Why all the fuss about this place?

Taizé.

If there is one word guaranteed to set the ageing renewalists aglow with gushing enthusiasm, it is Taizé.

Taizé is the centre of their religious universe, as Mecca is to the Mahometan.

Melancholicus was tidying up his room the other day and came across a newsletter from the local parish, the front page of which promoted this phenomenon with warm approbation. Melancholicus reproduces this blurb here for the benefit of his readers, and has taken the liberty of inserting a few barbed and sarcastic remarks in red.

Taizé «that little springtime»

The above description was given by the great Pope John XXIII [there is no doubt that John XXIII was very popular, but popularity hardly suffices to make one great. Ah, but silly me, John XXIII is great because he convoked Vatican II and so is the source of the wonderful renewal we are now experiencing in the Church today] referring to the Ecumenical Community of Brothers based at Taizé in France. The community was founded by Roger Schutz a Swiss Lutheran over fifty years ago. The community was visited by the late Pope John Paul II as well as the present Pope, who visited it as a Cardinal. Both praised it as venture to reach out to all people and particularly young people [emphasis mine] who visit the community in their hundreds [what, not thousands, as has oft been claimed?] and join the community of brothers in their prayer life and sharing of the Christian message. Brother Roger died in 2006 [there is considerable divergence of opinion as to whether Brother Roger died in 2005 or 2006. Maybe there were two Brother Rogers, one of whom is rumoured to have been a closet Catholic. Perhaps one of these Brother Rogers was the public figure and the other was kept hidden away in a dungeon out of sight. If we come across any photographs of Brother Roger purporting to have been taken in 2006, perhaps we should look closely at his ears] and has been succeeded by Brother Alois as head of the community of around one hundred brothers of various nationalities and denominations [the fact that these 'brothers' come from a large variety of sects—some are even Catholic!—is seen as one of the most wondrous aspects of this place. It is the ultimate ecumaniacal paradise].

If anyone wants to know more about this unique community they are invited to meet Brother Alois and some brothers who will be in the Pro-Cathedral on Friday 25 April at 8pm. They may even be tempted to visit Taizé and experience their very moving prayer gatherings and meet others who have been touched by this «little springtime» in the church [sic].

If you are on the web why not log on to: taizedublin@gmail.com [which is an e-mail address, not a URL]

Melancholicus missed Brother Alois’ visit, but has not lost any sleep as a consequence. I suppose the fellow was generously fêted at the pro-cathedral, and I dare say that in the run-up to his arrival parishes all across the diocese were active in love-bombing “the youth” (or what little youth they have left) in an attempt to bestir their interest in meeting this towering celebrity. For some reason that Melancholicus cannot quite fathom, the henchpersons of newchurch always seem to regard Taizé as especially relevant and appealing to “the youth”. Is this simply because as a phenomenon Taizé is a radical novelty, something totally untraditional, and hence buys into the patronising notion that young people are so shallow they will prefer the new simply because it is new?

What makes Taizé particularly dangerous—and hence totally undeserving of the promotion it receives from our parish clergy and religious—is that it is probably the one place on earth which most tangibly embodies the ecumenical lie. I refer to the notion that the unity of the Church does not actually exist, hence we have to go in search of it, along with our “separated brethren”, who are viewed by adherents of the lie as equal partners in the search for this “lost” unity. To put it simply, if Taizé is so cool, what’s so special about being a Catholic? The Taizé people aren’t Catholic (or if they are, they haven’t told us yet), but in spite of this they are praised to the skies by our fathers in God, as though Taizé holds the key to the cosmos. What lies at the bottom of this ecumenical search for “unity” is not unity at all, but universalism. Our young people are exhorted by the wild-eyed hippies that run parishes and religious orders to make pilgrimages to this place, effectively placing it on the same level as Fatima or Lourdes or even Rome itself, and in so doing, whatever faith they might beforehand have had in the singular importance of the Catholic Church is lost entirely.

But even if the Taizé community were a normal Catholic religious order—which it isn’t; as they say in Yorkshire, it’s neither nowt nor summat—Melancholicus would still object to its relentless promotion by the doyens of the new religion, and that simply because of its second rate tat. Take a look at their crucifix, for instance. Gaudy, garish colours; badly-proportioned figures with spindly limbs, evoking more than a whiff of the grotesque; mediocre artwork of a fairly middling standard; the odd shape of the thing, and not least, its propensity to be copied and mimicked in churches and parishes without number all over the world. Look at the photo of the sanctuary of the chapel here at the university where Melancholicus earns his living (in this post below), and you should notice a familiar-looking object adorning the wall behind the Lord’s board.

