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Tag Archives: communio

Unity for Evangelisation

14 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Uncategorized

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catholicism, communio, evangelisation, new evangelisation, unity

As you may have picked up, I am currently living at St Patrick’s, Soho Square, where I’ll be based over the summer whilst I complete my dissertation and await news of my next move. It’s a fantastic parish to be living in – lots of people my age, daily holy hour, public Morning and Evening Prayer, meals together, and so central I can walk to almost anywhere in central London in about 20 minutes.

St Patrick’s is now well-known following a significant and impressive facelift overseen by Fr Alexander Sherbrooke, the Parish Priest. I was fortunate enough to deacon the reopening ceremonies with Archbishop Nichols, Bishop James Conley, and Cardinal Pell, last year, and it really is a pleasure to enter the church each morning and pray. There are very few churches where you can walk in and be content with where everything is – this is one of them.

The parish is also home to the St Patrick’s Evangelisation School (SPES). This provides young adults with nine months of formation in the Catholic faith, in a context where there is daily Mass, communal meals and offices, and community living in central London. It’s tough work – regular essays and daily conferences and seminars – but it’s so impressive to see the result: Catholic adults who are ready to lead catechesis in their parishes and institutions when they leave.

The parish also hosts visitors. At the moment (aside from me!) there is a Spanish seminarian here from Valencia, and during Nightfever last week (see this post) we also had a German seminarian from St Boniface’s home town of Fulda.

What has been so encouraging for me is the immediate sense of solidarity between us. The SPES graduates, the seminarians; all of us share a vision and hope for the Church which – I think we would all say – is so well articulated by Pope Benedict. It’s a confident Catholicism which looks out to the world and speaks boldly of the love and grace of the life lived in communion with the Church, and which is not afraid of proclaiming unfashionable truths firmly, but with the charity and gentleness which our Lord himself shows us when we err.

When I was an Anglican seminarian we used to joke about the termly get-togethers between the theological colleges in Oxford. So varied were they that we called them “Interfaith Worship”.

The Catholic Church is not by any means uniform – a healthy plurality which reveals a genuine unity of faith is no bad thing – but there is an immediate universality between Catholics, and it’s something which only shared communion can produce. This is what the world needs if we are to bring about a change, and particularly as the Global Village becomes a smaller and more intimate place, we need to draw closer together so the voice of Christ can be heard above the noise and bustle. Ut unum sint!

The Catholc View

26 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by Fr James Bradley in Uncategorized

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Anglicanism, authority, Benedict XVI, communio, priesthood, teaching

Yesterday morning I was visited by a French journalist from Pèlerin, a weekly Catholic magazine. I wasn’t expecting the visit, but Gwénola de Coutard (@gdecoutard), the journaliste, is in the UK to write a feature on women clergy in the Church of England and she wanted the view of someone who had become a Catholic as a result of such developments within Anglicanism.

Two alarms bells rang in my mind – first, do I really want to get into the ins and outs of becoming a Catholic again, just to have things skewed into a frenzy of words like ‘bigot’, ‘misogynist’, and ‘defector’ and, secondly, do I really want to speak to a Catholic magazine that wants to write a feature on women priests. But all of these concerns were laid aside when we started talking, and I realised very quickly that actually what was wanted was an apologetic defence of the Church’s teaching on the Priesthood, and an explanation that the ordination of women was not – is not – in itself a reason to become a Catholic, but rather represents a symptom of a wider question of authority outside the Catholic Church. So we talked.

When I was preparing to be received into the full communion of the Catholic Church just last year, I knew that it would be exhilarating to be in communion with well over a billion people. I knew that visible communion with the Successor of St Peter, with the bishops, and with those great figures of sanctity whose writings had lined my walls for years, would be immense. And I have not been disappointed. But beyond that I have experienced a profound and genuine sense of peace – a peace which comes from letting-go of individual opinion and debate, and resting in the safe assurance of the Church’s teaching.

After the election of Pope Benedict XVI, Jeremy Paxman interviewed Cristina Odone and the-then-Fr Patrick Burke on Newsnight. In the interview Mgr Burke, who was a student of Cardinal Ratzinger and now works in the CDF, paraphrased a line that is often quoted from Ratzinger’s own writings – “The Truth of Jesus Christ is not measured by public opinion”.

For those of us used to tackling the biannual wave of General Synod votes, such a line rings very true. But, more than that, it reminds us that it is not our individual decisions to assent or dissent from Church teaching – in relation to the nature of the Eucharist, or the Priesthood, or Marriage, or any other area of faith, morals, and doctrine – that makes something true or false. Rather, that relates to our own relationship with the Church. And if we believe that Christ is truly present in the Church, that the Church is the Body of Christ on earth, then those decisions impact on our relationship with the Lord also.

We can’t hold the faith in isolation, not just because we need and desire communion with the Church, but because an individualistic faith where we decide on the rights and wrongs of doctrine, isn’t one which is Holy, Catholic or Apostolic. We don’t claim to be guardians of ‘natural religious instincts’ loosely basing our lives on a man-made moral code (see Fr Stephen Wang’s post on this here), but the mystical body of Christ, living and witnessing to his truth in a world where man-made moral codes come, change, and disappear to suit the age.

I’ll be interested to see what Gwénola writes. I know she’s hoping to speak to the Bishop of Ebbsfleet too, but if I’m honest it won’t keep me up at night worrying, because if there’s one thing I’ve grown to know and appreciate more than anything else, it’s that there’s no ‘I’ in Catholic.

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