Did you know that Milton defended the regicide of Charles I, advocated divorce, and rejected the divinity of Christ and immortality of the soul?

So much for the 'Puritan' Milton. Why do we never hear of such facts in the Protestant textbook traditions?

The endlessly insightful Newman - and Jaki on Newman

A well-read polyglot and good friend writes (and I publish his words with his permission):

I discovered Fr. Jaki on Newman in my favorite magazine, Christian Order, in 2002. I immediately ordered a copy of Newman to Converts. When I asked Fr. Ian Ker about it he wrote: "While Fr. Jaki is an expert on science and religion, he knows nothing about Newman". With that endorsement, I never looked back and ordered all five of Fr. Jaki's books on Newman one by one: Apologetics, Church of England, Neo Arianism, Justification and Challenge.

No books in my long life as a Catholic (nurtured on Ronnie Knox and Christopher Dawson) have given me such pleasure. Fr. Jaki notes that Newman believed that only in his letters does a man reveal himself. Newman is combative. His Anglican Difficulties is a satire on the Church of England. His book on the Arians is the only place you will learn why the Arians were such a threat and not dialogue partners as Rowan Williams would have it.

It is a scandal that these books have never been reviewed in the principal theology journals. The carefully constructed portrait of Newman the Anglican is blown sky high by the reality of Newman the Catholic. The fact that Fr. Jaki's books on Newman were self published is no excuse. They are the best books on theology to be published in my lifetime and all appeared in the new century.

I [must also] mention that you would probably find Fr. Jaki's Apologetics as Meant by Newman the most interesting as it deals with the Grammar of Assent, the marks of the Church, and the idea of a university.

I discovered today a really interesting article [by Deborah Ostrovsky], "The Freudian Became a Catholic" at the Tablet, a Jewish journal published in London. I've always felt a kinship with Karl Stern, who was welcomed into the Church by the same Montreal Franciscan priest who married my grandparents.

Where you can order the late Fr. Stanley L. Jaki's books on Newman (and a whole lot more!): Real View Books.

Stanley Ladislas Jaki (1924-2009), a Hungarian-born Catholic priest of the Benedictine Order, was Distinguished University Professor at Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. With doctorates in theology and physics, for over forty years he specialized in the history and philosophy of science. The author of over fifty books and over three hundred and fifty articles, he served as Gifford Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh and as Fremantle Lecturer at Balliol College, Oxford. He lectured at major universities in the United States, Europe, and Australia. He was an honorary member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, membre correspondant of the Académie Nationale des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts of Bordeaux, and the recipient of the Lecomte du Noüy Prize for 1970 and of the Templeton Prize for 1987.

Another terrific discussion in Download: "Tradition under fire"

Yes indeed: another excellent Download, a half-hour panel discussion this time of the Anglican Ordinariate, Summorum Pontificum, and the "blowback" and fallout the Church has witnessed -- partricularly for Summorum Pontificum -- from both clerics and laity who identify the post-Vatican II regnum as a rejection of pre-Vatican II tradition: "Tradition Under Fire" (Church Militant, January 29, 2016). A bit of Anglican history about the Book of Common Prayer, a bit of Catholic history about the liturgical changes spanning the last five decades, and a fine discussion of what is at stake.

Fr. Perrone on how the post-Vatican II revolution mirrors the English Reformation

Fr. Eduard Perrone, "A Pastor's Descant" [temporary link] (Assumption Grotto News, January 17, 2016):

January doldrums are setting in, along with the grey skies that induce them. Festivities of the Christmas season seem already well behind us. Yet these were splendidly celebrated here, as I think all will agree, with the generous participation of our parishioners whose reward was to have been a part and witness to the ceremonies of this most joyous season of the year. My thanks to everybody who put forth much effort in assisting to make these days happen. As Easter comes early this year, we will soon be entering the Lenten season, which always seems to be just the needed thing after the excesses of the holidays. I look forward to this greater concentration of spiritual energies in order to ready myself for the demands of Holy Week.

I have been doing reading once again on the period of the Reformation in England. It’s more evident to me now that the liturgical changes that were decreed for the universal Church in the wake of Vatican II mirrored the cruelly imposed demands of the Reformers. In nearly every respect what the sixteenth century revolutionaries foisted upon the people of England were adopted and forced upon the laity of the Catholic Church by the framers of our new liturgy. Could this have been mere coincidence, when so very many features of the Protestant liturgical change were replicated in our experience of the new liturgy? The gradual and near unending series of innovations we witnessed included the ruination of our churches, the barbarous removal of much sacred art, the replacement of tables for altars, the alteration of time-honored prayers of the Roman Missal dating from earliest Christian centuries, the modifications of language and church music, the reduction (but not, however, entire extrication) of words which affirmed the sacrificial nature of the Mass–by these and many other things, the laity were made to feel disorientation, confusion, and suffer much in being forced to swallow much a good deal of impiety along with the legitimate and reverently introduced liturgical changes.

