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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2024
Anglicans and Roman Catholics are exploring the Uniate analogy as a model for reunion of their Churches. In this paper we propose to discuss briefly the development of the Uniate analogy and, thereafter, to suggest a way for Roman recognition of Anglican ministry.
Proponents of the Uniate model point to an impressive precedent in Gregory the Great’s commission to Augustine in 597. They argue that Gregory favoured a distinctive patrimony for the Church of the Angles. Obviously this precedent should not be pressed too far. Subsequent Popes, such as Vitalian and Gregory VII, were less favourable to pluralism and more inclined to uniformity than was the first Gregory. Nevertheless, Gregory’s commission to Augustine of Canterbury does provide a useful precedent that might well be endorsed today.
‘My brother, you are familiar with the usage of the Roman Church, in which you were brought up. But if you have found customs, whether in the Roman, Gallican, or any other Churches that may be more acceptable to God, I wish you to make a careful selection of them, and teach the Church of the English, which is still young in the Faith, whatever you can profitably learn from the various Churches. For things should not be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things. Therefore select from each of the Churches whatever things are devout, religious and right; and when you have arranged them into a unified rite, let the minds of the English grow accustomed to it.’
The pallium given to Augustine by Gregory connoted recognition of a Roman primacy, a recognition that continued for nearly a millenium. Since the Reformation the Archbishop of Canterbury has served as a pastoral centre of unity for the Church of England and, later, for the world-wide Anglican communion.
page 386 note 1 Eric Mascall, ‘The Pope's Important Offer’, The Tablet, 12th December, 1970, pp. 1201‐1202.
page 386 note 2 Southern, R. W., Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, London, 1970, pp. 104‐133Google Scholar.
page 386 note 3 Bede, Venerable, A History of the English Church and People, I, 27, 2Google Scholar.
page 386 note 4 Neile, Stephen, Anglicanism, Baltimore, 1965, p. 430Google Scholar.
page 387 note 1 The Tablet, 31, January 1970, p. 98Google Scholar.
page 387 note 2 Halifax, Lord, Conversations at Malines, London, 1927Google Scholar. Halifax unwittingly contributed to Beauduin's subsequent sufferings by unilaterally publishing the papers. In his ‘martyrdom’ Beauduin differed from some subsequent Roman Catholic outlaws in that Beauduin was not vindicated until after his death, appropriately enough by the Pope's proposal of a model strikingly similar to Beauduin's at the canonization of the forty martyrs! Rome still makes martyrs daily—witness the tortuous delay over the inevitable discipline of optional celibacy—and here the Anglican ‘patrimony’ of comprehensive tolerance and Christian freedom can (to paraphrase Vatican II) provide ‘a treasure from which the Roman Church of the West can amply draw’.
page 387 note 3 Decree on Ecumenism, No. 14. ‘Fidem et disciplinim’ I have not translated ‘belief and discipline’ (Abbott) ‘but faith and order’.
page 387 note 4 Ibid., No. 16. Cf. also ‘Dogmatic Constitution on the Church’, III, 13 and 23; ‘Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy’, Nos. 37–41; and ‘Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World’, 4, 5, 44, 58, 62.
page 388 note 1 Cardinal Jan Willebrands, ‘Moving Towards a Typology of Churches’, The Catholic Mind, April, 1970, p. 40.
page 388 note 2 Butler had mentioned the Uniate analogy in a sermon and at the first international Anglican‐Roman Catholic meeting at Windsor Castle. The Tablet, which in 1925 had opposed the Uniate analogy, came out in its favour in a lead editorial, ‘United Not Absorbed’, 31st January, 1970, p. 90. Butler's article was partially in response to the lively reaction to this editorial.
page 388 note 3 Christopher Butler, ‘United Not Absorbed’, The Tablet, 7th March, 1970, p. 221.
page 389 note 1 Text in One in Christ, Vol. VII, No. 1, p. 122Google Scholar; cf. ‘Bishop Butler Proposes a Model for Reunion of the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches’, The Listener, 2nd April, 1970, pp. 441‐442.
page 389 note 2 Pope Paul VI, ‘In solemni Canonizatione’, AAS, LXII, November–December, 1970, pp. 752–753; cf. ‘The Forty Martyrs’, One in Christ, Vol. VII, No. 1, p. 113Google Scholar.
page 389 note 3 Christopher Butler, ‘An Approach to Anglicans’, The Tablet, 14th November, 1970, pp. 1098–1099.
page 390 note 1 Eric Mascall, ‘The Pope's Important Offer’, The Tablet, 12th December, 1970, p. 1202; cf. Mascall, ‘Is Organic Union Desirable?’, Theology, December, 1970, pp. 558–559.
page 390 note 2 Cf. John Macquarrie, ‘Is Organic Union Desirable?’, Theology, October, 1970, pp. 437–444; John Macquarrie, George Yule, ‘Is Organic Union Desirable?’, Theology, February, 1971, pp. 75–77; Lord Fisher of Lambeth, ‘Organic Union’, Theology, March, 1971, pp. 124–125.