Now look at this thing, by which I mean the object she’s sitting on. They call it the “Taizé kneeler”, but it isn’t a kneeler really, is it? It’s actually a kind of stool. The weight of the body in this position is borne not by the knees (as in classic kneeling posture) but by the buttocks, hence the Taizé version of kneeling is really nothing other than sitting. At best it can be described as lazy man’s kneeling. The goal of this posture is not to abase oneself in humility before the majesty of God, but to achieve ‘relaxation’ à-la New Age, with a veneer of prayer. This attitude is fed by the Taizé style of prayer, in which mantras are chanted over and over with the aim of soothing the participants, inducing emotion or a kind of trance-like stupor more reminiscent of a guided relaxation session than genuine prayer.

And as for their music, well, I cannot praise it. Chemical weapons have oft been described as “the poor man’s atomic bomb”. In that vein, we might describe Taizé singing as the poor man’s gregorian chant. Melancholicus has never cared for it, even in the days before his discovery of Tradition. It has always seemed to him to be contrived and vaguely embarrassing. Why have Taizé chant when, with a little effort, one can have the real thing? Why be content with hamburger when one can have filet mignon?

Far from being a “little springtime”, Taizé, much like Focolare, the neo-catechumenal people and various other fads of the hour, is a weed rather than a flower in the vineyard of the Lord. Some weeds are quite attractive, sporting pretty petals and flowers of pleasing hues. Those unlearned in botanical matters may mistake these weeds for something the Gardener has carefully cultivated, when in reality they are invasive intruders, having installed themselves without His assistance, limiting the growth of other plants by blocking out the light and by using up nutrients from the soil. They have pretty flowers, emit a delightful perfume, wave pleasingly in the breeze, and look to all appearances like a well ordered flowerbed—but the vine, starved in soil rendered barren by their aggressive proliferation, begins to die. Weeds do not serve the Gardener; neither do these ‘movements’—least of all Taizé, which isn’t even Catholic—serve the Church.

Such are the wages of ecumenism

It was surely a mistake to admit this man to the communion of the Catholic Church.

Melancholicus had hoped — O, the naivete of the boy! — that when Tony Blair became a Catholic, he would convert to the Truth, repent of his errors, and reform himself; that in the conduct of his public life he would do the Church proud; that he would be, as it were, a great “catch” for the holy Roman Church.

But it seems that in switching his adherence from the Church of England to that of Rome, Mr. Blair has merely followed his personal taste rather than religious convictions of any depth, because to all intents and purposes, he is just as secular in his outlook now as he was before he was received into the Church.

Accordingly, he has since been a great disappointment — even an embarrassment — as a Catholic, and Melancholicus finds himself hoping that (fingers crossed!) the established church will soon take him back again.

Now the fellow has gone and established a “faith foundation” in New York which — as far as Melancholicus can see from its homepage and its description in the media — is a veritable sty of Sillonism, an organisation which will not advance the Catholic religion one iota, nor attract to it a single convert, but will instead sow the seeds of secularism and godlessness under the guise of promoting some vague and generic “power of faith”.

Let us now hear Catholic World News on the subject:

Blair's new foundation will fight religious extremism

New York, Jun. 2, 2008 (CWNews.com) - Former British prime minister Tony Blair has launched a new foundation dedicated to fighting against religious extremism and harnessing the power of faith to fight against poverty and disease.

Speaking in New York at the formal opening of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, the former British leader said there is "nothing more important" than ensuring mutual understanding in the world and fostering cooperation among different religious groups.

Blair said that in addition to enlisting religious support for global development projects, his new foundation would fight against extremism in religion -- not only in Islam, but in every religious tradition. "Though there is much focus, understandably, on extremism associated with the perversion of the proper faith of Islam, there are elements of extremism in every major faith," he said.

It seems that Mr. Blair’s attitude is that a little bit of religion is quite alright, even to be recommended, but let us not commit the cardinal error of taking religion seriously, since that results in ‘extremism’.

It is quite clear that Mr. Blair’s faith foundation is quite unapologetic in treating all religions as essentially the same — hence, he is quick to offer excuses for Islam (islamist violence is a “perversion” of the “proper faith” of Islam, not part of the “proper faith” itself, despite the life of Muhammad and the testimony of the Qur’an) and has no hesitation in mollifying the Mahometans by assuring us that “there are elements of extremism in every major faith”. Well, fallen human beings are still fallen human beings regardless of the religion they profess, so anyone might be capable of violent acts, but can Mr. Blair explain to us the obvious disproportion between number of atrocities carried out by adherents of Islam as against the adherents of all other religions combined?

Clearly, all religions are not the same — it is a plain fact that they teach different and mutually-exclusive things, and that each religion expects a different standard of conduct and behaviour from its adherents. This truth is an embarrassment to the likes of Mr. Blair, since it is self-evidently divisive.

