Dr. Scott Hahn: "The Evangelical Catholic Moment?"

Protestants Need the Pope!

The following comes from The Jagged Word:

We do. We really, really do. We Protestants need the papacy. We need it for our theology. We need it for our politics. We need it more than we want to admit.

And this is a good thing. (Yeah, I said it Rev. Hess, the papacy is a good thing!) For those Lutherans and other Protestants who think Pope Francis, Pope Benedict XVI, and Saints John Paul II and John XXIII are the antichrist, you should probably stop reading this post right now, because I am a Lutheran pastor who is utterly captivated by the papacy.

Let’s take Saint John Paul II. Part of me gives credit to one of our nation’s great presidents, Ronald Reagan, for the fall of the Soviet Empire. I also give credit to Lady Thatcher of Great Britain and to the inherent failure of the communist system to sustain itself. But any student of theology, history, and politics, must give enormous credit to John Paul II in bringing down this evil regime. John Paul’s role in Poland’s solidarity movement offers a textbook case in how the Church ought to involve herself with politics. It is the Gospel that changes people’s hearts. Only the freedom of the Risen Christ offers people true hope when confronted with the perils of this world. John Paul the Great preached this and his message was instrumental in freeing millions throughout the world.

This same approach to politics is what draws many to Pope Francis. His way of dealing with and speaking to people is certainly different than his most of his predecessors, but the message remains the same. Francis’ language reminds me a lot of my own church’s bishop, Rev. Matthew Harrison. They both speak a lot about mercy – Christ’s mercy – and how this mercy is the foundation of the Christian faith. And both of these shepherds engage people in every station of their life, regardless of their situation or past transgressions. To the best of their sinful ability, they both model the love of Christ to others – with believers and unbelievers alike increasingly drawn to their message.

Then there is my favorite pope, Benedict XVI.

A Bavarian who understands Lutheranism more than any of those who preceded him as Bishop of Rome, I am absolutely convinced that history will regard this man as one of the foremost intellectual giants of Christendom.

I would put him on par with Thomas Aquinas. He’s that good. Probably better. His writings cover a great deal and never disappoint. I think he is most solid on the Liturgy. But we Protestants should also love him for his insight into the greatest evil today’s world knows, “The Dictatorship of Relativism”. Benedict understands how deceptively threatening relativism is to our world and challenges us all to confront it head on, with the Law of God to be sure, but even more with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Read the rest here.

Pope Francis and the Evangelicals

The following comes from Bishop Robert Barron:

The whole Christian world has watched with fascination as Pope Francis, over the past several months, has reached out to evangelicals. Who can forget the mesmerizing iPhone video, filmed by the Pope’s (late) friend Bishop Tony Palmer, in which the Bishop of Rome communicated, with father-like compassion, to a national gathering of American evangelical leaders? His smile, his tone of voice, and the simple, direct words that he chose constituted a bridge between Catholics and evangelicals. What I found particularly moving was the remarkable reaction of the evangelical audience after they had taken in the video: a real prayer in the Spirit.

And who could forget the high-five — reportedly the first of Pope Francis’s life — exchanged with Pastor James Robison, after the pope insisted that a living relationship with Jesus stands at the heart of the Christian reality? Many Catholics were surprised when the newly elected Pope Francis asked the crowd gathered in St. Peter’s Square to pray for him, but evangelicals from Argentina weren’t taken aback, for they had witnessed something very similar. In June of 2006, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was attending a meeting of evangelical pastors in Buenos Aires, and after he had spoken to them, he knelt down on the stage and asked them to pray for him and to bless him.

No one doubts that Pope Francis has a genius for the provocative symbolic gesture: washing the feet of women and non-Christians on Holy Thursday, paying his own hotel bill in Rome, opting to reside, not in the opulent Apostolic Palace but the far more modest Casa Santa Marta, driving in a tiny car while at World Youth Day in Rio, etc. But does his outreach to evangelicals go beyond the merely symbolic? Is it grounded in more substantial theological commitments? I would argue the affirmative and to do so on the basis of Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel).

