conversion. Where do these gentry stand, for example, on Transubstantiation, Papal infallibility, or artificial contraception? The Catholic Church does not exist to provide a funk hole for pick 'n' mix Anglicans upset by the prospect of gays and girls on the episcopal bench. It is a comprehensive deposit of faith which the believer accepts in its entirety.

If these people have truly been moved to conversion, they should return publicly to the lay state which the document "Apostolicae Curae" of Leo XIII confirmed is the actual condition of those in Anglican orders, pray, take instruction and make formal submission to the Sovereign Roman Pontiff.

Former Anglican priest Fr. Dwight Longenecker has some predictions:

1. Anglo Catholicism will endure. Some Anglican priests will still do worship in a Catholic way. They've been Catholic congregationalists all along anyway. They'll just pull up the drawbridges even more. They'll probably be allowed to keep their 'flying bishops' arrangement a bit longer. Even when that is withdrawn many of them will learn how to get used to female clergy. They've always operated within their own little 'church within a church'. That will simply become more pronounced.

2. Evangelical Anglicanism will survive. Like the ACs, they've always done their own thing anyway. They've always had their own theological colleges, mission boards etc etc. They'll just ally themselves with FOCA and continue to be a church within a church.

3. The Liberals will dominate the existing ruling structures of the church, but they'll find that the only people they have to rule are themselves and their cronies. They'll have won a Pyrrhic victory. Like winning the toss at a football game, then finding that the other team decided to take the ball and play somewhere else.

Out of all this there are two things that are certain: Large scale ecumenism with the Catholic Church is definitely over. There's no point talking with the Anglican Communion. They spit in our face every time. Furthermore, there is no way a unified body could be identified to talk with even if we wanted to. Ecumenism will now be with individuals and smaller groups.

Check out his blog, Standing On My Head, for much more about the Anglican situation.

Much, much more water in this stream, I'm sure.

Church of England bishops coming home to Rome?

Today's edition of The Telegraph contains this news:

Senior Church of England bishops have held secret talks with Vatican officials to discuss the crisis in the Anglican communion over gays and women bishops.

They met senior advisers of the Pope in an attempt to build closer ties with the Roman Catholic Church, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was not told of the talks and the disclosure will be a fresh blow to his efforts to prevent a major split in the Church of England.

In highly confidential discussions, a group of conservative bishops expressed their dismay at the liberal direction of the Church of England and their fear for its future.

They met members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the most powerful of the Vatican's departments, the successor to the medieval Inquisition, which enforces doctrine and was headed by Pope Benedict XVI before his election.

The names of the bishops are known to The Sunday Telegraph, but they have asked for anonymity because the talks are of such a sensitive and potentially explosive nature.

The disclosure comes on the eve of a critical vote as members of the General Synod – the Church's parliament – prepare to decide whether to allow women to be bishops without giving concessions to staunch opponents.

Up to 600 clergy gave warning in a letter to Dr Williams that they may leave the Church unless they receive a legal right to havens within the Church free of women bishops.

Damian Thompson of The Telegraph adds the following on the newspaper's blog:

The attitude of Pope Benedict is crucial. He is very well aware that, in the years 1992 to 1994, the Bishops of England and Wales put pressure on Cardinal Hume to resist any concessions to Anglicans wishing to convert en masse.

The Pope's closest advisers are not in a mood to allow the bishops the same freedom this time. They are already cross at the poor English response to the Motu Proprio liberating the Latin liturgy - and have conveyed their displeasure to the relevant bishops in no uncertain terms.

It's no surprise that the Anglican bishops are talking to the CDF, where the former Cardinal Ratzinger always lent a sympathetic ear to potential converts - and also expressed his appreciation of the Anglo-Catholic tradition. His warm personality, his intellect and his programme of liturgical renewal are tremendous incentives for traditionalists to take the plunge.

Hmmm...I recall that more than a few critics (many of them Catholics) were fearful that the election of Benedict XVI would signal the start of an ecumenical crisis. But it ain't so. The crisis, in this case, is within the Angelican Communion. And as Thompson points out in a July 2nd article titled "Apocalypse of the Anglo-Catholics", it was bound to to come to a head sooner or later:

But the real traditionalists, the Anglo-Catholic opponents of women priests and bishops? They're fast running out of incense.

