Vatican

Vatican reveals plan to welcome disaffected Anglicans

Responds to request made by group known as Traditional Anglican Communion
By John L. Allen Jr.
In a move with potentially sweeping implications for relations between the Catholic church and some 80 million Anglicans worldwide, the Vatican has announced the creation of new ecclesiastical structures to absorb disaffected Anglicans wishing to become Catholics. The structures will allow those Anglicans to hold onto their distinctive spiritual practices, including the ordination of married former Anglican clergy as Catholic priests.
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Synod leaders: Church needs to get its house in order

'Selfishness, greed and ethnic conflicts are destroying our societies'
By John L Allen Jr
Rome Grappling with how Catholicism in Africa can be a force for reconciliation, justice and peace, a handful of African bishops seemed to suggest today that in the first place, the church needs to get its own house in order. In effect, these prelates suggested, it will be difficult for the African church to preach what it’s not seen to practice.
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A great weekend for affirmative orthodoxy in Prague

By John L. Allen Jr.
Prague, Czech Republic Pope Benedict XVI’s Sept. 26-28 trip to the Czech Republic in some ways loomed as a potential minefield, given that it’s one of the most secular societies on earth, as well as a land that harbors a traditional animus against both Germans and the Catholic church. For a one-sentence summary of how things went, here it is: Affirmative orthodoxy is alive and well, and it had a great weekend in Prague. Th
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Healing the schism with traditionalists

By John L. Allen Jr.
From a strictly demographic point of view, one could argue that the intense interest surrounding relations between the Vatican and the Society of St. Pius X, popularly known as the "Lefebvrites," is terribly exaggerated. Yet for a variety of reasons, the Vatican's effort to reconcile with the Lefebvrites carries a significance way out of proportion to those numbers.
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Anglican leader, in Rome, optimistic

Nov. 20, 2009
By Francis X. Rocca, Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY -- Speaking in Rome a month after the Vatican unveiled plans to facilitate the conversion of conservative Anglicans to Catholicism, the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion offered a moderately hopeful assessment of ecumenical relations between the two churches.

The "ecumenical glass is genuinely half-full," Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams said Thursday (Nov. 19), at the conclusion of a 30-minute lecture at the Pontifical Gregorian University.

Pope John Paul reported closer to 'venerable'

Nov. 17, 2009
By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY -- The cardinal- and bishop-members of the Congregation for Saints' Causes voted unanimously Nov. 16 to recommend that Pope Benedict XVI formally recognize that Pope John Paul II heroically lived the Christian virtues, Italian newspapers reported.

The Vatican did not deny or confirm that the vote took place because the process is supposed to be secret until Pope Benedict signs the decree recognizing the heroic virtue of his predecessor and declares him venerable.

Pope Benedict generally signs a dozen or more decrees three times a year: in April, in June or July and in December.

Members of the saints' congregation meet regularly to study the life stories, eyewitness testimony and other documentation promoting the causes of proposed saints. The information is contained in a "positio," or position paper, prepared by the promoter of the individual's cause.

When the cardinals and bishops are satisfied that the "positio" is complete and demonstrates that the sainthood candidate lived an extraordinarily holy life, they recommend the pope sign the first decree.

Hope among thorns

After Vatican II, Cardinal Basil Hume achieved transition while preserving continuity

Nov. 11, 2009
By John Wilkins

Essay

In the English Catholic church, cardinal archbishops of Westminster tend to punch above their weight. One of those who punched hardest was Basil Hume. It was to this Benedictine monk that the nation came to look for spiritual leadership, and that same quality was recognized internationally -- including by the American and European bishops.

Hume received a number of invitations from the United States. The last one asked him to address a meeting of the bishops’ conference in Tucson, Ariz., in June 1999. Shortly before, in April, he learned that he had advanced cancer, so would not be able to go. Instead he videotaped what he wanted to say, and it was played to the bishops’ assembly on June 18, the day after his death. This last testament from beyond the grave is as pertinent now as it was then.

Traditional Anglicans hope for Easter reunion

Nov. 10, 2009
By Deborah Gyapong, Catholic News Service

OTTAWA -- The primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion said he hopes churches take action to enter into full communion with the Catholic church before Easter.

Archbishop John Hepworth said he reacted "with overwhelming joy" to the apostolic constitution published Nov. 9 establishing the structure for Anglicans to be in full communion with the Catholic church.

