I am very sorry to have to announce that the comments will now all have to be approved by me before posting them. I never wanted this blog to be one of those but due to some malicious and false accusations circling about my journey to Rome I will now approve comments. I am open to productive dialogue and disagreement but some of what has occurred has been libelous and so I am now approving the comments. Please still comment as I will publish all those that are helpful even if disagreeable to my postings. Thank you for your patience.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
16 comments:
I am sorry for your grief in this regard, but not surprised for two reasons:
1. The blogosphere seems to bring out the very worst in some people, and
2. No institution in the world is as deeply reviled as the Catholic Church, and the moment you speak well of that Church, the world will speak ill of you. Including, sadly, a great many Christians who are otherwise level headed and calm.
May the LORD of mercies be gracious to you and your family.
I am sorry to read that some comments have been malicious, its such a shame as I have been so impressed by the integrity that you have shown, in what have been some very interesting and moving comments.
I am ever so sorry that you have to face all this together with your journey for full unity with the See of Pewter. You have my prayers and support. The gates of hell shall not prevail...
Fr Ivan Dominic Aquilina SSC
What a great shame it has come to this! OLW pray for you and your family, and the prayers of the saints protect you from the attaacks of the evil one
Fr Nick De Keyser SSC
I wonder if you get some of the fruitcakes that leave comments on mine as well. All the best.
It's a shame that it's necessary, but I think everyone who ever made an attaempt at blogging has come across such people.
But I'm glad you won't let them win :) Keep on blogging, because the vast majority of your readers and commenters enjoy reading it, I'm sure.
A kind of nihil obstat?
Among some of us traditionalist Anglo-Catholics there is no doubt disapointment that we're loosing you but to put it bluntly if people can't accept your decision without expressions of nastiness they should just shut up!
Father Newman,
I would love to speak to you again.
vgahles@embarqmail.com
Fr Tim
My own comments on you departure for Rome, which were offered from a criticalist-realist perspective and contained no ad hominem comments brought the most appaling comments ever offered to my blog. I am always happy to engage, robustly, in the debate but was profoundley shocked by comments to me, ‘get a life’ I think of these attacks, this is business not personal. I'm sorry you suffered in the same way.
Followed by an "imprimatur."
Father Jones,
The thing about your post on my departure still has me wondering how my decision is individualistic and hence non-Catholic when something as uncertain and unknown as a corporate departure is Catholic. How can coming into communion with the Catholic Church be non-Catholic?
The main problem with Fr Jones's blog comment on your reception into the Church is that he appealed to esprit de corps for staying in the Church of England rather than truth. The multitudes of clergy, religious and laity who have become Catholics since Newman's reception in 1845 have all done so on an individual basis apart from a small number of religious communities. But even there each member had to make an individual submission. The pursuit of truth was their motivation and objective.
The argument for maintaining esprit do corps is peculiar to Fr Jones and the present time. In the past no Anglo-Catholic ever held this position. An appeal was sometimes made to remaining in the 'Church of my baptism' but Fr Jones repudiates that Church. The search for truth was pre-eminent in all religious discourse.
This shows what a sectarian side-show Anglo-Catholicism has become in the Church of England. Its prime intention from the beginning was to restore Catholicism to a body that had forsaken it. This failed because the Church of England is intrinsically Protestant, if sacramentalist in relative terms, as history has proved. Anglo-Catholicism is a tragically lost cause, an experiment that failed, that no longer counts as evidence of its gradual demise proves. It has become a purely self-authenticating tradition with no integrity as part of the Church of England or in Anglicanism at large. The tragedy is personal rather than corporate because it adversely affects well-meaning individuals.
As for Fr Jones, his position is idiosyncratic and mimetic and barely represents the views of his saintly predecessors who all understand Anglo-Catholicism as part of a greater whole rather than an end in itself. He has imported a pale imitation of the papalist customs of the 1920s at a time when they have lost their point, no longer count, and are tolerated by the Bishops because they have become harmless. That is what a self-authenticating tradition means and does. I don't feel sorry for him because he is so convinced by his views that reality eludes him and dislocation inevitably follows. What is worrying is that he espouses spiritual direction and I would pity anybody who sought his advice on ecclesiological problems. They would be met by overbearing fury and dismissal rather than understanding.
The decision you made is right for you, but it would not be right for all. The focus of many blogs is personal experience, but personally I think the focus of religious blogsites should be more outward looking.
Meg, I agree on the aspect of the 'outward' looking direction of religious blogs. This is in agreement with the Holy Father who said we should use them for evangelisation. I am not arguing that my experience or story is everyone's experience. What I would argue is that every decision to be reunited to the See of Peter has to be an individual decision.
Say for instance a group comes and many follow the priest they love so much. That priest soon is moved by the bishop to go work somewhere else and is sent a new priest that they aren't as fond of than the one who led them and they begin thinking they had more autonomy about this deicision as Anglicans and talks begin to return.
This is just one hypothetical example of the importance that the decision is individual and has to be because as you say, everyone has their own story and the Catholic Church will want and need to hear it.
Does this make sense?
Though I don't recall the exact words, there is a conversation in "A Man for All Seasons" between Thomas More and the Duke of Norfolk which touches on the argument that no one should depart for Rome alone.
Norfolk is attempting to convince More to concede to Henry VIII's heretical claim that he is the head of the Church in England by pointing out that everyone else of consequence has done so, and More replies (again, in paraphrase)
And when you go to heaven for following your conscience and I go to hell for disobeying mine, will you come along with me for the sake of fellowship?
Squatting in the ruins of the once glorious house of Anglicanism may be an option for those whose conscience cannot see another way, but for those whose conscience bids them be in full communion with the Bishop and Church of Rome, no fellowship or friendship of old can be an impediment to being received into the Catholic Church.
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