because usually I um I'm running most of these talks instead of singing my own accolades as many as they may be uh before we get started I want to offer a few sort of housekeeping details and then a brief introduction for those of you who don't know who I am first as you many of you already have there is some refreshments in the back enjoy some food I will not be disturbed if you need to get up and Shuffle about I now have five kids an anxious dog an assortment of chickens and rabbits at home so I can tolerate a great deal of movement and chattering so be at ease if you want to if you if you if you feel lonely in the back you can come closer right we're all we're all family here so that's fine second uh this is the the third in our series of 12 talks on The Life and Legacy of Pope Benedict XVI the rest so they will all be on our YouTube channel the previous two um are there for you to review and I would really invite you to go check those out I was first father Smith his presentation and also Aaron Lewis is wonderful presentation as well so please do check those out up next in this Rhoda is our own Deacon Michael Thompson who will give a talk on the church fathers from Clement of Rome to Augustine on May 27th and that is an incredibly wonderful topic and as a former Anglican my heart is really strangely warmed by the patristic uh by the patristic fathers and I really would recommend you coming mark your calendars May 27th same time same place we'll see you there at the very so lastly um I'm going to leave time for for any questions you may have at the end of my brief talk the Constitution the apostolic Constitution that I'm referencing is freely available online if you go to the vatican's website vatican.va it's very very brief uh I'll kind of mention that in a bit but it packs a punch so all of that sort of housekeeping stuff out of the way if you don't know me I'm Michael Sandifer the Pastoral associate for adult Faith formation here at Pence of peace and one of my many joys is coordinating this series of talks on the works of Pope Benedict XVI I am a convert from anglicanism I am a former seminarian and postulant for holy orders in the Episcopal church and when my wife and I joined the Catholic church with our children it was the fruit of to put it lightly a long and winding road I was raised Southern Baptist with a sort of Wesleyan or Nazarene Holiness flare thrown in from my parents interesting Mutual background protestant-wise and then I discovered liturgical Christianity and with it a sacramental theology in college when I discovered the Anglican shape of Christian worship the nuances of that Journey from from one outside looking into the warmth of the Catholic Church like like a dickensian orphan staring into the firelight of a loving home you know that is from a road from from a beautiful but shattered and broken family into the fullness of that Catholic faith is um it's pertinent there's a pertinent details but that's not really the topic of this lecture so this is not really about my conversion story I'm sorry to disappoint anyone who came for that um but I became convinced in short that the vision my vision for a Catholic sacramental life the one that I had carried and was nurtured by for a very joyful season could only lead one place like two of my great Heroes of the faith Saints Edmund Campion and John Henry Newman I knew that I could only find my spiritual home answering Christ's call for Unity with his church even if it cost me a vocation and you know a career we left Seminary and planted our spiritual roots in the fertile soil of a wonderful community of Catholic families outside of Milwaukee Wisconsin many other former anglicans at least for a period of time settled in that area because it is a very close proximity to the last remaining anglo-catholic seminary in the United States so it was really a great place for our family to sort of grow in the practice of our Catholic faith but by God's grace I came back home to my home state of South Carolina and eventually it was not immediate but eventually got to come on board here at Prince of Peace to join this really Incredible family of of men and women who are in love with the faith and are dedicated to helping families raise Saints here in the upstate and so with that sort of that's all the introduction about me I'm going to give I want to offer I want to begin us as we should begin all good things in prayer I'm gonna drink first because that was a lot of talking so far almighty God unto whom all our speed open all desires known and from whom no secrets are HID cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of the holy spirit that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy Holy Name through Christ Our Lord amen that prayer the call it for Purity is no doubt familiar to at least a few of you here that have made the similar Journey to the one which I made from the world of anglicanism into the fullness of the faith being received into the goodly harbor of the Catholic Church it is an ancient prayer today very little used in virtually unknown in the rest of the Catholic World it was either written or discovered and copied in the 8th Century by the great Anglo-Saxon Benedictine saint alquin of York and it made its way into the liturgical life of the English church as part of the priest Preparatory prayers before Mass this is a beautiful and poetic reflection on the totality of Christian Life and it itself could serve as the entire lecture as far as I'm concerned but very few of you probably came from a liturgical nerd history course tonight so I'll kind of spare you that bit instead I share it with you as an example of the kind of spiritual Treasures which were despite the best efforts of misguided Scholars clerics monarchs and puritanical dictators they were not only preserved but cultivated in a garden segregated from the life of the universal church for centuries tonight I want to invite you to reflect with me on a glorious Catholic vision of applied ecumenism in November of 2009 anglicans across the world were glued to their computer screens anxiously refreshing the vatican.va website in order to see with their own eyes the fruit of hundreds of years of waiting accounts from clergy about that incredible day stir my heart as a pastoral and ecumenical and Theological moment which quietly overshadowed anything like it that has come out of the Vatican not only in recent memory but arguably across the Long Reach of our history prior to this evening perhaps you have likely never even heard of the document with which I'm referring to and having heard the title of the apostolic Constitution you probably don't know what to think about it and not just because it's a mouthful of Latin for American lady who notoriously don't know their ecclesiastical mother tongue on November 4th 2009 which was incidentally and yet not accidentally the feast of Saint Charles Borromeo Pope Benedict XVI read this constitution quote providing for personal ordinarians for anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church of course anglicans like all Protestants have been welcome to enter full communion with the church since the Revolutionary days which we refer to rather ominously as the Reformation but this brief document outlined something that is altogether unique and different tonight as I briefly touched on what is for me personally one of the most important documents the church has ever promulgated I hope to leave you with a better understanding not only of the Pastoral heart of Pope Benedict XVI but also of his legacy in this ecumenical project which has only just begun to be fully realized this is of course not a lecture about the second Vatican Council but it is very important for us to understand Pope Benedict's interpretation of the council but most especially the document lumengencium which is the dogmatic constitution of the church throughout his brief anglicanormus he cites slumingencium no less than nine times there are other documents which he references as well of course but his case for for outlining a pathway towards the fruitful realization of Christian unity and for healing the sad divisions of Christ Church are founded upon the classical understanding of the churches one Holy Catholic and Apostolic importantly his view is framed with the language of the council to clearly Mark how God's grace is operative outside the boundaries of his church yet ever urging them toward the unity of the Catholic church and I could simply