Here is the pdf of the letter signed by 11 serving Church of England bishops (none of them diocesan) and 1,300 priests demanding legal protection from women bishops. I personally hope they don't get it.

After 1994, they decided to stay in a Church that ORDAINS WOMEN PRIESTS despite their belief that women cannot be priests, and now they are throwing up their hands in horror that - duh! - it is planning to consecrate women bishops. What did they expect? Sorry to sound so unsympathetic, but I always thought that the "flying bishops" expedient reeked of the home-made network of episcopi vagantes described by Peter Anson in his book Bishops At Large.

Thousands of (supposed) Anglo-Catholics have seen the logic of this, it must be said, and taken the Lambeth shilling: I'm amazed by how many former opponents of women priests have quietly dropped their objections to them. Their situation is made easier by the fact that many liberals have come over all "Catholic" and dress up like my dear friend the late Brian Brindley (who left the C of E for Rome at the earliest possible opportunity).

The conservative signatories of the letter aren't in this camp, of course. Some of them will stay regardless and keep on plotting feebly - but others (including bishops) don't really expect to remain in the Established Church for much longer and are hoping to become Roman Catholics.

Why did it take them so long? Well, one answer is that some Catholic Bishops of England and Wales have done everything in their power to make them feel unwanted, while insisting that converts attend services that (in style if not in content) are more drearily Protestant than anything the Anglo-Catholics have ever experienced.

He then notes (as he did in his blog post) that it is the presence and actions of Benedict that have helped paved the road for those Anglicans tired of dancing the priestette two-step. As someone who is not well-versed in matters Anglican, I have been puzzled about the very point made by Thompson: if an Anglican accepted priestettes a number of years ago, how he can now demonstrate sincere anger when the (inevitable) issue of Anglican bishopettes comes up? For example, this is from today's edition of The Guardian:

Traditionalists are demanding the right to opt out of the jurisdiction of a woman into special dioceses headed by male bishops, or at least to have guaranteed access to male bishops. Some of them argue that Jesus chose only men to be his 12 apostles, who were given leadership of the early church, and that an unbroken chain of male bishops has led the church since then.

The Rev Angus Macley, from Sevenoaks, Kent, said: 'For some of us, we feel that the argument has still not been made that the consecration of women to the episcopate is the word of God. The view that women bishops are repugnant to the word of God is an accepted position.'

Fr. Dwight Longenecker, a former Angelican priest, is keeping up with some of these happenings. Check out his blog, Standing On My Head. Here is a snippet from my March 2005 interview with him:

IgnatiusInsight.com: Why did you leave the Anglican Church (and priesthood) to become Catholic?

Longenecker: When the Church of England decided to ordain women to the priesthood in the early nineties it made me think more seriously about the nature of authority in the church. The Anglican church claimed to be a branch of the Catholic Church–rather like a latter day Orthodox Church. Many like me felt that if this claim were valid the Anglican Church did not have the authority to unilaterally break from the ancient tradition and ordain women as priests.

If she did this she was not just making a decision about women's ordination; she was also making a statement about what sort of church she really was. That is to say, she was stating that the Anglican Church was not, in fact, a branch of the Catholic Church, but simply another Protestant sect who could decide to do whatever she wanted to do in her own backyard.

I felt that this sort of decision making would only lead to a further secularized agenda. I remember saying to my parishioners when discussing the matter, "Mark my words, women priests now; homosexual marriage ten years from now." I was right. While the two issues are not in themselves, necessarily connected, the way the decision on the matters are made are identical: if you campaign long enough, get enough votes and shout loud enough you can change the historic rule of the Church. While this seems 'democratic' it actually ignores what G. K. Chesterton referred to as the greatest majority: the dead. In other words, it ignores tradition.

Read the entire interview.

On a related note, Joanna Bogle (a frequent contributor to Catholic World Report) has written an article, "As it was in the beginning" (July 1, 2008), for MercatorNet that discusses why and how the issue of "same-sex marriage" is also causing splitting, division, discord, and assorted tensions within the Anglican Communion.

