Archbishop Hepworth gives LifeSiteNews.com an interview

Go on over and read the whole thing. And goody! A part two is coming.

Here's an excerpt:

“If we get the life issues right, then we get the Incarnation right, the nature of God right, the nature of Christian worship right,” he explained. “This is actually an entrance issue, not a side moral issue. It's the issue on which Christianity actually defines itself against the others.”

LSN spoke with Archbishop Hepworth in Halifax, the capital of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, where he made an overnight stop to address the local TAC parish, St. Aidan's. The Australian native came to Halifax as part of a worldwide tour that he began four weeks ago to encourage TAC communities to accept the Vatican's offer to Anglicans, issued in October, to reunite with the Roman Catholic Church.

Hepworth told LSN that the TAC's commitment to life is “total.” “It's one of our founding premises,” he said.

-snip-

But he also explained that the TAC has needed to be clear on life issues as part of its efforts for unity with the Catholic Church. “Our position is not to fight the Catholic Church, it's to fully absorb its teachings,” he said.

In both his interview with LSN and his homily to the parishioners of St. Aidan's, Hepworth spoke out against the practice of embryonic stem cell research, comparing it with cannibalism. “Killing embryos in order to harvest stem cells to make drugs is simply our form of cannibalism, and it's just as wrong as cannibalism,” he told LSN.

He described the experience of a tribe in New Guinea, which can still remember when war canoes would come down the river and take a young person to eat for strength before a battle, a practice which only ended in the 1960s.

“Using stem cell drugs derived from killed human beings in order to wave off disease is no different in the human attitude,” he said. “Same temptations everywhere, we just think our temptations are more civilized.”

-snip-

“Rape is a profound evil, to be totally condemned, and I say that as somebody whose ministry is in Africa as much as anywhere else, and where rape is common and often leads to death because of AIDS,” he continued.

But, he said, “should there be a child born of that violence and evil, to kill that child is actually a worse crime than the rape.”

In this circumstance, he described the child as “a great good” and “a redeeming good.” “Christianity comes to Resurrection through the Cross, we must all pass that way. And so we must believe that God constantly weaves something beautiful out of something evil.”

-snip-

Archbishop Hepworth called the condemnation of the morning-after pill for rape victims “a very hard teaching,” noting that it was “the hard teachings of Jesus that people walked away from.” “The test of an apostle is whether he goes on teaching the hard teachings when people are walking away,” he said. “That for a bishop is the toughest thing he has to experience.”

He called on the Christian churches to confront rape and male dominance, which he said are still embedded in some cultures of the world. “We have been afraid to confront traditional behaviour, in just the same way as we've been afraid to confront traditional behaviour in countries like the United States and Canada and Australia within affluent middle class families, where contraception is the more thoughtless option and therefore the easier one.”

I love Catholic Christian Outreach

What an amazing night. I have to wind down so I won't be writing much, but the love for Jesus Christ these young Catholic missionaries have is contagious and inspiring.

Cardinal Levada on Anglicanorum Coetibus

The picture shows Cardinal William Levada after he celebrated the Eucharist at Notre Dame Cathedral Basilica in Ottawa. I just got back from an excellent "Meet the Movement" fundraiser for Catholic Christian Outreach here in Canada's capital.

Here's an excerpt of the story I wrote about Cardinal Levada's talk at a Catholic Christian Outreach fundraiser Saturday night in Kingston, Ontario, picked up by the Catholic News Service in the United States:

KINGSTON, Ontario (CNS) -- Groups of Anglicans entering into communion with the Catholic Church will not absorbed the way "a teaspoon of sugar would be lost in a gallon of coffee," said Cardinal William Levada, prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

Instead, Anglicans will provide a distinct sound within the church, the way the different instruments in an orchestra blend in a symphony, Cardinal Levada told a fundraising dinner for Catholic Christian Outreach and the Queen's University Newman Center March 6.

