The New Liturgical Movement blog has an article by the distinguished Dominican theologian Fr Aidan Nichols. Fr Aidan is a kind and sympathetic friend of Catholic Anglicans; he sat as R C consultant with the Forward in Faith group which put together Consecrated Women, our theological response to the imminent consecration of women bishops in the Church of England. I rather sympathised with his point that the title of that book would be misunderstood by Roman Catholics to whom consecrated women are nuns; Fr Aidan's suggested title was The Voice of the Bridegroom.
Fr Aidan knows more about Anglican history and culture than most Anglicans: it is a curious and disconcerting fact that most Anglicans are now completely uninterested in the Anglican tradition. An earlier fruit of Fr Aidan's learning and sympathy was The Panther and the Hind, in which he writes about the different Anglican traditions, their histories, and what they could each offer to a united Christendom. The book makes no secret of Fr Aidan's conviction that a 'Group Solution', repatriating the viable part of the Anglican faith-group to unity with Catholic Christendom, is a desirable way ahead. The same belief is implied in his more recent book, The Realm.
His New Blackfriars article recognises the contribution which our Catholic Anglican liturgical tradition can make to the reform and resacralisation of Western Catholic worship and of the architectural attitudes that go with it. He is not unmindful of the great role played by Sir Ninian Comper, and of the immense beauty of Comper's buildings. What a complete contrast to the heavy Teutonic contempt which Sir Nikolaus (Come and play with me in my Bauhaus) Pevsner loved to pour on Comper's oeuvre: 'limp' was perhaps one of his nicer words.
Roman Catholics sometimes have trouble understanding why Catholic Anglicans, who are so very much more orthodoxly Catholic than many Roman Catholics, are slow to leave their heritage behind them and to submerge themselves in the institutionalised philistinism of the English RC church. Fr Aidan's article might help them to understand.
"Roman Catholics sometimes have trouble understanding why Catholic Anglicans, who are so very much more orthodoxly Catholic than many Roman Catholics, are slow to leave their heritage behind them and to submerge themselves in the institutionalised philistinism of the English RC church."
ReplyDeleteCould it be that some of us know the history of the universal Church before and after 1054 better than most Romans and are aware that no matter how frequently that Romans say the words "Roman Catholic" the official title of the group to which they below is "The Holy Roman Church." And that is a very good thing because "Catholic" it is not.
I have read Father Nichols' book The Panther and the Hind, and was under impressed. Comper was a wonderful architect and designer. Unfortunately most of his altars were ruined by the addition of too many candles and the sacrament house. Anglo-papists don't understand Rome is really papier-mache Catholicism; it has the appearance, but the reality is simply not there, something like the high altar of St Mary's, Bourne Street in London.