Category Archives: Roman Catholic

Church Of Scotland/Roman Catholic Agreement On Baptism

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In reading through materials for the Church of Scotland General Assembly that will convene its meeting in just over a week my attention was caught by an item contained in the report of the Committee on Ecumenical Relations.  It seems that although the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops did not sign off on an ecumenical statement on baptism with some American Reformed churches, a similar agreement is in place in Scotland.  The deliverance of the Committee on Ecumenical Relations asks the Assembly to “4. Encourage the use of the Liturgy for the Renewal of Baptismal vows on appropriate ecumenical occasions as part of the fruits of the Joint Commission on Doctrine’s study on Baptism.”

Within the body of the report they say this about the agreement and the liturgy:

5.3 The Joint Commission on Doctrine (Church of Scotland – Roman Catholic Church) published a joint report on baptism as a study guide for local congregations in 2008. This booklet could not have been written 20 years ago and harvests the fruits of decades of faith and order discussion within the World Council of Churches and between the WCC and the Vatican in the Joint Working Group. Though some may dismiss this important aspect of the ecumenical movement as “old fashioned”, the faith and order agenda continues to provide the platform on which local developments can grow. The Joint Commission has followed up its study on Baptism by producing a PowerPoint presentation that gives the framework out of which the study has come and by commissioning the production of a joint liturgy for the reaffirmation of baptismal vows. All three resources belong together as the fruit of the Joint Commission’ study on Baptism and it is hoped that they will be widely used. The liturgy has been drawn up by a small group that included representation from the Scottish Episcopal Church. This liturgy is now available for general use on appropriate ecumenical occasions.

Now, while the report says the “liturgy is now available” I have not found it in electronic form in the report, on the Committee’s web pages, including the resources page , or in their extranet area .  (If it is there and I missed it please let me know.)

The bottom line here is that while I am not currently in a position to see how the two forms of agreement differ, it is interesting that one Reformed/Roman Catholic dialogue was able to craft a mutually agreed statement while another has not been able to do so yet.

Congratulations Are In Order

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I wish to add my own congratulations to the many already expressed to Mr. Rocco Palmo on the occasion of his receiving an honorary doctoral degree from Aquinas Institute of Theology of St. Louis where yesterday he served as the commencement speaker for the class of 2010.

If you are familiar with Dr. Palmo’s blog you can probably tell why I admire his work — He writes the influential Roman Catholic blog Whispers in the Loggia.  He is a trained journalist who writes like one while writing a blog tightly focused on one denomination and primarily on news from the U.S.  In a nice background piece on TMCnet.com (originally published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch) it says:

In awarding Palmo an honorary doctorate, the 84-year-old Dominican seminary is making a statement about the changing relationship between journalism and the Catholic church. The award for Palmo’s work on his blog Whispers in the Loggia is also an expression of how American Catholic leaders hope to encourage a younger generation to engage their faith through news.

And a colleague says of him writing:

Ann Rodgers, religion reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, said that when Palmo started attending the annual meetings of the U.S.Conference of Catholic Bishops, an event traditional reporters have covered for years, “he was like a rock star. I had archbishops asking me to introduce them to Rocco.”

So, my congratulations on this honor and the honor it reflects on those that use new media.  And my personal admiration for the effort at running a quality blog focused on one niche in religious reporting.  Best wishes.

PC(USA) Ecumenical Statment Not Approved By the USCCB

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Continuing with the theme of the previous post on Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Roman Catholic connections, I discovered recently that one of the Ecumenical Statements approved by the 218th General Assembly and having the concurrence of a large number of the presbyteries, did not receive the approval of one of the ecumenical partners, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops ( USCCB ).

