Dr Rowan Williams stands down, Coptic Pope Shenouda passes away

The biggest ecumenical news in the past two weeks are the resignation of Dr Rowan Williams as Archbishop of Canterbury beginning next year and the death of Coptic Pope Shenouda. Both events will have ecumenical ramifications.

Dr Williams resigned as Archbishop largely because he wasn't able to hold the Anglican Communion together. A brilliant theologian and a man of deep spirituality, Rowan seemed to be the wrong man for the job. His waffling on many issues did not get him support from the conservatives who accused him of favouring gay unions and from the liberals from his backing down from supporting  liberal positions like his alleged waffling on the Church of England's decision to ordain women as priests.

However it wasn't completely Rowan's fault. The fracture lines in Anglicanism had been there ever since the church province by province decided to ordain women starting in the 1970s. The more traditional provinces in Africa and Asia dominated by an evangelical ethos, still do not ordain women. In Australia, the Sydney diocese refuses to ordain women. Debate on women's ordination hasn't died down in the Anglican Communion since then. The Church of England is likely to pass legislation allowing women to be bishops. The conservative evangelical and Anglo Catholic parties of the CoE demand that a structure be in place for Anglicans who for good conscience cannot accept women clergy.

The tragedy here is that the Anglican Communion wasn't able to fully benefit from Rowan's intellect, charisma and good naturedness. If he were Archbishop of Canterbury in a more genteel age, he would have brought the Anglican Church even closer to the Roman Church. While this was Rowan's vision, it did not make much headway due to the divisions within the Anglicans themselves even with Pope Benedict XVI's direct encouragement for the Anglicans to stay as one communion. In the end Vatican ecumenists have concluded that the unity game was lost and Rome offered a lifeboat to fleeing Anglicans in the form of an Anglican Ordinariate.

Rowan Williams will take on the mastership of Magdalene College, Cambridge. We hope that he finds peace here after all academia is where he feels most at home and a college fits his contemplative call. The next Archbishop of Canterbury has the huge task of keeping the communion together while making sure those who do not share the general theological sentiments of the majority have a place to stay.

Pope Shenouda is one of three bishops today who can be legitimately called "Pope".  The Coptic Church is one of the oldest in Christendom and has 11 million members in Egypt.  Shenouda was on the Coptic papal throne for 41 years. He opposed President Sadat's policies in the 1970s leading to his internal exile. Pope Shenouda also made historic visits to the Vatican thus cementing ecumenical relations. He also forged close relationships with the Mubarak regime and the Islamists who in later years became a significant voice in Egypt.

With the Mubarak regime gone and the parliamentary rise of Islamist parties, the next Coptic pope is likely to play a significant moderating influence in Egyptian society.

Hip, hip hooray to the newly weds!

Now that Kate and Wills have tied the knot, we wish them all the best and may they live and love happily ever after! Now I could not help but remark about these by Damian Thompson

This is what the Church of England is for

and

that cartwheeling verger!

Damian Thompson is right that the wedding liturgy shows what the CoE is best at doing. The Anglican choral tradition is best. Compare this with what is dished out at Papal ceremonials at St Peter's!

But there is something about weddings that lift up the jaded still. Perhaps because it celebrates life. The Anglican wedding liturgy is replete with traditional Catholic teaching on marriage. Protestant restraint is wedded with Catholic pagentry This is what the CoE is best at. The sermon of the Bishop of London is magnificent and this smudges out ill will on his statement about the Ordinariate Catholics sharing Anglican churches.

And Rowan cannot be questioned about his authority as Archbishop of Canterbury. It shoots down wags' prediction that he would do a Rowan Atkinson!

As for the verger, I think he can be forgiven. Is being happy that the whole shebang happened with nary a  hitch a sin?

Now the CoE will have to deal with female bishops now! If no provisions  are given for traditional bishops to care for Anglicans who oppose female bishops, expect these Anglicans to cartwheel out of the CoE and into evangelical and Anglo-Catholic continuing jurisdictions or to the Ordinariate.

And while the old question was for Catholics "Whom do you wish were all Catholic?" Answer: All Anglicans/Episcopalians!

For once we have the question in reverse: Whom do you wish were all Anglicans? Answer: All Roman Catholics!

Rowan Cantuar finally nails his true colours

The guy in red is the only one on earth that understands him!

The Anglo-Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, of whom I much admire, has finally nailed his true colours to the fence, by vowing not to allow same sex unions in Anglican churches. He finally admitted that he will stick to what the Bible says about marriage, and that is marriage is between a man and a woman full stop!

However Rowan's critics have said that it is little too late. After years of waffling on homosexual issues and unions and "The Body's Grace", it has been hard to convince them, most of them Anglicans, about this latest waffle. Rowan belongs to another church, the Rowan Catholic Church!

But as a Catholic, I do detect that despite the trademark Rowan and Anglican ambiguity, something faithful to the Magisterium is coming out of Rowan lately. I started looking more into Rowan's theology after he gave that magnificent Catholic homily at a Mass in Lourdes. Not many Catholics are aware that Rowan is resolutely anti-abortion, saying "It is impossible to view abortion other than a deliberate attempt to end a human life". He is against euthanasia and voluntary suicide.

Even "The Body's Grace" admits what faithful Roman Catholics have known all along that if a church admits the legitimacy of contraception, then it follows that it will admit other faith positions inconsistent with the Bible and tradition.

Now what do we make of Rowan Cantuar? Anglican critics from the liberals to the conservative have all but abandoned him. In fact there is a big dose truth to the rumor that his best friend Pope Benedict XVI is the only theologian on the planet that understands in what he believes in!