It was unthinkable for a loyal Catholic to have criticized these measures that were mandated by the Church in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, until sometime in the 1990s then-Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, made his own appraisal of the liturgical fallout which deeply and adversely affected the entire life of the Church. While it is true that the liturgy was not the only change that came forth after Vatican II, it was the most consequential thing that affected all else. We are in many areas now recovering from the vertigo of these revolutionary times, but we have also far to go to restore tranquility and well-being of the Church in many ways that were formerly known to us. I have always managed to remain hopeful, even in the midst of critical moments, because of the divinely-implanted gift of faith which assures me that Christ promised to remain with His Church–not apart from it–until the end of time and that hell’s gates would not prevail against it.

Let hope then be the dominant theme to carry you through this new year, and over the slump of post-partum (referring to the Lord’s birth) depression you may be feeling. “God is our refuge and strength; therefore we will not fear...though the mountains be transferred into the heart of the sea.... The Lord of Hosts is with us, our Protector is the God of Jacob” (from Ps. 45).

Fr. Perrone

Why Francis is not a fan of Benedict's Anglican Ordinariate

Sandro Magister, "Ecumenism Behind Closed Doors" (www.chiesa, February 2, 2015): "While Benedict XVI made it easier for Anglicans in disagreement with the “liberal” direction of their Church to enter into the Catholic Church, Francis is not, he prefers that they remain where they are. The revelations of two Anglican friends of the pope." An interesting and revealing study.

[Hat tip to Sir A.S.]

"Get with the program": women bishops

Our undercover correspondent we keep on retainer in an Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, wired us a telegram two weeks ago when the news came out about the Church of England voting to ordain women bishops.

"You know," said the lengthy telegram, "Catholics will scoff at the Archbishop being advised by David Cameron, but I wonder how very different that is i-n s-p-i-r-i-t from the Pope giving repeated interviews to atheists?"

Indeed, I had just read that of the 12 media interviews granted by Pope Francis, eleven were with secular atheists. Maybe he's trying to reach out ...

Noir continued: "It is all of the same cloth of openness to the world and feeling the need for the church to be tutored.

"And while I am at it," the text went on, "if this is not an instance of a very real and obvious teaching moment, what is? 'I don't understand? Don't Catholics value women too? Why can't women be priests? See, the C.O.E. [Church of England] is going through all this too! Aren't they also Christians and partners in the Gospel?'

"Silence simply adds strength to the secular argument. The modernist movement can't be contained or countered by being nice.

"I wish I had access to the profile of the female bishop of D.C. (Episcopal) in the new issue of the W-a-s-h-i-n-g-t-o-n-i-a-n Magazine. It shows you what we will be up against for the next decade."

Albert Mohler, in his essay on the matter, begins with the following observation:

Writing about the age of John Milton, the British author A. N. Wilson once tried to explain to modern secular readers that there had once been a time when bishops of the Church of England were titanic figures of conviction who were ready to stand against the culture. “It needs an act of supreme historical imagination to be able to recapture an atmosphere in which Anglican bishops might be taken seriously,” he wrote, “still more, one in which they might be thought threatening.”

Hmmmm ... Food for thought.

Then he concludes with this:

The Rt. Rev. William Ralph Inge, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London in the early 20th century, once famously remarked: “Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.” Now, that is a word from an Anglican we all need to hear.

Hmmmm. More food for thought.

Weigel on Anglican wannabes

Following April 27's canonization doubleheader, George Weigel, "The Anglican Wannabe Fallacy" (First Things, May 21, 2014), notes that some of the public reactions verged on the bizarre. He cites an interview with ABC in which a former nun promoting women's ordination, Dr. Lavinia Byrne, said the following:

If in the 1990s, the [Catholic] Church had followed the example of the Anglican communion and had accepted the ordination of women, it would look very different nowadays. . . . Had there been ordination of women we would not have had parishes that are starved of the sacraments because there simply aren’t enough young men coming forward who are prepared to be celibate and prepared to labor on their own.

Weigel continues:

There, in brief, is the Fallacy of Wannabe Anglicanism.

