By Hilary White
CANTERBURY, July 24, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Anglican Communion is suffering from a form of spiritual Alzheimer’s and ecclesial Parkinson’s disease, said a Vatican official in a speech that was described by Damien Thompson, a British Catholic journalist as “one of the rudest things a Vatican prelate has said to Anglicans since the dawn of the ecumenical era.”
Ivan Cardinal Dias told the Anglican bishops gathered at the Lambeth Conference that the current state of chaos and disunity, brought on by the member churches from the wealthy western nations abandoning their Christian moral and scriptural basis, is damaging Christian credibility in the wider world.
Cardinal Dias told the assembled bishops, “Much is spoken today of diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. By analogy, their symptoms can, at times, be found even in our own Christian communities.”
“For example, when we live myopically in the fleeting present, oblivious of our past heritage and apostolic traditions, we could well be suffering from spiritual Alzheimer’s. And when we behave in a disorderly manner, going whimsically our own way without any co-ordination with the head or the other members of our community, it could be ecclesial Parkinson’s.”
In his speech, Cardinal Dias decried the “culture of death” of abortion, divorce, and “materialism and moral aberrations, which suffocate the joy of living and lead often to profound psychic depression.”
He noted the damage done to the evangelical work of Christians by the Anglican crisis. Indeed, what has been called the “slow-motion train wreck” of the Anglican Communion, has been at the forefront of international religious news since the consecration in 2003 by the American branch of an unrepentant active homosexual as bishop of New Hampshire.
“When [Christians] are of one mind and heart notwithstanding their diversity, their missionary thrust is indeed enhanced and strengthened. But, when the diversity degenerates into division, it becomes a counter-witness which seriously compromises their image and endeavours to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ,” Dias said.
“The world today needs Christian apologists, not apologisers,” the Cardinal continued. He cited the examples of towering 19th and 20th century Christian defenders John Henry Cardinal Newman, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and C.S. Lewis. Apologists should live in the world, but they should not be of the world, he said.
The Times religion correspondent, Ruth Gledhill says that Dias is one of the Vatican leadership known to support the reception of Anglicans into communion with Rome. Traditionally minded Anglicans are reported to be in talks with Rome to organise a means by which they can be received into the Catholic Church en masse while retaining their liturgical traditions.
Many observing the meeting, held at the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus until August 4, believe that this fourteenth Lambeth Conference will be the last. The reports of “chaos” and disillusionment growing from the meeting support the theory that the failure of the bishops realistically to address the problems of growing secularism in their church will spell the end of the Anglican Communion as a unified global religious body. At the moment, with over 77 million followers around the world, Anglicanism claims the place of the world’s third largest Christian denomination.
Five of the 38 Anglican primates from around the world, as well as the bishops of the diocese of Sydney, Australia, have boycotted the Lambeth Conference over their opposition to the growing acceptance of homosexuality and other secularist incursions. These five represent the provinces of Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and the Southern Cone of the Americas. These provinces represent the great majority of the 77 million practising Anglican communicants.
In June, 1148 lay and clergy delegates, including 291 Anglican Bishops, met at an alternate conference in Jerusalem to discuss a way forward for the Anglican Church. These delegates collectively represented three fourths of the world’s Anglican laity.