All Saints’ Day
November 1, 2009
Homily for the Anglican Usage Mass
of the
St. Thomas More Society
celebrated at
St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church , 1013 Wood Street
Scranton, PA
Matthew 5:1-12
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen
The baptisms we are about to celebrate are the first in our Anglican Use community since the Holy See announced last Tuesday that an Apostolic Constitution will soon be issued that will make the Anglican Use a permanent fixture in the Catholic Church. Before today, all the work we did in reconciling people to Holy Mother Church hung under the shadow, the uncertainty, that our community might not exist, as soon as, say, tomorrow. Today I can say with confidence that if in twenty-five years my daughter, Lucy, should elect to use this rite to have one of my grandchildren baptized, it will be available to her family.
This permanence is just one of the implications for the new Apostolic Constitution, which I promised I would discuss with you this week. While there may have been doubt that we would ever be erected as a personal parish – fearing that we might be a mere Society of St. Clare Church forever – we know now that the St. Thomas More Society will shortly be St. Thomas More Church. This is the first implication for us locally, and it provides us with a security we did not previously enjoy.
This permanence to which we look forward is possible only because our community will belong to a different canonical jurisdiction than the Diocese of Scranton. In fact, we will be linked canonically, and not just in spirit, to all the other Anglican Use communities in the U.S., and indeed the world. We will have an ordinary, probably a bishop, and he will be able to assign a priest here in Scranton every time there is a vacancy. For example, four years ago I fell gravely ill and I was unable to fulfill my duties. If this should happen again, our ordinary will be able to assign a priest here until I recover. Right now, the Bishop of Scranton does not have the resources to do that for our community, so if I fell ill we’d just be without a priest. Besides, the Bishop of Scranton has just one other priest who is trained to offer our liturgy. To have our own jurisdiction means not only permanence but also that Anglican Use Catholics here in Scranton will always have their own shepherd who is familiar with our traditions.
Our ordinary will be able to assign other men here, because going forward the Anglican Use communities will be able to keep the vocations that they raise up. Formerly the men from our parishes called to the priesthood entered into the life of the territorial dioceses, such as Houston or San Antonio. Now we will send our men to our own seminaries for formation, and they will come back to be ordained for service in our parishes, schools, and convents. Our faithfulness will thus in a sense be rewarded – to the degree that we raise up more vocations, we will be able to raise up more communities. And the more communities we have, the more vocations we will have.
Thus, we see here another implication of the Apostolic Constitution: evangelization. To the groups of Anglicans who desire to become Catholic, an ordinary will be able to send a priest who will then be able to found a new Anglican Use community. Where there is a need we will have the resources to respond. This ability to found new parishes will translate beyond our borders, as well. We know that some nations are richer with vocations than others. I can easily foresee a nation with a surplus of Anglican Use ordinations sending those men to other countries where the need is great but the laborers are few. The growth we are able to witness and the conversions we are able to facilitate will be directly related to the vocations we are able to raise up. Our ability to flourish will no longer be dependent upon the permission of a territorial bishop, but upon our zeal for souls.
That evangelical impulse is one of the gifts that we bring to the Catholic Church from our Anglican background. There are others. For example, the Anglican choral tradition is featured at every Anglican Use congregation, including our own. Not only do we have a trained Organist, we also employ a Music Director with a degree in Choral Conducting. This emphasis reflects the importance we place upon offering to God the best music we are able to give. The reverence of our liturgy is another aspect of our common life with which the Holy Father is pleased. The disciplines we observe here at Mass, such as kneeling to receive the Eucharist on our tongues, are some of the very ones he advocates in his book, The Spirit of the Liturgy.
The differences in our musical tradition, in our devotional practices, in our Sacred Liturgy – these are all part of what Cardinal Levada, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, called in his announcement of the Apostolic Constitution “legitimate diversity”. Since we believe what the Catholic Church teaches, how we live out the faith can be a little bit different without being a threat to the unity of the Church. Indeed, unity is not the same thing as uniformity, and the Anglican Use demonstrates how our particular gifts complement the gifts of our fellow Catholics from both the East and the West. The introduction of another tradition to the entire Catholic Church is not an example of competition but of complementarity, which issues in a strengthening of unity.
While what I have described may be music to our ears, the prospective entry of thousands of Anglican converts into the Catholic Church has provoked this past week a considerable amount of vicious commentary in the secular press. I don’t want to draw too much attention to the scurrilous things that were said about us in the local and national press. Suffice it to say that I was so provoked by the lies and the raw hatred I read in the paper that I wrote a letter to the editor for the first time in ten years. I was angry at first, but as I reflected further upon the vitriol and calumny, I remembered the words that we read in today’s Gospel, “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you, and utter all kinds of evil falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matt. 5:11-12). As I thought of all the hateful things I had read, I began to think, “Boy, we must really be doing something right, something really great, if it is making so many people angry.” Then I thought about the people we angered, advocates of immoral and vile practices, not one of them a defender of the sanctity of life. So I said to myself, “I shouldn’t be angry, I should be happy, because I believe in the life to come, and I’m looking forward to my reward.”
Just one thing gave me pause, if only for a moment. I realized that the dirt our adversaries sling at me, they will sling at my parishioners and my children, including the daughter I’m about to baptize. I wondered, “How do I protect her from this bigotry and rage to which I’ve been exposed this past week, prejudice so profound that the Archbishop of New York, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, declared days ago that anti-Catholicism is America’s second national pastime?”
Then the Lord reminded me I was asking the wrong question. I shouldn’t ask how to protect my children from persecution. I need to know how to prepare them for it. That is, the disciples we make must be trained solidly in the Faith, just like the saints, whose victory we celebrate today. With the saints as their examples and intercessors, our children will not be susceptible to the deceitful attacks of the enemy. With the saints as their examples and intercessors, our children will have the strength to promote the sanctity of life to a culture that deems life cheap and dispensable. I remembered in the end that I shouldn’t worry if the world hates them – the world hated Jesus first. I’ll know I’ve done my job well if the next generation suffers the same insults we have, and thus are as blessed as we.
Thanks be to God the Holy Father just gave us the means to help us make disciples the way we know how. Please pray we’ll be as successful as the world fears we’ll be.