When is the next part coming? I want to read how you went about it, how you felt as you did it, if you had serious qualms or got cold feet at any point…

(I did.)

Susan Peterson

Now you know that I am not upset at your conversion, so I am not commenting from a desire to refute (except from my delight in a good argument which has nothing to do with any theological position), but I have a few comments on the course of your account so far. As you’ve described it your journey is of one who held to Catholic pirnciples and thought that they could be maintained within the Anglican church, but then discovered that they could not. Key points seem to be an understanding of the liturgywhich you have always taken to be authoritative and a belief in the teachng authority of the church which you share with Richard Neuhaus. Correct me if I’m wrong.

What I am wondersing is if you are going to be defending these in themselves, rather than showing how they are present in the Roman church and absent in the Anglican church. I am speaking very loosely, without sufficient time to pose the questions properly, but these are the kinds of points i’m hoping you will address. Needless to say I am not expecting succinct but definitive and utterly convincing responses!

Can you justify historically and theologically the claim that the apostolic church was ever the concrete bastion of true faith and practice that comes across in your images and metaphors? It seems to me that the church has always partaken more of the fallen nature of the world and that the stream of authoritative doctrine and practice that has come down to us has depended more on the inward workings of providence and the current work of the Holy Spirit than you imply. Much of the tradition was under dispute much of the time and much that wasn’t under dispute was accepted because of inertia rather than theological enlightemment. Or am I wrong? Part of the Reformation was the necessary recognition of the contingent nature of much that had been taken to be authoritative tradition. Two age old examples would be the discovery that the almost apostolicly authoritiative neo-Platonic theology of Dionysius was actually written in the 5th century and the discovery that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery. These changed understandings did not rule out the truths that they had bolstered but they put them on a somewhat different basis.

Are you going to try to engage these questions in a theological way? You cite Newman, and refer to other writings which cite Newman. His example fits the kind of approach you are taking. But are you going to come to grips at all with the larger ecumenical theological tradition – I would say the catholic theological tradition – in which, it seems to me, Hooker is a more important theological thinker than Newman, and Calvin much more than either? In other words are you going to relate your thoughts to a consensus fidelium which gives the theologians of different confessions the importance that their own inttrinsic mertis deserve, and not quote the ones who support your position in what might be described as a sectarian manner? Sorry, you know my argumentative propensities!

As it stands so far your account leaves someone who did not grow up with the Catholic thoughts and sensibilities that you describe, and whose theological education has not led to all of the same conclusions, rather on the outside.

However, enjoying what you say very much!

All the best,

David

As for the correction to my post, the problem is in the way I phrased it. Had I put ‘Roman’ before ‘Catholic’ in the preceding line, it would not have appeared as if I thought Romans and Ukrainians used the same liturgy.

Cheers.

One correction of your post: At the Ukranian Catholic Church your wife and children attended up north, they would have experienced not any form of the Novus Ordo, but the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostum, the same liturgy used in Orthodox churches.

Agree with what you say. But the superficial appearances are difficult to live with sometimes. That is why I now attend a Byzantine Rite Catholic parish.

In Christ,
Susan Peterson