Hence, anything that divides man from his neighbour, anything that introduces division, must be suppressed. An insistence upon religious truth is by its nature considered ‘divisive’, and so must be eschewed like the plague. What the Tony Blair Faith Foundation has at its heart is the promotion of a single universal religion devoid of dogmas and creeds, to which all can belong, and centred upon the temporal needs of humankind in the here and now. Taking one’s own religion seriously, and claiming that it alone possesses truth while rival faiths are false is something this anthropocentric approach above all cannot tolerate, and so all religions — Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and the rest — must be blended together in a syncretic mass such that each will lose its distinctive characteristics in favour of identification with the whole.

Needless to say, Roman Catholicism — the faith only recently embraced by Mr. Blair — is not exempted from such treatment. A strange position indeed for any man calling himself a Catholic.

But Mr. Blair is not so much a Roman Catholic as he is a Conciliar Catholic — and there is a world of difference between these two, since Roman Catholicism and Conciliar Catholicism are two different religions.

Accordingly, one cannot really blame our recently-received convert for this execrable blasphemy, at least not exclusively, since this essentially secular ideology of all men working together in harmony in order to realise paradise here on earth has been extolled and promoted even by the Roman pontiffs ever since the halcyon days of the ’sixties, in what Mark Fellows has described as ‘the papal vision’. Paul VI and John Paul II were the most enthusiastic proponents of this worldly ideology, but it also marred the pontificate of its originator, John XXIII, and, despite the damage it has done to the Church, is not completely absent from the teaching of even the present incumbent of the Apostolic See.

For is it not true to say that, if the Catholic Church had maintained her traditional stance vis-a-vis other religions, that it would not be possible today for any Catholic (except a dissident) to fall into such errors and delusions as our recent convert, Mr. Tony Blair?

John Cooney on 'denominational migration'

From today’s Irish Independent comes another annoying piece of lightweight journalism from the egregious John Cooney. There are so many problems, mistakes, erroneous assumptions, smart-arsed remarks and other howlers in this piece that one scarcely knows where to begin. Melancholicus has added his own comments below in red.

Roaming Catholics: More conversions than ever before...

By John Cooney
Saturday March 01 2008

The appointment this week of the Venerable Dermot Dunne, a former Catholic priest, as Dean of Christchurch, one of Dublin's two landmark Anglican cathedrals, highlights a growing trend of "denominational migration".

Up until recently it was regarded as a social stigma, even a badge of shame, for a Catholic to convert to Protestantism, or for a Protestant of whichever strand -- Anglicanism, Presbyterianism or Methodism -- to embrace the Roman Faith.

Indeed, much of the history of 20th century Ireland, especially since the foundation of the State in 1921, was bedevilled by the decline of the minority Protestant population, mainly as a result of the Catholic Church's strict mixed marriage regulations requiring children to be raised as Catholics [in this regard we might remark that in some parts of Northern Ireland it is still seriously believed, even today, that the decline in the Protestant population of the Republic of Ireland after partition was caused by an orchestrated campaign of genocide by the Irish government, and that Protestants were done to death in extermination camps after the manner of the Third Reich!].

Memories still linger, particularly in the West of Ireland, of the crusades by Protestant evangelicals in the mid-19th century to provide soup-bowls to the starving Catholic poor on condition that they committed their souls to the Bible as propounded by the anti-Romanist preachers since the 16th century Reformation [Melancholicus is actually quite impressed by the 'soupers', since the Church of Ireland throughout its long history made practically no effort to convert the popishly-affected majority of the population].

When introducing Dean-elect Dunne, and his English wife, Celia, the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr John Neill, admitted that it was no great shock to him that at a time of change within each of the Christian traditions, individuals are finding their expression of Christian faith in another tradition.

Noting that last year Mrs Anita Henderson, the wife of the Anglican Bishop of Tuam, Killala and Achonry, Dr Richard Henderson, was received into the Catholic Church in Ballina, Co Mayo, Dr Neill said the important thing is that "we do not go seeking people from other denominations to attract them into our own." [classic ecumenical niceness!]

Noting that proselytism was something unfortunate [!] that happened in previous generations, he added: "The freedom and acceptance of change and the way that ecumenical relationships remain strong when people change from one denomination to another is not causing great pain," he insisted. "I do not see this as anything like triumphalism. We are all part of the Christian Church."

The reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s spawned a new era of ecumenical détente among previously feuding Christians, but 'the Restoration' policies pursued by the late Pope John Paul II and his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, [here we go, stick the knife in! Can't pass up any opportunity to attack the Holy Father now, can we Mr. Cooney?] have put the brakes on the pace of the church unity movement on issues such as shared Eucharist, Rome's continued non-recognition of the validity of Anglican Orders, the compulsory celibacy of Catholic priests, and Rome's refusal to ordain women and its consequent alarm over the ordination of women and gay men to the Anglican episcopacy and priesthood [There are a number of issues here, which we will treat seriatim:

1. First of all, the so-called "shared Eucharist". The Church of Ireland, in common with certain other branches of the Anglican Communion, offers an open table to other Christians "in good standing" in their own denominations who wish to receive communion at an Anglican service. This is a novelty in the history of Anglicanism, which traditionally did not offer the Eucharist indiscriminately to all and sundry, never mind to stubborn papists or to the adherents of sects. The reader should study the exhortations printed in the communion rite in the Prayer Book for an exposition of the classic Anglican position. Now that the novelty of an open table has been introduced in these unbelieving and ecumaniacal times, is it not presumptious, to say the least, to expect other Churches to espouse the same novelty as a matter of course? Shall we not do better to regard this innovation for what it is, namely an aberration that shall disappear when a measure of sanity begins to return to the churches of the Anglican Communion?
   
   Furthermore, the Eucharist is an expression of communion with those with whom one shares it. How can such communion be pretended when it does not in fact exist? "Eucharistic sharing" ignores the very real divisions and disagreements between Christians, preferring instead to generate a warm and fuzzy but no less false feeling of unity, a fake and artificial unity which is not grounded in reality. "Eucharistic sharing" is on this basis actually a form of spiritual prostitution. Suppose, gentle reader, that your next-door neighbour should offer to you his wife (or her husband, if you are female) for your good pleasure. If you are decent and a gentleman, you would of course decline. Would you not also be greatly affronted if your neighbour then expected to be allowed take the same liberties with your own wife as he offered you with his? In such manner do we behave when we offer the Eucharist to those with whom we are not in communion, or if we avail of such an offer from them.
   
   Finally, those who engage in indiscriminate "Eucharistic sharing" are also guilty of failing to discern the body of the Lord. There is a world of difference between the Roman Catholic theology of the Eucharist and the Anglican theology of the same. This means in effect that the Roman Eucharist and the Anglican Eucharist are two completely different things. No Roman Catholic who knows his faith would ever be prepared to receive the Eucharist at an Anglican service, except out of malice or unbelief. No Roman Catholic priest could, unless he had lost his faith or valued the approval of men more than the approval of God, offer the Eucharist to Anglican communicants, except under those few exceptions granted by canon law.



2. Now to deal with what Cooney calls "Rome's continued non-recognition of the validity of Anglican Orders". Actually, he has this sentence backwards. He ought to have said "Rome's continued recognition of the invalidity of Anglican Orders". Cooney simply assumes that Anglican Orders are "valid". But what does "valid" mean in this context? Can Cooney not tell us why Rome perceives a difference between its own orders and those of the Anglican church? As with the Eucharist, there is an unbridgable gulf between the Roman Catholic and the Anglican theology of orders. Cooney misleads his readers by treating this most serious question as a simple matter of reciprocal courtesy, as though there were no reason beyond a snooty sense of superiority for Rome to withhold "recognition" of Anglican Orders. He does not inform his readers that Rome recognises as valid the orders of the Orthodox and Old Catholic churches, even though these bodies are not in communion with the Holy See, and that if only the Anglican churches possessed the same orders as these bodies, Rome would have no hesitation in recognising them also. Despite the definitive judgement of Leo XIII in Apostolicae Curae, there are many today, including Catholics, who continue to insist with John Cooney that Anglican Orders are fully valid in the Catholic sense. Of course the situation has been muddied somewhat since 1896 by the introduction of the so-called "Dutch Touch", namely the ordination of Anglican clergy by Old Catholic bishops whose orders are not in dispute, and the Anglicans themselves have long since fixed the defects in their ordinal which, according to the Holy See, caused a fatal interruption of the apostolic succession in the sixteenth century.
   
   For more on this contentious question, the reader will find a useful collection of resources here.



3. Melancholicus shall pass over the issue of clerical celibacy, since he has said enough about it elsewhere. Instead, he shall move on to what Cooney calls "Rome's refusal to ordain women", as though this were simply an issue of sexism. But this question is related to that on orders above; once again, the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches have two radically divergent theologies of ordination, and they cannot be regarded as though there is no difference between them. The Roman Catholic Church believes it has no authority to confer the sacrament of holy orders on women. This is because the sacraments were instituted not by the Church, but by Christ, and the Church has no authority to change them in accordance with the fads of the hour. Of course, true to his tendentious approach throughout this article, what Cooney neglects to tell us is that the ordination of women to the Anglican priesthood and episcopate has caused enormous rifts everywhere in the Anglican Communion wherever such ordinations have taken place. Thus this matter is not reducible to a simplistic view of Rome as sexist and authoritarian, and Canterbury as inclusive and enlightened.



