The TAC's 2007 letter to the Holy See is now published

The Anglo-Catholic has published the entire text of the 2007 letter to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith that the bishops and vicars general of the Traditional Anglican Communion(TAC) had signed on the altar, along with a Catechism of the Catholic Church. An excerpt:

From the Bishops and Vicars General of the Traditional Anglican Communion, gathered in Plenary Meeting at Portsmouth, England, in the Church of Saint Agatha, to the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, concerning their desire for unity with the See of Peter.

5^th October 2007

Grace and peace in the Name of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour!

“A new hope arises that those who rejoice in the name of Christians, but are nevertheless separated from this apostolic see, hearing the voice of the divine Shepherd, may be able to make their way into the one Church of Christ….to seek and to follow that unity which Jesus Christ implored from his Heavenly father with such fervent prayers.”

In these words in his moto proprio, Superno De Nutu, the Blessed John XXIII, responded to the visit of Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher.

A few years later, in the Sistine Chapel, in March 1966, the next Bishop of Rome, Paul VI, told the next Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, that he should look on his journey as an approach to a home:

As you cross the threshold we want you especially to feel that you are not entering the house of a stranger but that this is your home, here you have a right to be.

The Holy Father warned of the difficulty of the task of bringing about the unity of “the Church of Rome and the Church of Canterbury”:

In the field of doctrine and ecclesiastical law, we are still respectively distinct and distant; for now it must be so, for the reverence due to truth and to freedom; until such time as we may merit the supreme grace of true and perfect unity in faith and communion.

The next day, at the Basilica of Saint Paul’s Without the Walls, the Holy Father placed his ring on the Archbishop’s finger. They had just signed the Joint Declaration that was intended to begin a dialogue that would lead to full communion between Anglicans and the See of Rome. The Pope used the phrases “our dear sister church” and “united but not absorbed’. These phrases inspired Anglicans who yearned for the reuniting of the Anglican Communion with the Holy See. They waited in prayerful optimism for the fulfillment of the work of the Anglican – Roman Catholic International Commission. The Lambeth Conference of 1968 powerfully endorsed the approach to the Holy See of the Archbishop and the proposed work of the Commission. The Holy Father noted this acceptance in his homily at the Canonization of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales in 1970, when he reflected on the nature of the unity that he anticipated:

There will be no seeking to lessen the prestige and usage proper to the Anglican Church.

These words exchanged between Anglican bishops and the Holy See transformed centuries of profound mistrust and unconsummated dreams of unity.

And yet they were set against contemporary Anglican developments that were already separating the Anglicans who most cherished these new hopes from their churches.

The ordination of women to the diaconate and presbyterate, at first in North America, Hong Kong and New Zealand, and in more than half the churches of the Anglican Communion by the mid – 1990’s, created a crisis of conscience among those who termed themselves Anglican Catholics, and who held the faith of the Catholic Church on matters concerning Holy Order, the primacy of the Eucharist in the life of the Church, and the authority of the Bishop of Rome in teaching with divine authority concerning matters contested in the Church and the world.

The Holy See, in direct and frank communications with the Archbishop of Canterbury, as well as – with increasing finality – in specifically addressing these innovations in its Apostolic Teaching, defined these Anglican innovations as “new and grave” obstacles to unity.