If the experience of Anglicanism in Great Britain is the measure Dr. Byrne proposes, then it is certainly true that “the Catholic Church . . . would look very different nowadays” if “in the 1990s [it] had followed the example of the Anglican communion and had accepted the ordination of women”—it would look empty. For that is how most Anglican churches in Britain today look on Sunday: empty. There are, of course, many reasons for the collapse of Anglican faith and practice in the U.K.; but there isn’t the slightest shred of evidence that that collapse has been slowed, much less reversed, by the Church of England’s decision to admit women to its ordained ministry.

On the contrary, that decision was of a piece with the general doctrinal meltdown of the Anglican leadership in the so-called First World, which began in earnest when the 1930 Lambeth Conference (a decennial meeting of Anglican bishops) accepted the morality of contraceptive sex, and has continued apace ever since. Thus when the head of the Anglican Communion, Robert Runcie, engaged in an extended correspondence with John Paul II and Cardinal Johannes Willebrands (the Vatican’s chief ecumenist) in the 1980s, Runcie leaned heavily on sociological arguments about changing gender-patterns of leadership in society to buttress his attempt at a theological explanation of why the Church of England was moving toward ordaining women to its ministry—a “radical innovation,” John Paul and Willebrands had warned, that would do grave damage to what was once the most promising of the bilateral ecumenical dialogues.

The Church of England went ahead with the “radical innovation;” the quest for full communion between Canterbury and Rome suffered a grave blow; North Atlantic Anglicanism continued to hemorrhage active congregants.

Hard experience should have taught us by now that there is an iron law built into the relationship between Christianity and modernity. Christian communities that know and defend their doctrinal and moral boundaries (while extending the compassion of Christ when we fail to live within those boundaries, as we all do) survive in modernity; some actually flourish and become robustly evangelical. Conversely, Christian communities whose doctrinal and moral boundaries are eroded by the new orthodoxy of political correctness, and become so porous that it becomes impossible to know if one is “in” or “out,” wither and die.

That is the sad state of Anglicanism in the North Atlantic world today: Even splendid liturgical smells-and-bells can’t save an Anglicanism hollowed out by the shibboleths of secular modernity. Why British Catholics like Lavinia Byrne can’t see this is one of the mysteries of the 21st-century Church.

Good as far as it goes, right? But turn your head and blink, and wham! another telegram from Guy Noir - Private Eye:

What planet is Weigel living on? In what way is Anglicanism very different than say, the Catholic Church in Ireland or Austria?! Are we to suppose that what John Paul II settled "definitely" in terms of women's ordination has indeed been in fact once and for all settled, given John Allen, The NCReporter, altar girls, lay eucharistic ministers, and the like? [Not to mention the rarely-mentioned fact that even Ratzinger was emphatic in his statement that the teaching on women was actually not infallible: That's helpful!] Does he really think the Catholic Church is busy "knowing and defending its boundaries" when the Pope is saying we have been doing too much defending, even as western morals collapse? Even our post-conciliar, a bit less splendid Catholic smells-and-bells certainly don't seem to be saving American Catholicism, do they?! Maybe we should ask the congregants at NYC's Holy Innocents. Or over in England, the faithful believers who got to listen to the chief author of the CCC laud the transvestite winner Eurovision's song contest as he/she "rose like a phoenix." John Paul thought the Church of England had done "grave damage to what was once the most promising of the bilateral ecumenical dialogues." You have to wonder then what he would think of the current state of affairs. Grave damage to what was once the most promising of the bilateral ecumenical dialogues. "The Church of England went ahead with the 'radical innovation;' the quest for full communion between Canterbury and Rome suffered a grave blow..." It is hard to take such comments seriously given the all-around fuzziness of current theological conversations and excuse-making on behalf of the reigning pontiff.

I don't enjoy bashing Weigel among the ashes, at least not too much. But here's the 'but...': he reminds me of so many assured voices that sound convincing if you don't have much knowledge of source material. This essay tries to make a point, but ignores the fact that the entire ecclesial structure of Catholicism is becoming more and more like an "Anglican wannabe," with only the addition of a sentimental Marian streak and a saint-making machine now in overdrive. Somehow this all reminds me of his recent book Evangelical Catholicism, which -- even with that title phrase repeated ad nauseum -- sounds more like an arid policy paper than a religious treatise. Polite cocktail party commentary but nothing to jar the status quo: what could be more Anglican than that? Weigel increasingly sounds like a man desperately trying to make sure he is on the inside with whomever sits in Peter's chair. It all seems dishearteningly like religion as party loyalty. Especially given it is hard these days to discern much difference between the reassuringly smiling faces of Papa Francis and ABC Welby. People actually interested in evangelical Catholicism would be far better served by reading Ralph Martin's bracing The Catholic Church at the End of an Age. And while the latter is not apocalyptic in tone, reading Weigel's exercises in denial increasingly makes me think we actually are living in what be be the end of something.