4. As if to seal the deal, Cooney feels compelled to thump the drum of the homosexualist lobby. Once again, hidebound reactionary Rome is unfavourably contrasted with open and enlightened Canterbury, as the latter, knowingly and with approbation, ordains gay men (and gay women) to the priesthood and episcopate. Although the Roman hierarchy is likewise full of ring pirates, as a spate of scandals over the past decade or more has revealed, homosexuality is frowned upon by hidebound reactionary Rome, which Cooney would like us to believe is horrified by all expressions of human sexuality. Once again he fails to mention that the Anglican Communion is at this moment bitterly convulsed over the issue of the ordination and marriage of practicing homosexuals, far more bitterly than any controversy generated by women's ordination.]

.

At the same time as the re-imposition of Rome's doctrinal authority [ooooh, evil authoritarian Rome!], increasing numbers of Irish Catholics have adopted 'Protestant' attitudes on issues of personal conscience such as birth control, cohabitation and divorce [there are many Anglicans, and other protestants likewise, who also reject birth control, cohabitation and divorce. Once again, Cooney attempts to reduce these matters to a simple question of backward, reactionary Rome and a modern and enlightened 'protestant' attitude] -- and are out of tune with the Sistine choir [this guy is far too enamoured of his own wisecracks to be a credible journalist. Is that why he has opted to write about issues of religion rather than something more "serious" such as politics?].

One option for disaffected Catholics is to join the Church of Ireland. It is estimated that 10pc of its 125,585 members in the 2006 census were born Catholics. This represents the highest figure for the Church of Ireland in the Republic since 1936 [This is true. Membership of the Church of Ireland is certainly growing. The figure Cooney provides includes only those who live in the Irish Republic. More Anglicans live in the north than in the south. Altogether the Church of Ireland has about 390,000 adherents, though this is still a lot less than the nearly 700,000 or so that belonged to the Church at the time of its disestablishment in 1870].

Dean Dunne is but one of several ex-Catholic priests in the Anglican ministry. Another notable [!] recruit is a former Dublin priest, the Rev Mark Hayden, now Rector in Gorey, Co Wexford, who describes his spiritual journey in his book, Changing Colours [First of all, Rev. Hayden's book is called Changing Collars, not Changing Colours. Cooney clearly hasn't read it. But Melancholicus has, since he used to know the author somewhat during the latter's appointment as a curate in Greystones, before he left the Church. In 2007, in the grip of a deep melancholic despond and, partly for that reason (among numerous others), disenchanted with the Irish RC Church, Melancholicus actually flirted with the idea of becoming an Anglican. Knowing of Rev. Hayden's departure some years earlier and finding that he had written a book about his journey, Melancholicus eagerly obtained a copy (in a Catholic bookshop!), looking forward to a learned and convincing vindication of the Anglican religion against the errors of popery. If he expected such, he was singularly disappointed. Rev. Hayden's book is not about theology at all, but more an exposé of its author’s human weaknesses and unfortunate misunderstandings. For such a defence, Melancholicus would have done much better to read Hooker, Andrewes, Cosin or Jeremy Taylor. Hayden's reasons for becoming an Anglican were so poor in comparison. In fact, he might have become any kind of protestant; there is nothing particularly Anglican about him. In the end, reason and conscience prevailed, and Melancholicus is still popishly affected to this day].

"I was a devout Mass-going Catholic, but I could not take the 'one shoe for all sizes' doctrinal hard-line from the Vatican, as the fate of many distinguished theologians from Jacques Dupuis to Charles Curran amply demonstrates," he says. "I also felt alienated and unwelcome in parish churches which were dominated by poorly read, loud-mouthed Catholic conservatives whose ignorance of theology was matched only by the emptiness of their unthinkingly conformist rhetoric." [wow, don't we have some issues here!]

Clearly, Rome and Maynooth are losing bright luminaries [!] to the more liberal Church of Ireland. 'Denominational migration' has winners and losers.

Melancholicus knows nothing about Dermot Dunne, but for Cooney to describe Mark Hayden as a ‘bright luminary’ seems to be begging the question. If Rev. Hayden really regards clowns like Curran and Dupuis as ‘distinguished theologians’, it doesn’t say much for his own intellectual prowess, his powers of discernment or his judgement of character. Rev. Hayden seems to be carrying a lot of anger and baggage from the past. He should, for the good of his physical, spiritual and emotional health, just let it go. I know he had some bad experiences at the hands of uncharitable persons prior to his departure from the Church, but come on, Mark, be bigger than that! Don’t bare your wounded soul and the emptiness of your unthinkingly fuzzy theology in the pages of the national press: get a blog! They're free you know, and you can say what you like about your nasty loud-mouthed conservatives without fear of rebuke.

