[OLDCATH-L] The Beginning of the Reformation's End?

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FEBRUARY 25, 2010, 6:34 P.M. ET

The Beginning of the Reformation's End? 

 
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By
<http://online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=CHARLOTTE+HA
YS&ARTICLESEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND> CHARLOTTE HAYS 

Washington 

On a recent evening, about 60 people-ex-Episcopalians, curious
Catholics and a smattering of earnest Episcopal priests in clerical
collars-gathered downtown for an unusual liturgy: It was Evensong and
Benediction, sung according to the Book of Divine Worship, an Anglican
Use liturgical book still being prepared in Rome. 

Beautiful evensongs are a signature of Protestant Episcopal worship.
Benediction, which consists of hymns, canticles or litanies before the
consecrated host on the altar, is a Catholic devotion. We were getting
a blend of both at St. Mary Mother of God Church, lent for the
occasion.

One former Episcopalian present confessed to having to choke back
tears as the first plainsong strains of "Humbly I Adore Thee," the
Anglican version of a hymn by St. Thomas Aquinas, floated down from
the organ in the balcony. A convert to Catholicism, she could not
believe she was sitting in a Catholic Church, hearing the words of her
Anglican girlhood-and as part of an authorized, Roman Catholic
liturgy. 

And that was not the only miracle. Although the texts had been
carefully vetted in Rome for theological points, the words being sung
were written by Thomas Cranmer, King Henry VIII's architect of the
English Reformation. "He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant
Israel," the congregation chanted, "as he promised to our forefathers,
Abraham and his seed for ever."

The language of this translation of the Magnificat, one of
Christianity's two great evening canticles, is unfamiliar to many
Episcopalians today, as it comes from earlier versions of their Book
of Common Prayer. Yet a number of former Anglicans are eager to carry
some of this liturgy with them when they swim the Tiber, as
Episcopalians becoming Catholic often call the conversion. "I wonder
why the phrase 'and there is no health in us' was omitted from the
penitential rite" by the Vatican vetters of the newly approved rite
for converts, one nostalgic ex-Episcopalian mused aloud. "Must be too
Calvinist," suggested another. 

Liturgies of this kind could become more common because of Pope
Benedict XVI's Apostolic Constitution, called Anglicanorum coetibus
(the name means "concerning groups of Anglicans"), which was published
last November. It provides for former Anglicans to come into the
Catholic Church as a group and retain certain of their traditions. For
nearly three decades, the Catholic Church has let Episcopal clergymen
who convert, even married men, become ordained as Catholic priests.
They are every bit as much priests as other Catholic priests. A former
Episcopal priest is not allowed to remarry if his wife dies. 

But Anglicanorum coetibus changes the landscape by providing for the
establishment of ordinariates, each almost like a diocese administered
by its own bishop. There will be one such ordinariate in the U.S., and
Episcopalians and parishes that come into the Catholic Church under
this provision can be part of it. The ordinariate will facilitate
Anglican Use for its member parishes. A former Anglican priest will
head the ordinariate; he will become a bishop only if he is celibate. 

The recent liturgical evening in Washington was arranged by Eric
Wilson, a 24-year-old layman and former Episcopalian. "I believe the
Anglican Use is a model for meaningful ecumenism-insisting on the
fundamentals of faith while providing charity in other areas," he
said. 

The service was conducted by Father Eric Bergman, a Yale Divinity
School-educated former Episcopal clergyman who was ordained a Catholic
priest in 2007. Father Bergman stresses that this is not an overture
to effete Episcopalians who are angry about changes in their church
and want to sneak into the Catholic Church bringing nothing more than
their pretty music. Being "angry about Gene Robinson," he says of the
openly homosexual bishop of New Hampshire, isn't enough reason to
become a Catholic. There must be a real conversion to the tenets of
Catholicism. 

Father Bergman says he began his journey to the Catholic Church by
thinking about something that has taken many liberal Catholics out of
the church: contraception. He regards Anglicanism's 1930 embrace of
contraception as a mistake: "Out of that came a confusion about the
roles of men and women, a theology of androgyny," he says. 

Father Bergman and his wife, Kristina, have six children. They and
more than 60 members of his Episcopal parish came into the Catholic
Church in 2005. He is now chaplain of the St. Thomas More Society in
Scranton, Pa., which seeks to establish Anglican Use parishes. 

Naturally, many liberal Catholics are less than thrilled at the
prospect of stodgy former Episcopalians importing traditional opinions
along with their non-Catholic thou's and thy's. In a Nov. 23, 2009,
story "Where Hype Meets Reality," the liberal National Catholic
Reporter pooh-poohed the idea of large numbers of Anglicans coming in
under the pope's new rules.

But Father Bergman not only predicts a mass movement toward Rome. He
believes Anglican Use may mark the beginning of the end of the
Reformation. There will be "a flourishing of this throughout the
world," he says. "Wherever there are Anglicans, there will be people
who want to enter Holy Mother Church." As he told a rapt audience at
St. Mary's, "If we look at histories, heresies run themselves out
after about 500 years. I believe we are seeing the last gasp of the
Reformation in the mainline Protestant groups."

And so, I ask Father Bergman, how does he feel about a liturgy using
the words of Cranmer, one of the Reformation's pivotal figures, in the
Catholic Church? "A despicable fellow," he replies. Even so, he notes,
the liturgy Cranmer created was built upon Catholic sources, and where
elements were retained they now fit into the Catholic Church. Father
Bergman doesn't quite say that it's "meet and right" to use those and
many others of Cranmer's now-famous words. But it is clear that this
is what he means. 

Ms. Hays is the editor of In Character, published by the John
Templeton Foundation. 

 

 

Blessings for Lent - Second Sunday

 

Bishop Marty Patton

 

Then from the cloud came a voice that said, 

"This is my chosen Son; listen to Him."Luke 9:35