THE Anglican patrimony of the new ordinariates due in Australia next
year will likely enhance the liturgical culture of the post-conciliar
Catholic Church, leading Australian theologian Tracey Rowland said.
In November 2009, Pope Benedict announced his decision to erect personal
ordinariates (non-geographical dioceses) 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.
Dr Rowland, the author of Ratzinger’s Faith: the Theology of Pope
Benedict XVI and Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed, said many
commentators have observed an affinity between the Anglo-Catholic
approaches to liturgy and the Pope’s own liturgical theology.
“In particular, (Pope Benedict) is very concerned about what he has
variously described as ‘parish tea party’ liturgy, ‘pastoral
pragmatism’, ‘emotional primitivism’, ‘Sacro-pop’ and ‘utility music’,”
Dr Rowland told an Anglican Ordinariate Festival in Melbourne on 11
June.
Dr Rowland, a former Anglican, said that, in her personal experience,
the barriers to full communion with the Catholic Church are primarily
cultural rather than doctrinal.
“They have been reluctant to seek full membership of the Catholic Church
because of a not unreasonable belief that they would have to abandon
whole elements of their Anglican cultural heritage,” Dr Rowland said.
“It is precisely this problem Pope Benedict hopes the creation of an
ordinariate will overcome. Many of my Anglican friends have long held that, for them, the major
barrier to their return to full communion with the Catholic Church is
precisely the banality of parish liturgies.”
The Festival was held at the Basilica of Our Lady of Victories in
Camberwell, a domed stone church combining Romanesque and Renaissance
styles built in 1914 by Fr Robinson, a former Anglican.
Melbourne Auxiliary Bishop Peter Elliott, the Vatican’s delegate for the
Anglican ordinariate in Australia, described the Basilica as “one of
Australia’s finest parish churches”.
Dr Rowland noted that in his book The Feast of Faith, Pope Benedict
(then, Cardinal Joseph Rat zinger) wrote that “next to the saints, the
art which the Church has produced is the only real ‘apologia’ for her
history”.
“The Church is to transform, improve, ‘humanise’ the world – but how can
she do that if at the same time she turns her back on beauty, which is
so closely allied to love? For together, beauty and love form the true
consolation in this world, bringing it as near as possible to the world
of the resurrection,” Cardinal Ratzinger said.
“The Church must maintain high standards, she must be a place where
beauty can be at home; she must lead the struggle for that
‘spiritualisation’ without which the world becomes ‘the first circle of
hell’.”
Dr Rowland endorsed the judgment of Digby Anderson, an Anglican priest
in the UK, that Anglo-Catholics could bring with them better
translations of the Mass and the moral sensibility associated with the
idea of a gentleman, including “the cult of self-deprecation and
traditional manners”.
She explained the ‘idea of being a gentleman’ using a quote from Blessed
John Henry Newman, who started the Oxford Movement in 1833 seeking to
restore Catholic identity in the Anglican Church: “He [the gentleman]
makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be receiving
when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled,
never defends himself by a mere retort …From a long-sighted prudence,
he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct
ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend.”
It has been observed in numerous blogs and even a few academic journals
that both Pope Benedict XVI and the Archbishop of Canterbury are
world-class Augustinian scholars, and on many fronts there are points of
convergence and unity between them, she said.
“Nonetheless, when it comes to matters like the meaning and purpose of
human sexuality and the theological significance of gender differences,
Rowan Williams and Benedict XVI are on different planets,” Dr Rowland
said.
“Being ‘C of E’ or just plain ‘C’ is now something more significant than
a juridical difference over the appointment of Bishops. There are now
differences affecting the very foundations of sacramental theology.”