But as for losing such ‘luminaries’ to the ‘more liberal’ Church of Ireland, there are not a few Irish Anglicans who are none too happy about such migrational trends. The quality of the traffic seems to be all one way, so far as Melancholicus can see. In most instances, the Anglican Church gives Rome her brightest and best people, and we give her our dross, our rejects, our cast-offs and our nincompoops in exchange. She sends us Bible-believing, serious, moral, upright Christians, the very best that the faith of their Church has formed, persons who know how to reason and defend the Christian faith against the assaults of an aggressive secularism. From our ranks she receives religious illiterates, persons whose motivation for abandoning the Roman communion is neither conscientious nor scriptural, but often because they wish to pursue a lifestyle of loose morals. They break with Rome over such issues as contraception, abortion, divorce and remarriage, sodomy and suchlike, and they have the temerity to think that the good people of the Church of Ireland will give them a sympathetic hearing. For there are not a few Irish Anglicans who deplore the entrenched and institutionalised liberalism of their Church, and how unscriptural it has become in its normalisation of what were once considered grave immoralities. So who is the winner really?

Alas, Mr. Cooney, you have become a parody of yourself!

Now this is REAL ecumenism

From Catholic World News. Melancholicus has taken the liberty of editing the original to remove spelling errors.

Orthodox prelate faults Catholics on politically-correct approach

Moscow, Nov. 13, 2007 (CWNews.com) - The top ecumenical-affairs officer of the Russian Orthodox Church has criticized Catholic leaders for bowing to popular opinion in their public statements.

"More than one generation of Roman Catholic hierarchs have been taught with the political-correctness idea," said Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk, speaking to a group of students in Moscow. The Russian prelate said that in ecumenical talks, Orthodox leaders have sought to warn Catholic bishops that if they become overly concerned about public opinion, "then one might turn traitor to his own identity;."

Bravo Papa Kirill! The Orthodox can usually be relied upon to inject a dose of healthy realism into such situations. And it seems to be a truism that the perspective of one on the outside can reveal faults in a system that are invisible to insiders.

Of course what the archbishop says is perfectly true. If our bishops have not internalised political correctness or are swayed by public opinion and the media, they are nonetheless adept at appearing to be so. A cynic might say that most Catholic bishops are more concerned about the opinion of the godless secular world than about safeguarding and transmitting the depositum fidei, and since Melancholicus is a cynic, he would concur.

Let the bishops take note of Kirill’s remarks, and let them take his words to heart, for Kirill has done greater service to the Church with these few words of criticism than a hundred years of meaningless ecumenical pleasantries.

Letter from the abbé de Nantes to His Holiness Benedict XVI

From the October edition of the CRC journal:

Most Holy Father,

The pride of the reformers who, in past centuries, always came up against the holy fidelity of the apostolic Magisterium to Christ her Founder, has received today from the supreme Authority full scope to «renovate» our traditional Church and, by means of a conclusive «aggiornamento», to bring her back to the Gospel, to purify her of all in her that bore the trace of age-old imperfection, to correct all that repelled the modern world and contravened its demands. Thus, the glorious pioneers of this reform of the Church plan to present her at last to men in conformity with the Utopia of which they have long dreamt. The modern pioneers have succeeded the alleged Reformers of the sixteenth century, Protestants driven out of the Church on account of their schism and heresy, and thus reduced to attacking her from without. They have succeeded the Modernists who secretly plotted to change the Faith and the institutions of the Church by acting from within, but against a Hierarchy that reproved them – in the encyclical Pascendi (1907), in the Letter on the Sillon (1910), and in the encyclical Humani Generis (1950). Since 11 October 1962 these commissioned Reformers have succeeded. The work of these conciliar Fathers or periti (theologians) consists of reinterpreting the dogmas, revising morality, and modernising rites and discipline, and the Hierarchy itself considers it in its principle and in its most general form of «renewal» as inspired and directed by «the Spirit». The Roman Church, which yesterday was still «one, holy, Catholic and apostolic», is thus «in a state of permanent reform».

In this drift that is carrying her far from her place of origin, in this transfiguration (or disfigurement) of her historical being, in this opening to the world, one fact requires the attention of Your Holiness, that of the division of the Church, in hearts and in minds. The understanding of a concept cannot evolve without its extension varying to the same degree. The «people of God» of the New Reform is no longer exactly the same as the faithful Catholic people of not so long ago. Those who claim to find the rule of their mentality and of their new habits in Man’s Future necessarily separate themselves from those who have forever and fully found it in the Christian Past. Let us leave the indistinct mass of the flock that accepts everything – the old and the new – with blind obedience and blind faith. Their unthinking consent, whether passive or solicited by the authorities of the hour, proves nothing significant. The fact of the division is blatant at the extremes.

... This division is not material or superficial. It is spiritual and formal. There exist among us two religions in a single Church: the unchangeable dogmatic one and the modern pastoral one, that of Catholicism and that of ecumenism, that of the cult of God in Jesus Christ and, in the words of Paul VI, your predecessor, that of the cult of Man in the world. These two religions are not identical; the latter does not emerge from the former by logical development. Moreover, it claims to manifest better than the other one the true and pure Gospel.

