Anglicanorum coetibus: "Annexation", "theatricals" and "unintended consequences"

The Apostolic Constitution making provision for Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans who wish to enter full communion with the Catholic Church has been published. The English text, along with a press release, Complementary Norms and a commentary from the Rector of the Gregorian University in Rome can be found here, at the Vatican website.

The title of this blog coverage hasn't quite got the idea: Released: Apostolic Constitution addressing annexing Anglicans into the Catholic Church. It does give rise to a quiet chuckle, though.

Article 11(3) and 11(4) of the Complementary Norms seem to go in the opposite direction, with a suggestion of "high church theatricals":

§3. A former Anglican Bishop who belongs to the Ordinariate may be invited to participate in the meetings of the Bishops’ Conference of the respective territory, with the equivalent status of a retired bishop.

§4. A former Anglican Bishop who belongs to the Ordinariate and who has not been ordained as a bishop in the Catholic Church, may request permission from the Holy See to use the insignia of the episcopal office.

Article 6 (1) of the Complementary Norms:

In consideration of Anglican ecclesial tradition and practice, the Ordinary may present to the Holy Father a request for the admission of married men to the presbyterate in the Ordinariate, after a process of discernment based on objective criteria and the needs of the Ordinariate. These objective criteria are determined by the Ordinary in consultation with the local Episcopal Conference and must be approved by the Holy See.

seems to weaken article VI (2) of the Apostolic Constitution itself:

§2. The Ordinary, in full observance of the discipline of celibate clergy in the Latin Church, as a rule (pro regula) will admit only celibate men to the order of presbyter. He may also petition the Roman Pontiff, as a derogation from can. 277, §1, for the admission of married men to the order of presbyter on a case by case basis, according to objective criteria approved by the Holy See.

It does this by recognising the Anglican tradition as being the factor underlying its provision for married clergy. I have already posted on my concern about the witness to celibacy ( and here) of the move towards Personal Ordinariates, and the denial of a change of discipline in this regard in the press release accompanying the Apostolic Constitution does nothing to counter the provisions of the Complementary Norms.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is identified as the authoritative expression of faith professed by the members of an Ordinariate (I (5) of the Apostolic Constitution). If the Catechism is the norm of faith for those joining the Catholic Church from the C of E, can't it also be held up as the norm of faith for those who dissent from within the Catholic Church? And, though some paragraphs express teaching of the extraordinary magisterium of the Church, it is, in itself, and exercise of the ordinary magisterium. Ecclesial implications of this might reach beyond the Ordinariates.

The provision that clergy might in case of necessity undertake paid secular employment in addition to their priestly duties (article 7 (3) of the Complementary Norms) is also interesting. This might provide an interesting model for "worker priests" - whoops, sorry, the modern term should be "industrial chaplaincy". Now, I do think there are interesting possibilities here that could extend beyond the Ordinariates.

So we have "annexation", "theatricals" and some "unintended consequences".

PS: I wonder whether there will be the same debate over what constitutes a "coetibus" in this context as there was in the context of Summorum Pontificum?

PPS: The post at Catholic Analysis is a useful complement to my remarks above. Catholic Analysis has a different take on the celibacy question than I have:

Two points strike me as important: 1.) the embrace of legitimate liturgical diversity in the Roman Rite, as opposed to neo-Tridentine uniformity; and 2.) married clergy among the new Catholics, which we can term "clerical diversity." Both points emphasize that the "Benedictine" model of this Pope does not match that of the supertraditionalists.

PPPS: Further comment at Valle Adurni, which focusses in part on the question of celibacy. I had thought, too, to comment on the intention that the Ordinariates come under the supervision of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This makes sense if one views the Ordinariates as being akin to the situations of groups that formerly came under the remit of the Ecclesia Dei commission that has now been taken over by (sorry, subsumed into) the same Congregation. The provisions do, however, refer to the other dicasteries of the Curia having a role according to their competence.

