Archbishop of Canterbury

The Anglican wars roll on (and Holy Communion for dogs)

The German Shepherd's name was Trapper and he came to St. Peter's Anglican Church with his owner, a newcomer at the historic Toronto parish. At the end of the Mass, Trapper went forward with everyone else for Holy Communion. That's when the vicar, in what she later described as a welcoming gesture, served the dog some of the consecrated bread that Anglicans believe has -- in a mysterious manner -- become the body of Jesus Christ.

So one parishioner complained to the bishop and, in a flash, critics online were quoting Matthew 7:6 ("Do not give dogs what is holy...") and the controversy -- this story has had long legs -- even reached BBC with the headline, "Canadian priest sorry for giving dog Holy Communion."

It seems that strange and dramatic events of this kind happen year after year in the global Anglican Communion -- truly one of God's gifts to headline writers.

Also, it appears unlikely that this trend will change anytime soon. Recently, in a burst of candor in Mexico, the current Archbishop of Canterbury harkened back to the English Civil War and quoted sobering advice from Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who was under the patronage of Archbishop William Laud when the latter was executed in 1645 by the Puritan parliament.

The Most Rev. Justin Welby noted that Taylor warned: "It is unnatural and unreasonable to persecute disagreeing opinions. ... Force in matters of opinion can do no good, but is very apt to do hurt."

These are hard words in an era in which England's shrinking flock of Anglicans is still fighting over female bishops and, across the Atlantic, the shrinking flock of Episcopalians continues to fight over non-celibate gay bishops. Meanwhile, leaders in the growing Global South churches of Africa and Asia are calling for repentance and doctrinal discipline.

During an August 13 address in Monterrey, Welby said he sometimes worries that Anglicans are "drifting back" into a true civil war of their own.

"Not consciously, of course, but in an unconscious way that is more dangerous. Like a drunk man walking near the edge of a cliff, we trip and totter and slip and wander, ever nearer to the edge of the precipice," he said, in the released text.

"On one side is the steep fall into an absence of any core beliefs, a chasm where we lose touch with God, and thus we rely only on ourselves and our own message. On the other side there is a vast fall into a ravine of intolerance and cruel exclusion. It is for those who claim all truth, and exclude any who question. When we fall into this place, we lose touch with human beings and create a small church, or rather many small churches -- divided, ineffective in serving the poor, the hungry and the suffering, incapable of living with each other, and incomprehensible to those outside the church."

The problem? One bishop's "core beliefs" are another's cruel dogmas. And, according to Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Christianity is entering another 500-year cycle of doctrinal reform similar to that of Martin Luther.

"The major shifts of focus of these periodic seismic events are profoundly unsettling to many people, but they seem to be necessary to God's mission," she said, in an August 15 address at the national assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, meeting in Pittsburgh.

Anger and fear caused by rapid political and cultural changes have caused some members of liberal Protestant flocks to flee, said Jefferts Schori, whose denomination has declined from 3.6 million members in 1965 to 1.9 million in 2011. In the tumultuous past decade, average Sunday attendance has declined nearly 25 percent, to roughly 650,000 Episcopalians.

Jefferts Schori's flock is also aging rapidly, in part because -- as she boldly told The New York Times in 2006 -- Episcopalians are "better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates" than Catholics and other believers and because they "pay attention to the stewardship of the earth."

While other are seeing signs of peril, she said, progressives must see progress, especially when fighting for gay rights, racial justice and causes central to their faith.

"The challenges that both our churches have experienced around issues of inclusion of all human beings in recent years have reminded us that God is always at work -- on us, within us, and among us," said Jefferts Schori. "Some have judged our smaller numbers as faithlessness but it may actually be the Spirit's way of pruning for greater fruitfulness."

Columbine, Newtown and our culture of death

Blame it on the guns. No, blame the judges who banned Godtalk in schools, along with most lessons about right and wrong.

No, our lousy national mental health care system caused this hellish bloodbath.

No, the problem is the decay of American families, with workaholic parents chained to their desks while their children grow up in suburban cocoons with too much time on their hands.

No, it's Hollywood's fault. How can children tell the difference between fantasy and reality when they've been baptized in violent movies, television and single-shooter videogames?

Why not blame God?

These were the questions in 1999 when two teen-aged gunmen at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., killed 13 people and themselves in the massacre that set the standard for soul-searching media frenzies in postmodern America.

All the questions asked about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are now being asked about Adam Lanza after he gunned down 20 first graders and six employees at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., before taking his life. He began his rampage by killing his mother in the suburban home they shared after the 2008 divorce that split their family.

After Columbine, Denver's archbishop wrote an agonizing reflection that looked toward a future after all the headlines and endless cable-news coverage. Last week the staff of Archbishop Charles Chaput, now leader of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, circulated those words once again. What has changed?

"The media are already filled with 'sound bites' of shock and disbelief; psychologists, sociologists, grief counselors and law enforcement officers -- all with their theories and plans," he wrote. "God bless them for it. We certainly need help. Violence is now pervasive in American society -- in our homes, our schools, on our streets, in our cars as we drive home from work, in the news media, in the rhythms and lyrics of our music, in our novels, films and video games. It is so prevalent that we have become largely unconscious of it. ...