"People long for discordant tones to be harmonized, united," he said. "And when an individual or, indeed, a community, is ready for unity with the church of Christ that subsists in the Catholic Church, it would be a betrayal of Catholic ecumenical principles and goals to refuse to embrace them, and to embrace them with all the distinctive gifts that enrich the church, that help her approach the world symphonically, sounding together or united."

Pope Benedict XVI's historic offer for groups of Anglicans to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church is "the logical outcome" of 45 years of ecumenical dialogue, Cardinal Levada.

The Vatican's offer came November 9 with the publication of Pope Benedict's apostolic constitution "Anglicanorum Coetibus" ("Groups of Anglicans") along with specific norms governing the establishment and governance of "personal ordinariates," structures similar to dioceses, for former Anglicans who become Catholic.

Cardinal Levada described the apostolic constitution as "one of the fruits" developing out of the statements issued by the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission -- commonly known as ARCIC -- on the Eucharist, ministry and ordination, and authority.

And the Salt and Light TV blog has posted an unofficial transcript of the talk by my friend Kris Dmytrenko here.

And Christian Campbell has commented on excerpts of that transcript at The Anglo-Catholic:

Cardinal Levada presents the Apostolic Constitution as the natural outgrowth of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) dialogue, of which he proceeds to provide a general outline. He recounts the several stages of the ARCIC process, set against the backdrop of the collapse of Catholic Faith and Apostolic Order in the Anglican Communion, of which women’s ordination and the homosexual movement are perhaps the most notable symptoms.

For Catholic Anglicans, he hits the nail squarely on the head.

The fundamental issue here, as many have noted, is the question of authority. This may be briefly summed up in the following two points. Does the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and in Scripture intend to let us know God’s will in a way that requires our obedience (for example, the imitation of Christ, the Ten Commandments)? And secondly, has God, in Christ, left His Church, founded on the Apostles, an authority by which it can assure that can know the correct meaning of the revelation, amidst sometimes varying human interpretations (for example, the sensus fidei, the ecumenical councils, the Magisterium of the Pope and bishops)?

There's a lot more. Go on over and check it out.

Meeting Cardinal Levada

I have posted some photos over at The Anglo-Catholic. I hope to post some comments about his address at Queen's to a Catholic Christian Outreach fundraiser last night, but I probably won't until tomorrow.

An expansion of virtue not more regulation

So say the Catholic bishops of the U.K.:

The bishops said that trust could not be restored by increased regulation, but rather by an expansion of virtue.

Father Z's bolds. My Amens!

"Be not afraid!"

I posted today at The Anglo-Catholic on the great uncertainty facing all of us Anglicans who now face a decision about becoming Catholic and joining a Personal Ordinariate.

Here's an excerpt, but there's lots more at the hub for all reliable information about Anglicanorum coetibus.

One day a package arrived in the mail at work. It was “Crossing the Threshold of Hope” by John Paul II. I confess that I had a little flicker of derision as I opened up the book. Aside from that, I had been indifferent to the man, and I can kick myself now that I was working in Halifax when he visited in 1984 and I didn’t even bother using my press credentials to get close enough to see him.

I opened the book, and I remember reading “Be not afraid,” that he repeated as a refrain, echoing what he had said in his first homily in St. Peter’s Square. The book’s open pages seemed to glow with a warm light and the room got a little brighter.

That was only one of the many little epiphanies, the step by step “clicks” into place of understanding and spiritual growth that have led me to a place where I say “Yes!” to becoming Catholic. It’s been a gradual process over more than 15 years.

All of us are not at the same stage yet. There are “fightings and fears, within, without,” to borrow from a lovely hymn. We are leaping into an unknown, but what is clear, is this: we cannot remain the same. We have been offered a choice and some of us will say “Yes!,” others have not made up their minds, and others seem to have dug in their heels and say they will never fall under the pope’s authority.

I am thankful for the refining fires ahead and I choose to “Be not afraid!” I exhort all of us to “Be not afraid!”

TAC requests Personal Ordinariate for the United States

The House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America, the American Province of the Traditional Anglican Communion, have issued the following press release.