read Anglican Norm chetubus to you it's very brief but I would prefer to provide context for those cradle Catholics in the room who are perplexed by this whole Anglican thing and Lord willing to present Pope Benedict's Evangelical offer to any of my Anglican brothers or sisters who have snuck into the room or who are watching from afar uh you know God be praised to set the stage I will allow Pope Benedict to open us because I could do no justice to his work with my own faltering words there's a quote in recent times the Holy Spirit has moved groups of anglicans to petition repeatedly and insistently to be received into full communion individually as well as corporately the apostolic sea has responded favorably to such petitions indeed the successor of Peter mandated by the Lord Jesus to guarantee the unity of the Episcopal and to preside over and Safeguard the universal communion of all the churches could not fail to make available the means necessary to bring this holy desire to realization the Church of people gathered together into the unity of the Father the Son and of the Holy Spirit was instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ as a Sacrament a sign an instrument that is of communion with God and of unity among all people every division among the baptized in Jesus Christ wounds that which the church is and that for which the church exists in fact such division openly contradicts the will of Christ scandalizes the world and damages that most holy cause the preaching of the Gospel to every creature precisely for this reason before the shedding of his blood for the Salvation of the world the lord Jesus prayed to the father for the unity of his disciples he goes on to Proclaim that the Holy Ghost is the source of unity in the life of the church he is the principle of the unity of the faithful and the teaching of the Apostles and the breaking the bread and in prayer and here is where Benedict's intellect and Zeal coalesce with the Pastoral charism of the church he reminds us that like Christ himself the church the church is not simply a spiritual or metaphysical reality but a real tangible Community instituted by Christ himself they are not two realities on the contrary they form one complex reality formed from a two-fold element human and divine of course here Benedict is simply quoting lumengensium where the church outlines her self-understanding both sacramentally and spirit sorry as both sacramentally and scripturally rooted in the mystery of Christ himself indeed as we professed in the Creed a belief in all things visible and invisible this is both and Theology and it is at the heart of our faith as Catholics starting in paragraph six Benedict authoritatively proposes the structure of living out the reunion of those anglicans seeking to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while still retaining all things compatible with the Catholic faith which were cultivated and nurtured despite the pain of schism within the Anglican tradition again this document is very brief you may be surprised to learn that it is six pages with very generous margins counting copious citations outlines additional complementary Norms quote complete the Constitution these were again updated by Pope Francis in 2019 but briefly I want to explain probably the elephant in the room which is the linguistically cumbersome name which the church uses to describe the communities provided for in anglicanormus and I'm going to touch briefly on this the history that Benedict has referenced in his opening paragraph in a moment where I'm gonna I hope to describe the experience of many anglicans who did long for reunion but for now simply remember that from the earliest days of separation from her mother church members of the Church of England and the diverse related communities which resulted from the cultural spread of England's Empire they have worked both publicly and behind the scenes to find some path to repair the division between anglicans and the Catholic Church of the many attempts at corporate Union none proved satisfactory until the church settled on this idea of a personal ordinariat our Parish has a very dear friend Father James Bradley who is a priest of the personal ordinariate of Our Lady of wallsingham in the UK he's a professor of canon law at Catholic University of America and is a one-man Publishing House churning out documents articles by the Dozen in scholarly journals on many different topics relating to the mission and life of the ordinariat and in an article that he published in 2022 father Bradley explains the novelty of this legal concept described in anglicanormal chadubus as quote juridically comparable to a diocese by explaining both the ways that a personal ordinary differs from a diocese and the way that the ordinariat shares in the normal Catholic life that we expect from a Diocesan structure a personal ordinarian is simply a jurisdiction that governs the life of those faithful who are attached nurtured and guided by the unique traditions and ways of Christian Life which distinguish anglicans from all other Protestants and highlight a way of being Catholic which complements the diversity native to the rich family of Catholic faith these jurisdictions are erected within Episcopal conferences for example within the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops or the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales for example and there are therefore non-geographic structures that exist within the boundaries of an existing Conference of Bishops so they're called also then to be cooperative with those conferences wherever the ordinary operates and this at the end of the day this legal distinction between a diocese a dastan bishop and a personal ordinary who of course I should say may be a Catholic bishop as we have in some of the ordinaries or a former Anglican Bishop who was ordained in the Catholic priesthood and that person is then granted personal ordinary faculties to guide and govern the faithful and clergy under his authority in the name of the Pope so this is where the distinction really comes in but these former Bishops and in case anyone's confused I'm trying to hopefully preempt any questions people have about this former Anglican Bishops if they're married are of course not eligible to become Bishops in the Catholic Church following the wisdom and ancient tradition of east and west but not elevating married men to the office okay a lot of Distinction a lot of uh sort of legalese from someone who's not even a Canon lawyer so you get more than you bargain for but this distinction between a Diocesan bishop and an ordinary is is likely more a Voyage Through the canonical weeds than you really signed up for tonight so for an all intense just know that a personal ordinary is the person who leads an ordinariat they act in every experiential way from the perspective of the faithful and clergy like a bishops and Bishop they do the things you expect a bishop to do and also ordinarians are often compared in some circles to the Eastern churches who are in full communion with the Holy Father and are thus fully Catholic the ordinarians Do Not comprise an independent church in the sense that the byzantines do or you know the Oriental Catholic churches do so this is an important point for us to remember as well and this is in part due to the kind of complicated history of the Church of England right the Church of England began as a magisterial reform that was attempted on the Catholic church in England um and so that's part of it but it's also because of the conscious decisions it it gets complicated because of the conscious decision to retain the epis the epis the episcopacy so that's 10 times fast apparently and much of the bones of traditional catholic life right so England's have people they call Bishops and they have many things that look Catholic right the Reformation in England was because of some of these things much more different than much much different than the various Continental Protestant reforms but it is also important for us to know and to note and to admit that there is a strong influence from the Continental Protestant reforms those people we think of as the reformers and the Reformation on the leadership of the movement in England that's undeniable but my point here with all of this long-winded uh journey through um detail is that the divisions and realities on the ground are understandably complex to Briefly summarize the ordinary it has a balance of