• Objections, Obstacles, Acceptance | An Interview with J. Budziszewski
• The Papacy and Ecumenism | Rev. Adriano Garuti, O.F.M. | From Primacy of the Bishop of Rome and the Ecumenical Dialogue
• Monsignor Ronald Knox: Convert, Priest, Apologist | An Interview with Fr. Milton Walsh, author of Ronald Knox As Apologist: Wit, Laughter, and the Popish Creed
• The Monsignor and the Don | An Interview with Fr. Milton Walsh, author of Second Friends: C.S. Lewis and Ronald Knox in Conversation

Ben Witherington rips "Pagan Christianity" from page to page

A few days ago I was sent a note about a series of posts written by Ben Witherington III, who is an Evangelical scholar and professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky, as well as author of numerous scholarly and more popular books on Jesus, the early Church, and the Bible. (Full disclaimer: Witherington has appeared in a couple of recent DVDs co-produced by Ignatius Press: Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead? and Lost Gospels or False Gospels?). He has, shall we say, some serious credentials when it comes to the subjects he writes and talks about.

The same cannot be said for the authors of the book, Pagan Christianity?, which is the focus of Witherington's posts (four and counting). They are Frank Viola, who has a background in social science education and "church planting," and George Barna, who is the founder of the Barna Research Group. This is not a knock on their character or intelligence, but merely points out the obvious: they aren't historians or biblical scholars. (And, needless to say, this doesn't mean they shouldn't write about history or the Bible. It does mean that their strong claims deserved to be analyzed carefully by those who know a lot about the topics involved.)

The book is marketed as a strong critique of the "institutional church." From the book's website:

Have you ever wondered why we Christians do what we do for church every Sunday morning? Why do we "dress up" for church? Why does the pastor preach a sermon each week? Why do we have pews, steeples, choirs, and seminaries? This volume reveals the startling truth: most of what Christians do in present-day churches is not rooted in the New Testament, but in pagan culture and rituals developed long after the death of the apostles. Coauthors Frank Viola and George Barna support their thesis with compelling historical evidence in the first-ever book to document the full story of modern Christian church practices.

Many Christians take for granted that their church's practices are rooted in Scripture. Yet those practices look very different from those of the first-century church. The New Testament is not silent on how the early church freely expressed the reality of Christ's indwelling in ways that rocked the first-century world. Times have changed. Pagan Christianity leads us on a fascinating tour through church history, revealing this startling and unsettling truth: Many cherished church traditions embraced today originated not out of the New Testament, but out of pagan practices. One of the most troubling outcomes has been the effect on average believers: turning them from living expressions of Christ's glory and power to passive observers. If you want to see that trend reversed, turn to Pagan Christianity . . . a book that examines and challenges every aspect of our contemporary church experience.

I've not read the book, but Witherington's posts indicate that it is, in some ways, simply a more sophisticated variation of the anti-Catholicism (and anti-mainline Protestantism) that has been part and parcel of a Fundamentalist viewpoint for many decades. Witherington writes:

And of course the big bad guy in Pagan Christianity is not going to be sin, suffering, the Devil, or any of those things. The big bad guy is going to be what is loosely called the Institutional Church and that other famous whipping boy—‘church tradition’ and oh yes--- Greek philosophy. The particular animus is against the Roman Catholic Church for paganizing Christianity. Dan Brown would have liked this book.

But frankly there are no such thing as ‘institutional churches’. Churches have institutions of various sorts, they aren’t institutions. Furthermore, the Bible is full of traditions and many of those developed after NT times are perfectly Biblical. It’s not really possible to draw a line in the sand between ‘Biblical principles’ and traditions. The question is which traditions comport with Biblical tradition and which do not. And there is a further problem. It is ever so dangerous to take what was normal in early Christianity as a practice, and conclude that therefore it must be normative. It may have been normal in the NT era for non-theological reasons, for example for practical reasons.

To tell us that the church is really people, people united in Christ and serving the Lord, is to say nothing for or against the ‘institutional church’, or for that matter its institutions. Everyone agrees that the church is people, more specifically people gathered for worship, fellowship, and service. Everyone agrees that the church is a living thing and organism, not an organization. So what’s the beef here, and where is the real thrust of the critique?

Let us begin with a historical point made on p. 6 on the basis of old and weak evidence. The idea is that Christianity had become overwhelming Gentile and already was adopting numerous pagan practices in the last third of the first century A.D. Frankly, this is historically false. Not only did Jewish Christianity continue well into the fifth century in many forms and places and in considerable numbers, including in the Diaspora and not just in Israel and Syria, in fact all of our NT was written by Jewish Christians with the possible exception of Luke's works, but he seems however to have been a god-fearer. And in fact many of the NT documents were written for Jewish Christians including Matthew, Hebrews, James, Jude,1 Peter, and probably John, the Johannine Epistles, Revelation.

