BENEDICT XVI IN THE UK
If we don’t want to begin right at the beginning, and recall Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), who initiated the evangelization of Anglia by sending Augustine and his monks to that island, we can and should remember, more recently, the visit made by John Paul II to the UK in 1982 that marked something of a watershed, the first visit of a Pope to the territory of Great Britain. It was an historic event after the separation of the Church of England with the Act of Supremacy of Henry VIII in 1534, which had led to the breach with Rome and the establishment of the Anglican Communion. An acknowledgement of that division and a painful recollection of the sad events of the past marked the beginning of the meeting of 29 May 1982 in Canterbury Cathedral, where the Pope and the Anglican Primate Runcie, entering into dialogue, together recited the prayer of Jesus reported in the Gospel according to John (17:21): “That they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they may be in us, so that the world may believe…”.
That prayer is irrepressible and unstoppable. It continues to animate the heart and body of the community of the disciples of the Lord and knocks with ever greater insistence on the door of the Churches and Christian communities. It is whispered in small prayer groups, wherever two or three meet together in His name. It is meditated on in meetings of theological research, and no one can wonder at or prevent a pope from repeating it to himself and to all those who have the opportunity and duty to meet together, even if it means overriding formal reservations and conveniences. The prayer, cried out by the Lord on the tragic evening of His passion, continues to be heard; it cannot be stopped and does not tolerate being subjected to forms of conditioning. The charisma of “parrhesia”, the power of speech with which a true pastor is endowed, does not know obstacles and leads him straight to the areopagus where he places at the centre the one thing that is needed by revealing God’s design for reconciliation and peace between men. There are no other intentions in the mind of Benedict XVI who is strengthened in the exercise of his ministry and does not stop in the face of opposition or obstacles. As soon as he had been elected Pope, Ratzinger asked the faithful to say a prayer for him, which became for him a proposal and a promise: “Pray for me, that I may not flee from the wolves out of fear”.
At the meeting in 1982, with the participation of all the Anglican bishops and also the leaders of other Churches in England and Wales, with profound emotion, as recalled by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop Emeritus of Westminster, who welcomed and accompanied the Pope on his visit, the rite of renewal of baptismal vows was celebrated, which is the same for Catholics as it is for Anglicans, as re-evocation of the sacrament of baptism through which we were united to Christ. At the same time the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth and the Spirit of unity, was invoked, thus giving rise to renewed impetus in the search for a way of reconciliation. An eloquent witness of this is the Joint Declaration, signed by Pope John Paul II and Archbishop Runcie, which came out of that visit and which marked further progress in the bilateral dialogue between Catholics and Anglicans. Already in 1982 some fruits of that dialogue were achieved, and it was immediately shown to be promising with some salutary results on the Eucharist and ministry, one of the first of them having already been reached with the full and convinced agreement of Paul VI and Archbishop Ramsey in 1966. 1982, we may recall, was also the year of the joint signing by the World Council of Churches and the Catholic Church of the declaration on Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, known more briefly as the BEM (Lima Document). The hope was that would lead the ecumenical process to a culminating agreement on aspects of the doctrine and life of the Church. The history of this process is complex and since then, unfortunately, the direct route has been abandoned in favour of the pursuit of more uncertain and tortuous routes, though without ever losing sight of the final goal which only God holds in his hand.
In the meantime, we, both Catholics and Anglicans, are invited to embrace the teaching and follow the example of Newman, tireless seeker of the truth and unity of the Church, without ever betraying fidelity to his own conscience. Newman, a sincere Christian, who was born and brought up in the Anglican Communion and who then became a convinced believer in the Roman Catholic Church, is now to be proclaimed Blessed. Let us recite with him the lines he wrote in his famous hymn “Lead, kindly Light”, that it may guide us along the paths of perfect union in Christ: “Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, lead Thou me on! / The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead Thou me on!”.
That is how this astonishing and more than ever relevant man prayed, the man who is at the root of the papal journey to England. May his genius and the holiness of his life, his faith and his radical recall of fidelity to conscience, the courage of his choices, and the sincere passion of his writings, be a common and precious legacy for the citizens of the United Kingdom, an example for intellectuals and scholars, educators and politicians, Catholics and Anglicans. His genius and the holiness of his life indicate goals which, also in Europe, go beyond the artificial barriers that history has placed between the members of the one Christian people.
SIR Europe
(13 September 2010)