The third paragraph of that encyclical commences with this ecumenically remarkable sentence: “I invite all Christians everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ.” Catholics have tended to be suspicious of the language of personal relationship with Jesus, especially as it has appeared in evangelical Protestant rhetoric over the past half century (accepting Jesus as my “personal Lord and savior”), and this for two basic reasons. First, it seems to undermine or at least lessen the importance of the properly mediating role that the Church appropriately plays, and secondly, it tends to compromise the communitarian dimension of Christian life. I do not for a moment think that Pope Francis is unaware of those dangers, but I think he is more concerned that a hyper-stress on the ecclesial can render Christian life abstract and institutional.

In paragraph seven of Evangelii Gaudium, Francis says, “I never tire of repeating those words of Benedict XVI, which take us to the very heart of the Gospel: ‘Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.’” Christianity is not a philosophy or a set of ideas, but rather a friendship with Jesus of Nazareth. In paragraph 266, we hear, “It is impossible to persevere in a fervent evangelization unless we are convinced from personal experience that it is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him.”

Read the rest here.

Prayer and the Taizé Community

Pope Francis and Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew look to new council at Nicea in 2025

The following comes from the Catholic Culture site:

Pope Francis and Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople have agreed to plan for an ecumenical meeting to be held in Nicea in 2025, the AsiaNews service reports.

Patriarch Bartholomew revealed that he and the Roman Pontiff had “agreed to leave as a legacy to ourselves and our successors a gathering in Nicaea in 2025, to celebrate together, after 17 centuries, the first truly ecumenical synod, where the Creed was first promulgated.” The Council of Nicea, held in 325, brought together over 300 bishops and approved the formula of faith now known as the Nicene Creed.

Pope Francis and the Ecumenical Patriarch chose Nicea—now known as Iznik, Turkey—as the site for a council that could bring together Eastern and Western Christians, as the original Council of Nicea did.

In video message to Pentecostal community, Francis calls for Christian unity

The following comes from the CWR:

In an unusual video message, recorded on an iPhone by a Pentecostal pastor Pope Francis knew in Argentina, the pope says all Christians share blame for their divisions, speaks of his "longing" for their unity and insists that God will bring the miracle of Christian unity to completion.

"Pray to the Lord that he will unite us all," the pope tells a group of Pentecostals meeting in the United States. "Let's move forward, we are brothers; let us give each other that spiritual embrace and allow the Lord to complete the work he has begun. Because this is a miracle; the miracle of unity has begun." …

Addressing Palmer as "my brother, a bishop-brother" and saying they had "been friends for years," the pope offered what he said were greetings "both joyful and full of longing" to participants in a forthcoming meeting of the Kenneth Copeland Ministries, a Pentecostal group that sponsors large prayer gatherings around the world.

The joy, the pope said, comes from knowing that "the Lord is working all over the whole world."

But he said he is full of longing because Christians are still separated, "separated because of sin, our sins."

"Who is at fault?" he asked. "All of us are, we are all sinners. There is only one who is just and that is the Lord."

Michael Cumbie explains the Mass

Fr. Dwight Longenecker: Why Pope Benedict Mattered to Me

In all the drama of today’s farewell to Pope Benedict XVI, and amidst all the high level comment, intellectual analysis and historical accounting of his legacy, here are the very personal reasons why Benedict mattered to me.

1. He granted the dispensation from the vow of celibacy that opened the door for my ordination as a Catholic priest.

2. He established the Anglican Ordinariate. While I am not a priest in the Ordinariate, I have great interest in the ordinariate and its progress. I believe history will show Benedict XVI to have been a revolutionary pope when it comes to ecumenism–showing new ways for Christians to come into full communion with the Holy See.

3. He showed the way of truly Christian Biblical scholarship. He did not reject the findings of modern Biblical critics as fundamentalists do, nor did he adopt modernism and promote it. Instead was truly Catholic in his approach. He gleaned from all Biblical scholars what was true and good, and he also rejected that which was inconsistent, heretical, merely theoretical and unsubstantiated. His Biblical scholarship was thorough and erudite, yet fully within the magisterium of the church.

4. He turned upside down the media’s stupid portrayal of him as “God’s Rotweiller.” Almost immediately after his election that slur vanished as he revealed himself to be just what he said he was, “a humble worker in the Lord’s vineyard.” He showed the world that he was a gentle, scholarly, quiet man who did not avoid the onerous duties laid upon him by the Lord.

