The Roman Catholic King Richard III is to be interred in a Protestant Cathedral, presumably using the rites of the Church of England. The local Catholic bishop has volunteered to participate in an ecumenical capacity.
From here.
Fixed the link.
A Correct Way to Correct
18 hours ago
6 comments:
Link won't work.
Fixed and thanks for the heads up.
It is anachronistic to refer to Richard III as a "Roman" Catholic. The custom of referring to the Church headed by the Pope as "Roman Catholic" became common only after the Reformation. Similarly, referring to Leicester Cathedral as a "Protestant" cathedral is anachronistic; there has been a church on the site continuously since long before the Reformation.
The claim of the Church of England is that it -- and not Rome -- is the Apostolic and Catholic Church in the realm of England. The ginned-up outrage that a "Catholic" monarch is being buried in a "Protestant" cathedral is, at best, theologically question-begging.
Chris
Irrespective of what the Church in England was 600 years ago, which is a subject of heated debate, one thing is not debatable. Today the Church of England is Protestant and profoundly heretical, if not apostate. The Cathedral irrespective of who built it, is now in the hands of the Church of England and is therefor a Protestant Cathedral.
It is near to impossible for me to imagine that were Richard magically restored to his throne today that he would not have the entire House of Bishops burned at the stake. This is not ginned up outrage. It is pissing on the man's grave.
I don't disagree with you, John. Except that I would say that the problem is not that the Church of England is Protestant, but that it is apostate. I have little doubt that you are right that Richard would be horrified at the current state of the Church of England; it is less clear that he would have had difficulty with the mainstream Protestantism that the Church of England threw away in the late 20th century.
I just have a problem with the casual assumption that all pre-Reformation Western Christians can properly be called "Catholic." Post-Reformation Catholicism isn't simply and entirely the same thing as the pre-Reformation Western Church; and post-Reformation Protestantism isn't simply a "clean break" with no continuity with the pre-Reformation Western Church. Calling King Richard "Roman Catholic" is rhetorical base-stealing.
Exactly what was done by Katherine Schori, the Episcopalian presiding bishop. When her Orthodox Christian mother died in 1997 she did the funeral. I knew her mother and know how much she disliked the Episcopal church and ordained women. When big Anglicanism gets a dead person they capitalize on it. They lose so many live ones.
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