Orlando, FL – 1 pm EST – Bp. George Langberg

Released by the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America, Traditional Anglican Communion 3 March 2010

We, the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America of the Traditional Anglican Communion have met in Orlando, Florida, together with our Primate and the Reverend Christopher Phillips of the “Anglican Use” Parish of Our Lady of the Atonement (San Antonio, Texas) and others.

At this meeting, the decision was made formally to request the implementation of the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum cœtibus in the United States of America by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Archbishop Chaput's wonderful talk in Texas

Here are some excerpts of a speech that must be read in its entirety (my bolds):

One of the ironies in my talk tonight is this. I'm a Catholic bishop, speaking at a Baptist university in America's Protestant heartland. But I've been welcomed with more warmth and friendship than I might find at a number of Catholic venues. This is a fact worth discussing. I'll come back to it at the end of my comments.

-snip-

I'm here as a Catholic Christian and an American citizen – in that order. Both of these identities are important. They don't need to conflict. They are not, however, the same thing. And they do not have the same weight. I love my country. I revere the genius of its founding documents and its public institutions. But no nation, not even the one I love, has a right to my allegiance, or my silence, in matters that belong to God or that undermine the dignity of the human persons He created.

-snip-

Ecumenism based on good manners instead of truth is empty. It's also a form of lying. If we share a love of Jesus Christ and a familial bond in baptism and God’s Word, then on a fundamental level, we're brothers and sisters. Members of a family owe each other more than surface courtesies. We owe each other the kind of fraternal respect that “speak[s] the truth in love” (Eph 4:15). We also urgently owe each other solidarity and support in dealing with a culture that increasingly derides religious faith in general, and the Christian faith in particular.

-snip-

Real Christian faith is always personal, but it’s never private. And we need to think about that simple fact in light of an anniversary.

Fifty years ago this fall, in September 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy, the Democratic candidate for president, spoke to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. He had one purpose. He needed to convince 300 uneasy Protestant ministers, and the country at large, that a Catholic like himself could serve loyally as our nation’s chief executive. Kennedy convinced the country, if not the ministers, and went on to be elected. And his speech left a lasting mark on American politics. It was sincere, compelling, articulate – and wrong. Not wrong about the patriotism of Catholics, but wrong about American history and very wrong about the role of religious faith in our nation’s life. And he wasn’t merely “wrong.” His Houston remarks profoundly undermined the place not just of Catholics, but of all religious believers, in America’s public life and political conversation. Today, half a century later, we’re paying for the damage.

-snip-

America’s Founders encouraged mutual support between religion and government. Their reasons were practical. In their view, a republic like the United States needs a virtuous people to survive. Religious faith, rightly lived, forms virtuous people.

-snip-


The life of our country is no more “Catholic” or “Christian” than it was 100 years ago. In fact it's arguably less so. And at least one of the reasons for it is this: Too many Catholics confuse their personal opinions with a real Christian conscience. Too many live their faith as if it were a private idiosyncrasy – the kind that they’ll never allow to become a public nuisance. And too many just don't really believe. Maybe it’s different in Protestant circles. But I hope you’ll forgive me if I say, “I doubt it.”

-snip-

First, Augustine never really offers a political theory, and there's a reason. He doesn't believe human beings can know or create perfect justice in this world. Our judgment is always flawed by our sinfulness. Therefore, the right starting point for any Christian politics is humility, modesty and a very sober realism.

-snip-

I believe abortion is the foundational human rights issue of our lifetime. We need to do everything we can to support women in their pregnancies and to end the legal killing of unborn children. We may want to remember that the Romans had a visceral hatred for Carthage not because Carthage was a commercial rival, or because its people had a different language and customs. The Romans hated Carthage above all because its people sacrificed their infants to Ba’al. For the Romans, who themselves were a hard people, that was a unique kind of wickedness and barbarism. As a nation, we might profitably ask ourselves whom and what we’ve really been worshipping in our 40 million “legal” abortions since 1973.