If you are wrong about the history of the early church, and wrong about the character of the canon as well, then it is no wonder you will make mistakes in your argumentation. It is interesting that documents like the Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Protoevangelium of James, and other documents which came out of largely Jewish Christian circles are just ignored as well. These folks need to read a book like Oscar Skarsaune’s edited volume on Jewish Believers in Jesus. They will discover it is not possible to say either that Jewish Christianity waned after 70 A.D. nor is it possible to say that the dominate practice of the church was pagan, and became increasingly pagan in the first, second, third centuries--- wrong, and wrong.

There is a lot of great stuff, but rather than give quote after quote, take a moment to look through the four posts:

• Pagan Christianity: by George Barna and Frank Viola (June 30, 2008)

• Pagan Christianity, Part Two (July 1, 2008. Okay, one more quote: "In the second main chapter of Barna and Viola’s book Pagan Christianity, we are given a brief history of some forms and orders of worship, with perhaps a special emphasis on low church Protestant worship. Missing is a discussion of Catholic worship, various forms of Orthodox worship and Anglican worship. I suppose it is just assumed that these forms of worship are so unBiblical, that don’t even warrant discussion." This is a fascinating post.)

• Pagan Christianity, Part Three (July 2, 2008)

• Pagan Christianity, Part Four (July 3, 2008)

Much more could be said, but the over-arching reason I find this interesting is how it highlights what I think is a rapidly growing chasm within American Evangelicalism, between those in the "emergent church" movement (and in related movements) who makes feints toward taking Church history seriously but usually only end plundering it (and misrepresenting it) for their own 21st century purposes, and those who take seriously the need to study early Church history and patristics, and who end up with a much more Catholic vision of things (and who, in many cases, do become Catholic or Eastern Orthodox). Yes, that's simplistic, but I think it captures the basic issues at hand, which are primarily historical and theological, with ecclesiology holding a central place in both of those arenas.

The Ecumenical Dream of Benedict XVI

From Sandra Magister of Chiesa:

Universal and ecumenical. For a church that is "catholic" and "one." This is the twofold horizon that the bishop of Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople wanted to give to the Pauline Year, proclaimed together by the respective Churches of Rome and of the East. At the Mass celebrated on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the two successors of the apostles entered together into the basilica of St. Peter's; together they went up to the altar, preceded by a Latin deacon and by an Orthodox one, carrying the book of the Gospels; together they listened to the chanting of the Gospel in Latin and in Greek; together they delivered the homily, first the patriarch and then the pope, after a brief introduction by the latter; together they recited the Creed, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan symbol in the original Greek, according to the liturgical use of the Byzantine Churches; they exchanged the kiss of peace, and at the end they blessed the faithful together. Never before now – after almost a thousand years of schism between East and West – had a liturgy so visibly oriented to unity been celebrated by the bishop of Rome and by the patriarch of Constantinople.

The relationship with the Protestant communities remains deeper in the shadows for now. But the Pauline Year could be rich in significance for the dialogue with these communities as well. The leading thinkers of the Reformation – from Luther and Calvin to Karl Barth, Rudolph Bultmann, and Paul Tillich – elaborated their thought beginning above all with the Letter of Paul to the Romans.

And the contribution that the Pauline Year could make to dialogue with the Jews is no less relevant. Paul was an observant Jew and a rabbi, before falling down blinded by Christ on the road to Damascus. And his conversion to the Risen One never meant, for him, breaking with his original faith. The promise of God to Abraham and the covenant on Sinai were always for Paul one and the same with the "new and eternal" covenant sealed by the blood of Jesus. Joseph Ratzinger has written memorable pages on this unity between the Old and New Testament, in his book "Jesus of Nazareth."

Read the entire piece.

Speaking of Benedict and ecumenism, Ignatius Press has recently published an important collection of lectures and papers by Joseph Ratzinger, titled Church, Ecumenism, & Politics: New Endeavors in Ecclesiology. From the description:

This work features the most discussed topics of the life of the Church, treated with unique frankness and depth by the Church’s spiritual and theological leader. In this collection of essays, theologian Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, tackles three major issues in the Church today—the nature of the Church, the pursuit of Christian unity, and the relationship of Christianity to the secular/political power.