5. Benedict XVI took the name Benedict. I have loved St Benedict for a long time and seek to follow him in what humble way I can as a Benedictine oblate. When he took the name “Benedict” I immediately felt a connection with him. He was not only they holy father, but a kind of universal abbot. Now that he has retired to the monastic life it all seems a perfect ending.

6. He visited England and the United States. My heart is in both lands, and to witness his visit to both countries drew me closer to him and his courageous ministry.

7. He beatified Bl. John Henry Newman. Nuff said.

8. He taught the “hermeneutic of continuity” reminding us that the second Vatican Council did not overturn centuries of tradition, but renewed them and brought them forward with new meaning and insight and relevance. He was not ashamed, in his dress and liturgical style to renew the liturgy by drawing on its deep roots in the past.

9. He managed to combine a contemplative, inward gazing personality with an active and dynamic papacy. He showed the world that quiet men can be leaders too, and that “in quietness and confidence is much strength.”

10. He wore those red shoes.

Pope Benedict urges prayers for peace during Christian Unity Week

The following comes from the CNA:

Pope Benedict XVI asked for more prayers of world peace as part of the Christian Unity week celebrated this week.

"For the prayer of Christian unity I would like to add again that one for peace, because, in the ongoing diverse conflicts, and end to the massacres of unarmed civilians, an end to all violence, and that courage to dialogue and to negotiate is found," he told thousands of pilgrims from his Aposotolic Palace window at St. Peter's Square today.

The Church is now celebrating its annual week of prayer for Christian unity, which began Jan. 18 and will end Jan. 25.

The Pope detailed the importance of unity during his Sunday Angelus at the Vatican.

"One of the most serious sins that disfigures the face of the Church is against its visible unity, especially the historical divisions the have separated Christians that haven't yet been overcome," said Pope Benedict.

"It's a moment always welcome to believers and communities, which awakens in all the desire and spirit of commitment to full communion," he added.

The pontiff also recalled last month's vigil, which he celebrated with thousands of young Europeans and with the Taizé ecumenical community, and called it "very significant" and "a moment of grace in which we experienced the beauty in the form of one Christ."

"I encourage everyone to pray together so that we achieve this year's theme, which is, 'What does the Lord require of us?'" the Pope said.

The theme was proposed by Christian communities in India, which he asked "to walk with determination towards the visible unity of all Christians to overcome, as brothers in Christ, any kind of unjust discrimination."

The Holy Father also spoke of today's liturgy on the wedding at Cana.

"Jesus reveals himself as the Bridegroom Messiah, coming to establish the new and eternal covenant with his people," he added.

The Holy Father recalled a Bible passage that says "as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you."

"The wine is a symbol of this joy of love, and it also alludes to the blood that Jesus will pay in the end which will seal his marriage covenant with humanity," said the head of the Catholic Church.

Pope Benedict explained that the Church is the Bride of Christ, who makes her holy and beautiful with his grace.

However, he said, this Bride managed by human beings is always in need of purification.

The Pope will close the week of prayer for Christian unity by presiding vespers in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls alongside representatives of other churches and communities.

Saint of the day: Josephat

The following comes from the American Catholic site:


In 1967, newspaper photos of Pope Paul VI embracing Athenagoras I, the Orthodox patriarch of Constantinople, marked a significant step toward the healing of a division in Christendom that has spanned more than nine centuries.

In 1595, when today’s saint was a boy, the Orthodox bishop of Brest-Litovsk (famous in World War I) in Belarus and five other bishops representing millions of Ruthenians, sought reunion with Rome. John Kunsevich (Josaphat became his name in religious life) was to dedicate his life and die for the same cause. Born in what was then Poland, he went to work in Wilno and was influenced by clergy adhering to the Union of Brest (1596). He became a Basilian monk, then a priest, and soon was well known as a preacher and as an ascetic.

He became bishop of Vitebsk (now in Russia) at a relatively young age, and faced a difficult situation. Most monks, fearing interference in liturgy and customs, did not want union with Rome. By synods, catechetical instruction, reform of the clergy and personal example, however, Josaphat was successful in winning the greater part of the Orthodox in that area to the union.

