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Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my Church.
On 22nd February we celebrate the feast of the Chair of St.Peter. This feastday is our opportunity to thank God again for the primacy of the Pope as chief shepherd of Christ's flock. It is our opportunity to affirm our belief in the full, supreme, universal and immediate jurisdiction of His Holiness the Pope over each and every single one of the faithful. Christ Himself is the Head of the Church, and He chose St.Peter and his successors to share and mediate that headship and its primacy, as servant of the servants of God.
We are told that a number of Anglicans are in the process of considering their position in the light of the Holy Father's extraordinarily generous offer to them in his recent Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, which makes canonical provision for personal ordinariates for Anglicans who leave the Church of England and enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. It has also been said that a number of them are hoping to make a decision by the feast of the Chair of St.Peter this year. We must pray for the Holy Spirit to guide them in their response to the Holy Father. We should remember that Pope Benedict's Apostolic Constitution is itself a response to numerous and repeated petitions made to the Holy See by various Anglican groups over a number of years. The Pope is offering them what they asked for. Now it is up to them, by the grace of God, to respond. The ball is now in their court.
It is well to recall the Lord's words to St.Peter: "… I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." This commissioning of Peter follows a question by Jesus, "Who do men say that the Son of man is?" to which the reply is uncertain and varied: some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, others Jeremiah, and so on. People were confused. They wanted a Messiah, and were looking for someone of unambiguous majesty and overt political power. Instead, they were confronted with a disconcertingly humble itinerant rabbi-preacher, of whom many were perhaps understandably suspicious. By divine revelation, Peter was given the grace to answer correctly, to acknowledge and proclaim Christ as the Son of God. It is important for all of us, Catholics and potential converts alike, to understand clearly that the proper transmission of the Christian faith is inextricably bound up with the primacy of the Pope, Peter's successor. St.Peter was given the primacy not as an honour or as a reward, but in order to equip him with those gifts necessary for his task of transmitting the faith to subsequent generations, after Christ's visible presence had left the earth.
Peter was given the primacy to enable him to become the servant of the servants of God. Equally important is this: the transmission and practice of the faith are inextricably bound up with being in full and visible communion with Peter and his successors. When Christians separate themselves from Peter, the faith is always impaired, sometimes even destroyed. When we unite ourselves with Peter, we find the proper context of our faith, and the authentic means to live it. This is the plain truth. Like all the truths of Catholicism, it is not comprehended merely by argument or ratiocination or negotiation. Study and discussion can certainly help, but they are never enough.
Faith is a supernatural gift from God. So non-Catholics who are considering their position in relation to the Catholic Church must do so, not in the spirit of simply "reaching a decision" as if this were just like any other human decision, weighing the arguments and assessing the probabilities. They should rather be praying with might and main for God to give them the fullness of His gift of faith, a supernatural gift from the Almighty which enables us to believe without doubting all that He has revealed. The fullness of that faith includes the doctrines of the primacy of St.Peter, the necessity of being in communion with his successor the Bishop of Rome, the indefectibility of the Catholic Church as guaranteed by papal infallibility, and all else that flows from those truths.
We Catholics are in no position to be smug and complacent about all this. Yes, we have been given the gift of faith. Yes, we are in full communion with the Holy Father. Such undeserved privileges carry with them grave responsibilities, not least the imperative to give the best possible witness to the truths of the faith by what we say and do, and by what we are. We are also bound in charity to pray fervently for our separated brethren and to give them every possible encouragement and assistance, as brethren, as friends, as fellow disciples of the Lord Jesus. Those of us who at different times and in varying circumstances left the Church of England in order to become Catholics, we know that for any number of contingent human reasons it is often difficult to pursue the right path. How deep the difficulties can be is seen in the long journey made by John Henry Newman. He thought, and studied, and prayed. The most efficacious of these activities was, and always is, prayer. It is also worth remembering that ultimately the decision belongs to God and not to us. Dominus dat incrementum.
If any Anglicans would like to talk to us about all this, please get in touch. We are here to help. |
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Anglicanorum Coetibus
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