(1) That in the Sacrament of the Altar, by virtue of the words of Christ duly spoken by the priest, is present realiter, under the kinds of bread and wine, the natural Body of Christ, conceived of the Virgin Mary, and also his natural Blood.
(2) That after the consecration there remains not the substance of bread and wine, nor any other substance, but the substance of God and Man.
(3) That in the Mass is offered the true Body of Christ,and his true Blood, a propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead.
(4) That to Peter the Apostle, and his lawful successors in the Apostolic See, as Christ's Vicars, is given the supreme power of feeding and ruling the Church of Christ Militant, and confirming their brethren.
(5) That the authority of handling and defining concerning the things belonging to faith, sacraments, and discipline ecclesiastical, hath hitherto ever belonged, and ought to belong, only to the pastors of the Church; whom the Holy Ghost for this purpose hath set in the Church; and not to laymen.
During these rather curious months in between the vacating of the Sees of Ebbsfleet, Richborough and Fulham and the creation of the Ordinariate, it seems to me that these Articles express the continuity which exists between the Canterbury Convocation of 1559 (which enacted these Articles), and the Ordinariate which Pope Benedict is to erect.
On Saturday February 25, as the House of Commons in Westminster completed its treatment of a combined Bill for the restoration of a Book of Common Prayer and of the royal Supremacy, a little way down the river, in Old S Paul's Cathedral, the Convocation of Canterbury (York could not meet because its bishops were in London for Parliament) met under the presidency of Bishop Bonner and passed these Articles. The first three were, with minor variations, the same articles that had been put together by Queen Mary's first Convocation in 1553 as the basis of the Disputation being planned in Oxford between Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, and some Catholic divines. The first two Articles related directly to the 1552 Book with, between its covers, the Black Rubric denying "anye reall and essencial presence ... of Christ's naturall fleshe and bloude". As Parliament hurried towards the re-enactment of the 1552 rite, Convocation in the most specific terms ('natural'; 'natural') renewed its condemnation of the eucharistic doctrine which the Black Rubric expressed.
And on the very day that the Commons finished their work on the Royal Supremacy, Convocation defined unambiguously in its fourth Article the Church of England's commitment to the Primacy of S Peter. It is hard to think of a more pointed declaration on a more significant day. But the fifth Article is perhaps the most bold and fearless of all (the Universities, when they subscribed the first four Articles, were apparently too nervous to pass this one). The first four Articles, on Eucharist and Primacy, undoubtedly nailed some very dangerous colours to the mast but they were not, when they were passed, actually contrary to Statute law as it stood at that moment. But to deny the competence of the Crown in Parliament to order ecclesiastical matters ran contrary to all the assumptions of the years since 1533 - assumptions as real in the Marian statutes restoring the Old Religion as they had been in the Henrician and Edwardine statutes varying or abolishing it.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Excellent!
However, we do have 39 Articles not five.
I hope that we are not suggesting immense selectivity over the whole, later, package.
Is the Holy See going to understand Article 37 as referring not to ecclesiastical matters but only civil affairs? A Roman priest colleague on reading this for the first time exclaimed with some dismay "So the Church of England is only a Protestant sect after all!"
Is "Apostilicae Curae" being boiled down to "Non Romani sed Anglicani"? That we are genuinely ministers of the word and sacraments is a matter in which I do feel secure. Nonetheless, the boundaries between that view and that in the papal bull do seem to be rather modified these days, to say the least.
I suspect there is really more to it than that, but the emerging news is beginning to look a little worrying over the real differences between the two communions.
And, finally, a "Happy New Year" and "Many Years!"
If article 5 of 1559 be valid (and how could it not be, since convocation did not require royal assent), then the 39 articles later adopted in parliament are not valid. As I see it, the Church of England for these past 450 years has been in the same situation as the Church in China since Mao; a church in chains, with many who have remained faithful, some to the point of shedding their blood, others in a more underground way.
The Ordinariate, which was unfortunately compared to "tanks on the lawn" in October 2009 is more like the ships that dropped anchor in Nagasaki's harbor allowing the hidden Christians to emerge once more into daylight.
Post a Comment