The first principle of the Ordinariate is then about Christian unity. St. Basil the Great, the Church’s greatest ecumenist, literally expended his life on the work of building bridges between orthodox brethren who shared a common faith, but who had become separated from one another in a Church badly fragmented by heresy and controversy. He taught that the work of Christian unity requires deliberate and ceaseless effort...St. Basil often talked with yearning about the archaia agape, the ancient love of the apostolic community, so rarely seen in the Church of his day. This love, he taught, is a visible sign that the Holy Spirit is indeed present and active, and it is absolutely essential for the health of the Church.

- Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, Homily on the Occasion of his Formal Institution as Ordinary

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Another entry in "What is the Patrimony of Anglicanism"

Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have all mentioned, in one form or another, the "legitimate" patrimony of Anglicanism, which should find a home within the Catholic Church. The question of what this patrimony consists has been on the minds of many. Fr. Chadwick at the Anglo-Catholic blog writes about this today.
The Counter Reformation and Anglican Patrimony
I have given one subject quite an amount of thought, that of defining Anglican patrimony in relation with the Counter Reformation patrimony in Catholicism. It seems to me that this point has been narrowly missed in our postings and threads of comments, but never really addressed head-on.

The Counter-Reformation was the Catholic Church’s answer to the scourge of Protestantism, the loss of parts of Europe to the Church, and also to its own corruptions and problems in the clergy in the late middle-ages. It was therefore defined by the Protestantism challenging the Catholic world, and less by the early pre-decadent medieval tradition...

Read the rest of his thoughtful contribution to this discussion at The Anglo-Catholic blog.
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