Monday, November 9, 2009

SIGNIFICANCE, REVISITED


I mentioned that the new Apostolic Constitution for the Anglicans was published today, the Feast of the Dedication of the Basilica-Cathedral of St. John Lateran—a date that perhaps has some significant impact, as this is the “Mother and Head of all Churches…”

The document itself was signed (therefore formally promulgated) last week, on the Feast of St. Charles Borromeo (4 Nov.). Is there any significance here? Maybe…

St. Charles was the great theological ‘mover and shaker’ that finally concluded the Council of Trent with its reforms; he vigorously implemented those reforms in his Archdiocese of Milan. It is largely through his example that what we understand nowadays as ‘seminaries’ came into being. He was the great figure of the times during and immediately after the Council of Trent—a leader in the “Catholic Counter-Reformation” that was so desperately needed.

Why do I bother with such “significances” or “coincidences”? I cannot help but remember that when it came to throwing down the gauntlet, so to speak, in the Oxford Tractarian Movement, John Henry Newman published his famous (infamous?) Tract 90, explaining how all of the 39 Articles of the Church of England could be understood in a ‘catholic’ way. The date: the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (25 Jan.) in 1841.

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