Randomness

There is much going on.  What is going on does not prevent me from rabidly following the news, but what is going on serves as an obstacle to me writing about…anything.

I’m in a state of suspended animation on two fronts – not in a negative way, mind you. I’m just waiting on final words in two areas and until I get those final words I find myself unable to commit to putting much of substance out here to share.

Hope that will all be resolved next week. Should be. Then my inner life and my every day external life will have more focus than they do today.

Waiting.

(As I hasten to assure you..not waiting in dread or foreboding…just waiting.)

A few thoughts:

• My daughter directed The Leader by Ionesco at a student-produced theater evening last night, and it went very well.  She has long been interested in theater and I have, to the extent that I do interefere, encouraged her to look at directing. Not only has she been very comfortable telling other people what to do since the age of 2, she has an interest in the big picture, in how things work together, in meaning, in expressiveness that strikes me as a good match for directing. The production was excellent – she did a great job casting it, her actors were focused, and the audience responded. I murmured to her in the car later, “So was this your comment on the current political scene?” “Maybe,” she answered.
• My older son who is in television is making big career leaps.  His work can be seen nationally now, but I’m hesitant to point you to it because I don’t know if it would be some violation of an unwritten professional code for someone’s mom to point to their work in her blog or if it would also simply be lame and embarrassing for someone’s mom to point to their work in her blog. I’ll check on that and let you know.
• I do think the creativity gene has not found its full expression yet. This morning in the car on the way to school, Michael was scolded for using a crayon to color his….socks. “I didn’t have any paper and I wanted to draw!” was his defense.

Now on the bigger picture:

Of course the big Catholic news this week was the announcement regarding the Anglicans.  The best commentary, in my mind, is coming from those who are actually Anglican or have been, and really do understand the situation from all sides.  Most of the other coverage is useless, marked not only by ignorance, but by the persistent compulsion to play “Put Benedict in a Box.”

I have a few things to say, but I want to wait until I’ve refreshed a bit more on Ratzinger/Benedict XVI on deep background regarding ecumenism, catholicity and universality. The trouble with doing that, though, is that you go to read Ratzinger for one purpose and you get distracted and waylaid by his brilliance on something else, and so down you go in that rabbit hole.

I tend to see Pope Benedict’s initiatives from a slightly different angle than most people. Maybe it’s different because it’s wildly wrong. Probably. For example, in the discussions of and efforts related to the Year for Priests, what most people seem to have gotten out of it was a call to simply celebrate individual priests. I think support of priests and a clarification of the role of the priesthood is a part of it and praying for priests even closer to the center, but the core, it has seemed to me, is a challenge to priests themselves. Pope Benedict, as head of the CDF for decades dealt every day with Church problems related to the problems with the presbyterate, and what I heard in the Year for Priests – echoed in every talk the Holy Father has given to priests and seminarians – is the call to a deeper, more profound union with Christ as the core of priesthood, which means, in the end, an acceptance of crucifixion.

So, too with this. This is obviously about Anglicans, because the initiative has come from the Anglican side – that is, those asking for this kind of structure. But I can’t help but see that it is also about the Church in general, particularly shifts in ecclesiological and canonical thinking and practice,  and more specifically about the liturgical life of the Church.  It is not clear what liturgy will prevail in this new arrangement, but I can’t help but wonder if part of the envisioned fruit of this is the wider presence of a liturgy that would offer another way for those fed up with the unpredictability and frequent ego-driven banality of a typical parish Mass but who find the TLM too big of a step (or for whom it is not available.) The insertion of a more formal, English-language liturgical tradition into Catholic practice adds a startling new chapter into the post-Vatican II era of liturgical change.

It’s also interesting to me because the structure of this new entity does not depend on a local bishop’s good feelings or sympathies. This has been an enormous problem in the application of the Pastoral Provision and the Anglican Use, and aside from other reasons for approaching it this way, this seems to be a factor.

Remember, though, that this is not unprecedented. There have been other times in church history in which reform efforts have necessitated doing end runs around bishops – the Cluniac Reforms being one of the best examples, the establishment of monastic foundations which were directly responsible to the Pope, not out of a power grab, but as a way of insuring the integrity of religious life and freeing from the meddling of bishops and feudal powers  – often indistinguishable.

(Of course, the Cluniac establishments then journeyed down the same path as every other religious instution, eventually requiring reform itself, but the point is that in this situation, the bishops were seen as part of the problem. So it’s not a new insight.)

It is hard to say much more of anything, though, until the Apostolic Constitution is released.

So perhaps it’s best not to say much, especially things like, “Wow, the Pope is really going to be surprised because you know, not all Anglicans are Angl0-Catholics…a lot of them are pretty evangelical…and don’t like Catholic stuff much..maybe the numbers won’t be as big as he thinks…” or “I hope the Pope remembers that Anglicans have married clergy….”

Yeah, I’m thinking they knew all that.

Some of the places I have found most useful:

Fr. Christopher Phillips, pastor of Our Lady of the Atonement Anglican Use parish in San Antonio, has been insightful, including this today:

If the Holy Father had done this only for the conversions it might enable, he would not be giving it its permanent nature. No, what he has done is to say that the Anglican Patrimony (everything consonant with the Catholic faith that forms its ethos) is worthy not only of preservation, but of growth. It won’t take long for the strength of the Personal Ordinariates to depend not so much on converts as on its own organic growth. Children will be raised up in this form of Catholic spirituality, and they will grow up to have children; seekers after truth will be attracted to the spiritual life of the Ordinariates, just as people used to be attracted to Anglicanism; clergy will be trained and educated for work in the Ordinariates, and they will in turn become missionaries throughout society, planting new parishes and forming new Religious communities.

The Holy Father is taking the best and most worthy elements of Anglicanism, which are now wilting and near death, and he’s giving them a new place in which to grow and thrive. Certainly, this is a most welcome open door to those Anglicans wanting to come into full communion with the See of Peter; but more importantly, Pope Benedict is giving a new beginning to all that is lovely and true in Anglicanism, so it can continue into the future as a legitimate and worthy expression of the fullness of Catholic Faith.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker, whose spiritual path has taken him from Bob Jones University to Anglican priesthood to Roman Catholic layman to Roman Catholic priest (ordained by Bishop Robert Baker in Charleston), is writing the most thorough explorations of the topic this week – explaining, presenting questions…very good. Check his blog out.  Maybe start with this post and then skip around.

I would also read Robert Moynihan’s “News Flash” related to this matter. It’s quite interesting, reflecting on the timing and, in his opinion, the strangeness of the press conference this week.

I’ve also been reading the posts and threads over at Stand Firm, providing varied and different insights from the Anglican perspective.

There’s a lot more going on, including the Synod of African bishops and these interesting times we live in here in the US of A, but that’s enough for now.