-snip-

The vocation of Christians in American public life does not have a Baptist or Catholic or Greek Orthodox or any other brand-specific label. John 14:6 – “I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me” – which is so key to the identity of Houston Baptist University, burns just as hot in this heart, and the heart of every Catholic who truly understands his faith. Our job is to love God, preach Jesus Christ, serve and defend God’s people, and sanctify the world as his agents. To do that work, we need to be one. Not “one” in pious words or good intentions, but really one, perfectly one, in mind and heart and action, as Christ intended. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “I do not pray for these only, but also those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (Jn17:20-21).

We live in a country that was once – despite its sins and flaws -- deeply shaped by Christian faith. It can be so again. But we will do that together, or we won’t do it at all. We need to remember the words of St. Hilary from so long ago: Unum sunt, qui invicem sunt. “They are one, who are wholly for each other.”⁹ May God grant us the grace to love each other, support each other and live wholly for each other in Jesus Christ – so that we might work together in renewing the nation that has served human freedom so well.

This is bracing, marvelous stuff.

Abortion not a right wing issue

Michael Coren, in the Catholic Register, writes:

I’ve outlined the scientific and ethical case for the unborn in the past so won’t repeat it here. What is staggering, though, is how care for children in the womb has been turned into a right-wing position. It should have nothing to do with party but if anything is more of the left than the right in that it involves the defence not only of the most vulnerable — the unborn — but also of women, people of colour, the poor and the handicapped.

Women are victims twice over. As potential mothers they are frequently pressured by men to abort, and their babies are invariably aborted by men — there are very, very few female abortionists. Information about post-abortion trauma and links to cancer is generally disguised or hidden by an overwhelmingly male pharmaceutical and medical establishment.

Pre-born women suffer in disproportionate numbers because gender specific abortion is rampant not only in developing nations but also in specific communities in North America and Europe. In contemporary China archaic misogyny has combined with modern technology in the most pernicious form. A mini-van equipped with ultrasound and abortion equipment will come to an area and, if the baby is female, the abortion takes place on the spot. Two procedures in one visit.

As for people of colour, the abortion industry has long concentrated on Africa and Asia, partly because of the number of people that can be influenced but also as part of a more sinister commitment to population control. There is a concerted campaign to reduce numbers in Africa, even though the continent could easily feed itself if we stopped taking its resources and arming its dictators who we often ease into power in the first place.

The case for the suffering of the handicapped is obvious. A virtual war has been declared on the disabled, with a pre-born baby with some detectable challenge far more likely to be killed than one considered “normal.” Park your car in a handicapped parking spot and you’ll be fined, kill your handicapped child and you’ll be given a government grant.

God will provide!

This is a wonderful story about how the life size Crucifix came to adorn the rood screen at the Anglican Use Atonement Parish:

When the church was built in 1987 there was but a simple wrought iron rail where people knelt to receive Holy Communion. When it was installed it was thought of as temporary, because the plan all along was to construct a rood screen with a communion rail incorporated into it. I found the right carpenter to build it, and plans were started. The search began for the great crucifix which would crown the screen. Catalogues were scoured, but I found nothing suitable. Word came that there was a large crucifix stored in the basement of a local convent. I went to look at it, but it wasn’t the right size. One day the idea came to me to call the Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement in Graymoor. I spoke to Sr. Alexis Joseph, S.A., who was a good friend of the parish, and the godmother of one of my daughters.

“Sister, you don’t know of any large crucifixes looking for a home, do you?” I asked. “No, I don’t,” Sister replied, “but if I hear of anything I’ll let you know.” I hung up the phone, not feeling very hopeful. Scarcely had the receiver been replaced, and the phone rang. It was Sister Alexis Joseph. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said, and then went on to tell me, “I had just hung up the phone from our conversation, and when I happened to look out the window there was a truck with a trailer behind it coming into the convent driveway. I could see there was something wrapped up on the trailer, and when I went out to greet the two men in the truck, they told me that they had salvaged something from their church in upstate New York, which was undergoing ‘renovations.’ When I asked them what it was they told me that it was a really big crucifix.”