The first part of the book explores Vatican II's teaching on the Church, what it means to call the Church "the People of God", the role of the Pope, and the Synod of Bishops. In part two, Ratzinger frankly assesses the ecumenical movement—its achievements, problems, and principles for authentic progress toward Christian unity. In the third part of the work, Ratzinger discusses both fundamental questions and particular issues concerning the Church, the state and human fulfillment in the Age to come. What does the Bible say about faith and politics? How should the Church work in pluralistics societies? What are the problems with Liberation Theology? How should we understand freedom in the Church and in society?

And here is short list of some of the key works on ecumenism from Joseph Raztinger.

The Monsignor and the Don

The Monsignor and the Don | An Interview with Fr. Milton Walsh, author of Second Friends: C.S. Lewis and Ronald Knox in Conversation | Carl E. Olson | June 30, 2008

Fr. Milton Walsh is a priest of the Archdiocese of San Francisco. He wrote his dissertation on Ronald Knox and is the author of Ronald Knox As Apologist: Wit, Laughter, and the Popish Creed, an enlightening tour of the writings and thought of one of the most elegant and witty apologists of the past century. His new book, Second Friends: C.S. Lewis and Ronald Knox in Conversation, combines his knowledge of Knox with his many years of reading and researching the works and life of another English author and apologist, C.S. Lewis.

Ignatius Insight: How did the idea for this book come about? What did you set out to accomplish in having Knox and Lewis converse, as it were?

Fr. Milton Walsh: Back in 1982, I was sent to Rome to complete doctoral studies. My Archbishop believed I had an ability to write clearly, and   he wanted me to devote myself to some aspect of apologetics. (Need I say that this was hardly a fashionable topic at the time?) I had been reading Chesterton, Newman, Knox and Lewis since my high school days, and my original idea was to produce a comparison of Knox and Lewis. However, I was under a time constraint, so my director suggested I limit my research to Ronald Knox. While in Rome I was privileged to meet Walter Hooper, Lewis's literary secretary. We had some enjoyable conversations about our two heroes, and the idea of writing about C. S. Lewis and Ronald Knox never left me. I even considered the idea of writing an imaginary dialogue between them, based on their writings. Upon reflection, I felt that this approach would seem artificial—and besides, their own expressions are far superior to anything I could imagine them saying.

Read the entire interview...

Because some people don't like being marshmellows

From the "Is that really how you want to put it?" department:

From Anglican Church League, Sydney

You can’t split a marshmallow. You can melt it. You can even cut it. But, marshmallows are too malleable to be split. Something has to be brittle to split.

So there will be no split in Anglicanism. It is just not the kind of thing that is open to splitting.

The heat of the society in which we operate may melt us. Outside forces can even cut into us. But we have no mechanism to split even if we had the desire to do so.

Here is the strange strength and weakness of Anglicanism. Having resisted the tyranny of Roman rule, Anglicanism could not replace it with Lambeth rule. Thus each national church is free to follow the Lord Jesus in their own culture.

Anglicanism has expanded and developed in much the same way as a family. Over generations we have gradually changed and drifted away from each other. Cousins know that they are related but have never met. Second, third and fourth cousins do not share the same culture or even speak the same language. They do not even recognise each other as relatives. It is not that families split – they just grow apart.

Read the entire piece.

In related news:

Jerusalem, Jun. 20, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Conservative Anglican prelates, meeting in Israel next week in an alternative to the Lambeth Conference, will announce that they can no longer remain in communion with the Church of England, the London Daily Telegraph reports.

The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), convened by African Anglican bishops, will essentially announce a schism in the Anglican communion, according to the Telegraph story. The conservative bishops will say that there is no realistic prospect for retaining unity among the world's Anglican leaders because of grave disagreements on doctrine and practice.

Sounds as though some folks have found the non-existent mechanism for splitting.

A pearl in the mud

Ah, the joy of discovery. This past Monday I was in Portland, Oregon, and had the opportunity to visit, for the final time, the Pilgrim Discount bookstore, one of the better Evangelical bookstores I've ever frequented. I first discovered it not long after moving to Portland back in 1991, and was impressed by the amount of "heavy stuff" being sold there—that is, serious works of theology, apologetics, etc. Even after becoming Catholic I would drop in once or twice a year, usually coming away with several good finds, especially books on apologetics and Scripture.