But the next year a dissident hierarchy was set up, and his opposite number spread the accusation that Josaphat had "gone Latin" and that all his people would have to do the same. He was not enthusiastically supported by the Latin bishops of Poland.

Despite warnings, he went to Vitebsk, still a hotbed of trouble. Attempts were made to foment trouble and drive him from the diocese: A priest was sent to shout insults to him from his own courtyard. When Josaphat had him removed and shut up in his house, the opposition rang the town hall bell, and a mob assembled. The priest was released, but members of the mob broke into the bishop’s home. He was struck with a halberd, then shot and his body thrown into the river. It was later recovered and is now buried in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. He was the first saint of the Eastern Church to be canonized by Rome.

His death brought a movement toward Catholicism and unity, but the controversy continued, and the dissidents, too, had their martyr. After the partition of Poland, the Russians forced most Ruthenians to join the Russian Orthodox Church.

Chuck Colson on Religious Freedom and Possible Necessity of Civil Disobedience

The Likeness of Christ

Full and Visible Unity

Pope Benedict: "Tear down the barriers between us to bring peace"

"We must overcome our differences ", to" break down barriers between us and our neighbours, to enter into the divine life and "bring peace and reconciliation where there are conflicts." This was Pope Benedict XVI's message this morning, during his homily at Mass celebrated in Nicosia, Cyprus, for the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ. Before more than 6 thousand faithful, Cypriots and immigrants, especially from the Philippines and Sri Lanka, gathered in the city's sport's centre with more in the grounds outside, Benedict XVI recalled that "each of us who belong to the Church needs to leave the closed world of his individuality and accept the 'companionship' of others who "break bread" with us ...

Holy Father urges Catholics and Orthodox to bear witness to the Gospel

The following comes from the CNA:

Speaking at an ecumenical celebration in Cyprus, the Holy Father explained that like the original evangelizers of the island, every Christian is called to witness to the Lord and his Gospel.

Members of the Orthodox Church, led by His Beatitude Chrysostomos II, and many Catholic Church representatives including Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, were present for the celebration at the Church of Agia Kiriaki Chrysopolitissa for the ecumenical encounter on Friday afternoon. Other representations included those from the Armenian, Lutheran and Anglican communities.

Recalling the original evangelizers of Cyprus in Sts. Barnabas, Mark and Paul to the island, Pope Benedict said “from this place, the Gospel message began to spread throughout the Empire, and the Church, grounded in the apostolic preaching, was able to take root throughout the then-known world.”

He observed that the Church in the nation can “rightly be proud” of its connection to these preachers and its links with all churches through the communion in the apostolic faith. “This is the communion,” he explained, “real yet imperfect, which already unites us, and which impels us to overcome our divisions and to strive for the restoration of that full visible unity which is the Lord’s will for all his followers.”

Our communion in the faith, he went on, “is both a gift and a summons to mission” and “like Paul and Barnabas, every Christian, by baptism, is set apart to bear prophetic witness to the Risen Lord and to his Gospel of reconciliation, mercy and peace.”

Turning to the upcoming Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops, he noted that, “enriched by the presence of fraternal delegates from other Churches and Christian communities in the region,” it will examine the “vital role” of the Christian communities in the Middle East and encourage their witness, dialogue and cooperation.

Benedict XVI also cited the role and commitment of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches of Cyprus, as the "bridge between East and West," to the advancement of dialogue and fraternal cooperation, praying that “the Holy Spirit enlighten our minds and strengthen our resolve, so that together we can bring the message of salvation to the men and women of our time…”

At the conclusion of the celebration, the Holy Father blessed a plaque for a new retirement home built by the Latin Rite Catholic community of Paphos and moved on to the capital city of Nicosia where he is scheduled to consign the Instrumentum laboris tomorrow.

The Vatican Publishes Book of Moscow Patriarch

The Vatican continues to build bridges to our Eastern brothers and sisters. The following comes from Caput Mundi:

The Vatican Publishing House is publishing a book by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and of All Russia.