Dying

I posted yesterday about the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP). Before Mass this morning I spoke with a nurse who works in our local hospital, and discussed the LCP with her. That conversation reminded how much the words that we use in describing the end of a patient's life communicate messages about how we value - or do not value - that time in a patient's life. Different words that we used in our conversation were "difficult", "horrible", "cruel", "existing, not living".

I was comfortable with the word "difficult" - reaching the end of your life, or accompanying someone else as they reach the end of their life - can be difficult. But I think a major part of the problem in being pro-life in the context of the end of life is that we do not promote a positive and hopeful language to talk about that time of a person's life. The experience of hopelessness, both on the part of the patient and on the part of those accompanying the patient, seems to arise simply because no-one challenges a language that enshrines a hidden agenda of despair.

I then saw this post at Diakonia - and was very struck that here the moment or time of a person's dying was seen as being worthy of a photographic record. Yes, accompanying someone as they are dying is difficult. But it is also, like other great moments of life, an irreplaceable moment, a moment that should be lived in its full meaning rather than being abandoned to despair.

Abortion at the heart of wrangling over US health care legislation

Report here from the New York Times. I haven't been following this in detail, but it looks like an interesting development. I gather that the health care provisions - a key part of President Obama's electoral platform - have gone through the House of Representatives with a majority in single figures, and restrictions on federal funding of abortion being included in order to achieve that majority. How the legislation will fare in the Senate is still to be seen.

From the political point of view, if the New York Times report is giving a correct impression, it is interesting to see that it is pro-life Democrats - ie President Obama's own party - who were key in securing the inclusion of an amendment restricting federal funding of abortion.

Blog-by-the-Sea has a useful comment on this, and some links to further coverage.

Pro-abortion conference gets rough ride in Ireland

Having just visited Ireland, I am quite happy to link to this report at John Smeaton's blog.

"God is back and Europe as a whole still doesn't get it"

I should really have given this post the proper title of Lord Sacks' lecture - "Religion in the Twenty-First Century".  Jonathan Sacks is the Chief Rabbi here in the UK, and his lecture was the 2009 Annual Theos Lecture. H/T to Auntie Joanna who put me on to this; the Daily Telegraph report, to which Auntie Joanna links, is here.

The homepage of Theos is here, and this page explains the aims of Theos. One can perhaps summarise the aims as being about research into and encouragement of dialogue between religious faith and contemporary society. A report of Lord Sacks lecture can be found at this page; a link towards the bottom of the page allows you to download the transcript of the lecture.

Lord Sacks asks first: Why has religion survived? He answers: because the human being is an animal that seeks meaning. He argues that four of the key components of contemporary culture and life do not provide an answer to that search for meaning: not the market, not politics and the state, not science and not philosophy.

So, if we search for meaning, we will not in the twenty-first century find it in the market, in the state, in science or in philosophy. It is that principled abdication of the search for meaning by the four great institutions of modernity that has created the space which religion has returned to fill, and which indeed it always did fill.

 Lord Sacks makes an interesting - and subtle - point about the failure of these four institutions in the search for meaning. On the one hand, we might view their failure in this regard as precisely that - a failing which could be corrected by including a search for meaning in their remit. But Lord Sacks asserts that it is quite correct that these four institutions, as he calls them, should retain an autonomy from the search for meaning.

This is because Lord Sacks sees religion as having its place in what we, today, would call civil society, and not in institutions of the state; indeed, religion needs a rightful distance from such institutions. [Pope Benedict would call this a "rightful secularity", not to be confused with "secularism", the banishing of religion from public life altogether.] Lord Sacks cites a nineteenth century French diplomat, commenting on his experience of the separation of Church and state in America:

What then did [Alexis de Tocqueville] see religion doing in the United States? He saw that it sanctified the family, that it created community, that it encouraged philanthropy, that it built schools, that it taught responsibility, that it brought people together for the common good. It created what Tocqueville called “the art of association” and another beautiful phrase, “habits of the heart,” which he described as “the essential apprenticeship in liberty.” He saw religion as the essential counter-balance to what he described – again 180 years ago - as “the greatest danger facing America.” It was a new phenomenon in those days and he had to invent a word to describe it, and the word he invented was ‘individualism’.

