A couple of odds and ends

Proof reading
I rejected a comment because it was written to pick on a typographical error, belittling someone. The worst proof reader in the world is the writer of any given piece or comment, seeing what he meant to write rather than what he typed. It happens to the bbessttt of uss.

In light of a recent essay that has been posted to the internet, I find it wise to post a link to one of our earlier pages, from Sept of 2008. It concerns the thinking of Eric Lionel Mascall, and what he actually wrote about the papacy.

I will quote two portions:

From Father Eric L. Mascall. Corpus Christi: Essays on the Church and Eucharist. London: Longmans, 1965. 2nd ed. Pages 17f.

"...the Church, as a visible and tangible society, living in the historic process, needs a visible and tangible organ of its unity, though that union is, as I have emphasised, an interior and mystical unity and not a moral or political one. The Church is a visible and tangible society, but it is a sacramental one, and the organ of its unity will be a sacramental organ. This is why, as I see it, the apostolic Episcopate precisely fulfils the requirements for such an organ, for the episcopal character is conferred by a sacramental act. And this is why it seems to me impossible to locate the organ of the Church’s unity in the Papacy, for the papal character is not conferred by a sacramental act at all, but by the purely administrative and organisational process of election. Whether the Papacy has, by divine providence, a unique status in the Church and, if so, what are the functions which rightly attach to it are, of course, important questions, but by its very constitution the Papacy does not, so far as I can see, possess the nature which is required in the organ of the Church’s unity."

The second quotation is:

"As for Eric Mascall, he was greatly troubled by the idea that the Church of England might eventually 'ordain' women, and he expressed his anguish to Dr. William Tighe in private conversation. Nonetheless, he died a Church of England priest. In his book The Recovery of Unity, he wrote at length his apologetic for the Anglican position, and with respect argued against the Roman teaching on the papacy as it has developed (the above statement is from a separate work, and summarizes part of the more detailed argument in the book). The same is true of the Dogmatic Theology series by Francis Hall, in which a defense of the Anglican position was skillfully written in light of theology and history."

I will add that Francis Hall also wrote his own criticism of the modern Roman teaching about the papacy in Dogmatic Theology.*

It is useful also to quote a comment from that thread by Fr. Laurence Wells:

"Professor Tighe's information is always helpful and certainly accurate. But he omits one fact: whatever their views on this or that, Lewis, Dix and Mascall all died as Anglicans. Whatever Dix thought about the papacy, it was not enough to push him into the Tiber."

I suggest reading it all; it is not long. I assure you, mysterious as it may be, posting this is timely. "Though this be madness, yet there is method in it." Hamlet Act 2, scene 2,

* Included in the evidence for his position, Hall mentioned an 1850 Roman Catholic catechism in which the question was asked, is the pope infallible? The answer was "no." The Church, it taught, is infallible, but not the pope. After 1870, when the pope became infallible retroactively, those old catechisms were rounded up and destroyed. Hall's copy escaped.