Apostolic Constitution and a Brief Look at Magisterium and Tradition

I am a bit disappointed about my lack of time for reflections and snooping around the I-Net to see what is being said on the recent happenings for Catholic-minded Anglicans. I think it is imperative to say from the beginning as it has had to be said numerous times that this document and provision is an *answer* to Anglo-Catholics who have already been 'converted' to seeing the necessity of the papacy and the authority of the Magisterium. After reading a number of negative responses from Anglicans and reading those head-scratching responses from AC priests saying that they want to wait to decide on Rome's offer after seeing what the C of E is going to do, for instance, just makes one wonder what some have been all about to begin with. With malice toward none, it does seem to be in some sense that a serious bluff has been called and in another sense a lot of dressing up of skeletons with not much flesh under the cassock is becoming evident. I digress. What I want to briefly point out in this post is a clarification about the relationship between the Tradition of the Church and the Magisterium as I understand it. Entries around the I-Net and the post below from the ACC Archbishop just goes to prove that there is a hierarchical misunderstanding about Tradition and its context with the Magisterium. There is an apparent misunderstanding with regards to what looks to be ignorance about a supposed autonomy that the Magisterium has in and of itself. But that is not the case at all. The Magisterium is not independent of the deposit of the faith. The Magisterium is the active and living tradition of the Church. The Magisterium is a witness to the deposit of faith and derives its authority from the spoken and the non-spoken writings and traditions of the apostolic tradition. The Magisterium evaluates this tradition and makes judgments but is always dependent upon the apostolic tradition. The Magisterium does not have a function outside or above the Church but within her and is in the Church to keep, define and protect that apostolic tradition. The Magisterium can sometimes be said to function as the conscience of the Church when she defends the apostolic tradition received. It is not as if she has some infused knowledge but rather the Magisterium studies and submits to the apostolic tradition of the Church. I like what Yves Congar says when he describes this relationship. The Fathers and the Councils never separate the subjective instinct of the faith from the objective content received from preceding generations. For them there is no question of autonomy for the subjective, mystical instinct in spiritual things, concerning the proposition that God has himself made us, according to all the means he has established to this end, forming as it were a scale of descending importance: the Revelation made to the prophets and apostles, the Church, the Councils, the Fathers, the Doctors and the saints. Certain modern theories, which I have criticized elsewhere, do not pay enough respect to this balance and, overstressing the aspect of "Church" or "Magisterium" , come to attribute to them a sort of autonomy with regard to the deposit, whose content can be obtained only in the objective monuments. The Magisterium does not have an autonomous value: it receives assistance only when it keeps, interprets and defines the Revelation, of which it has been made a witness. Similarly, the Church has no power to create truth. this is why the subjective instinct of the faith should always seek expression in the objective setting of the truths, customs, rites and behaviour on which the Church agrees, and in the fellowship in space as well as time, which in its Councils, has always borne witness, using such terms as "This is what the Church believes, this is what she has always believed; it is what we have received from our Fathers and what we have lived by, faithful to their traditions." It is the latter part of this paragraph that I find the answer to the problems of those who say that they can have a non-papal Catholicism and be a true 'branch' of the Catholic Church when they do not exercise an autonomy in truth but in their own grabbing of power. It is to the latter that an Anglo-Catholic must come to terms with and have a true conversion to this truth before even contemplating the decision to swim the Tiber. I do pray many come, but I hope they come realising and asking God for theconversion of heart to the ONE truth of the deposit of faith.