Now this is not recent news, but in reviewing the report of the General Assembly Committee on Ecumenical Relations (GACER) to the 219th General Assembly as I was researching another issue, I found that just about a year ago the USCCB declined to approve the “Mutual Recognition of Baptism with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops” that came out of the Catholic-Reformed Bilateral Dialogue.  On the PC(USA) side this document was overwhelmingly approved by both the GA (voice vote) and the presbyteries (169-2).  On the USCCB side, they announced in May 2009 that it was not acceptable as it stood.  No specifics were given in any of the information I could find but the web site of the Ecumenical and Interfaith News Network – PCUSA [sic] says:

In May 2009 the chair of the Catholic bishops’ committee on ecumenical
and interreligious affairs reported that the
bishops had examined a Common
Agreement on Mutual Recognition of Baptism growing out of the
Catholic-Reformed dialogue and had “voted not to approve it in the form
in which it had been adopted.”…  In order for the document to have become
acceptable to the bishops, changes would have been necessary that were
not acceptable to the Reformed dialogue partners.

The Reformed partners issued a Statement in Response to the refusal.  Having failed to be mutually agreed upon this statement gets no second chance and it is “archived,” as the terminology goes, as a historical note in this dialogue.

What I find interesting is that for most of the PC(USA), dare I speculate 99% or more, this document is voted upon and then shelved since, as the FAQ indicates , it has no substantive effect on our practice, only on how we understand the practice.  Reinforcing this non-concern for the ecumenical statement is how “under the radar” the non-approval was.  Yes, it was there if you were looking for it on the EIF-PC(USA) web site, or until recently on the GACER page, but both using search engines as well as checking over the press release pages for the PC(USA) and the USCCB from that time period I found nothing that “average” Presbyterians or Catholics would see in the normal course of events.  (It might be hiding behind some cleaver headline that did not catch my attention.) I think this is relevant because the report has a section on “Pastoral Recommendations: Tangible Expressions of Mutual Recognition of Baptism.”  Without the “mutual recognition” part do any of these “tangible expressions” change?  In reading through the recommendations they appear pretty generic so I’m not sure anything changes there, but it would be nice to know.

Anyway, the Ecumenical Dialogue is off to bigger and better things… The Eucharist.  If there are still differences on Baptism I’m not sure what the next round will produce, but that is for a future GA.

You Never Know Where A Story Will Take You — Finding The Presbyterian Connections

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you find the PC(USA) in the most interesting places…

So, during my morning coffee break I am skimming through one of my regular blog reads, Clerical Whispers , an Irish Roman Catholic blog at heart but one that does a good job of also covering Irish and Scottish Presbyterian news as well as Anglican developments.  And as I’m scanning through I find an article with not one, but two links to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

The story is about a group derived from the Roman church that is ordaining women as priests in the RC tradition.  Of course, as the article notes this is not the teaching of the wider church:

Noting that church law and teachings prohibit the ordination of women, Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that ordinations of women are invalid.

“You don’t wake up and say, ‘I’m going to be a priest today,'” Walsh said.

This is not news to the group who clearly post on their web site

Yes, we have challenged and broken the Church’s Canon Law 1024, an unjust law that discriminates against women. Despite what some bishop may lead the faithful to believe, our ordinations are valid because we are ordained in the line of unbroken apostolic succession within the Roman Catholic Church.

OK, I’ll leave that for them to sort out.  We Presbyterians have enough questions of our own.

Anyway, over the weekend the group ordained (or is that “ordained”?) two women as priests and three more as deacons at Spiritus Christi Church in Rochester, New York, a church that “was established in 1999 in a split with the Rochester Diocese ” according to the article.  One each of the priests and the deacons are from Rochester with the other priest from New Hampshire and the other deacons from Pennsylvania and Maryland.

PC(USA) Connection #1:  In listing the work of the Rochester woman ordained as a priest it includes her work as a Peacemaker for the Presbytery of Genesee Valley.

PC(USA) Connection #2: It is also interesting to note that the church that hosted the ordination service, Spiritus Christi, is a church that now shares facilities with the Downtown United Presbyterian Church in Rochester.

So we Presbyterians are finding connections into all sorts of doctrinal debates and places the boundaries in other denominations are being stretched.