diocesanesque family which is cooperative with local clergy local faithful local Diocesan clergy and faithful and this creates a host of opportunities but it also brings unique logistical challenges which are not normal for a parish like Europeans of Peace So the Chancery has to manage a vast reach of local situations and field issues from living out this ecumenical Mandate of the Holy Father in a lot of really complicated good but inevitably imperfect context for example being a fully Capital Community means that any Catholic could go to an ordinariat mass and fulfill their Sunday obligation by attending a mass according to Divine worship the missile which is the ordinary its use of the Roman right the Indie Catholic could likewise join an ordinary parish and Avail themselves of the sacraments there and these constitute really special opportunities for people who are a cooperation of Christians rather cradle or convert who are drawn closer to Christ through this lived experience of an ordinary Community but there have also been many different ways that that ordinary communities have have come into being how they've been planted in an area from whole or partial parishes congregations joining together with their Pastor right Episcopal Churches or Anglican churches that that form together with their Pastor to make a new ordinarian Parish or there could be new groups of ordinary lay faithful Gathering and worshiping together with a visiting ordinarian priests coming locally to offer masses according to our liturgical books but they could also invite a Diocesan priest to generously acquire the faculties to say mass for them that first option of whole parishes coming in to the church was the presumed Norm in the early days of the church but as the ordinaries grow and as lay membership sometimes trickles and sometimes floods in various places the leadership of the ordinarians have to respond by by working to provide some means for the spiritual life of those people who seek to retain in in some meaningful way the customs and practices of the Anglican patrimony which brought them which they brought with them when they conformed themselves through obedience to the Catholic Church but all of this everything I've just described it presumes that we know what we actually mean when we say the word Anglican patrimony so to provide a little bit of a backdrop for the reunion made possible in the ordinary it's I think it's helpful for those of us who who are aren't as naturally familiar with this story to consider a little bit about where anglicanism came from but also where does it stand today the Church of England's historical beginning was of course famously or infamously King Henry VIII's declaration that he was the Supreme head of the church in England and as such could direct the welfare of the ecclesial life of his subjects in addition to the temporal Affairs of his realm unsurprisingly most anglicans don't really spend much time thinking about the reflection or reflect on the legacy of Henry VII rather they focus on other developments from the ecclesial landscape and these are really diverse and beautiful parts of what we call patrimony this is the Poetry of John Donne or or George Herbert who both were Anglican priests or maybe the theological reflections of their contemporaries then we call the Anglican divines liturgical and spiritual schools of worship things we might call a lofty and dignified Simplicity these are various points of focus for people who are drawn to the patrimony in this way of of being a Christian of course Archbishop cranmer's work that consolidating and revising the liturgical life of the church is seen in the book of common prayer if you've heard of this you probably have it's really really normal for any English-speaking person we've heard a lot of these prayers before variously where it was revised through the 1500s until finally in 1662 at the Elizabethan settlement we have this Edition where it is formed the single most defining aspect of an otherwise increasingly incongruous assortment of churchmanships and Theological polity this is what many engines refer to as a big tent right where people can on the one hand like my former position as an anglo-catholic believe in transubstantiation sitting next to in my in my Chapel stall and Seminary someone who was for all intents and purposes a very low Church Methodist who didn't believe that Christ was actually president anyway and which is not true of all methodists so anyone's watching that's not what I believe and I just I know there's a there's a spectrum uh so I'm going to leave that aside for another time we can talk about that after class it's fine um but the book of common prayer was written in beautiful dignified English and it doesn't reflect so much the common speech of the 17th century as some people think but more the idealized and higheretic language of worship it's poetic naturally singable and it's sacred the register of this language is one of the things that many of us who make this journey into the Catholic Church miss most dearly when we at last surrender to God's joyful call it is this linguistic patrimony I believe which also most obviously represents the nuanced beauty of what Pope Benedict saw in the ordinary in the Anglican experience rather as a treasure to be shared with the wider church and which is preserved in the ordinarians official books so that history from the 17th century to today both in England and then the rest of the world is really far too complex for me to give uh really any summary to tonight the Reformation period as we all know saw Europe subdivided and torn the Catholic Church's calendar Reformation gave us some of the most powerful and beloved saints that we that we cling to as Catholics that are so inspiring and in those intervening centuries the world has been marred by War famine and other deep grief made all the more painful all the more painful by the continued bleeding wounds from the Schism of those days in the Anglican experience much can be said about the exterior events of political realities that affect and shape the ability for English Catholics to cultivate a nurture a deeply Catholic piety the exterior agitation and influence is really obvious when we look at the history of of the nation of England or the Church of England especially because what we what the place that we called Mary's Dowry right due to the Deep Devotion to Our Lady In The Living Faith of Ordinary People men and women who maybe even couldn't read right um this this beautiful Faith was smashed and in many cases Stripped Away from the face of England but it is also telling and the way that that piety lived on quietly at first and at last triumphantly in the flowering intellectual and spiritual moment in the 19th century that we call the Oxford movement led by a group of Oxford Dons orbiting around the fiery Zeal and intellect of the man we love to call Saint John Henry Newman praise God these men discovered and after digging deeply into the church fathers in later church history they discovered that the fundamental aspects of Christian Life have been excised cut away pulled out of their National Church experience they believed that that this this Gap it came from something disordered in their eyes and indeed this was what Newman's good friend John Keeble addressed in his Infamous sermon which had as we might say today the rather clickbaity title on the national apostasy that is not a sermon title that many people well you'll get a lot of you get out of hits but you get a lot of hits Keeble saw the consequences of parliament exercising Authority on the church is dangerous but of course in hindsight we can call the the context really kind of ironic because the state was consolidating redundant Anglican bishoprics in Ireland you know that that Catholic Thorn and the Protestant backside of British life from the perspective of many in power for so long it had been a consistent stage for political and spiritual saber dancing and so Keeble's good friend then fellow Anglican clergyman John Newman he zealously led the charge for a Catholic reform within the Church of England arguing for a spiritual return to fullness and robust practice so they wanted to insert simply that the the church was Central the centrality of the church over the temporal so the spiritual life over the temporal and of course at first none of these men knowingly advocated for anything like reunion with Rome uh they really just wanted to reclaim this common