Ecumenism fulfilling its goal.That is all Road leads to Rome.The Anglicans take the Lead.
Bishop
Brian Farrell, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting
Christian Unity, and the Archbishop of Canterbury (Photo: CNS)
Dr
Rowan Williams has told Pope Benedict XVI and the Synod of Bishops that
evangelisation is not a project, but the natural “overflow” of an
experience of Christ and his Church that transforms lives, giving them
meaning and joy.
The Archbishop of Canterbury said that “those who
know little and care even less about the institutions and hierarchies
of the Church these days” are nevertheless attracted and challenged by
Christians whose lives show they have been transformed by their
encounter with Christ.
The leader of the Anglican Communion had
been invited by Pope Benedict to deliver a major address at the synod on
the new evangelisation yesterday.
Dr Williams began his talk by
remembering the Second Vatican Council, which, he said, was a sign that
“the Church was strong enough to ask itself some demanding questions
about whether its culture and structures were adequate to the task of
sharing the Gospel with the complex, often rebellious, always restless
mind of the modern world”.
In many ways, he said, the synod on the new evangelisation is a continuation of the work of Vatican II.
Presenting
the Gospel means being confident that it has a distinctive, life-giving
message, the archbishop said. Confidence in the message, and not in
oneself, can be cultivated only through contemplation, he said.
“With
our minds made still and ready to receive, with our self-generated
fantasies about God and ourselves reduced to silence, we are at last at
the point where we may begin to grow,” he said.
“The face we need
to show to our world is the face of a humanity in endless growth toward
love, a humanity so delighted and engaged by the glory of what we look
toward that we are prepared to embark on a journey without end to find
our way more deeply into it,” Archbishop Williams told the synod.
During
an interview earlier in the day with the American Catholic News Service
and Vatican Radio, the archbishop said: “If evangelisation is just
rallying the troops or just trying to get people to sign up, something’s
missing – what’s missing is the transformed humanity that the Gospel
brings us.”
The archbishop urged the synod to support the Taizé
ecumenical community and similar ecumenical efforts that help people
learn prayer and contemplation. “The more we keep apart from each other
as Christians of different confessions,” the less convincing we will be,
he told synod members.
He also told the Pope and synod
participants that nurturing a habit of contemplation “strips away an
unthinking superiority toward other baptised believers and the
assumption that I have nothing to learn from them”.
Dr Williams, who has announced he will retire at the end of December, also had a private meeting with Pope Benedict.
Earlier
in the day, he told CNS and Vatican Radio that the Second Vatican
Council was “enormously important” for other Christians as well as for
Catholics.
“I was a teenager as the Council began, and a
practising Anglican, and what had been a very self-contained, rather
remote, exotic, fascinating, but strange body, suddenly opened up,” he
said. Seeing what the Catholic Church did with the Council led other
churches to re-think how they, too, were interacting with the wider
world and with one another.
Preparing to retire, he said he
obviously was disappointed that efforts to promote full, visible
Christian unity had not progressed further, but no one could deny that
Christians pray and work together today in a way that would have been
unimaginable in the 1950s.
“Praying together isn’t just a casual
thing, a marginal activity,” he said. When divided Christians “share the
prayer of the Church”, even if they cannot share the fullness of that
prayer in the Eucharist, they are placing themselves before God together
and showing the world what it means to be Christian.
At the same
time, he said, the Catholic Church and Anglican Communion both have
changed over the past 50 years and “we don’t, when we change, always
wait for one other”.
The archbishop did not identify specific changes,
but Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict have said the move in many
Anglican churches to ordain women priests and bishops has become a new
obstacle to full unity.
The Anglican discussions and debates took
place and continue to take place very publicly. Asked if there was
concern about finding a balance between letting people see the process
of discernment and not scandalising people with the differences existing
within a Christian community, he said, “the desire not to give scandal
is doubtless very worthy in some ways, but it’s so often an excuse for
denial [or] sweeping things under the carpet”.
At the same time,
he said, “there is a real spiritual, and not just practical, question
about a Church which gets so obsessed with its own internal church
politics and conflicts – the drama, the clashes and controversy, what I
call the soap opera of Church life – there’s something spiritually very
damaging if we just sort of wallow in that. And thus, from time to time,
pastors and teachers of the Church have to say, ‘Whoa, step back, just
remind yourselves of what we’re here for’.”
Without
contemplation,
the richness of spirituality and the experience of faith in Jesus, he
said, “it’s just a matter of winning arguments or winning battles, God
help us”.
In his 10 years as head of the Church of England, he
said, one of the most enjoyable and faith-confirming things he did was
to visit schools and parishes, being with “people who are doing what
matters”.
One of the “great illusions” bishops can fall prey to,
he said, is thinking that what they do in the office is what really
matters.
Instead, he said, people who are questioning, people who are
educating and offering guidance, people who are “developing in faithful
discipleship” are doing the work of the Church.
