Maybe If They Knew What They Were Talking About We Wouldn't Consider Them Krazies

Pope Francis with Bishop Tony

Palmer shortly before Palmer's

death

The Krazy Katholic Blogosphere is alight with alarm over the fact that Pope Francis not only authorized a Catholic Funeral Mass for his friend, Tony Palmer, a Bishop of the Communion of Episcopal Evangelical Churches, but permitted him to be buried with the prayers and rites proper to the funeral of a bishop. 

Catholic Canon Law permits a Catholic Funeral Mass for baptized non-Catholics under certain circumstances.  Perhaps the most famous of these Masses was in August 2005 when Pope Benedict XVI sent Cardinal Walter Kasper to preside over the Funeral Mass of Brother Roger Schütz, the Founder of the Ecumenical Monastic Community of Taizé and a close personal friend of both Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  Cardinal Ratzinger had personally given Brother Roger Holy Communion at the funeral of Pope John Paul earlier that year.  In the case of Tony Palmer permission for a Catholic Funeral Mass was granted by the local bishop because Palmer’s wife and children are Catholic.  It is not only permissible under Canon Law to provide a funeral Mass for a non-Catholic member of a Catholic family, especially one who frequently worships with his or her family, but it is routine in most parishes today to do so.  Certainly in our parish it is a common event, perhaps provided as often as a dozen times a year.

When the Palmer family asked that Tony have a Catholic Funeral Mass, the Bishop of Clifton, the Rt. Rev. Declan Ronan Lang, granted permission but said he was not to be buried as a Bishop.  This is when Pope Francis stepped in and granted the permission for a funeral in which the deceased was given the rites due a bishop.  How could a Protestant, the Krazies wonder, possibly be accorded recognition as a bishop?  Well, we need to look at the facts.  We cannot presume that just because a person is Protestant that they are not, according to the standards of the Catholic Church, validly ordained.   In fact, the Communion of Episcopal Evangelical Churches has been very careful from its foundation to make sure that its Bishops are consecrated according to Rites acceptable by the Catholic Church and by Bishops whose Apostolic Succession is unquestioned by Rome.  Their Orders are derived from the Old Catholic Church in Netherlands whose first bishop, Cornelius van Steenoven was consecrated for the empty See of Utrecht in 1724 —without papal mandate—by Dominique-Marie Varlet, titular Archbishop of Babylon, who had himself been consecrated—with papal mandate—by Jacques de Goyon Matignon, who had served as Bishop of Condom from 1671-1673.  While the episcopal consecration of van Steenoven was illicit (there being no papal mandate, and in fact Steenoven had been turned down by Rome as a candidate for Archbishop of Utrecht because he was suspect of Jansenism), it was valid as it was performed by a validly ordained bishop according to the canonical rite and with presumable correct intention to consecrate a Bishop in the sense that the Church holds.  Thus the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands has an undisputed Apostolic Succession (and is and has always been recognized as such by the Holy See) and thus the Succession passed on to the Bishops of the Communion of Episcopal Evangelical Churches is also recognized.  Pope Francis was simply giving Bishop Palmer the courtesies due him in the funeral service.  That doesn’t please the Krazies, but if they would do their homework –theological as well as historical—they would lose their beef with Francis.  But then, if they didn’t have their gripes with the Pope, they wouldn’t be special and who wants to be just a garden variety Catholic like the rest of us?  What would you blog about if you were happy?  I don’t know, but I find an awful lot good about the Church today and where it is going.  And when I hear that Pope Francis reached out to Bishop Palmer’s family with his sort of courtesy, I am profoundly thankful that we have such a Pope.  At the same time, to be fair, I have no doubt that Pope Benedict would have done the same as his actions at the time of the death of Brother Roger would indicate.  We call this the hermeneutic of continuity.    

Roma Locuta Est--Causa Finita Est? Not Necessarily

The late Prior Roger Shutz of

theTaizé community, a Protestant,

receives communion from then

Cardinal Ratzinger at the funeral

of Pope John Paul II, 2005

 

I mentioned in my last posting that Cardinal Josef Ratzinger sought election to the papacy because he felt a responsibility to correct the course taken in the papacy of John Paul II in regards to ecumenism/interreligious dialogue and to “save” the Roman Liturgy from what he believes is an essentially flawed “reform” during the papacy of Paul VI with the 1970 Missal.  This entry will be a boring, turgid even, but if you stick with me, I think it important to understand the reasons for the turn in direction that the Church has undergone in the current papacy. 

