Saturday, January 15, 2011

Religion and life

When I was reading John Henry Newman's autobiography many years ago in seminary in Rome, I recall this line, just quoted during the priesthood ordination of three former Anglican bishops for the new Anglican "rite" in Catholicism:
“As a Protestant, I felt my religion dreary, but not my life ‐ but, as a Catholic, my life dreary, not my religion”.
At the time, I was finding both pretty dreary!

Newman had a tough ride. For a long time he was mistrusted both by his new English Catholic comrades, the few sturdy survivors of The Old Religion after centuries of Anglican persecution and legal and social marginalization, and the very Italian powers in Rome.

After the laying on of hands and the prayer of ordination, the men's wives brought them the symbols of the priesthood, the vestments.



One of these re-ordained ministers has been appointed the "ordinary" of the new structure. Not a bishop, --he's married--he functions as its superior, like an abbot or a provincial. A significant group in the Church of England and its daughter churches calls itself "Anglo-Catholic". Well, now some of them actually are.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I notice that Japheth and Ham have their hair uncover'd. I hope the angels weren't corrupted!

P.S. It's too bad that Father Mulcahey wasn't your confessor when you were in seminary in Rome. Sacrament-free Buddhist wisdom could have restored the essentially not-dreariness of life and spirituality (which really are synonyms).

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