He in other words saw that religion was the counterweight to individualism, and because of that it sustained a free and democratic society. In the terminology of today, we would say that religion sustained the third sector that is not the state, that is not the market but it is civil society. ....[de Tocqueville] says: “In the United States, religion exercises but little influence on the laws and upon the details of public opinion, but it directs the customs of the community, and by regulating domestic life, it regulates the state”.

 And Lord Sacks continues:

So, we would expect, if Tocqueville got it right, to be able to test that in practice. If Tocqueville was right, then we would expect any society in which religion declines, in that society, civil society would decline. Families would become fragile, marriages would decline, communities would atrophy, society would cease to have a shared morality. And by those tests, 100 years later, Tocqueville got it exactly right.

I don't think we can find a more accurate description of the societies of Europe today than this.

Lord Sacks interestingly identifies the unwillingness of many in European nations to make the sacrifices necessary to bring up children in families as a major issue for the future of European culture. In that sense, the population of Europe is dying out for want of generosity of its members for the generations of the future. One thing that a religious culture will give is a generosity for larger families. I recall being struck by much the same thought when listening to recent media coverage of research into the numbers of children being conceived with Downs Syndrome - that in the UK some 90% of babies considered to have a risk of being born with Downs Syndrome are aborted, and that, in many cases, the potential parents have decided for abortion purely after communication of the risk factor for Downs Syndrome and before any consideration with their medical practitioners of the life opportunities of their baby, spoke to me of a huge failure in generosity. Not so much that this failure of generosity occurs on the part of the potential parents involved; rather they are the manifestation of a lack of generosity towards someone who is weaker or less well off that is systemic to our society as a whole.

So to repeat. Tocqueville was right: the place of religion is in civil society where it achieves many things essential to liberal democratic freedom, but two in particular: Number one, it sanctifies marriage and the family and the obligations of parenthood; and number two, it safeguards the non-relativist moral principles on which Western freedom is based. That is why Tocqueville described religion as “the surest pledge for the duration of freedom.”

It may not be religion that is dying, it may be liberal democratic Europe that is in danger, demographically and in its ability to defend its own values.

 When turning to the opportunities and imperatives for the future, Lord Sacks, in passing, comments on the way in which conflicts that would at one time have been seen as political have come to be "religionized". This is why he has earlier recognised that religion should not be political. An intellectually open and tolerant religiosity is necessary to respond to this fundamentalist religion. Lord Sacks calls for a new dialogue between religion and science - recognising that, though science in itself is not providing the answer to questions of the meaning of human existence, its discoveries do nevertheless have deeply religious implications. He argues that religions, having an international character, are in some ways better placed to mobilise energies on a global scale than are nation states - issues such as global warming and international debt relief are examples he cites. Religions can engage with politicians, scientists and economists on issues like this.

Finally, religious groups in the liberal democratic state must be prepared to enter into serious respectful conversations with secular humanists, with charities, with other groups in civil society about the nature of the common good and the kind of society we wish to create for our grandchildren not yet born. At the moment we don’t fully have this. At the moment in Britain I would say that religious groups tend more to act as pressure groups or lobbying groups than as conversation partners. But, that conversation is there to be had and I hope Theos will play a part in facilitating it. It is doable.

 Lord Sacks is, I think, more optimistic than I would be about the possibilities of this last point. Secular humanists are not necessarily themselves open to this conversation - the National Secular Society, for example, demonstrate a strong hostility towards religious belief rather than a certain neutrality that would show openness to dialogue. The political state also seeks to impose a secular morality - via government "five year plans", targets, and the like - that puts limits on the operation of religions in civil society.

