De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

Andrew Burnham (born 19 March 1948) is an English priest of the Roman Catholic Church. Burnham was formerly a bishop of the Church of England and served as the third Bishop of Ebbsfleet (a "flying bishop"), a provincial episcopal visitor in the Province of Canterbury from 2000 to 2010. He resigned in order to be received into the Roman Catholic Church. He was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham on 15 January 2011. Further to the recent decision of Philip North to withdraw his acceptance to be the new Anglican Bishop of Sheffield, Mgr Burnham has written an excellent response to the situation in The Catholic Herald . The story is that North, 50, who is Bishop of Burnley, is a traditionalist who disagrees with female ordination. North said that the news of his appointment last month had ‘elicited a strong reaction’ . A similarly strong reaction greeted his decision on Thursday to withdraw. After he had inform...

The decision of the Synod yesterday to "create" women "bishops" sounds the death knell for Anglo-Catholic aspirations of reunification with Rome. In a frankly, barking mad attempt to redefine and remake two thousand years of Christian Tradition, the Anglican Synod voted for the third time, to overturn centuries of practice and biblical teaching in a total capitulation of divinely revealed truths before modern temporal considerations. I frankly find it amazing how God's will can be discerned by repeatedly voting for what the world apparently wants. Evidently, the last two votes which were 'saturated in prayer', and produced a rejection of women bishops, didn't count as being God's will. Third time lucky. If at first you don't succeed, just keep plugging away. What better way to show the world that revelation doesn't exist, let alone matter. And this is the crux of the matter--the way that decisions are made within the Anglican Communi...

Abraham Offers Tithes to Priest-King Melchizedek of Salem—Peter Paul Rubens. Thanks to Luke O'Sullivan for providing the inspiration for the title of this post. I have been fascinated by the events in the Anglican church over the last few days. I have also come to recognise how ignorant I am regarding Anglicanism (is that the right terminology even?) which seems impossibly complex and bureaucratic, which is saying something coming from a Catholic! I was taken to task by someone I know on Twitter last week for referring to Anglican 'bishops'. This was considered patronising and I was admonished to accept the validity of Anglican religious orders out of respect for them. This struck me as somewhat disingenuous. I am a Latin Rite Catholic and the Papal Bull  Apostolicae Curae issued in 1896 by Pope Leo XIII declared all Anglican ordinations to be "absolutely null and utterly void". The issue, as best I understand it, is regards the intention with which o...

This is stunning: Eisegesis (from Greek εἰς "into" as opposed to exegesis from ἐξηγεῖσθαι "to lead out") is the process of interpreting a text or portion of text in such a way that it introduces one's own presuppositions, agendas, and/or biases into and onto it. The act is often used to "prove" a pre-held point of concern to the reader and to provide him or her with confirmation bias in accordance with his or her pre-held agenda. Eisegesis is best understood when contrasted with exegesis. While exegesis draws out the meaning from a text in accordance with the context and discoverable meaning of its author, eisegesis occurs when a reader imposes his or her interpretation into and onto the text. As a result, exegesis tends to be objective when employed effectively while eisegesis is regarded as highly subjective. Stephen makes his argument using Gal 3:28, which, as I noted yesterday , seems to be considered Biblical basis for the case for women...

The Synod, where the Church of England continue to reject explicitly any jurisdiction of the Holy See over them, and move continually further away from the beliefs held by the whole of Christendom in an unbroken and immemorial tradition. Well done chaps. There's an 'open letter' in the Independent today which purportedly puts the Biblical case for women bishops. Of course as a Catholic, this does not, nor can it ever affect me. Pope John Paul II declared the question closed in his letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis , stating: "Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance…I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgement is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful." - John Paul II in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis , cf. Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici (30 December 1988), 31. This teaching on the restriction of ordination to men i...