People still sometimes ask what is this Anglican Patrimony of which Professor Ratzinger wrote in Anglicanorum coetibus. Does it just mean occasional Choral Evensong?
I believe dear old Archdeacon ... oops, Cardinal ... Manning summed it up thus:
I see much danger of an English Catholicism of which Newman is the highest type. It is the old Anglican, patristic, literary, Oxford tone transplanted into the Church.
Bang on, except for that strange word 'danger'.
I have often wondered whether our own Professor Henry 'Patrimony' Chadwick had Manning's words consciously in mind when he wrote
The fact that [Newman] had been converted to Catholicism by Oxford and the study of the Church Fathers, not by any personal friendship with Roman Catholics, meant that everything he wrote and said sounded almost Anglican.
That's the Patrimony: Anglican tone. Including, of course, Saint John Henry Newman's old Anglican gifts of Irony, Satire, and especially, above all, and pretty well daily, the Argumentum ad hominem.
And an adherence to Saint John Henry's belief in the iniquities of Liberalism.
And his resolute opposition to Ultrahyperueberpapalism.
And his emphasis on getting one's guidance from the Fathers.
And writing decent English.
Those are things I would have concentrated upon if anybody had ever asked me to contribute to the endless Conferences that keep happening in order to pin down and identify the meaning of "the Anglican Patrimony".
4 comments:
What about the blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits and the things fondly invented?
Your summary of "Anglican Patrimony" is superb. But you left out something: Anglican graciousness and dedicated pastoral care free of clericalism.
Dear Father, what was Cardinal Manning opposing to the patristic tone of Saint John Henry? The current version of Thomism? Although as to that, there is now a growing body of work showing Saint Thomas’s closeness to the Fathers, and the surprising acceptance of much of Thomas by some Byzantines.
Indeed. The often overlooked Catena Aurea informs the whole of St Thomas's speculative theology. His experience in the schools as a master of the sacred page is the foundation of it.
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