The recent Oct 20 press conference on the forthcoming Apostolic Constitution of Pope Benedict XVI, given simultaneously at the Vatican and in London, came as a surprise to many. This new Constitution when promulgated will put in place “a canonical structure that provides for Personal Ordinariates.” Such a setup will allow former Anglicans to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church “while preserving elements of distinctive Anglican spiritual partimony.” This is the way of Jesus who said, “For whoever is not against you is for you,” (Lk 9:50) and in Chapter 17 of John where he prayed that his disciples be one as He and the Father are one. This unity is prescribed in the Creed in which we profess the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Interestingly, among those who desired this unity was Cardinal John Henry Newman, whose beatification will take place sometime next year. It was in 1876, in a letter to Ambrose Phillips de Lisle, a former Anglican, that the Cardinal wrote: “Nothing will rejoice me more than to find that the Holy See considers it safe and promising to sanction some such plan as [full visible communion within the Catholic Church]. I give my best prayers, such as they are, that some means of drawing to us so many good people, who are now shivering at our gates, may be discovered.”

Archbishop Augustine Di Noia, who helped in the preparation of the new document, told the reporters at the Vatican press conference that there may be many more who desire this Unity and could be as many as 50 Anglican Bishops, mainly from the Traditional Anglican Communion who are requesting ‘corporate reunion’ with the Roman Church. In a prophetic manner Cardinal Newman wrote that “It seems to me there must be some divine purpose in it. It has happened in sacred and ecclesiastical history, that a thing is in itself good, but the time has not come for it… And thus I reconcile myself to many, many things, and put them into God's hands. I can quite believe that the conversion of Anglicans may be more thorough and more extended, if it is delayed — and our Lord knows more than we do,”(Apologia pro Vita Sua).

This therefore, is not a question of someone entering another church because of some dissatisfaction with the church that he or she is currently in. It is more of a question of being in the Church of Christ. This is it! And it is now becoming the defining moment for the Catholic Church to proclaim its identity. Thus the summary Article 8 of Lumen Gentium teaches us that the Church of Christ “subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him. Nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside its visible confines.” This was also the view of Cardinal Newman who believed that the Catholic Church is ‘one true fold of the Redeemer’. In a letter to the Duke of Norfolk, he expressed this in 1875: “From the day I became a Catholic to this day, now close upon thirty years, I have never had a moment's misgiving that the communion of Rome is that Church which the Apostles set up at Pentecost.”

And so as recent as 2007, Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has emphasized that Vatican Council II has “neither changed nor intended to change this doctrine, rather it developed, deepened and more fully explained it.” And that explanation was further clarified by stating that the texts of the Council do "not use the title of “Church” with regard to those Christian Communities born out of the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The reason according to Catholic doctrine is that “these communities do not enjoy apostolic succession in the sacrament of Orders, and are, therefore, deprived of a constitutive element of the Church.”

It is this notion of the Church that can help us to understand the role of the Pope in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he became Pope Benedict XVI, wrote in The Spirit of the Liturgy, that “the First Vatican Council had in no way defined the Pope as an absolute Monarch. On the contrary, it presented him as the guarantor of obedience to the revealed Word. The Pope’s authority is bound to the Tradition of faith.”

Hence the purpose of the invitation in the Apostolic Constitution was not to create a numerical increase in the membership of the Roman Catholic Church but to live one’s experience in the saving work of Jesus and participate in it. It is also living what we profess in the Nicene Creed.