This gesture follows a similar move of the Moscow Patriarchate, which last December published a book with texts from Benedict XVI regarding European culture.

Now, the Italian-language book with addresses by the Russian Orthodox patriarch, titled "Liberta e Responsabilita alla Ricerca dell'Armonia" (Liberty and Responsibility in the Search of Harmony) will be officially presented on Monday at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan

The work brings together the most important addresses on human rights given by Patriarch Kirill. In it, he wrote, "We have a common vision with the Pope on the protection of the dignity of man in Europe."

For this reason, he said, "today the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church are the only ones naturally allied in the hard struggle against the liberalist and secularist ideology."

"In the West there is the desire to relegate the faith to the private realm in a way that is almost worse than the Soviet regime did in our country," the patriarch wrote.

To overcome it, he added, the Church will have to enter "into a serious dialogue, devoid of prejudices, with lay and liberal humanism," but without falling into the temptation of "unilateralism."

"It is a harsh analysis but full of hope," stressed Pierluca Azzaro, professor of politics at the university and the book's editor. "Pope Benedict XVI and Patriarch Kirill exhort Christians of East and West not to be conformed to the mentality of this century."

"They invite all of us to profess our creed in the Church founded by Christ the Savior, to defend liberty as an indisputable but not unlimited value: by its most profound nature, liberty is, and always will be, linked to truth," Azzaro said.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, who signed the volume's introduction, stated, Patriarch Kirill "puts one on guard in an incisive and passionate way against a 'new generation of rights' that shelter in their interior true and genuine degenerations of the authentic dignity of the person."

The volume will be presented by Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, archbishop of Milan and president of the Giuseppe Toniolo Institute of Higher Studies, and Adriano Roccucci of the Roma Tre University.

Addresses will be given by Lorenzo Ornaghi, rector of the Sacred Heart university; Anatoly Torkunov, rector of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations of the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry; Edmondo Caruana, publishing director of the Vatican Publishing House; Giuseppina Cardillo Azzaro, president of the international association "Sophia: Russian Idea, Idea of Europe."

The presentation will end with a speech by the chairman of the Department of External Affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate, Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev of Volokolamsk.

The publication of the book also leads up to the May 20 inauguration in Rome of the Italian-Russian Academy "Sapientia et Scientia."

The project has received the blessing of the Holy See and of the Moscow Patriarchate, and the official approval of the Italian and Russian States.

The Academy -- which aims to be a stable meeting place for representatives of the Church and of the civil societies of Italy and Russia -- will carry out its activities at the Villa Sciarra in Rome.

The dictatorship of relativism strikes back—and goes nuclear

John Stephenson is a Lutheran theologian who writes for Logia. He has some strong feelings about the way the media are treating Pope Benedict these days:

The secular press has had it in for Joseph Ratzinger for going on three decades. Before his election as Pope in the spring of 2005, he was routinely derided in his homeland as the Panzerkardinal (“tank cardinal”) and caricatured in North America as the “Enforcer” or even the “Rottweiler.” The roots of this negative reputation stretch back at least as far as the book-length interview he granted to the Italian journalist Vittorio Messori that catapulted him to global fame when published as The Ratzinger Report in 1985. Prior to that juncture, as a heavyweight German academic who had leapfrogged over a major episcopal see (Munich-Freising) to become a leading official in the Roman curia (as cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) under the still new John Paul II, Ratzinger’s was hardly a household name.

But shrewd observers must wonder about the startling disproportion between the enormous hue and cry artificially whipped up by the media and the softly spoken real life figure who seems always to have avoided hyperbole like the plague. Even though the curial department over which he presided for almost a quarter century is the direct heir to the 16th-century Inquisition, the disciplinary measures dealt out by Ratzinger against barely a score of wildly Modernist (actually mostly apostate) theologians over more than two decades add up to a string of fairly mild censures, gentle slaps on the wrist in most cases. Hans Küng lost the right to teach theology as an accredited representative of the magisterium (as his missio canonica was stripped from him), but (despite his clear disavowal of the divinity of Christ!) retained his status as an incardinated (=rostered) Roman Catholic priest, and he has, well, greatly profited in fame and fortune from his much trumpeted role as Rome’s chief dissident. Had he rather than Ratzinger landed in the chair of cardinal prefect back in the early 1980s, the media would have shown no sympathy for the advocates of traditional Christianity that a totalitarian liberal such as Küng would have hounded to the remotest margins of Church life; ironically, there is no more illiberal force on earth than a liberal with his hands on the levers of power.