"The causes of this violence are many and complicated: racism, fear, selfishness. But in another, deeper sense, the cause is very simple: We're losing God, and in losing Him, we're losing ourselves. The complete contempt for human life shown by the young killers ... is not an accident, or an anomaly or a freak flaw in our social fabric. It's what we create when we live a contradiction. We can't systematically kill the unborn, the infirm and the condemned prisoners among us; we can't glorify brutality in our entertainment; we can't market avarice and greed ... and then hope that somehow our children will help build a culture of life."

Columbine unfolded in the Easter season, noted Chaput, a time in which believers are reminded that even the Son of God was not spared the reality of death.

"The Son of God descended into hell and so have we all, over the past few days," noted the archbishop. "But that isn't the end of the story."

Now, the Newtown massacre has shattered the season of Advent, in the days preceding the 12-day season of Christmas -- another biblical event that included violence and the deaths of innocents, as well as the singing of angels and signs of ultimate hope.

Little has changed.

Death is real and life is precious. Innocence is fragile and sin is terrifyingly real. The violence that haunts our culture is real and at times impossible to prevent. America is blessed and cursed with charge cards, computers, cellphones and many other gifts of modern life.

Chaput and other clergy faced familiar questions this week. The only option, he said, is to look in the mirror.

"God is good, but we human beings are free, and being free, we help fashion the nature of our world with the choices we make," he said, in a new letter. "Every life lost in Connecticut was unique, precious and irreplaceable. But the evil was routine; every human generation is rich with it. Why does God allow war? Why does God allow hunger? ...

"We are not the inevitable products of history or economics or any other determinist equation. We're free, and therefore responsible for both the beauty and the suffering we help make. Why does God allow wickedness? He allows it because we -- or others just like us -- choose it. The only effective antidote to the wickedness around us is to live differently from this moment forward."

St. Peter in Westminster Abbey

During his long exile in Normandy, the Saxon prince who would become known as Edward the Confessor vowed that he would make a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Peter once he returned to England. After his coronation as king, the pope released Edward from this vow -- if he built a monastery dedicated to the first bishop of Rome. Thus, St. Peter's Abbey was rebuilt in Westminster.

Pope Benedict XVI gently stressed this history in the first words of his address during his recent visit to Westminster Abbey, where he prayed with the archbishop of Canterbury.

"I thank the Lord for this opportunity to join you ... in this magnificent Abbey church dedicated to St. Peter, whose architecture and history speak so eloquently of our common heritage of faith," said Benedict. "Here we cannot help but be reminded of how greatly the Christian faith shaped the unity and culture of Europe and the heart and spirit of the English people. Here too, we are forcibly reminded that what we share, in Christ, is greater than what continues to divide us. ...

"I thank the Lord for allowing me, as the successor of St. Peter in the See of Rome, to make this pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Edward the Confessor."

Benedict's historic visit to England's national shrine received little coverage, in part because his remarks there were intensely spiritual. Meanwhile, journalists had to notice that his Westminster Hall address on the role of reason and faith in politics drew a secular flock that included, as an Associated Press report noted, "former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, who recently converted to Catholicism."

Speaking in the hall in which the Catholic martyr Sir Thomas More was convicted of treason for his loyalty to Rome, Benedict warned that the modern world -- take Europe -- is increasingly hostile to those who try to act on their beliefs.

"There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere," he said. "There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none. And there are those who argue -- paradoxically with the intention of eliminating discrimination -- that Christians in public roles should be required at times to act against their conscience.

"These are worrying signs of a failure to appreciate not only the rights of believers to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, but also the legitimate role of religion in the public square."

The abbey visit created no sparks, in part because earlier that day the pope told Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams that there was no need to "speak of the difficulties that the ecumenical path has encountered and continues to encounter. Those difficulties are well known." Thus, there were no clear references to tensions about female priests, gay bishops in America's Episcopal Church and the Vatican's controversial decision -- after many appeals by Anglican traditionalists -- to make it easier for members of the Church of England to enter the Church of Rome.

Instead, Benedict repeatedly stressed that unity must be found in scripture, creeds and moral doctrines that date back to the early church. These words, however, are controversial in an age in which the global Anglican Communion is divided over teachings as central as the resurrection of Jesus and claims that salvation is found through Christ, alone.

"Our commitment to Christian unity is born of nothing less than our faith in Christ, in this Christ, risen from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father, who will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead," he said. "It is the reality of Christ's person, his saving work and above all the historical fact of his resurrection, which is the content of ... those creedal formulas. ... The church's unity, in a word, can never be other than a unity in the apostolic faith, in the faith entrusted to each new member of the Body of Christ."

Finally, Benedict stressed -- yet again -- that he was speaking and acting in "fidelity to my ministry as the bishop of Rome and the successor of St. Peter, charged with a particular care for the unity of Christ's flock."