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The Uniate Model and Anglican Ministry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2024
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Anglicans and Roman Catholics are exploring the Uniate analogy as a model for reunion of their Churches. In this paper we propose to discuss briefly the development of the Uniate analogy and, thereafter, to suggest a way for Roman recognition of Anglican ministry.
Proponents of the Uniate model point to an impressive precedent in Gregory the Great’s commission to Augustine in 597. They argue that Gregory favoured a distinctive patrimony for the Church of the Angles. Obviously this precedent should not be pressed too far. Subsequent Popes, such as Vitalian and Gregory VII, were less favourable to pluralism and more inclined to uniformity than was the first Gregory. Nevertheless, Gregory’s commission to Augustine of Canterbury does provide a useful precedent that might well be endorsed today.
‘My brother, you are familiar with the usage of the Roman Church, in which you were brought up. But if you have found customs, whether in the Roman, Gallican, or any other Churches that may be more acceptable to God, I wish you to make a careful selection of them, and teach the Church of the English, which is still young in the Faith, whatever you can profitably learn from the various Churches. For things should not be loved for the sake of places, but places for the sake of good things. Therefore select from each of the Churches whatever things are devout, religious and right; and when you have arranged them into a unified rite, let the minds of the English grow accustomed to it.’
The pallium given to Augustine by Gregory connoted recognition of a Roman primacy, a recognition that continued for nearly a millenium. Since the Reformation the Archbishop of Canterbury has served as a pastoral centre of unity for the Church of England and, later, for the world-wide Anglican communion.
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- Copyright © 1971 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
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page 387 note 3 Decree on Ecumenism, No. 14. ‘Fidem et disciplinim’ I have not translated ‘belief and discipline’ (Abbott) ‘but faith and order’.
page 387 note 4 Ibid., No. 16. Cf. also ‘Dogmatic Constitution on the Church’, III, 13 and 23; ‘Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy’, Nos. 37–41; and ‘Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World’, 4, 5, 44, 58, 62.
page 388 note 1 Cardinal Jan Willebrands, ‘Moving Towards a Typology of Churches’, The Catholic Mind, April, 1970, p. 40.
page 388 note 2 Butler had mentioned the Uniate analogy in a sermon and at the first international Anglican‐Roman Catholic meeting at Windsor Castle. The Tablet, which in 1925 had opposed the Uniate analogy, came out in its favour in a lead editorial, ‘United Not Absorbed’, 31st January, 1970, p. 90. Butler's article was partially in response to the lively reaction to this editorial.
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page 394 note 3 Clement XLIV, 4; cf. XLI, 1.
page 395 note 1 It would take us beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the polemics of Ambrosiaster and Jerome, but it is noteworthy that Jerome firmly testified to presbyteral ordering of the Alexandrian bishopric well into the third century. Cf. St Jerome, ‘Epist. ad Evangelum’, PL 22: 1192–1195.
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page 395 note 3 St Ignatius, Letter to Trallians, III, 1.
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page 396 note 2 Pannenberg, Wolfhart et al., Spirit, Faith and Church, Philadelphia, 1970, p. 31Google Scholar.
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