Moreover, when someone takes the trouble to examine Ratzinger’s huge opus over close to six decades as a professional theologian, they make the discovery that he occupies a centrist position in the constellation of modern Roman Catholic theology; he is at most mildly “conservative”, the “ultra-conservative” label routinely affixed to him by most sections of the press being sheerly laughable.

As I set forth the Roman Catholic reality in our St. Catharines Religious Bodies (Comparative Symbolics) course, I point out the current uneasy coexistence of three groupings in that vast church body.

Modernism on the rampage (or the elephant actually destroying the living room)

In the one corner are the media-supported Modernists, those who do not acknowledge the definitive quality of God’s unsurpassable self-revelation in Christ, and who thus regard faith and practice not as givens to be handed down intact but as man-made constructs to be refashioned at whim according to the capricious desire of succeeding generations. Roundly condemned and solemnly proscribed by Pius X (1903-1914) and still held back to a great extent by Pius XII (1939-1958), the Modernists crawled out of the woodwork during the reign of John XXIII (1958-1963), and Modernism swiftly rose to a dominant position in Roman Catholic theology in, with, under, and around the (sixteen) officially promulgated documents of Vatican II (1962-1965).

As a young theologian, Ratzinger attended Vatican II as a peritus (=expert) of somewhat “progressive” tendencies. By Council’s close he was uneasy over the tone and content of its last document, Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church and the Modern World. Shocked to the core by the virulently anti-Christian positions embraced even by theology students (led by such figures as the radical Tübingen exegete Ernst Käsemann) in the student uprisings of 1968 (Achtundsechziger [“68ers”] is an actual word in modern German), Ratzinger firmed up his centrist credentials and switched his support from the left-leaning magazine Concilium (the house organ of Küng & Co.) to the middle of the road Communio (the substitute publication of von Balthasar and friends).

Clearly, the Modernists who surged forth to theological dominance in the wake of Vatican II have never forgiven Ratzinger for his “betrayal” of their cause; in their books (literally, in the case of Küng’s interminable memoirs) he is and remains a cross between Brutus and Judas Iscariot. At least some of his media woes are attributable to the Modernists’ insatiable thirst for revenge for, say, his pointed critique of Gaudium et spes written ten years after the close of the Council. But these pages of sober commentary are surely sweet music to orthodox Lutheran ears. Yes, Vatican II was infected by the dementedly schwärmerisch optimism of the Kennedy era (Principles of Catholic Theology, 372; 383). Yes, Gaudium et spes considers the “world” a positive entity, with which it seeks dialogue and cooperation with a view to building jointly with it a better global state of affairs (Principles, 379f.). Had he lived much longer, Hermann Sasse, who was careful to register both the strengths and the weaknesses of Vatican II, would surely have added his Yea and Amen to Ratzinger’s analysis of Gaudium et spes.

As they still pretend that everything in the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic garden is fine and dandy, the Modernists undoubtedly continue greatly to resent Ratzinger’s telling Vittorio Messori in the early 1980s how “we must speak …of a crisis of faith and of the Church” (Ratzinger Report, 44; “the gravity of the crisis,” 62; “in this confused period, when truly every type of heretical aberration seems to be pressing upon the doors of the authentic faith,” 105). Later in the same decade I headed the first chapter of CLD’s Eschatology volume “General Apostasy: the Sign of our Time.” Guess what? Ratzinger, the GAFCON Anglicans, and I are spot on. Might there be something slightly fishy in the direction ELCA, ELCiC, TEC (the US Episcopalians), and the Anglican Church of Canada have been heading lately? The Modernists and their media allies would much prefer that no one notice these developments.

For the rest of the story please click here.