John Paul was by all accounts a bit cavalier in his approach to both ecumenism among Christian denominations and interreligious dialogue with other world religions.  While the Catholic Church does not “recognize” Anglican Orders, for example, John Paul always accorded the Archbishop of Canterbury a place of honor comparable to that accorded to the Patriarch of Constantinople or his representative at various pontifical ceremonies.  I remember, for example, at the ceremonies for the 2000 Holy Year the Holy Father was flanked by Metropolitan Anastasias representing the Ecumenical Patriarch and then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, on January 18, 2000 as he opened the Holy Year Door at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls.  By putting the Archbishop of Canterbury in such a position he is signifying that an Anglican Archbishop is indeed of the same status as a Greek Orthodox Archbishop, despite the fact that we recognize the validity of Greek Orders while we claim that the Anglicans lost the Apostolic Succession with the Edwardine Ordinal of 1552.  On November 13, 1999 the Holy Father presided at Vespers in the Vatican Basilica flanked by the Lutheran Primates (major Archbishops) of Sweden and Finland along with several other Scandinavian Bishops, all attired in Copes and Miters, again implicitly recognizing the Episcopal (bishoply) character of these Lutheran Prelates.  Now, don’t misunderstand me—I don’t have a problem with this.  I think the entire understanding of “valid orders” is more about historical politics than sound theology—though remember, I am a historian not a theologian—but Josef Ratzinger as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was very quick to see the implications of ritual actions that symbolized one thing when official Church policy holds another.  If bishops had been garbed in “choir dress”—rather than pontifical vestments, correct protocols would have been followed and the problem would have been avoided but the use of Pontificals sent an ambiguous sign about the sacramental systems of Anglican and Lutheran Churches.  As early as Mass marking his installation as Pope, Benedict adjusted the position occupied by the Archbishop of Canterbury in Papal ceremonies to make it more clear that the Anglican prelate was a guest and observer, not a “member of the club,” albeit an honorary one  

Benedict is not insensitive to Ecumenical sensibilities only anxious to be clear about the Catholic position.  To be fair to Benedict, as Cardinal Ratzinger and Dean of the Sacred College during the interregnum between the death of John Paul and his own ascension to the chair of Peter, while making arrangements for the funeral of John Paul II, Ratzinger allegedly instructed that the priests giving communion at the funeral mass that they were not to refuse the Eucharist to those who came forward even though there were any number of official guests who were not Catholics.  Ratzinger himself gave Communion to Frère Roger Shutz, the Protestant Prior of the Ecumenical Monastic community at Taizé. I was living in Rome at the time and working with several television networks in the coverage of the events, and two of the priests designated to distribute communion in the dignitary section told me of the instruction that they were not to refuse Holy Communion to anyone coming forward.  (They also told me that to their knowledge there were no communicants among the distinguished guests in their section who were not Catholic.  They explicitly said that no one in the American Delegation came forward [The Presidents Bush, President Clinton, and Secretary Rice] and that no non-Catholic clergy nor anyone in Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu garb came forward.)     Frère Roger’s reception of Holy Communion was quite public, however, seen on world-wide television and evoked much comment.  There are conditions in canon law under which a non-Catholic Christian can be admitted to the Eucharist in the Catholic Church and Frère Roger’s situation was certainly one.  It was only four months later when Frère Roger himself died—stabbed by a mentally ill woman during Vespers in the monastery Church at Taizé.  Pope Benedict sent Cardinal Walter Kasper to represent him at the funeral and to celebrate a Mass of Christian Burial.  On the instructions of the Holy Father, communion was, on this occasion, given to both Catholic and Protestant members of the community.  Of course, there is a considerable difference between implicitly recognizing the validity of Anglican or Lutheran Orders and sharing the Eucharist with non-Catholic Christians.  As I pointed out there are certain situations in which Church law provides for such permission as sharing the Eucharist with non-Catholic individuals while the recognition of Orders is a much more complicated issue with vast implications for ecumenical relations.

As long as we are talking about Ratzinger/Benedict and “valid” orders, however, there is one other incident to point out.  When the Church of England was considering ordaining women to the priesthood in the early ‘90’s, the Tablet, a Catholic international news weekly which is, to my mind, the best English language Catholic news publication, reported that Cardinal Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, approached then Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey with the proposal that if the Church of England did not proceed with the ordination of women, the Catholic Church would take a new look at the validity of Anglican Orders.  The “new look” never happened, of course, because the Church of England voted in 1993 to ordain women to the priesthood,  What is crucial about this offer, however is that it means that the question of Anglican Orders is not a closed question and the decision of Leo XIII in Apostolicam Curam that Anglican Orders are not “valid” is not necessarily final.  Theologians, or rather self-appointed theological experts, might be surprised at that; historians know that no word from Rome is ever truly final and no door is irrevocably shut.  In the bigger picture I think we can say that while the course corrections of John Paul and Benedict have pushed back change somewhat—200 years if you believe the late Cardinal Martini—all is not lost.   Time marches on, but nowhere more slowly than in Rome.