Are they playing God?

This is the headline on the front page of the Romford Recorder, our most significant local newspaper. The sub-headline is: "Hospital stops food and medication for patients close to death".

The newspaper is reporting on a meeting of the local authority's Health Oversight and Scrutiny Committee. This committee is made up of local councillors who are not members of the local authority's Cabinet, and its role, with regard to matters of health, is as follows:

1. Providing a critical friend challenge to policy and decision makers.

2. Driving improvement in public services.

3. Holding key local partners to account.

4. Enabling the voice and concerns of the public.
 
The conception of oversight and scrutiny committees is somewhat similar, at the level of local government, to that of parliamentary committees that shadow departments at the level of national government.
 
One of the agenda items for the meeting of the Committee on 3rd November was the use of the Liverpool Care Pathway in the local NHS hospital trust. The Chair of the Committee, Cllr Ted Eden is quoted as saying:

Reports of the use of this pathway and its effects, including first-hand testimony I've heard, have been quite appalling. At precisely the moment [patients] need care, they are too often placed on what seems little more than a pathway to oblivion. In my view, this could easily be seen as playing God or even killing people off."

The representatives of the NHS hospital trust are reported as defending the Pathway as providing the best possible course of action for patients in terminal pain and agitation.

There is no hidden agenda. On the LCP patients die with dignity and with the best quality of life they have left.
 
There is nothing sinister about this - the LCP is not about shortening life. We do not believe in euthanasia, either passive or active, it's about excellence of care.

It is interesting that a web page which might be considered the "home" of the Liverpool Care Pathway includes the following sentence: "The use of the LCP does not preclude use of antibiotics or artificial nutrition or hydration but it does ask the professional to consider an appropriate decision for that moment in time and document the reason for decisions made."
 
But a set of sample documentation that I have been able to find for recording the patient assessment at the start of an implementation of the pathway has as Goal 3 the discontinuation of inappropriate interventions and lists blood test, antibiotics and intravenous fluids and medications as points to be considered under this heading. The wording clearly implies a presumption of discontinuation, and it views any "NO" to discontinuation as a variance from the pathway, to be recorded as a variance and justified, with a practitioner signature. No justification is expected for discontinuation, just a tick in a box. Goal 3a refers to discontinuation of inappropriate nursing interventions.
 
The LCP also expects anticipatory prescribing of drugs, ahead of the emergence of symptoms. This provision does seem, from the sample documentation, to include the administration of diamorphine in this anticipatory way.
 
[There are some good goals indicated in the documentation, an example being those related to spiritual and pastoral care of the patient and their family/friends.]

What we can see here, though, is an interesting use of local democracy to challenge the practice of the local NHS hospital trust.

My trade union to oppose Government proposals on sex education?

The General Secretary of my trade union has a little paragraph in The Times today - utterly illogical and rather muddled it is, to say the least. I rather suspect that the leaders of other teacher unions were a bit more savvy than she was, and did not let themselves get drawn in to commenting.

With one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe, whatever we are doing at the moment we are not doing well. We have got to stop being Janus headed about this and grow up as we expect young people to grow up. We can't infantalise them and then expect them to behave responsibly.

So, I assume that my trade union is now going to advocate a change of strategy ... and not just "more of the same" sponsored by those with vested interests.

It is also interesting to note that The Times is reporting a Catholic Education Service spokeswoman as saying that they are "disappointed" with the removal of the total right of withdrawal- yesterday's spin by Ed Balls might well have been claiming a level of support from the CES that was not justified. There is some relief that the right of withdrawal will remain until age 15 - and, if the CES expressed some welcome of that in the context of removal of the absolute right of withdrawal, one has some understanding of what they were saying.

James Preece, alongside my General Secretary, does a rather better job of arguing for the parental role on this matter.