Den ansedda katolska engelska The Tablet har 9 juni en öppen (fritt tillgänglig) ledare som handlar om ”De många goda gåvorna omkring oss”, med anledning av kardinal Kurt Kochs besök i England. Jag gör inget försök att översätta texten till svenska; såvitt jag förstår av engelskan så är den full av olika reflexioner, jag höll på att säga ’hit och dit’. Skarpa och mycket tänkvärda.
/Krister Janzon
Rubriken ovan är klickbar.
Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, is visiting England this weekend primarily so that he can acquaint himself with some aspects of the Anglican tradition which he has not experienced before.
It is good that the Church of England has extended the invitation to him for that purpose, and that he sees his own need for it. Being Swiss, he knows about Calvinism already, and those parts of the Anglican tradition which owe most to Geneva will seem familiar to him. But mainstream Anglican spirituality has many Catholic elements to it, sometimes coexisting with post-Calvinist Evangelicalism, sometimes in tension with it. The Anglican choral tradition continues to testify wonderfully to the beauty of holiness, and indeed to the holiness of beauty. That is a very Catholic idea.
In the exchange of gifts which is at the heart of modern ecumenism, this Anglican sensibility is something not just to be admired but to be sought after in the Roman Catholic Church too. There are other Anglican gifts that Catholics might envy, which could help to heal some of the issues currently causing unease or even dismay in the Catholic Church in various parts of the world. There is on the one hand a growing sense of crisis, and on the other, frustration that those responsible for the management of the Church seem unaware of it, or misunderstand it.
There is thus a breakdown of communication between the leaders and the led. A new survey of Catholic opinion in Ireland shows just how far the rejection of the traditional Irish way of being Catholic has gone. But this is true not just in Ireland.
Cardinal Koch will be aware that the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (Arcic) has on several occasions addressed issues of church structure. Arcic’s conclusions were that while Anglicanism needed more of the primatial principle to safeguard its unity – a reference to the role of the papacy in the Catholic Church – Rome needed for its own good to embrace the synodical principle present in Anglicanism.
The notion that the laity and parish clergy should routinely have a voice in the management of the Catholic Church was generally accepted by the Second Vatican Council and has generally been ignored ever since, despite being enshrined in canon law. A synodical structure at diocesan or national level would provide a lightning conductor at times of crisis. No doubt it would also greatly improve the quality of decision-making. The lack of an effective means for expressing lay opinion, on the other hand, sends a signal of distrust, or even of contempt. It seems to say: “We are not going to ask you what you think because we suspect it is not what we want you to think.” And that mindset is crippling the Catholic Church at the moment, with vast amounts of energy being wasted trying to push more open-minded parts of the Church back into line rather than taking on board what they are trying to say. The Anglican synodical system is not perfect, and perhaps owes too much to a legalistic parliamentary model. But in treating the laity with respect, Anglicanism is streets ahead of the Catholic Church. That may indeed be something it inherited from Calvinism. Cardinal Koch is far too shrewd not to notice it.
