IN BRIEF
Orthodox warning The Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk has warned that if the Anglican Communion continues to embrace liberal ideas, Orthodox-Anglican dialogue may come to an end. Speaking at Lambeth Palace in the presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, on 9 September, Metropolitan Hilarion criticised “the unrestrained lib- eralisation of Christian values ... in many [Anglican] communities”, and raised “the possibility of establishing an Orthodox- Catholic alliance in Europe for defending the traditional values of Christianity”. In Vienna on 14 September the new Serbian Orthodox Patriarch gave an upbeat assess- ment of the state of Orthodox-Catholic relations. “There is no such thing as a problem that one cannot solve in dialogue with the help of God,” Patriarch Irinej said.
Italian nuncio in Poland
An Italian archbishop has pledged to uphold Poland’s “interesting model” of Church-State relations after becoming the first foreign Vatican nuncio to the country in more than seven decades. “Today, Poland plays a central role in Europe and the world, and makes an invaluable contribution to the life of the universal Church,” Archbishop Celestino Migliore, 58, said after arriving in Warsaw. The archbishop, formerly the Holy See’s Permanent Observer at the UN, replaces Archbishop Jozef Kowalczyk, who was named Polish Primate in June after serv- ing as nuncio for 21 years.
Plea to deal with LRA Catholic, Protestant and African tradi- tional leaders in East and Central Africa meeting in Sudan have appealed to their Governments to step up the protection of civilians against the northern Uganda militia, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), notorious for its rapes, civilian murders and child kidnappings. Leaders from Uganda, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic also called on the authorities to adopt a negotiated settlement to the crisis.
March for fair elections Thousands of Christians and pro-democ- racy activists marched in the Nigerian city of Lagos on 9 September demanding that next January’s parliamentary, presidential and state governorship elections be free and fair. The next day 200,000 Catholics led by bishops of the six dioceses of Owerri Ecclesiastical Province held a prayer pro- cession in Owerri, capital of southern Imo State, also calling for credible elections.
For daily news updates visit
www.thetablet.co.uk
42 | THE TABLET | 18 September 2010
Letter from Rome
t is finally the week of the papal visit to Britain! Pope Benedict XVI was to arrive in Scotland on Thursday for his much debated and long-anticipated journey to Great Britain. An early start was scheduled for the 70 of us journalists travelling with him in his litter, as it were. Vatican organisers scheduled our departure from Ciampino Airport for 8.10 a.m. (7.10 in the UK). And although Pope Benedict is involved in many non-liturgical events on this trip, Catholics will certainly be focusing in a special way on the three papal Masses. You will have noticed that there is much use of Latin. As a noted liturgist in Rome told me when the “Missal” for the papal visit appeared several days ago: “They are a mish-mash of English and Latin, often following illogical patterns.” Only this morning’s Mass at Westminster Cathedral is not. It is to be almost entirely in Latin, with the readings, petitions and some recited prayers in English. Looking at the rubrics in the Vatican’s “Missal”, it also appears that the Pope could preside ad orientem. The other two Masses, in Glasgow on Thursday and in Birmingham tomorrow, featured a hybrid English-Latin Eucharistic Prayer – the preface in Latin, but the Sanctus in English; the Eucharistic Prayer proper in Latin, but the response to mysterium fidei in English. Latin is not only the Western Church’s official language, but some claim it is also a sacred language. Not according to world-renowned Latin scholar, Fr Reginald Foster. “A sacred language? In the first century every prostitute in Rome spoke it fluently” – he likes to say – “and better than most people in the Roman Curia!”
I A
mong the Vatican officials travelling with Pope Benedict during the visit was to have been Cardinal Walter
Kasper, whose last-minute withdrawal from the visit disappointed many. The 77-year-old German theologian retired over two months ago from his job as president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. Archbishop Kurt Koch of German-speaking Switzerland took over from him in July and is in the papal entourage. It would have been unusual for a retired
Vatican official to accompany the Pope on a foreign journey, but Cardinal Kasper was still the Vatican’s ecumenical chief while the visit was being prepared and the Anglicans were keen that he be on hand for the historic event. But there were more practical reasons, too. Most Anglicans and ecumenically minded Catholics credit the cardinal with having saved the various Christian unity dialogues from collapse in the wake of a number of Vatican documents and initiatives that were initially judged as,
shall we say, ecumenically insensitive. The Anglicans trust Cardinal Kasper and are willing to listen to him even when he must say things that are sometimes difficult to hear. They are convinced of his commitment to ecumenism and they value the deep and kindly friendship they have forged with him and his staff over the years. Archbishop Koch, on the other hand, is virtually unknown to them. The 60-year-old former Bishop of Basel is also a theologian, but he has little knowledge or deep understanding of the Anglican Communion. And he is working hard to learn English. A papal visit to Britain is too important from an ecumenical point of view to take any chances, so Archbishop Koch might find himself under rather close scrutiny.
C
ardinal Kasper and Archbishop Koch have probably been asked to explain how the Vatican chose the date for the feast of the Blessed John Henry Newman. The Church of England already commemorates him as “priest and Tractarian” on 11 August, the date on which he died in 1890. And there was hopeful expectation that the Vatican would choose the same date, since it regularly uses the dies natalis (birthday into heaven) for the feast days of its blessed and saints.
But unless there is some last-minute change of plans, tomorrow morning in Birmingham’s Cofton Park Pope Benedict will solemnly proclaim: “His feast shall be celebrated every year on the ninth of October.” That was the date in 1848 that John Henry Newman left the Anglican Communion and became a Roman Catholic. Does this mean that Catholics will be celebrating the day he swam the Tiber rather than the day he passed into eternity? No doubt that is the way some will see this, and they will chalk it up as yet one more sign of the Vatican’s lack of ecumenical sensitivity. But don’t blame the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. They had nothing to do with it. Neither, apparently, did the Congregation for Saints. Rather, the Congregation for Divine Worship took the decision. Reports said officials there chose the
October date so that Newman Centres around the world would be able to celebrate the feast. The rationale was that most universities are not in session in August. That explanation seemed pretty far-fetched to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s representative in Rome, Canon David Richardson. He noted that this may be the case in the northern hemisphere, but his native Australia is part of the other half of the world where most universities certainly are operating in August.
Robert Mickens
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48