After nearly thirty years of business, Pilgrim Discount is closing its doors, no longer able to compete with the internet and the more slick-heavy and substance-free bookstores that keep their doors open, it seems, by selling a lot of books by Joel Osteen and "Bishop" T.D. Jakes.

I bought about $120 worth of books (regular price) for $24. But here's the best part: the store has long had a section with books about cults and other religions, which included an assortment of anti-Catholic texts (the "mud" referred to above), ranging from the well-known (Boettner's Roman Catholicism) to the very obscure. I glanced at the section in passing—after all, I have two or three shelves of anti-Catholic stuff, so I'm good, as they say—and noticed a name: Nichols.

Then I saw the title: Rome and the Eastern Churches: A Study in Schism. Sure enough, it was by Aidan Nichols, O.P., the great English Dominican theologian, and it is a book that is hard to find and quite spendy to buy used, costing anywhere from $99 to $280. How about that: finding an excellent book on Catholic-Orthodox ecumenism in the anti-Catholic section of a Protestant bookstore.

My price, after the additional 60% off: $3.60.

For those who are curious about Fr. Nichols' thoughts on Eastern Orthodoxy, his 1995 essay, "A Catholic View of Orthodoxy," can be accessed on the Christendom Awake website.

Fr. Nichols has written many excellent books, including a few published or sold by by Ignatius Press:

• Lovely Like Jerusalem: The Fulfillment of the Old Testament in Christ and the Church
• Looking at the Liturgy: A Critical View of its Contemporary Reform
• Hopkins: Theologian's Poet

And here are some excerpts and an interview:

• The Pattern of Revelation: A Contentious Issue | Aidan Nichols, O.P. | From Lovely Like Jerusalem: The Fulfillment of the Old Testament in Christ and the Church                        

• Going Deeper Into the Old Testament: An Interview with Aidan Nichols, O.P. | The renowned English theologian, author of Lovely Like Jerusalem, reflects on the importance of the Old Testament.

• Abbot Vonier and the Christian Sacrifice | Aidan Nichols, O.P. | This introduction to Abbot Vonier's A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist, provides a biographical sketch of "the most gifted dogmatic theologian writing--and preaching--in England during the inter-War years."

Finally, I just noticed that Fr. Nichols dedicated Rome and the Eastern Churches to "the honoured memory of Adrian Fortescue (1874-1923), priest, Orientalist, liturgist, luminary of the English Catholic Church." In the past year Ignatius Press has republished two of Fr. Fortescue's books: The Greek Fathers: Their Lives and Writings and The Early Papacy to the Synod of Chalcedon in 451.

Some "anti-Roman Catholic" Protestants in Australia...

...are congratulating themselves on being willing to smile and endure the approaching World Youth Day '08:

As a Sydney Protestant I consider it an honour that our city is to host World Youth Day. Protestantism is a protest. Our protest is against the enormity of the claims of the Roman Catholic Church.

Some people are born as Protestants. They are anti-Roman Catholic because of their own tribal roots. They have no belief other than that Roman Catholics are wrong. But Protestantism is not tribalism. It is the belief in the sole authority of the Bible. The Bible explains to us that salvation is only by the generosity of God. This salvation comes through Christ alone, and is received by faith without any works on our part. All is to the glory of God alone.

So we protest against Roman Catholic claims to authority. We object to the Pope claiming to be the Vicar of Christ. We reject all claims to authority that imply the insufficiency of scripture. We reject any implication that Jesus's work on the cross was insufficient or is received by more than faith or requires some other mediator. ...

I will not be welcoming the Pope, going out to see him or waving a flag. Given what I have said, the Pope wouldn't expect me to. But I am certainly not going to pray for rain on his parade. Remember, our Lord said that our Father in heaven sends sun and rain on all - as the Bible puts it the "just and unjust" alike. This is God giving secular support. We should want our Government to do the same.

Read the entire piece.

The author? Phillip Jensen, the Anglican Dean of Sydney.

One interesting thing about admitting you are a protester of the Catholic Church is that you implicitly admit the Catholic Church was around before Protestantism. And then you study a bit more and find out that the Catholic Church was around before the New Testament was written and the canon of Scripture was defined. And then? Well, ask Thomas Howard. Or (now Fr.) Dwight Longenecker. Or Monsignor Ronald Knox. Or J. Budziszewski. Or Chesterton and Newman and...

Not, of course, that I mean to rain on anyone's protest.