foundation with the Catholic truth but that didn't last long uh they did all of this work of proclaiming for this uh Reclamation of what was ours this Birthright this patrimony as they might even say uh and what in documents they called tracks for our times and you can read these online they're really fun uh especially everything Newman wrote but she wrote a ton of them uh these are passionate arguments right for things like vestments and incense and candles processions these all came from a simple realization right that these men of Goodwill made that the Reformation had at best done a little too much in the reforming of the Church of England or at worst which Newman and many of his his friends and the adherence of the Oxford would come to believe it had done far too much when he famously left the fold of the church in England Church of England rather he was reconciled to the Catholic Church realizing that no matter how deeply he loved the shape of his life as an Anglican he must follow his conscience Newman paved the way paved the way for a tidal wave of prominent conversions because you know Newman was not some another quirky intellectual which he was or recusent stepping out into the open Newman was one of the most popular preachers in his day he was both famous and Infamous for his defense of a church of England as a distinct branch of the Catholic Church his conversion framed as it was in a confession that maybe it's morally wrong for a man of Catholic conscience to remain within what we today call the Anglican communion rocked his contemporaries of course Newman went on to make deep peace with his journey right as we all know he embraced a kind of English romanitas right when he established the oratory and built his community around the principles of Saint Philip Neri but his the impact that he made on the English church it affected both sides Protestant and Catholic because there's an important question that his conversion raised for those who remained and this is where I found myself as a seminarian what does it mean to be a Catholic in the Anglican context can we work toward reunion from the inside and this is what became the operative principle for a wing of anglicans a group of people that we today call anglo-catholics and this group is the final piece in a very long chain of sympathetic anglicans that discovered the Catholic faith and wanted to bring their tradition back into the fold of the church these people founded religious orders they built gloriously beautiful churches they designed and cultivated a body of liturgical art which stands in its own right as a means for drawing closer to our Lord they form Priestly societies to work for the reintroduction of ancient and Holy Catholic practices you know things like like benediction and adoration and very importantly in the Guild of All Souls caring for The Souls of the faithful departed so these are Protestants right people who you know we might assume don't believe in these things right but they're working to reclaim this and it's only a matter of time right and all this Noble work that was fought against a widely apathetic or even even unfortunately antagonistic ecclesial context all of this work was painfully Limited in scope because without full partition without full participation of the hierarchy the dream of healing this wound right within the church and normalizing the familial bonds of a universal church for them could never be realized so the tumult of the 1960s eventually happened and it broke many people of their resolve to till the soil within the Anglican church and they simply crossed into full communion individually with the Anglican ordination of women any fruitful movement towards corporate healing and recognition of holy orders was let's say stymied and remained dead in the water increasingly those catholic-minded anglicans were relegated to ecclesiastical ghettos places where they were allowed to do all that Catholic stuff just as long as they didn't Rock the Boat too hard and they're also they're also theological conservatives who while not Catholic in practice or or churchmanship they possessed a traditionally Christian understanding of family life and scriptural principles but these people also felt pushed out they felt pushed out to the margins by a church whose worldview and Praxis had become in their eyes unmoored from those values in the ensuing changes of modern Western culture so of course divisions follow divisions new smaller groups of parishes cluster together they cluster together in an effort to maintain this necessary leadership of Bishops and they held on to the classical prayer book tradition but this continuing anglicanism as it's called is a far cry a very far cry from the fullness of Catholic life which was proclaimed by Newman the other tractorians provinces whole provinces of parishes small of course compared to the weight of global Latin Catholicism but these whole provinces longed for resolution to this anxiety of homelessness diocese within the Anglican communion people who had fought tooth and nail to retain not only a tradition recovered by the Oxford movement but also their home within the Anglican within the family of ancientism they also long for some means to finish this goal of those early anglo-catholics who had worked for reunion from the inside these anglicans are clergy lay and religious and these people worked tirelessly with competent authorities in Rome to make a path for corporate reunion this document the Constitution we're referring to tonight Anglican shadabus is that ecumenical promise that path is realized by the way the Catholic Church by the way of the Catholic Church condescending and I don't mean this in a vernacular use of that word but like Christ himself who forsook his glory to stoop low into our humanity and taking on those things which are worthy of bringing into the glory of God's presence he made a path where there was none these are riches in the case of the Anglican pastrami places like a focused pastoral theology a deeply protistic approach to the reading and preaching of scripture a noble literary tradition a commitment to beautiful corporate worship and of course the rhythm of mourning and evening prayer shaping both Layman and cleric alike besides my own personal experience in first discovering the Anglican tradition being formed by it as a journey into the Catholic faith and countless stories and discussions with friends of mine who have made this journey on both sides so the Tiber I'm I'm indebted to Father Bradley of course in his Winsome and concise explanations for backdrops that support this whole ecumenical reunion project so please check out anything he's written if you're if you want more succinct uh very brilliant insights on this from a very legal but canonical wonderful approach but I'd also like to suggest a few books because we're Catholic and that's what we do to any of you who are interested in learning more so there are two books that I think everyone who's interested in this story should read by the English Dominican father Aid Nichols the first is the Panther in the hind where he discusses the idea of a home for Anglican patrimony within the Catholic church and then he later wrote Catholics of anything patrimony but he's directly discussing and describing what the ordinarian looks like in the UK and it's interesting both books are helpful because in the panther in the hind he's he's not necessarily describing what came out the ordinary he's describing a vision looking into the future but many of those things were incorporated into finding a way to put these pieces back together somehow it's really beautiful another great primary resource for anyone who's interested is put out by Ignatius and it's the the book anglicans and the Roman Catholic Church this is a book which is a collection of essays from different people who are involved in this process of forming in the ordinarians but it's particularly got a a focus from from folks here in the United States there's lots of a great first-hand sort of stories which I could I could encourage that to you read as well and also because again I love books and you should too and because it's inevitably linked to the retelling of the church's true history uh and in England I think it's fruitful for all of us to re-read or perhaps read and reread Eamon Duffy's the stripping of the altars because we need to understand the context right how did the English church suffer and adapt themselves through out