An Anglican Bishop whom I knew very well came back from a Lambeth Conference (not the recent one) having made the acquaintance there of a woman bishop. After bit, she had observed "Of course, you and I are very much in the same position. I have to face the possibility that I am not a bishop; you have to face the possibility that I am a bishop."
Bishop JR liked that. He was the sort of person who would.
The two of them got on like a house on fire.
Is there a model here for what Jorge Bergoglio, and the famous sedevacantist writer Anthony Cekada, might say to each other?
[I never liked the late Cekada; he referred to me as "Vicar Hunwicke", although at no point in my life have I ever been a Vicar.]
Father Cekada, it's nice to meet you. Don't you like the idea of Subsistit?
ReplyDeleteNice to meet you also, Jorge, I think you are right because each of us can protest against aspects of Tradition while still being considered part of the Church.
Wait, hold on... what do you mean? Fr Cekada, Fr Cekada, where are you going?
The answer is not complicated, dear Father: something snarky and venomous with no prerequisite of a provocation.
ReplyDeleteNoone is perfect, not even Father Cekada. His analysis of the the Novus Ordo Mass orations, and other Novus Ordo novelties such as the Offertorium prayers, is outstanding and scholarly. But he went overboard in his study of the Pauline rites of episcopal consecration and priestly ordination, wrongly concluding that they were invalid, or doubtful at best. His faulty judgement seems to be based more upon rightful indignation that the ancient Roman rites had been tampered with, than upon objective judgement of their liturgical and sacramental worth. And his sedevacantism - at least regarding the popes following Pius XII, is totally unfounded, based upon an erroneous notion of the pope as being either infallible and perfect in all aspects - or invalid. He meant well, however. Requiescat in pace.
ReplyDeleteWould I be right in guessing, Father, that the woman bishop who so winningly disarmed Bishop Richards must have been the Rt. Rev. Victoria Matthews, who was successively suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Toronto, Canada (1994–97), Bishop of Edmonton, Canada (1997–2007), and Bishop of Christchurch, New Zealand (2008–2018)? Her ministry of ἐπισκοπή began in the same year that John Richards was consecrated Bishop of Ebbsfleet, so they would have been direct "contemporaries" at Lambeth in 1998.
ReplyDeleteI was told by someone who knew her at the time that, when she was first ordained to the presbyterate of the Anglican Church of Canada in 1980, some seminarians asked her how they ought to address her. She replied, "Why, you should call me Father Vicky."
I found that very winning, too. It suggested that she understood ministerial priesthood in the Church as representative of the one true priesthood of Christ, a view far more "catholic" than what one so often hears from champions of women's ordination.
Bergoglio to Cekada: "I have to face the possibility that I am a pope; you have to face the possibility that I am a 'bishop in white'."
ReplyDeleteIvan
He was a jerk (IMHO), and of course sedevacantism is kooky; but I'm sorry to hear that he passed away... a couple years ago, it looks like.
ReplyDeleteMay the Lord have mercy on those driven to extremes, especially when they were driven to it by people who should have been good examples and helpers, who drove them away instead.
Sometimes people who are Not Very Nice are worried by other people who are Not Very Nice in almost the same way.
ReplyDeleteFor example, there's supposedly a letter by Alistair Crowley, warning Jack Parsons that L. Ron Hubbard is kinda shady.
Pot. Kettle. Black. (Not wrong, though.)
And apparently Dennis Wheatley was weirded out by Montague Summers.
Again, not wrong, but....
Maybe Father C's comment was an allusion to the old days of the C of E as depicted in Ealing Comedies --- everyone wearing a clerical collar is a "vicar" (unless he is a bishop, as in the Titfield Thunderbolt). Example: in Father Brown (1954) --- not an Ealing Comedy, but all the same --- Alec Guinness in the title role may be playing a Catholic priest, but you can tell deep down he is really a "vicar" --- as can be seen from his 39-button cassock and leather belt.
ReplyDeleteIt could also be what Aidan Nichols suggests about Adrian Fortescue's opinion of Ronald Knox and Hugh Benson: "Perhaps it was at the back of his mind that both were Anglican converts who had never had the Scholastic philosophical and theological formation from which he had benefited." (The Latin Clerk, p. 284)
Poor Fr. Cekada.
ReplyDeleteI wonder, who you would rather be forced to sit next to on a long flight: PF or Cekada?
Off topic I know but I have always liked the other John Richards (1901-1990), Bishop of St Davids. His writing about his time as a Church Missionary Society evangelist in Persia in the decades up to 1945 show his command of Arabic and Farsi, and follow on in a sense from E. G. Browne's A Year Among the Persians in offering an unusual perspective on an Islamic society.
ReplyDeleteOT: What, Adrian Fortescue said that Msgr Knox was not scholastically formed?
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about Adrian Fortescue, and I am not myself scholastically formed, but I do know that Msgr Knox does a pretty good job in presenting the Quinque Viae to a modern audience in Belief of Catholics.