[Hat tip to JM]

Accommodating homosexism: Will RC's follow Anglicans down the primrose path?

A courier arrived at my door yesterday wearing a tux and holding a tray with three items on it: a telegram, a newspaper, and a martini. "You'll need it," he said he was supposed to tell me, about the martini.

The telegram was from our friend, Guy Noir - Private Eye, who regularly does a good bit of sleuthing for us. In part, it read as follows:

Only God's prevenient grace will keep the Catholic Church from seeing this same scenario duplicated almost word for word within its own walls. Note that while no official reversal of doctrine is admitted, it also is quite obviously reversed in effect. What is being witnessed is a wholesale redefinition of the idea of morality and revelation. We have "ideals" and we have "reality," and ideals are so otherworldly they are almost irrelevant.

Also note that Welby is an Anglican [counterpart of Pope] Francis in that he is marketed as a man of the people and an "evangelical" Anglican who talks about sin and the devil. Woo hoo! Of course the devil is here, in the details... And no, this is not from The Onion.

The newspaper was a copy of The Telegraph with the following headline blazed across the front page: "Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby says gay marriage is ‘great’" (May 14, 2014). The article began:

The Church of England has been forced to reaffirm its opposition to same-sex marriage after the Archbishop of Canterbury appeared to suggest that he thinks it is “great”.

In his first interview with a gay publication, the Most Rev Justin Welby, told PinkNews that the Church had to accept that same-sex marriage is now the law in England and Wales after securing overwhelming support in Parliament.

He said it was “right and proper” that same-sex marriage has now come into force, adding: “And that’s great.”

His comments came as he offered an olive branch to the gay community, publishing new rules for Church of England schools aimed at stamping out homophobic bullying.

Lambeth Palace insisted that despite the initiative, the Archbishop remained opposed in principle to same-sex marriage and that he had been speaking about the right of Parliament to change the law when he used the word “great”.

Then came the second part of Guy Noir's telegraph message, which contained a URL to a website and the following:

Now THIS might be from The Onion. But as an item of satire it could easily be mistaken for anything but, in either communion. I think Kasper might have ghost-written it! And notice that for all the talk of conservative obsession over homosexuality, it is not conservatives who keep placing it on the front page, but homosexauls, liberals, and accommodating conservatives. In fact, it is now close to impossible to find any converge of conservative attitudes towards homosexuality. But hey, what culture war?

I typed the URL into my browser, and here's what came up: David W. Virtue, "Episcopal Church Declares ‘Week of Unhappiness’ over 'Gay' Bishop Divorce" (VirtueOnline.Org, May 6, 2014):

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori today declared The Episcopal Church would recognize a ‘Week of Unhappiness’ to be enshrined in "Lesser Feasts and Fasts" to honor the broken marriage of Bishop Gene Robinson and his beloved “husband” Mark following their much publicized split.

“I believe the king of Bhutan is right to say that gross national happiness is far more important than the gross national product, and The Episcopal Church’s gross national grossness needs to be honored as well,” opined Jefferts Schori as she wiped a tear from her eye at a press conference.

Read more >> [Advisory: off-color humor]

[Hat tip to JM]

Catholics should avoid the temptation to Schadenfreude

The underground correspondent we keep on retainer in an Atlantic seaboard city that knows how to keep its secrets, Guy Noir - Private Eye, wired me on Friday. The telegram had a distinctly ominous air about it:

Despite the secular clean-up crews, the bodies and rubble still lay scattered about. I experienced the Episco-insurrection first-hand. No one believed the danger was so visceral until it was upon us. Then it was too late.

There followed a link to this article: "Slow Motion Implosion" (New Oxford Notes, May 2014) with the following sentences in large, red capital letters: "Anglicanism’s slow-motion implosion has drawn a lot of rubberneckers over the years. But Catholics would be well advised to avoid the temptation to Schadenfreude." The article proceeds as follows [with Mr. Noir's added emphases]:

A time of deep soul-searching is fast approaching for Christianity. It should come as no surprise that the past few decades have been particularly difficult ones for institutional churches and ecclesial communions, which have struggled to attract new members and retain old ones. The situation has grown so grim in the Anglican Communion that one of its elder statesmen, Lord George Carey, a former archbishop of Canterbury, warned recently that the Church of England (C of E) is “one generation away from extinction.” At a November 2013 conference, Lord Carey said that Anglicans should be “ashamed” of themselves for not “investing in young people.”