this Reformation period and it's really fascinating because it's it's not Eamon Duffy did an Incredible Gift to any student of History by removing a lot of bias uh and and sort of retelling from the from from Victorious um let's say victorians uh and uh and really told a beautiful job did a beautiful job of telling that story for the perspective of normal people and it's really Winsome so but it's also massive so it's a Chihuahua killer right don't drop it on your pets kids um so finally I guess if you want to access what Pope Benedict called a treasure to be shared I mentioned that there's this textual component the liturgical books that are really important there's a number of resources that were you know they're official that are Church documents for people within the ordinarians and that are shared to the rest of the Catholic World so one of the one of the first books I'd recommend to you is the Saint Gregory prayer book which was also published by Ignatius um it's a really it's a pocket pocket-ish size book um but it is a devotional prayer book with beautiful prayers that you're not really going to find really anywhere else in English it's full of pastoral poetic Beauty and I'd recommend everyone get a copy of it no matter where you are if you're an English-speaking Catholic this is you should definitely read this it has things like preparation for receiving Holy Communion it has littonese it has guided meditations to the Stations of the Cross St John Henry Newman's are there and it's really beautiful I recommend that uh this next lent when you're looking or anytime when you want to pray the stations uh Saint John and Newman walks you through that in a beautiful way so you can find it there um but this um this book shares with the wider Church a lot of things that were they were Faithfully nurtured in the Anglican tradition and preserved until today and not presented uh for for wider consumption if you want to say it that way uh and then lastly some of the most important um uh textual the most important books that were published recently aside from the the missile itself but was in 2020 and 2021 where the two editions of the Divine Office unique to the ordinarians were published So Divine worship daily office both the North American and Commonwealth editions there's two different versions they invite all Christians to a very scripturally rich simple yet beautiful cycle of morning and evening prayer these one you're going to read 150 Psalms in a month which is well more than you read if you're not reading this if you're not reading your Bible as you should be anyway this is a wonderful way to really get a significant chunk of Holy Scripture throughout the year as well so there's a two-year lectionary cycle for that and I think that in in a very special way this this form of the Divine Office captures the second Vatican council's call to invite the lay faithful to unite with our clergy in in praying the hours as a as a public prayer of the church and so I would encourage all of you to Avail yourself of these resources as as you can and obviously all that I've been able to talk about so far is is very brief I'm not a Canon lawyer I'm a lay Theologian I live these things and I can give you very sort of specific answers to all these things from a dogmatic approach but definitely not from some of those legal realities in a certain sense but it's my hope that by giving you a glimpse however brief into the personal and corporate significance of Pope Benedict's gift to us it's my hope that we could deeper appreciate his pastoral heart and I want to invite more of our separated brothers and sisters into full communion with the Catholic church in order that our savior's prayer may be fulfilled and we may indeed all be one it's especially critical I think to reflect upon one of the most important spiritual insights that we see in this experience of anglicans coming home into the Catholic Church through Pope Benedict's gift to us it's not with Triumph nor with any haughtiness that we can cross that threshold instead it's with deep humility that we with tears of mingle joy and sorrow plant our crosses alongside the English Martyrs who gave their lives to preserve the Catholic faith in England in the long days of spiritual Exile when it was illegal to do so in this year of revitalized Eucharistic catechesis and devotion I want to end uh briefly here with a prayer which I think is is most poignantly representative of the English prayer book tradition and I and it's also Graven on the hearts of all who have been nourished spiritually by the Anglican tradition and so after after a brief prayer here I will invite any questions of course if you have any let us pray we do not presume to come to this thy table o merciful Lord trusting in our own righteousness but in thy manifold and great Mercies we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table but Thou Art the same Lord whose property is all ways to have mercy grant us therefore gracious Lord so to eat the Flesh of thy dear son Jesus Christ and to drink his blood that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body and our souls washed through his most precious blood and that we may ever more dwell in him and he and us thank you guys for your time [Applause] so if anybody has questions you can ask otherwise you can eat oh yes that's a good question so I mean having not been a Lutheran I don't have like the the thumb on the pulse of that but I have a lot of friends that are and there have been attempts in the past of sort of Lutheran uh I want to say a Lutheran equivalent of the ordinarian but it's a bit complicated obviously because Lutheran because you know because of the exact way way that the Lutheran Church has formed very much more directly as in a you know but I I think there's nothing outside their own possibility I haven't heard of anything that's in the works and that would be beautiful to see I think absolutely but nothing Direct yes foreign yeah I think the the biggest again there's a there's a canonical answer which is probably way more beautiful and robust than I can give you but the one of the most important reasons that Benedict created the structures that he did was because he had a very broad view in mind the ordinarians are are the ability for entire diocese or provinces or um or religious institutions for an entire entire corporate group of anglicans to come in where the Anglican use was a bit more ad hoc in some ways and it was very much more tied to a bishop in a specific Place sort of agreeing to let them in there and and to work with them and to and to have sort of a sort of convergence of orders and all those sorts of things and the ordinary actually it was in is designed to cultivate that spiritual life in a much more robust way than is possible with with the Anglican use which there's a number of I I maybe Deacon Johnson you can correct me on this if I'm wrong but I believe it do you recall how many are there any uh Anglican use parishes like pastoral provision parishes that are still left that are not in the US that are not part of the ordinary is there is a handful yeah I was thinking of one I was thinking of the one the only one I could think of right but I was going to be I was going to be generous and say maybe there's two exactly when it was formed this was sort of it was provisional in terms of pastoral provision right there's this idea of waiting for something more permanent and having this sense of more corporate identity and one of the things that is described in angular and cherubus and in the complementary Norms is that um that when as the ordinarians are forming clergy there's this need for this uh for a unique sense of corporate identity right so um sometimes people would say well why don't you know um ordinary at seminarians just go like studying the English college right that's that is an option and they could do that as any other perhaps right they are if they're in England right in their English they could do this but there's something missing in the corporate element that you're not actually you're formed through formation right that's the whole point of going to Seminary and being formed in a very specific way um and it's really very difficult to pass on a tradition that you don't have right if you know like for me I wasn't born on Anglican but I I discovered it and then I did took a deep dive and that's just you know I'm all around that's the way I do this right and and I I drank very deeply and even when