page 390 note 3 Cf. Macquarrie, ‘Is Organic Union Desirable?’, Theology, October, 1970, pp. 440–442.
page 390 note 4 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, ‘What is a Dogmatic Statement?’, Basic Questions in Theology, Vol. I, Philadelphia, 1970, pp. 181‐210Google Scholar; Dulles, Avery, ‘Church Teaching and Historical Relativity’, in Pannenberg, Wolfhart et al., Spirit, Faith, and Church, Philadelphia, 1970, pp. 60–80Google Scholar.
page 390 note 5 John Coventry, ‘Anglican Orders: Re‐Assessing the Debate’, New Blackfriars, January, 1971, pp. 38–40.
page 390 note 6 Burrows, Aelred, ‘Anglican Orders, the Present Position’, The Ampleforth journal, 23 (1969), pp. 358–360Google Scholar.
page 391 note 1 Decree on Ecumenism’, No. 22.
page 391 note 2 Clement, Letter to Corinthians, The Apostolic Fathers, K. Lake, ed. and trans., N.Y., 1919, pp. 70–85.
page 391 note 3 Dix, Gregory, The Shape of the Liturgy, Westminster, 1945, pp. 252–254Google Scholar.
page 391 note 4 Cf. John Damascene, ‘The Orthodox Faith’, in Saint John of Damascus Writings, F. Chase, ed. and trans., N.Y., 1968, pp. 385–460; St Thomas Aquinas, S. T., III, q. 83. Cf. also McDevitt, A., ‘The Episcopate as an Order and Sacrament on the Eve of the High Scholastic Period’, Franciscan Studies, 20, 1960, pp. 130–148CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
page 391 note 5 Cf. for example St Thomas Aquinas, S.T., III, q. 83 et passim.
page 391 note 6 Echlin, Edward P., The Anglican Eucharist in Ecumenical Perspective, N.Y., 1968, pp. 25–63Google Scholar.
page 392 note 1 In the United States a joint commission of Anglicans and Roman Catholics has agreed that the eucharist no longer divides them. Cf. The journal of the General Convention (1967) of the Episcopal Church. Cf. Hay, Camillus, ‘Intercommunion: a Roman Catholic Approach’, One in Christ, 4, 1969, pp. 361–363Google Scholar.
page 392 note 2 Coventry, ‘Anglican Orders’, New Blackfriars, January 1971, p. 40.
page 392 note 3 I am indebted to Myles Bourke for much that follows, including his attention to the evidence for leadership even at Corinth. Cf. Bourke, , ‘Presidential Address’, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 30, 1968, esp. pp. 501–502Google Scholar.
page 393 note 1 Schnackenburg, R., ‘Apostolicity: The Present Position of Studies’, One in Christ, 6, 1970, pp. 243–273Google Scholar.
page 393 note 2 Brown, Raymond E., Priest and Bishop: Biblical Reflections, N.Y., 1970, p. 84Google Scholar. Cf. also Power, David N., Ministers of Christ and His Church, London, 1969, p. 23Google Scholar.
page 394 note 1 Hans von Campenhausen may overstate the freedom at Corinth when he asserts: ‘Responsible presidents to see to this matter cannot therefore have been available’, in Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the first three centuries, London, 1969, p. 66Google Scholar.
page 394 note 2 Didache 15, 1; cf. 14. There is no doubt about the importance of prophets and teachers in the Didache. Like Pauline ministers, they are to be supported by the congregation. In fact the Didache awards them the ‘first fruits’. Cf. 13.
page 394 note 3 Clement XLIV, 4; cf. XLI, 1.
page 395 note 1 It would take us beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the polemics of Ambrosiaster and Jerome, but it is noteworthy that Jerome firmly testified to presbyteral ordering of the Alexandrian bishopric well into the third century. Cf. St Jerome, ‘Epist. ad Evangelum’, PL 22: 1192–1195.
page 395 note 2 St Ignatius, Letter to Smyrneans, VIII, 2.
page 395 note 3 St Ignatius, Letter to Trallians, III, 1.
page 395 note 4 The Shepherd of Hermes, Vols. III, 5, 1. Cf. Colson, Jean, Les Fonctions ecclesiales aux deux premiers siècles, Paris, 1956, pp. 251–256Google Scholar.
page 395 note 5 Martyr, Justin St, ‘First Apology’, Saint Justin Martyr, Thomas Falls, ed., N.Y., 1948, p. 105Google Scholar.
page 396 note 1 I have also argued this case elsewhere. Cf. Edward P. Echlin, ‘Anglican Orders, a Case for Validity’, The Anglican Theological Review, April 1970, pp. 67–76; and ‘The Validity of Anglican Orders’, The journal of Ecumenical Studies, Spring, 1970, pp. 266–281.
page 396 note 2 Pannenberg, Wolfhart et al., Spirit, Faith and Church, Philadelphia, 1970, p. 31Google Scholar.
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