Apparently these faithful Catholic men couldn’t bear the thought of it being thrown out, so they decided to load it onto a trailer and drive to Graymoor because, in their words, “the Sisters will know what to do with it.” Sister Alexis Joseph went on to tell me, “I shouldn’t have been surprised that it arrived just as you were looking for it!”

Good reason not to decriminalize marijuana

H/t Five Feet of Fury for this article at Pajamas Media:

There’s no question that making drugs illegal creates serious problems for our criminal justice system. It clogs the courts, it corrupts police officers and government officials, and it funds some really sleazy people. All of this is true — but it turns out that there are some substantial social costs on the other side that simply don’t get any attention. While it may sound like I have been watching Reefer Madness (1936) – a tragically overwrought portrayal of the dangers of marijuana — it turns out that mental illness is one of those social costs.

A surprising number of scholarly studies in the last 25 years have demonstrated that marijuana use seems to cause an increase in psychoses such as schizophrenia, and somewhat less dramatic mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder.

Let me emphasize: This isn’t just correlation analysis — finding that people with a current mental illness are disproportionately potheads. I am well aware that people with significant mental illness problems tend to “self-medicate” using various psychoactive drugs (including alcohol). No, these are longitudinal studies that show the marijuana use comes first, with the mental illness later in life.

Liturgical reform and archeologism

Great post by Father Anthony Chadwick over at The Anglo-Catholic. Here's an excerpt:

A few years ago, a friend invited me to accompany him on a visit to the organ of Poitiers Cathedral, a rather splendid eighteenth century instrument that had recently been restored. It has the most uncomfortable console I have ever come across. The pedalboard is of the baroque French type, and the organ is tuned to mean-tone temperament. In other words, it was a purist restoration. It was impossible to play Bach, and the temperament gave an excruciating comma even when playing in E minor – one sharp but with a sharpened leading note, the D# which was like drinking lemon juice! What is the point of spending hundreds of thousands of euros on an organ restoration when the use of the finished product is so restrictive? You can play seventeenth and eighteenth century French music on this organ, and nothing else. You can’t even accompany the liturgy if the key signature exceeds more that two sharps or flats, and don’t even think about minor keys! So much for authentic restoration. I’m all for preserving the past, but what’s wrong with a modern pedalboard and a less excruciating unequal temperament for tuning? It is a question of respect for tradition, but with intelligent innovation and development. I see the same problems in the liturgy.

I have often gone on about Sarum, which has not been regularly in use since about the seventeenth century (recusants and expatriate English priests in France, etc.). Is this not also archaeologism? I would argue that this is not the case, since it is a developed liturgy that stopped, and can be resumed in exactly the same way as the older form of the Roman rite which also was ‘stopped’ and replaced by the new rite in 1969.

Strain at a gnat and swallow a camel! Some would baulk at ‘re-booting’ a recent and developed liturgy, and would seek to restore the Missal to the pristine form and rite of the holy Fathers in the words of Pope St Pius V. When I researched the Tridentine missal, I was quite flabbergasted to discover these words coming from a Pope, so that Paul VI in 1969 could claim to be doing nothing different. We are led to believe that both Popes scraped the barnacles from the bottom of the hull and gave the boat new sails. “Returning to pristine antiquity” was the leitmotiv of the Jansenists of the Synod of Pistoia and Archbishop Bugnini.

In actual fact, despite these surprising words of the Pope, the Tridentine Missal was simply a prune-back of the 1474 Princeps Missal with some reference to available sources, and above all, the mature Roman Rite of the 11th century. It was not a ‘reconstruction’ or a new creation, even though only five sequences remained and the lectionary is left rather impoverished. What the Jansenists and the 1960’s reformers envisaged was something else. The former wanted so-called antiquity, and the latter wanted something inculturated into secular modernity.

Archaeologism is the only coherent response if you do not believe in organic development. If no continuous development is desirable or possible, then the liturgy has to be constantly on the drawing board and in the workshop, and as Luther said, the closer the Mass is to the Last Supper, the more Christian it is, or words to that effect. Always this Heraclitan notion of constant motion, noise and disturbance! The Church needs to become a spiritual home, and we need a minimum of stability!