Pope Benedict to Lutheran church in Rome: Only Christ can grant unity

We have destroyed the us of the Christian community, we have divided the only way into many ways, and now we experience the sin that does not allow us to drink from the same chalice or be together around the altar. However, today we are here praying together to the Lord, the only One who can grant us unity. With these words, Benedict XVI ended his homily on Sunday, March 14th, during the evening worship service of the Lutheran community in Rome. Invited to the Christuskirche, the Church of Christ, on the Via Sicilia in Rome -- 27 years after John Paul IIs visit, the first papal visit to a Lutheran church -- Benedict XVI was welcomed by Pastor Jens-Martin Kruse and the communitys 350 members ...

100 US Anglican parishes convert to Roman Catholic Church

This is pretty big news from the Telegraph! Hat tip to WDTPRS.com:

About 100 traditionalist Anglican parishes across the United States have decided to convert en masse to the Roman Catholic Church, it emerged yesterday.

They have voted to take up the offer made by Pope Benedict XVI in November that permits vicars and their entire congregations to defect to Rome while keeping many of their Anglican traditions, including married priests.

By issuing the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus (on groups of Anglicans) the Pope was accused of attempting to poach Anglicans unhappy about decisions taken in their Church to ordain women and sexually-active homosexuals as priests and bishops.

But the Vatican insisted that the move to create self-governing "personal ordinariates", which resemble dioceses in structure, came as a result of requests from at least 30 disaffected Anglican bishops around the world for "corporate reunion" with the Catholic Church.

The Anglican Church in America (ACA) will now enter the Catholic Church as a block, bringing in thousands of converts along with their own bishops, buildings and even a cathedral.

They will worship according to Anglican rubrics, and use the Book of Common Prayer, but they will be in communion with the Pope, recognising him as their leader.

The decision was taken by the House of Bishops of the ACA during a meeting in Orlando, Florida, earlier this week.
The bishops said in a brief statement afterwards that they had agreed to formally "request the implementation of the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus in the United States of America by the (Vatican's) Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith".

The ACA belongs to the Traditional Anglican Communion, which broke from the Anglican Communion nearly 20 years ago because of its drift from orthodox Christian doctrines.

Unlike 77 million Anglicans worldwide, it is not in communion with the much larger US episcopal church nor does it recognise Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the head of the church but still considers itself Anglican in its origins.

Its decision to rejoin the Catholic Church represents the second group of Anglican churches to take up the Pope's offer.

The first was the Australian branch of Forward in Faith, a traditionalist group in communion with the Church of England and other mainstream Anglican churches, which last month directed its governing council to take the first steps needed for the mass conversion of 16 parishes to Catholicism.

The UK branch of Forward in Faith is also considering mass conversion but has delayed a decision until July at the earliest – though its leaders are known to be holding secretive meeting with high-ranking Vatican officials.

In the meantime Forward in Faith UK has set up a "Friends of the Ordinariate" group to help to gauge the level of support for conversion among rank-and-file worshippers.

If they decide to take the path to Rome, Britain will see unprecedented numbers of conversions, possibly involving in the region of 200 Anglican congregations, which would amount to thousands of converts.

John Broadhurst, the Anglican Bishop of Fulham and chairman of Forward in Faith, said mass conversion was a real prospect. "We have a thousand priest members in my organisation and there are many others who agree with us," he said last year.
"The main issue for many Anglican priests is now the ownership of parish churches."

In preparation for an influx of converts the Catholic bishops of England and Wales have established a commission which is expected to look at the possibility of church-sharing and also the chances of taking out 100-year leases of some Anglican parishes.

An early conversion came last month, however, when it emerged that Paul Robinson, the former assistant Anglican Bishop of Newcastle, converted just weeks after stepping down from his post.

The 63-year-old was received into the Catholic Church in January and is now a regular worshipper at St George's Roman Catholic Cathedral in Southwark, following a move to London.

'It's really a journey I've been on for some time,' he said. 'It's just like coming home.'

Last summer, Mr Robinson claimed that the dramatic fall in church marriages and baptisms was an indication that Britain was no longer a Christian nation.

He has predicted the demise of the Church of England as the established religion within a generation.

Pope Benedict will visit Britain in September to attend the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, a high-profile Anglican cleric who shocked Victorian England by converting to the Catholic faith.

Soul of the Body of Christ