His sentiments were echoed by prominent Anglican columnist A.N. Wilson, who wrote in London’s Telegraph (Nov. 19, 2013) that in each of the more than ten C of E parishes he visited over the preceding year, he had the same experience. “At the age of 63,” he said, “I have been the youngest person present by 20 years. The congregation has seldom numbered double figures. The C of E is a moribund institution kept going by and for old people.”

Things are equally dire in the Church of England’s U.S. counterpart, the Episcopal Church (TEC). As reported in “Incredible Shrinking Churches” (New Oxford Notes, Dec. 2011), since 2003 TEC has lost over three hundred thousand members. According to research conducted by David Virtue, a veteran analyst of all things Anglican, nearly one-third of all Episcopal parishes are populated by parishioners in their mid-60s, with virtually no young people to fill the gap. Virtue predicts that in a quarter century, “there will no longer be anyone attending an Episcopal Church.”

Anglicanism’s slow-motion implosion has drawn a lot of rubberneckers over the years. But Catholics would be well advised to avoid the temptation toSchadenfreude. After all, the Pew Forum’s 2008 “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey” found that, of all Christian groups, the Catholic Church “has experienced the greatest net losses.” Former Catholics outnumber converts by a ratio of four to one. Ten percent of the U.S. population now consists of “ex-Catholics.” If they were to form their own church, it would be the second largest in the U.S., trailing only the Catholic Church herself.

Back in old England, the picture isn’t much merrier. Linda Woodhead, a sociology of religion professor at Lancaster University in Lancashire, recently conducted her own “scientific survey of Catholic opinion.” Dr. Woodhead has determined that “faithful Catholics” in the U.K. are now “a rare and endangered species” (Religion Dispatches, Nov. 24, 2013). Defined as those who attend weekly Mass, profess certain belief in God, take authority from religious sources, and are opposed to abortion, same-sex marriage, and euthanasia, a mere five percent of British Catholics can be called “faithful.” That figure drops to two percent for British Catholics under the age of 30. Startlingly, Dr. Woodhead found that zero percent of British Catholics “look to religious leaders for guidance as they make decisions and live their lives.”

The problem, as Woodhead sees it, is that “most Catholics don’t think the [Church’s moral] teaching is too hard, they think it’s wrong” (italics in original). This would suggest that dressing up existing doctrines — especially those related to marriage and sexuality — to make them more appealing, or dispensing with them altogether, will have little to no effect. The recent history of the Anglican Communion is a case in point: It is endlessly refashioning itself in order to achieve “relevance” by shedding virtually every one of its distinctively Christian moral teachings — and with disastrous results.

The foregoing article, "A Slow-Motion Implosion" was originally published in the New Oxford Review (May 2014), and is reproduced here by kind permission of New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706.
[Hat tip to JM]

Anglicans to dump "sin" & "devil" from baptism rite, and Fr. Z. suggests a Romanorum coetibus for disaffected Catholics

Fr. Z makes some typically fine observations in his post, "Church of England to dump 'sin' and 'evil' from baptism rite?" (January 5, 2014), and offers kudos to the senior member of the Anglican General Synod who said "This is more like a benediction from the Good Fairy than any church service."

The only problem I can see is that me may be a bit too quick to make fun of the Anglicans in this regard, when there are others who are wondering whether Catholics in their new rite of baptism have not done nearly the same, or whether Welby is a Francis clone on the Thames.

In his defense, Fr. Z does at least acknowledge the National Catholic Fishwrap types and the squishy who inhabit our own premises, and declares, for their sake, that he holds out the "hope that you will soon see the Church of England issue Romanorum coetibus, a document "whereby our Anglican sisters and brothers will make provisions for disaffected catholics, offering them a safe-haven from the patriarchal oppression of Rome while preserving intact their most cherished traditions, such as clay cups, guitars, abortion clinic escort nuns, hand holding, the dream of female deacons, etc."

Life as a papist these days is entertaining beyond Comedy Central. You just can't make this stuff up.

[Hat tip to JM]

"The End of Protestantism" turns out to be ... Protestant

Michael Liccione, "'The End of Protestantism' turns out to be ... Protestant" (Sacramentum Vitae), November 14, 2013):

When it came out last week, I had intended to write a lengthy rebuttal of Peter Leithart's First Things piece "The End of Protestantism." But if you know much about church history, reading it for yourself makes that unnecessary. For what Leithart is advocating, which he calls "reformational Catholicism," has been around since the 16th century. It's called "Anglicanism"--or more precisely, what used to be called "broad-church Anglicanism." C.S. Lewis would have been quite comfortable with it. Leithart's brand doesn't require England, but it's just the sort of via media of which traditional Anglicans are so uniquely proud.

Read more >>