This idea of the liturgy being in a perpetual ‘restoration workshop’ negates the ‘organic’ liturgical development identified by Newman and others in the Church’s doctrinal life and teaching.

Ghastly "women bishops" files

One of the biggest reasons why there should be no women bishops is the kind of women that hoist themselves into what they perceive as positions of power and the damage they do to the Christian faith, not only by their presence but by their witness--to say nothing of the tyrannical power they exert to prevent orthodox expressions of the faith from reasserting themselves.

Here is a case in point concerning Dr. Margot Käßmann, who was the bishop of the largest territorial Lutheran church in Germany, until she stepped down recently. Here's an excerpt of a guest post by Rev. Dr. Holger Sonntag over at the First Things blog Evangel. My bolds.

What caused her to resign? On February 20, at 11 p.m., the Saturday after Ash Wednesday, she had been caught running a red light while intoxicated. The police established her blood alcohol content as .154%. While her fellow council members assured her of their ongoing trust in her in a telephone conference on February 23, but left the final decision up to her, she resigned nonetheless on the following day. As she put it once, she wanted her “personal power to convince” to be “unhampered.” And this public moral failure was apparently seen by her as a major hindrance to such authenticity.

The reactions in Germany range from dismay (not so much about her drunk driving, but about her resignation) to respecting her integrity. Many saw her as a dynamic, honest leader who made the church credible again in the eyes of non-members. Others, however, saw her as a divisive figure who felt constrained to comment on any number of social and political issues, even without (or against) God’s clear Word, and who personalized her office as probably no one had done before in recent history.

What can be said about this major event? First of all, it was perhaps providential that she resigned from her offices on the day of St. Matthias, the man who was chosen to replace Judas.

-snip-

Perhaps it was because she did not hold her office legitimately, Dr. Käßmann made it all about herself: her views, her positions, her opinions, but also her integrity, her moral attitude. In a variation of Jesus’ saying, one could say: Those who live by authenticity will die by authenticity. Behind her Ego striving for societal stardom, the office and its actual tasks withered away. Since she did not allow the office to limit and focus her self, the office in turn then also offered her no support in times of need. Accordingly, the publicized media commentary asked only: with her moral stature and claim, can she still continue after such a public moral failure? The question was no longer asked, not even in the churches she led: does her teaching agree with God’s Word and the Lutheran confessions?

-snip-

Public opinion, fostered by the likes of Margot Käßmann, on the other hand, is naturally Donatist: moral credibility and authenticity is all it knows, both in political and ecclesiastical leaders (is this the hidden self-righteousness of the “little guy”?). And, of course, morality is here not measured by God’s Word, but by what everybody thinks is good, right, and salutary. Being for homosexual pastors, for divorce (Dr. Käßmann is divorced), and against war is then good, progressive, courageous, and loving. Being against women’s ordination, divorce, and for war, on the other hand, is bad, medieval, and discriminating against women. This type of moralism, that is actually a characteristic of unbelievers, should not hold sway in the church. Here the first question should be: what is a teacher’s teaching? Does it agree with God’s Word? Moralism, to be sure, spurred many a reform movement before Luther (just think of John Wycliffe, but also Erasmus of Rotterdam), but it typically missed the doctrinal boat entirely. The corrupt life of a minister or bishop became the focal point of popular outrage; no one cared about his teachings. Pastors experience this even today: deny baptismal regeneration, and no one even notices; move the baptismal font by one inch, and you’re in hell. On the contrary, Luther emphasized: life is earth; doctrine is heaven (cf. Am. Ed., vol. 27:41-42). This is to say: every Christian’s life is going to be messy because we are and remain sinners, although we strive by the power of the Holy Spirit to be more and more holy in our lives as well. Yet our doctrine comes from God. It is not only perfect; it makes us perfect because it is God’s light brining us the light of the world, Jesus Christ. Tolerance ought to be extended to a messy life, not to messy doctrine. Because with doctrine, heaven and hell are at stake.

Read it all.

Preach it, brother!

Ghastly "women bishops