Methinks Rowan is too good for the Anglican Communion (and I think too for the Roman Catholic communion!)  Anglicans have suggested he goes to a monastery, confess his sins and lead a cloistered life (of which Rowan has said in an interview that he had an attraction to).  But with Rowan finally showing the Catholic he is, it may be best for him if he would revert from being Archbishop of a disintegrating communion and lead the life of a simple Reverend Father. But this time in the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham! I'm sure his best friend won't object!

Fiesta sa Quiapo: The Feast of the Black Nazarene

January 9 is the most famous patronal feast in the Philippines. On this day, the Manila commercial district of Quiapo celebrates the Feast of the Black Nazarene. The image of the Christ as the Black Nazarene was carved in Mexico and brought to Manila on a galleon from Acapulco. Popular tradition says that the black colour of the icon was a result of a shipboard fire that singed the image.

The image arrived on May 31, 1606 and was enshrined in the Recollect church in Manila. It was later transferred to the Church of San Tolentino in Intramuros (this church no longer exists). The Archbishop of Manila in 1790 ordered the transfer of the image to Quiapo Parish church (now known as the Basilica Minore of the Black Nazarene) where it remains to this day.

The Black Nazarene image is brought in procession around the district, where hundreds of thousands devotees walking barefoot in a sign of humility, follow it. The January 9 procession commemorates the transfer of the image from the Recollect church in Intramuros to Quiapo, across the Pasig River. Because of the passage of time and that many generations of devotees over the centuries have touched it, a replica of the image is processed through Manila's streets rather than the original Mexican image. Thousands of people many wearing the image's maroon dress, throw white handkerchiefs or towels, which people on the 'carroza" of the icon, wipe on the image. Devotees claim that by able to touch the image, they will be healed. Many claim that they were physically healed, but much more have claimed they were spiritually healed.

Traditionally, only men were allowed to process with the image. But in recent years, women have been allowed.

In 2010 the police estimated 5-7 million people attended the procession and religious services of the feast. The Quiapo fiesta has become notorious for devotees being trampled to death. Police and health services in recent years have made precautions to prevent a stampede but still a few people die each year.

An observer to this religious devotion may note that it is fanaticism, and that it may be un Biblical and contrary to the Gospel. Several Catholic theologians have reflected on this devotion and write that it reflects on an understanding of Christ's incarnation and suffering by a vast majority of inarticulate people (people who weren't formally catechized). To this day a majority of devotees come from the working classes.

And so the Archdiocese of Manila has initiated a catechetical program that accompanies the Black Nazarene feast. Church authorities worked closely with laypeople organizations organizing the celebrations, reminding the Gospel basis of their devotion, proper religious behaviour to fellow devotees and the importance of interior reflection during the vigil. This was so successful that no one was trampled to death in 2010.

Foreign observers have noted that the Black Nazarene fiesta is the closest Catholicism gets to having a pilgrimage that is like to Muslims going to Mecca. They still ask the question, why are there so many pilgrims and devotees?

For me the name "Nazarene" is enough explanation. Jesus was first rejected in Nazareth by his own townsfolk. This immediately caught on with millions of poor and disadvantaged Filipinos over the centuries. They were in a real sense 'rejected" by the rest of Filipino society especially the rich. Also in a deeper sense, the need to PHYSICALLY touch the Christ really has a basis in the Gospel. In St Mark 5:24-34, we read about the woman with a flow of blood, and as such was made ritually unclean and rejected by her own people. She believed that if she just were able to touch Jesus clothes, she will be healed. She did and Jesus sensed the power drain out of him and asked "Who touched me?"

The woman touched not just the Jesus the Man but the God that is Jesus. And trembling,  the woman told Jesus the truth. The woman was healed. Christianity is really an incarnational faith. There is really a need to touch another human being. The need to physically touch another human being is the first step in how we love!


If we are not afflicted, all our reason will tell us how unnecessary processing the Black Nazarene is. In the same way how it was not necessary for the woman to touch Jesus' clothes (she could have seen a doctor, which she really did!). But all this goes beyond reason.

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams said it best in his homily at Lourdes on Saint Bernadette. He preached that Bernadette, who like the millions of Black Nazarene devotees was inarticulate and very poor, recognised that with the Blessed Virgin appearing "Here was life, here was healing, here was joy"

Rowan also writes what very well describes the faith of the millions of Black Nazarene devotees, where a devotion really is "heralding some future with Christ that we can't yet get our minds around."

The poor have a future with Christ which most of us can't get!

A blessed feast of the Black Nazarene to our readers!

Vatican Radio airs an interview with Dr Rowan Williams,

The Vatican Radio recently aired an interview with Dr Rowan Williams,Archbishop of Canterbury who is on a visit to Rome to mark the 50th anniversary of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, established by Pope John XXIII in 1960.


Among the highlights of the interview are these remarks by Dr Williams


Asked to comment on Pope Benedict XVI's offer to Anglicans with Anglicanorum Coetibus as prophetic, Dr Williams said


"But prophetic? Maybe yes, in the sense that here is the Roman Catholic Church saying there are ways of being Christian in the Western church which are not restricted by historic Roman Catholic identity - that’s something we can talk about."


and about Anglican patrimony in the Ordinariate and the Ordinariate vis a vis the Church of England


"Well I think if the Ordinariate helps people evaluate Anglican legacy or patrimony, well and good, I’m happy to praise God for it. I don’t see it as an aggressive act, meant to destabilise the relations of the Churches and it remains to be seen just how large a movement we’re talking about."


Dr Williams remarks are remarkable indeed, something that was unimaginable a mere 5 years ago. The remarks go beyond the usual ecumenical niceties and shows the way to a real and practical ecumenism rooted in clear doctrine and pastoral needs.


Also Dr Williams has more or less admitted that Anglicanism will survive outside the Anglican church!