ACS statement on the death of Pope Benedict XVI

The Anglicanorum Coetibus Society joins the countless millions of people around the world mourning the death earlier today of Pope Benedict XVI, the founder of the ordinariates for Catholics of the Anglican tradition.

Even before becoming pope, Joseph Ratzinger was a kind man, an erudite teacher, and a loving spiritual father. His writings were instrumental in the journeys that many Anglicans have taken into the full communion of the Catholic Church. He was a longtime friend and close collaborator to Pope Saint John Paul II, and was a key figure in the origins of the Anglican Use liturgy and the establishment of the Pastoral Provision that allowed for Catholic parishes to maintain Anglican customs. He was thus a true shepherd to Anglicans and Catholics of the Anglican tradition for many reasons even before establishing the ordinariates.

In 2009, as Pope Benedict XVI, he issued Anglicanorum Coetibus, an apostolic constitution that created the personal ordinariate, a special diocese for Catholics of the Anglican tradition. In these dioceses dedicated to Anglican converts and their future Catholic generations, he expanded upon the Pastoral Provision, giving us our own dedicated diocesan jurisdiction, our own bishops and ordinaries, our own incardinated clergy, our own seminary houses of formation, our own custom forms of ecclesial governance, and most of all, an expanded, more comprehensively and authentically Anglican form of our Catholic liturgy. As a theologian, liturgist, and pope, he had recognized the Catholic character of Anglican liturgy and thus secured its place in the ranks of Christian liturgical traditions.

He had long been aware of the divisions within the Anglican world, and the continued interest on the part of many Anglicans in a “uniate” type of arrangement, something of which Saint John Henry Newman once wrote, “Nothing will rejoice me more than to find that the Holy See considers it safe and promising to sanction some such plan…” With his most gracious creation of ordinariates for Anglican-tradition Catholics, Pope Benedict doubtless gave John Henry Newman cause for rejoicing, as he did us, and we have no doubt they will be merrily comparing notes together in the libraries of Paradise.

Pope Benedict’s name will be long remembered, and his papacy will forever be a cause for the Church’s gratitude. He wrote and taught with a lucid clarity. In today’s dark and lonely world, he promoted the value and worth of every human life, saying, “We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.” He battled the dictatorship of relativism and was a true defender of the faith. He sought a healthier coexistence of the old and the new, an increased respect for Roman liturgical tradition, and mutual enrichment between liturgical forms. But it is for what he did for us that we will forever be especially grateful. In the ordinariates, the Anglican tradition can play its part to the fullness in our common mission of saving souls and glorifying God.

It is no paradox to say that Pope Benedict XVI was both orthodox and open-minded, faithful and creative, traditional but also original, meek yet visionary. His life demonstrated that adherence to Christian orthodoxy and tradition is radically liberating. Christian faith creates the foundations for truly innovative and creative approaches to the problems of our world and the challenges facing the Christian people. In short, Jesus is the answer!

Pope Benedict XVI was a true father to Catholics of the Anglican tradition. We love him and will miss him profoundly. We pray he will rest in peace and rise in glory, and we long for the day when we may join with him, and with Our Lady of Walsingham, St. Joseph, St. John Henry Newman, St. John Paul II, and with all our patrons in forever thankfully singing the praises of the Lord.

Thank you, Pope Benedict.