... We must acknowledge the fact that there is a rupture in historical Tradition, by the superimposition or substitution of one religious faith for another. No «hermeneutic of continuity» can preclude the fact that there is a dramatic split in Catholic society between the adherents of the ancient allegiance and the devotees of the new.

Modernism cannot be brought into conformity with the deposit of the faith; the New Church is built on the ruins of the Ancient one. This Reform is opposed in general and in detail to Tradition, just as its so-called new “good” and pastoral “perfection” is opposed to the age-old “evil” and ancient “sin” of the Church. Thus, there is salvation only in casting into oblivion, abolishing, retracting all these worldly fashions and fables that will have momentarily overshadowed the divine Mystery of the Holy Church.

Retract the Second Vatican Council? Yes!

... The whole work of the Council was warped. Theologians, a council, even a pope, St. Paul would say “an angel”, no one has the inspiration nor the grace to reform what Jesus Christ himself instituted and to abolish what the Holy Spirit created throughout the centuries. The religious power of the hierarchy ends at the threshold of this sacrilege, which in itself is null and void. Guardians and Doctors of the faith, Pastors entrusted with bringing about the salvation of souls through the grace and the law of Christ, the reigning Pope and bishops alive today are not, according to St. Francis of Sales, the landlords of the Church but its administrators. They have not received, nor will they ever receive the mission to carry out the metamorphosis of her, and the revolutionary formula repeated everywhere of a “new Church for a new world” does not come from God. Christ is the cornerstone of the Church, and no one else. A single Pentecost sufficed; any other one could only come from another Spirit, from an Antichrist.

... One should leave no room for revolution. The wind from so many speeches will soon raise a storm that no one will be able to boast that he can calm. All that remains is to retrace one’s way from this whole programme of reform in order to disavow and abandon it as an unprecedented, impracticable and, what is more, illegitimate endeavour.

One does not reform the Church.

Read it all.

Three Anglican parishes in Ireland to unite with Rome?

This just in from the BBC:

Churches set to become Catholic

Three former Anglican congregations have asked to be received into the Roman Catholic Church, a Catholic newspaper has reported.

The ex-Church of Ireland communities in Down, Tyrone and Laois, were part of the 'traditional rite'.

The Irish Catholic newspaper said the congregations asked the Vatican for "full, corporate, sacramental union" under the authority of the Pope.

This would see the communities being received into the Catholic Church.

A spokesman for the congregations confirmed that the members of the traditional rite of the Church of Ireland did hope to be received into "full communion with the See of Rome".

A decision was made at a plenary meeting of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), the umbrella organisation for traditional Anglicans, to petition Rome for such a move earlier this month.

Entrusted

According to a statement from the TAC "the bishops and vicars-general unanimously agreed to the text of a letter to the See of Rome seeking full, corporate, sacramental union.

"The letter was signed solemnly by all the College and entrusted to the Primate and two bishops chosen by the College to be presented to the Holy See," the statement added.

The traditional rite broke away from the Church of Ireland in 1991, after the House of Bishops of the Church of Ireland decided to start ordaining women.

Traditionalist Anglicans described the move as a "defiance of both Scripture and Tradition."

It is rare for entire Anglican communities to seek corporate communion with the Catholic Church whereby every member of the parish becomes Catholic and the parish effectively becomes part of the Catholic Church.

There have been a number of high-profile individual conversions.

Most recently, Anita Henderson, wife of the Church of Ireland Bishop of Killala was received in to the Catholic Church in a private ceremony in Ballina, Co Mayo.

To say that this is surprising would be an understatement.

Conditions within the worldwide Anglican Communion must be really, really bad if three entire parishes of Anglican Traditionalists are now seeking full union with Rome.

It is interesting that, with the exception of the group in Co. Laois, these communities are not based in the more liberal, easy-going south, but are from what is considered the most protestant part of the Church of Ireland, namely Northern Ireland.

The website of the Traditional Anglican Communion in Ireland can be viewed here. That of the umbrella organisation is located here.