Source:
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2012/10/11/dr-rowan-williams-joint-prayer-and-contemplation-are-key-to-evangelising-the-world/
It was not until 1952, through the Mariazell Manifesto, that the Catholic Church [gave up its claim to being the national church and] brought to an end the ill-fated political Catholicism (For example, Prelate Ignaz Seipel as Chancellor.) [This was the “Roman Catholic priest, twice chancellor of Austria (1922–24 and 1926–29), whose use of the Fascist paramilitary Heimwehr in his struggle against Austria’s Social Democrats led to a strengthening of Fascism in his country.”] [2]
I
observe with particular pleasure the view you have taken of the
immunity of Religion from civil jurisdiction, in every case where it
does not trespass on private rights or the public peace. This has always
been a favorite principle with me; and it was not with my approbation,
that the deviation from it took place in Congs., when they appointed
Chaplains, to be paid from the Natl. Treasury. It would have been a much
better proof to their Constituents of their pious feeling if the
members had contributed for the purpose, a pittance from their own
pockets. As the precedent is not likely to be rescinded, the best that
can now be done, may be to apply to the Constn. the maxim of the law, de
minimis non curat.
There has been another deviation from the strict principle in the
Executive Proclamations of fasts & festivals, so far, at least,
as they have spoken the language of injunction, or have lost sight of
the equality of all religious sects in the eye of the Constitution.
Whilst I was honored with the Executive Trust I found it necessary on
more than one occasion to follow the example of predecessors. But I was
always careful to make the Proclamations absolutely indiscriminate, and
merely recommendatory; or rather mere designations of a day, on which
all who thought proper might unite in consecrating it to religious
purposes, according to their own faith & forms. In this sense, I
presume you reserve to the Govt. a right to appoint particular days for
religious worship throughout the State, without any penal sanction
enforcing the worship. I know not what may be the way of thinking on
this subject in Louisiana. I should suppose the Catholic portion of the
people, at least, as a small & even unpopular sect in the U. S.,
would rally, as they did in Virga. when religious liberty was a
Legislative topic, to its broadest principle. Notwithstanding the
general progress made within the two last centuries in favour of this
branch of liberty, & the full establishment of it, in some parts
of our Country, there remains in others a strong bias towards the old
error, that without some sort of alliance or coalition between Govt.
& Religion neither can be duly supported. Such indeed is the
tendency to such a coalition, and such its corrupting influence on both
the parties, that the danger cannot be too carefully guarded agst. And
in a Govt. of opinion, like ours, the only effectual guard must be found
in the soundness and stability of the general opinion on the subject.
Every new & successful example therefore of a perfect separation
between ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance. And I have
no doubt that every new example, will succeed, as every past one has
done, in shewing that religion & Govt. will both exist in
greater purity, the less they are mixed together. It was the belief of
all sects at one time that the establishment of Religion by law, was
right & necessary; that the true religion ought to be
established in exclusion of every other; And that the only question to
be decided was which was the true religion. The example of Holland
proved that a toleration of sects, dissenting from the established sect,
was safe & even useful. The example of the Colonies, now
States, which rejected religious establishments altogether, proved that
all Sects might be safely & advantageously put on a footing of
equal & entire freedom; and a continuance of their example since
the declaration of Independence, has shewn that its success in Colonies
was not to be ascribed to their connection with the parent Country. If a
further confirmation of the truth could be wanted, it is to be found in
the examples furnished by the States, which have abolished their
religious establishments. I cannot speak particularly of any of the
cases excepting that of Virga. where it is impossible to deny that
Religion prevails with more zeal, and a more exemplary priesthood than
it ever did when established and patronised by Public authority. We are
teaching the world the great truth that Govts. do better without Kings
& Nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other
lesson that Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the
aid of Govt.
THEY WILL POINT TO CALAMITY ON LAND & SEA ..WRITTEN June 28, 1904
of the week, pleading tradition and custom in behalf of this man-made institution. They will point to calamities on land and sea--to the storms of wind, the FLOODS, the earthquakes, the destruction by fire--as judgments indicating God's displeasure because Sunday is not sacredly observed. These calamities will increase more and more, one disaster will follow close upon the heels of another; and those who make void the law of God will point to the few who are keeping the Sabbath of the fourth commandment as the ones who are bringing wrath upon the world. This falsehood is Satan's device that he may ensnare the unwary.--Southern Watchman, June 28, 1904. {ChS 155.2} 
great physician who can heal all their maladies, he will bring disease and disaster, until populous cities are reduced to ruin and desolation. Even now he is at work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific hailstorms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, Satan is exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence. These visitations are to become more and more frequent and disastrous. Destruction will be upon both man and beast. "The earth mourneth and fadeth away," "The haughty people . . . do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant." Isaiah 24:4, 5. {CH 461.1}
Calamities will come--calamities most awful, most unexpected; and these destructions will follow one after another. If there will be a heeding of the warnings that God has given, and if churches will repent, returning to their allegiance, then other cities may be spared for a time. But if men who have been deceived continue in the same way in which they have been walking, disregarding the law of God, and presenting falsehoods before the people, God allows them to suffer calamity, that their senses may be awakened. 
The time of God's destructive judgments is the time of mercy for those who have had no opportunity to learn what is truth. Tenderly will the Lord look upon them. His heart of mercy is touched; His hand is still stretched out to save, while the door is closed to those who would not enter.-- Testimonies, vol. 9, p. 97. 56.2} 
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2012/10/11/dr-rowan-williams-joint-prayer-and-contemplation-are-key-to-evangelising-the-world/
Among the reasons for the change a spike in the number of American adults who say they have no religion. The Pew study, released Tuesday, found that about 20 percent of Americans say they have no religious affiliation, an increase from 15 percent in the last five years.