we lived overseas when there was no in church anywhere near us that's morning evening prayer every day you know and that's what I did um and I was very I became very formed in this way of spirituality um but if you don't have that you need someone to teach you what does it look like to pray morning and evening prayer matins and even song publicly they've never seen it you I mean it's a liturgical exercise right uh and there's a sort of a I'm not going to say snide let's say it's a let's say it's a just a gentle prodding uh thing that many of us in liturgical nerd World talk about specific uses of liturgy which is you know um like English Museum history religion which happens right where when people they they discover a liturgical textbook and like well this looks cool and I'd love to do that again but they're just like pulling this thing out of the closet and putting on the stuff and it's really hard you can do it you can you can reclaim a tradition this way but it's really hard if no one's actually lived it to share that with you right and that's really what the ordinarians have created I mean there's a story um which everyone should read uh to know about the story um The Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary they're in Birmingham uh in England um they had been one of the oldest 12 sisters had been members of the oldest um Anglican religious community found in just in the midst of the Oxford movement in the mid 18 I think 50s 1849 and prior to this point after the English after Henry VII took all the money from all the monasteries closed them all down uh there was no religious orders in England that were open right there you know they're obviously were people hide in hiding praise the Lord for their for their work for no public religious orders right and the Oxford movement kind of reversed that it was this time of ripe history where there's enough people with enough money and enough power and they made it happen and they formed these beautiful religious houses of men and women um and there was this Benedictine group of Anglican women that were in this period of discernment when English form cheadlebus came out there was this moment of like like spine tingling hope that this inside this need they had to come home to the Catholic Church could be resolved because think about a religious right so if you've made you've made promises to live in a place a stability right especially in a Benedictine tradition right you're going to live in this place until you die and this is the way you live your life you don't have possessions in the same sense right if you're a religious person and you come into the church until the Anglo Norm chady bus that woman would come in as just a lay cafet she would re-enter the lay state right there's not really a diocese unless she was absorbed somehow into Another Place Another religious community which could happen but it's kind of difficult and she wouldn't have any of that the the bits that formed her spiritual life that would all be dead right she couldn't live it anymore corporately and that was a similar thing you know John Paul II in his letter um to the Eastern the light of light of the Eastern Church Oriental but thank you um I have five kids now and I'm not sleeping very much thank you um but uh and one of the like sort of mid-paragraphs he's talking about how the the monastic way of life is a model for the baptized living out the baptized life so for all Christians our our as lay people our order cannot be looking at our priests to be this is the way I should live because priests have a radical life of self-sacrifice right and in the broader discipline of the Catholic Church they have turned their back on the world in a very radical Way by by saying no to a lot of things that they could have said yesterday they were legally allowed to say yes to and there's a strong commitment and a very unique and very passionate way then we can see that and it's it's very special and glorious but that's not the that's not the normal way of life every priest will tell you that their life is not normal and this is not what everyone's life is supposed to look like and they pray that it doesn't every priest I know will tell you that um but the way that a monastic orients their life around prayer and worship and family in this sense of community there are things that we can learn as lay Catholics from that don't go no don't go crazy with this I'm not trying to turn you all into a bunch of hypers groups that beat yourself up all night every night and that's I didn't say that but what I did say is we can learn a lot from the way that monastic orders sort of govern themselves that's what John Paul II said as well so when we look at this experience of these sisters who finally found a way to come home and to retain this bit of life-shaping spirituality praying a certain way living a certain way worshiping a certain way seeing a certain way that's the same reality that lay anglicans who wanted to come home to the church they just all right well I'm willing to lay it down if that's Lord if there's if I don't have to have this that's okay you know it's I'll miss it but this is what I got and and places like Prince of Peace we are very blessed to incorporate as much as humanly possible of that musical tradition of uh of I mean really of as much of it as we really can the devotional life we bring it in here because we're blessed with two converts romanianism who who could bring that with them right so as a great gift that we have here but not every not every Parish has that as a you know an option um that was a very long-winded uh segue thank you Father for that springboard but I hope I sort of made that a little bit clear to anyone who wanted to know more about that any other questions foreign I mean this would be really fun I mean father Smith could do this even more we have a lot of fun if we sign up here and did that actually and then we could have father never mind I'm not going to make you guys do that um I mean really so that's a great question so there's especially online as we all know the the internet is a vacuum of really bad ideas they get circled around and we get they get us on the way out um but there's also great stuff there too we're very gifted with the internet to have um access to things that we couldn't have before um but when people refer to um the Divine worship the missile um as the tridentine mass or something like that the trademaster in in English they're what they're talking about is more something experiential rather than textual or then part of the actual tradition of course there are things elements within um the what we could call the Anglican office or Anglican use uh liturgy um that are very very ancient you know things were Incorporated from all sorts of places um but to say that it is necessarily more ancient or or whatever I mean that's really like picking how old something is as it is as a determination for for like magic dates don't really exist which I think every Catholic needs to learn this and if anyone gets nothing else from my talk which has nothing to do with things there is no magic date in the world where if I go back to this year the Liturgy was like everything was perfect because I mean father Smith gave us a wonderful talk right now on really like awful things that happened in 1961 in this like experimental radition or in 1952 of like this one monastic house and you know like like in Georgia of all places not I'm not the United States you know the Republic of Georgia uh and you know but this stuff happens all of all over the all over the place and so picking a magic date is is that's something I would advise anyone against but really in terms of just like differences there's a lot of um because of the sort of diversity within the Anglican World um the prayer book of 1662 had a very foundational linguistic element of course there were things that were necessary that were seen from the Catholic Church as these texts are being received in and sort of reinterpreted for an actually Catholic context that were not quite robust enough or not not sufficient enough in the way they express certain things right so like you could like um when the priest is confect in the Eucharist making this absolutely clear one of the things that a lot of former anglicans hate is that you don't have access you can't just use the prayer book you Eucharistic liturgy and I'm not going to get into whether or not that's good or bad you I mean listen when I was in