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AUSTRALIA


Banal liturgy ‘deters Anglicans’, conference told


THE “BANALITY” of parish liturgies since the Second Vatican Council has been the major obstacle for many Anglicans to coming into full communion with the Catholic Church, a leading Australian academic told a meeting about the ordinariate in Melbourne, writes Mark Brolly. Associate Professor Tracey Rowland, the dean of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne, told a meeting in the city about the ordinariate mechanism for receiving groups of Anglicans into the Catholic Church that in her experience, barriers to full communion with the Holy See for many Anglo-Catholics were more cultural than doctrinal. “They have been reluctant to seek full membership of the Catholic Church because of a not unreasonable belief that they would have to abandon whole elements of their Anglican cultural heritage,” she told the gathering last month at Our Lady of Victories Basilica in the Melbourne suburb of Camberwell. Professor Rowland said the Pope had consistently held that the ecumenical process meant acquiring unity in diversity, not structural reintegration. She cited a speech he gave in Cologne in 2005 that “ecumenism does not mean what could be called an ecumenism of the return: that is, to deny and to reject one’s own faith history – it does not mean uniformity in all expressions of theology and spirituality, in liturgical forms and in discipline”. “The announcement of the establishment


of a personal ordinariate for Anglicans has been the most dramatic example of Pope Benedict’s attempt to put these principles into operation,” she said. “Although the Pope has made no public statements about what might be the ‘gifts’ Anglicans could bring to full membership of the Catholic Church, many commentators have observed an affinity between the Anglo-Catholic approaches to liturgy and Pope Benedict’s own liturgical theology,” she said. (For the full text of Professor Rowland’s address, visit www.thetablet.co.uk)


UNITED STATES


Dolan criticises New York bill legalising gay marriage


Michael Sean Winters In Washington


THE ARCHBISHOP of New York, Timothy Dolan, has warned that a bill legalising same- sex marriage in the state poses an “ominous threat” and warned that Government should not be able to change fundamental social institutions. The New York state legislature passed the bill last week and the New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, signed it into law within an hour of final passage. New York is the sixth and largest state to pass such a law. Archbishop Dolan criticised the decision


in a radio interview and on his blog. But according to news reports, he did not engage in any face-to-face lobbying and was in Seattle leading his first meeting as President of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in the


critical final days of debate on the measure. The Church in New York succeeded in get- ting certain provisions protecting religious groups from being compelled to recognise the new marriages. The religious protections were necessary to gain the votes of a majority of New York’s state senators. Republicans control the state senate in New York but, unlike more conservative states, New York has a long tradition of liberal Republican leaders. In his radio interview, Archbishop Dolan was asked whether the Church would excom- municate Catholics who supported the measure. “We try to model ourselves after Jesus, and he’s always conciliatory,” he said. “Sometimes, if we come off too hard, we lose more people. Our job is to try to patiently change hearts, and not be throwing people out.”


Corpus Christi breakthrough RUSSIA


THE FIRST Catholic Corpus Christi proces- sion since 1918 has been held in central St Petersburg by consent of the city government, writes Jonathan Luxmoore. Church sources


said that Sunday’s


Eucharistic procession, led by Russia’s Italian Catholic archbishop, Paolo Pezzi, had been attended by consular officials from several European countries and was the first since the immediate aftermath of the Russian Revolution, before all public religious events were suppressed by the Bolshevik regime. They added that


the inclusion of St


Petersburg’s main Nevskii Prospekt shopping street had symbolic importance as the location of the northern city’s largest Orthodox,


CHILE Bishops back protesting students


THE CHURCHhas insisted that the tens of thousands of students who are currently engaging in public protests demanding an overhaul of the education system “need to be heard”, writes Jon Stibbs. In a 23 June statement signed by the


President of the Episcopal Conference, Archbishop of Santiago Ricardo Ezzati, the bishops said: “It is urgent to move forward in the search for proposals for consensus to direct and develop the process that allows a response to the just demands.” Describing the current system, the bishops


30 | THE TABLET | 2 July 2011


said: “There is a long way to go in the task of building an educational model of quality, fair and appropriate learning, where every student, regardless of personal or social sit- uation, is assured of the necessary training.” There has been a series of demonstrations


focused on the capital, Santiago, calling for greater state investment in public education. Dating from the time of the Pinochet dicta- torship (1973–90) Chile has developed one of the world’s most segregated education sys- tems, with what is widely recognised as insufficient state participation.


Catholic, Lutheran and Armenian Apostolic basilicas. Meanwhile, a bishop in neighbouring


Ukraine protested after Catholics were barred from holding a similar ceremony outside their cathedral in Odessa because of “public order” concerns. The Bishop of Odessa-Simferopol, Bernard Bernacki, said that the banning of the procession indicated a “dangerous trend towards the violation of rights and freedoms of religious communities” in Ukraine, adding that Odessa’s council had allowed the local Orthodox diocese to process along the same route and appeared to have forgotten the city was “multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi- religious”.


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