This story seems to go further than this, however. It is not merely three Irish parishes that are seeking union with Rome, but the entire TAC (see here for further details). It will be interesting to see how this develops. Doubtless the Anglicans will wish to retain—within the limits of Catholic orthodoxy, of course—such features of their praxis which are distinctively Anglican and not at the same time incompatible with the profession of Roman Catholicism. If such a compromise can be agreed upon by both TAC and Rome, we might witness further mass migrations of disaffected Anglicans Romeward, particularly in the United States where the accelerating collapse of ECUSA has created a large pool of displaced Christians seeking alternative primatial oversight since they cannot in conscience continue in the communion of an organisation which so openly and brazenly repudiates central tenets of the Christian faith. Melancholicus would be in favour of such a compromise being reached; he has no wish to inflict upon these his long-suffering brothers and sisters in Christ the barbarities of the Novus Ordo and tasteless ICEL liturgy. A properly-constituted ‘anglican rite’ retaining elements of the classical Prayer Book within Roman Catholicism would be an enrichment to Catholic liturgy. He has said elsewhere that choral evensong is the outstanding contribution of the anglican church to Christian liturgy, and if this liturgical gem could be incorporated within the practice of Catholicism, so much the better!

In the meantime, we await the response of the Holy See.

The bishop, his wife, the pope and the press

What a to-do. Yesterday morning, as Melancholicus was driving to the university, he heard an item on RTÉ radio that was otherwise unremarkable in the grand scheme of things. It ought to have been a private matter between the persons concerned, but given that at least one of those persons is a high-ranking ecclesiastic and hence a public figure, the media mavens were delighted with the story and with the scope it gave them to vaunt both their ignorance and their prejudice regarding matters religious.

The news people treated it as something really, really controversial. An episcopal wife in the west of Ireland has abandoned her Anglican faith and embraced Catholicism. Her name is Anita Henderson. Her husband, the Right Rev. Richard Henderson, is the Anglican bishop of Tuam, Killala and Achonry. On Sunday last, October 14th, Mrs. Henderson was received by bishop John Fleming into the communion of the Roman Catholic Church.

The two bishops at Mrs. Henderson's reception into the Church. Bishop Henderson is even sporting his crozier; both men seem to be completely oblivious to the obvious clash of jurisdictions implied by this gesture. And what is Fleming doing wearing a cardinal's scarlet? Has there been a recent consistory of which Melancholicus is unaware, and of which Bishop Fleming was a beneficiary? [picture courtesy of Irish Angle]

Melancholicus wishes to extend his best wishes to Mrs. Henderson, and offers his prayers on her behalf. He is glad that she has the freedom to follow her conscience in matters of religion, the position of her husband notwithstanding. He is glad that (except in certain parts of Northern Ireland) one can today become a Catholic without fear of being pressed to death under heavy weights, or hanged, drawn and quartered, or that, conversely, one can go the other way without fear of being burned at the stake.

That the wife of an anglican bishop could enter the Roman Catholic Church so serenely, without anathemas and counter-anathemas being hurled back and forth between Catholics and Anglicans seems to have come as a disappointment, if not as a shock, to the news media, who seem to have been drooling in anticipation of some bitter and recriminatory clash more redolent of Reformation polemics than of today’s ecumenical chumminess.

On his way home in the evening, Melancholicus tuned in to Drivetime on RTÉ radio, and found somewhat to his chagrin that the media were still pursuing this story. Wondering why this should be, and why an individual’s change of religion should be considered so important to a society which scorns all forms of Christianity indifferently, he resisted the urge to switch over to Newstalk and kept listening - and all the more avidly when the Most Rev. John Neill, the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, appeared as a guest on the programme.

The female presenter seemed rather taken aback that Archbishop Neill did not consider Mrs. Henderson’s conversion a scandal to the Church of Ireland. If she were hoping for some frothing at the mouth, she was disappointed. In any case, Archbishop Neill is a restrained and soft-spoken man, and much of what he had to say was perfectly reasonable. After commenting on how wonderful it is that the Churches can now live together in harmony, etc. etc., she asked Archbishop Neill for his views on Dominus Iesus, and his reaction to this recent re-statement of Catholic doctrine from the CDF, and then Melancholicus understood precisely why the media were so eager to run with this story: any excuse to bash the Catholic Church, and Pope Benedict in particular. The usual tired objections to perennial Catholic teaching were trotted out yet again; they are so shopworn that there is no need for Melancholicus to list them, much less refute them. It beggars belief how sections of the media will go out of their way to malign the holy father. The coverage of such issues by RTÉ is well known for its childish animus against Catholicism, and for its hatred of Benedict XVI, whom these illiterate stooges have repeatedly castigated for his alleged conservative authoritarianism.

Speaking of Catholicism, Mrs. Henderson will soon discover, alas, that there is not much of it left in the ‘renewed’ church she has lately joined. She may well find her new religion indistinguishable in almost every way from her former faith, except she will doubtless observe that liturgical worship in her new church is so much more poorly discharged than in the church in which her husband remains a bishop. She will discover that the blandness of the ICEL missal makes a poor showing beside the elegant poetry of the Book of Common Prayer. She will discover that on the far side of the Tiber, things are not all as they should be. Nevertheless, she is doubtless still aglow with the enthusiasm of the convert, and we pray that the grace of God will help her to overcome the obstacles ahead. There will be many of them.