seminary we wanted to say the I mean what was called the Anglican this is like you guys are you're welcome for a journey through like liturgy nerd history right here but there how do I say this really briefly there is there is an in America anyway there's a book called the England missile which is actually essentially the um the Trad Mass said in in prayer book English and that is you know that's what you get exactly it's it's what it says on the 10 guys you open it up and you flip it through and it's like it's just like you're watching come into you know one of our new masses in in English it's beautiful and that was like the dream for everyone in my Seminary we wanted all of our masses to be that that was the goal and we could have three sacred ministers and we'd have incense every day even if there's three people there I don't care we're gonna be singing everything it's gonna be awesome and then you then you get into the parish you're like well that's actually really horrible like that's not going to work you know like it's a great ideal and if you got the you know the staff for it and the the clergy for it um but that is actually an operative principle that I think is really important and I brought this with me from my Anglican days what are we doing in in in in church when we have mass Christ is present right we are and we're inviting the king of Eternity God himself to be present with us in a physically spiritually I mean like if that doesn't blow your brains like that's that is mind-boggling amazing and if any of you had been Protestant you realize that is actually an incredible thing to say to actually we all believe what Jesus is present with us everywhere he's with you know we're two or three are gathered he's there and that's true absolutely it's true but it's true in an amazing way when you go into the Adoration chapel and you look at Jesus in the face I mean like I won't preach up in here guys um but that idea that we can actually be present with Christ so it's going to matter the way we we and it's again this is something we we strive for here Prince of Peace that the way that we celebrate liturgies is gonna gonna matter right it shouldn't matter if Jesus is there or if we're just kind of like schlepping some things together and yeah good enough right like that's not that's not it so um this is not at all actually your exact answer to your question I'm sorry thank you for the tangent again but um it would be so I I could give I mean I really want to have like I want to have like diagrams so I could show you and there are resources you can see this online and I can probably find a link to share with him who actually actually has um side by side the the the ordinary use to Anglican use the Trinity Mass and then the the Nova sword or kind of side by side and it's like I think what everyone needs to actually understand about that is that the parts that matter are all there right if this is a Catholic liturgy Jesus is there I mean I'm not going to get hung I I love tradition I became Catholic for the fullness of the faith I want tradition and I love it and I mean like I mean all of it give me all the tradition but at the end of the day if you're getting hung up on those magic dates and on whether or not I mean just I'll talk you talk to me after that if that's any of y'all I'll pray with you um because that's not what Jesus is about about he's not about division again but we're not doing it like sloppy like it doesn't matter and it does matter tradition matters a lot we have to care about what the church teaches so sorry I mean I can answer that again more if someone has more questions and I know that wasn't a great answer for that specific question sorry um yes um hmm okay so yeah that's a great question yeah I mean so there's there's an entire like wonderful books you can read on um the comparative analysis of you know the the new mess and many Protestant service Lutheran or Methodist or whatever um it's interesting you said that England didn't have Vatican too in a sense we we did as anglicans because when the psychopathic Council happened all of our rude screens got torn down and our altars got you know moved we got beige carpet and and it was it was worse because we didn't have we didn't have to do anything like there was no one telling you how to do it but Rome's doing it let's do it too you know Unity but um that so that's that's a side thing I mean the church that I served in when I was in seminary had it was this church in 1800s beautiful stone it was on a lake it was glorious and I saw pictures of what the high altar used to look like and it was awesome well right yes right if you go to if you go to any historic Parish in England it's again beautiful I mean absolutely breathtaking beautiful liturgy right so okay let's that that question is actually really simple to ask when when Henry VIII made his great move nothing changed he wanted nothing to change he was having masses set for him until the day he died because he knew his thought I mean a lot of people think that what Henry VII actually was hoping for was that he could get married have an heir and then when he dies everything goes back to normal right that's like he doesn't really he didn't have a long game view of like transforming the church right but many people did this was an opportunity that that sort of Savvy uh clerics uh took advantage of people from the continent so remember you know the title that the English Monarchy has as a defender of the faith came from the fact that um St Thomas More I mean Thomas More helped write a a defense of Catholic theology refuting Luther uh and so this is something that um that Henry earned this title defender of the faith because of that obviously it's formally revoked when you say you know like thumb your nose at the the pope uh you kind of lose that you're not defending the faith at that point um but that's uh sort of neither here nor there there have been there were lots of changes I mean it's very complicated right so the Liturgy didn't change hardly at all for um the church in England during Henry VII's lifetime but with the the changes in religion uh under you know going back to Queen Mary where it was Catholic again right and then and then you know we had Edward and then we had Edward first Mary and then Elizabeth we had when we have this this transition of this Whiplash right of some people being really super hardcore uh Continental reform Protestants and some people being you know look let's just kind of stay Catholic right like Mary wanted everything be Catholic again um this really created the tensions this is why the the anglicans call the 1662 prayer book the Elizabethan settlement because it tried not I mean depending on how Catholic you were as Anglican it didn't do a ton to preserve all there is some flexibility but there's what is called the 39 article 39 articles of religion apparently they need to sleep um that uh that have some very anti-catholic things right there's a lot of really fun stories I'm not going to get into the sort of liturgical nerd history on that part um but the Liturgy did transform a bit it changed most of what people think of when they think of like the why anglicanism looks so Catholic it's because of the 19th century it's because of this rediscovery of the Oxford movement um they did so much incredible work to rebuild the the way the church lived and looked in England of course there were other people that were quietly doing this beforehand they were in small places if you ever hear of the poem little getting you know uh but TSL there was actually a community of called little getting where Nicholas Farah and his family lived in this estate and they basically had a semi monastic existence as a family but they were very careful to talk about we are not monks we are not nuns because it's very politically not good at this time right yes how is it yeah right yeah right that's a great question so there are there's a bunch of there's random ordinary communities that exist and they're not random they look random on the map like there's a community in Japan and there's a few that are in formation in the Philippines there's like how'd that happen what's up with that yeah um but you know this is you know God is good right um uh and father there are there are even groups of of anglicans in are they in are they in Turkey now right yeah yeah and one of my favorite liturgical one of my favorite liturgical nerd jokes to have with father is that the least useful