A Treasure to Be Shared: Understanding Anglicanorum Coetibus ed. by Walter Oxley and Ulrich Rhode, S.J.

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Treasure to Be Shared: Understanding Anglicanorum Coetibus ed. by Walter Oxley and Ulrich Rhode, S.J. Mark Woodruff Walter Oxley and Ulrich Rhode, S.J., ed. A Treasure to Be Shared: Understanding Anglicanorum Coetibus Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022 182 pages. Paperback. $34.95. Three years before he died in 1988, Michael Ramsey, the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, was visited by a long-time collaborator with the news that he would shortly announce his resignation and be received into the Catholic Church. Ramsey responded, "If you had told me twenty-five years ago that this man whom I ordained a priest in the Church of God would one day leave his ministry to become a Roman Catholic, I would not have been believed it possible. Nowadays, I cannot say that I am surprised." Not long before, Ramsey had given a serious of lectures to Anglican seminarians in the United States (The Anglican Spirit, 2004) in which he described Anglicanism not as a church that was an end in itself, but providential and necessary for the authentic re-composition of the universal Church as a whole. They are a fine reflection on what it is about the shared history, perspective, and tradition—social, theological, ecclesiological, spiritual, pastoral, and liturgical—that it matters to Anglicanism to offer to the whole Church in the spiritual exchange of gifts of which John Paul II wrote, just as Anglicanism has itself learned so much from other churches. So, what is this patrimony as identified by the Catholic Church? A Treasure to be Shared provides the considered reflections of key Catholic figures who witnessed the rising tide of groups longing to transfer to the Catholic Church, yet not lose who they were and what had formed them. These accounts of the historical background, the canonical conundrum, the ecumenical controversies, and the Catholic Church's shaping of the Anglican patrimony that it wished to receive, as a kind of so far missing expression of its faith, crucially come not from the immediate beneficiaries or third-party commentators, or apologists for one cause or another, but from those involved in the development of Anglicanorum Coetibus at close hand. Did it come twenty years too late? Cardinal Basil Hume of West-minster told Anglican clergy hoping to be received and ordained [End Page 125] priests in the Catholic Church in 1993: "Bring your Anglican tradition with you. Do not leave it behind. We need it." In his essay on canonical questions, Gianfranco Ghirlanda, S.J., Rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University at the time of Anglicanorum Coetibus' release and now a Cardinal, convincingly explains that earlier proposals for corporate reunion could only prove inconclusive. The late Msgr. Mark Langham, from his role at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity as Anglicanorum Coetibus was crystallizing, reflects in his essay that official Anglican bodies had so far failed to "think things through" (158–159) on the implications of their dialogue with the Catholic Church, or to be consistent in their account of faith and order, or moral teaching. Yet Ghirlanda's engrossing account of discussions back and forth between the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, and ultimately Pope Benedict XVI, reveals the conviction in Rome that a defining moment had at last arrived, and that it was important to keep faith with those who had taken the Catholic Church at its word—if only the right formula could be found. Resolving upon the structure of the personal ordinariate recalls the proposal at the Malines Conversations from Dom Lambert Beauduin that the way to unite the identity and tradition of Anglicans with the Catholic Church was through a distinctive entity: "the Anglican Church, united not absorbed." But to some Anglican observers the establishment of the ordinary's office as vicarious, as if it signified a merely delegated power rather than a position distinct from that of the local bishop and protected for this purpose by immediacy to the Apostolic See, fell short of a fitting recognition of what Anglican tradition constitutes in a reintegrated Church. Ghirlanda is frank...