Nostalgia is not a path to the future

Nov. 10, 2009
An NCR Editorial
Detail of text from the 1962 Roman Missal, commonly known as the Tridentine Mass (CNS photo/Nancy Wiechec)

Editorial

It has been an open secret that powerful forces in the church’s leadership have strongly opposed the reforms set in motion by the Second Vatican Council and have worked quietly yet assiduously during the past 40 years to roll back what has been accomplished. The regression is usually couched in Orwellian churchspeak, which lavishes praise on the council even as its intentions are reversed. Or sometimes in this parallel universe the argument is made that nothing really happened during the gathering of the world’s bishops over a four-year period to redirect the church and its mission.

The Vatican angles in rightist waters

Nov. 06, 2009
By Hans Küng
Fr. Hans Küng in his office in Tübingen, Germany, in 2008 (CNS/KNA/Harald Oppitz)

Viewpoint

After Pope Benedict XVI’s offenses to Jews and Muslims, to Protestants and to reform-oriented Catholics, it is now the turn of the Anglican Communion, which encompasses some 77 million members and is the third-largest Christian confession after the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches. Now that he has brought back the extreme anti-reformist faction of the Society of Pius X into the fold, Benedict hopes to fill up the dwindling ranks of the Catholic church with Anglicans sympathetic to Rome. Their conversion to the Catholic church is supposed to be made easier: Anglican priests and bishops shall be allowed to retain their standing, even when married. Traditionalists of the churches unite under the cupola of St. Peter’s.

Burke's influence is set to grow

Vatican names pugnacious prelate to congregation

Nov. 06, 2009
By John L Allen Jr
Archbishop Raymond L. Burke (CNS/Paul Haring)

Analysis

Archbishop Raymond Burke’s Oct. 17 appointment to the powerful Congregation for Bishops offers an illustration of how in the Vatican, even the ordinary can be extraordinary.

The appointment means that the 61-year-old Burke, a frequently polarizing figure during his 12-year run as a bishop in the United States, is now in a position to put his stamp on the next generation of Catholic bishops all over the world.

Cardinal Franc Rodé statement on Apostolic Visitation

Nov. 03, 2009
By Thomas C. Fox

The following statement was issued by the Vatican Press Office Nov. 3, 2009:

STATEMENT OF THE PREFECT OF THE CONGREGATION OF INSTITUTES OF CONSECRATED LIFE AND SOCIETIES OF APOSTOLIC LIFE, CARD. FRANC RODÉ, C.M., ON THE APOSTOLIC VISITATION OF INSTITUTES OF WOMEN RELIGIOUS IN THE USA

Since the Apostolic Visitation of Institutes of Women Religious was first announced in January 2009, there has been great interest in the study that the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CICLSAL) has undertaken to look into the fundamental aspects of women religious in the United States. This Apostolic Visitation hopes to encourage vocations and assure a better future for women religious. Having read many news accounts and received various inquiries, I offer the following in response.

For many years this dicastery had been listening to concerns expressed by American Catholics – religious, laity, clergy and hierarchy – about the welfare of religious women and consecrated life in general, and had been considering an Apostolic Visitation as a means to assess and constructively address these concerns.

Cardinal Rodé defends apostolic visitation of US nuns

Nov. 03, 2009
By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service
Cardinal Franc Rodé (Photo: Catholic News Service)

VATICAN CITY
Cardinal Franc Rodé, head of the Vatican office overseeing religious orders, said he requested an apostolic visitation of women's religious orders in the United States to help the sisters and to respond to concerns for their welfare.

"This apostolic visitation hopes to encourage vocations and assure a better future for women religious," the cardinal said in a statement released Nov. 3 by the Vatican.

Cardinal Rodé, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, said his statement was in response to "many news accounts" and inquiries about the visitation, which was announced in January.

Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York posted an article on his blog Oct. 29 listing what he called examples of anti-Catholicism in The New York Times, including an Oct. 21 column regarding the apostolic visitation.

African synod heard the cry of women, laity

Oct. 29, 2009
By NCR Editorial Staff

Should historians in the future rummage through the final documents of Vatican synods, they will find tepid accounts, blandly written and largely cleansed of the motivating tensions and contentious discussions of the moment.

We expect the same of documents that ultimately will be compiled and then stashed as a result of the recently completed Synod on Africa. The sad consequence, if past experience is any indication, is that the life in evidence at the synod, the energy bubbling up from this somewhat newly minted and wildly growing version of an old, old church, will be ignored. Much of that life issues from the questions being raised about the future, about the empowerment of women, about a larger role for laity. It is the result of the kind of back-and-forth that disturbs the Vatican’s meta-narrative, a vision of calm continuum that needs only to be reinforced.