liturgical book ever produced is the book of common prayer in Farsi like it did not get used very much but it exists you can find it online it's there um and uh but it's really fun it's good fun if you especially yeah and that's amazing right and this is the this is the category for how that works so it's not there's not this Grand sweep part of that is because um the sort of the Schism uh within the what we call the Anglican communion happened um before Anglican Norm chady was right there were already sort of breakaway groups that kind of as I mentioned that had tried to found hold themselves together and so there are groups from uh uh from sort of the lower part of the world that are much more theologically conservative and like what we're doing this this is good enough right in some sense and some of that is I mean they're doing wonderful work for preaching the gospel you know they were baptizing people they're doing beautifully Noble things um but there those seams are getting uh tested even more right now um so it's getting more difficult to retain some of those bonds of affinity for them outside even I mean within um within the United Kingdom and the United States it's really um staggeringly heartbreaking to look at what has happened in the in sort of the Church of England anglicanism um but outside of that I mean There Are Places you know in the rest of the world where there is still growth and there's still wonderful things that are happening and only time will tell how they will Avail themselves of the church's you know open invitation to come home um but yeah it's a great question yes that's a great question so specific full Methodist parishes I don't know of any uh that are like full Methodist Spirit but part of the sort of the the Mandate of the the opening of Anglican arm chadabus was was for anglicans of course and then the sort of like the Affiliated bits that kind of like like methodism formed as like you know basically a movement within anglicanism right uh so that was sort of a natural thing like okay like I mean again depending on your Methodist right there there's a spectrum um but uh there's a there's a lot of really beautiful family like the Wesley's hymns or like some of those attempts like the Wesley's hymns are incredibly Catholic there's some really great stuff and some of them are like that's not Catholic at all but there's some really beautiful incredible singable stuff but in terms of whole Methodist congregations I haven't heard of that I do know of clergy that are um coming coming into full communion and there's Pathways for them uh forward nation that sort of thing um and then you know sort of clusters of families that are doing that but I haven't heard of that I'd like to see that that'd be beautiful and with the sort of the state of the Methodist church right now the the kind of the field is the the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few right so that's a good thing any other questions at all yes yeah I think you know there's something that's really important for especially as you talk if you ever get a conversation with someone who's from any other sort of non-liturgical or sort of Mainline I guess you want to say uh Protestant tradition um they themselves do have a tradition as well so Baptists have a tradition of interpreting scripture now Baptist does not only you know my family being Southern Baptist you know most of my family is that they don't look at scripture and say it's just me in the Bible alone oh that looks like that because no one can actually be them in the Bible alone because they you kind of have a collection of people that interpret things a certain way so you you look at Bible commentaries with a with a theologian or a scholar that you can trust and you have a lot of people vetting this well that's a magisterium right it's not a it's not a perfect one it's it's it's it never claims to have any kind of you know infallibility which is terrifying um because you get a lot of weird stuff but um I mean your question is great I mean really there's a lot of you know the great the Fulton Gene quote about how there's you know this tiny fraction of people who actually hate you know the Catholic Church whether we believe they hate what they think the Catholic Church believes and teaches and so many people of good faith when they're open to reading scriptures have their mind blown like for me reading the Bible was transformed on my journey into Catholicism because things that were never I couldn't get a good answer for it that's a question about like about like John 6 what is it like why does it say this like it went or say let's talk about Peter but yeah what is that what does the Greek say my Greek class my very Protestant Greek Professor who was a brilliant Greek Theologian said there is literally no other way you can look at the Greek and say he's literally talking to Peter he's not talking about some random like collection of Apostles or like a rock over here like the text is clear you can do without what you want theologically he said because we were mixed you know the big umbrella right the big um but so there's a lot of ways that people interpret things but I mean it's a great question um and there's tons of apologists you know that um Catholic apologists that will really encourage using scripture like and using like Protestant Bible scripture like don't go to Maccabees because that's not in the Bible like well it's not in your Bible because you cut it out man that's you know don't why do you want the Reader's Digest verse in the Bible um but um anyway that is a great question and it is it's difficult like you have to kind of walk that carefully with people and test where they're at like if someone's actually challenging you on this like you know defend this and you know it is a thing um but it but when it's clear right I mean so I was just having a conversation with uh with someone about this and you know all of the all that we believe is Catholics about our Blessed Mother everything that we have like none of the things that we that we pray are actually anti-scriptural right which is a claim we get like well that's not in the Bible Well I mean okay as Catholics we don't we're not we don't feel Bound for every word that we pray or everything that we believe to have like a reference to a chapter and verse the truth should be connected it can't be contrary to the faith right but everything doesn't have to be you know we don't have to you know have verses like that um but everything that we believe about the relationship that we have as disciples that Christ loved you know and when he says to John you're the Disciples of you know behold your mother mother behold your son we but we the church has interpreted that for forever that that's us that we we are that disciple as well right she's been given to us in this sense as a mother and so I mean it's um there's a little bit of uh you know spiritual blindness that happens when you're in a certain way but at the same time it takes it takes a lot of time and the faith is a gift that we have to nurture as well so I think that's something we have to keep in mind did I say any other hands I can't remember if I saw anyone outside of the corner yes yes there you go and do you happen to know how much it costs today you bought it recently but just recently man it's a steal guys that's a steal I don't get paid from Ignatius they don't give me any money but you know definitely it's definitely worth it uh for sure I definitely recommend it to you any other questions pretty good oh yes yes absolutely the colic for Purity I can definitely do that you have to flip back a moment all right this is yeah if you if you ever want to look this pair up it's the colic for purity okay so that's my name and father so ghost I'm in almighty God unto whom all Arts be open all desires known and from whom no secrets are HID cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnify thy Holy Name through Christ Our Lord amen yeah beautiful prayer and as I said guys I don't have there's a ton more that can be said this is a like how can I can't I mean this is the I'm not a Canon lawyer and father Bradley should be here giving this but I'm doing the best I can guys right it's a really really beautiful um and I would love to talk about anyone who has more questions about sort of living this or how could you incorporate any of these principles or whatever so really uh love to talk more about it but have a blessed night thank you [Applause]