Leo XIV Hopes Anglican Worship Services Will Return to English Church Damaged by Fire

More false worship, please!

Leo XIV Hopes Anglican Worship Services Will Return to English Church Damaged by Fire

“A fire greatly damaged an Anglican church in the English city of Leicester on July 28”, Crux is reporting today.

The building in question is St. Andrew’s Church on Jarrom Street, which is part of the conservative ‘High-Church Anglican’ or ‘Anglo-Catholic’ wing of the Church of England. It does not appear that any foul play was involved, as no evidence of arson has been found.

The reason why this fire at a Protestant church is news for a Novus Ordo publication like Crux is that ‘Pope’ Leo XIV (Robert Prevost) sent a message to the Anglican parish priest, Rev. Johannes Arens, expressing his solidarity. He did so by way of ‘Abp.’ Paolo Rudelli, Substitute of the Vatican Secretariat of State.

Crux has provided a scan of the letter here, which is dated Aug. 7, and it contains the following text:

Dear Reverend Arens,

His Holiness Pope Leo XIV was saddened to be informed of the fire that significantly damaged Saint Andrew’s parish church, and he sends the assurance of his spiritual solidarity to all those affected.

With hope that services can return to the church as soon as possible, His Holiness prays that the response to this disastrous event will strengthen the community and bring about a renewal in the life of the parish.

With these sentiments, the Holy Father invokes upon you and your parishioners Almighty God’s blessings of strength, peace and consolation.

Yours sincerely in Christ,

[signed]

Paolo Rudelli
Substitute

(Source; underlining added.)

Of course it is not wrong to reach out to people who just suffered loss from a fire and express some kind of goodwill. The problem is that Leo XIV’s words go beyond a mere cordial gesture: They are an implicit endorsement of Anglicanism and its objectively false worship, so odious to the Most Holy Trinity.

Let’s not forget that “the sin of superstition may be committed by worshipping the true God in the wrong way or by worshipping false gods”, as the Jesuit Fr. Thomas Slater writes in his Manual of Moral Theology. He explains further:

God may be wrongly worshipped either by false worship or by superfluous worship being paid him. Worship of God is false when its meaning is not in accordance with fact, or when the falsehood is in the person who performs the act of worship, as when a layman performs the duties of a priest, or when someone tries to gain credence for false miracles or false relics. The ceremonies and practices of the Jewish religion signified that the Messiah was to come, and so now, after the coming of our Lord, they could not be employed without superstition. Inasmuch as falsehood in religion is a grave injury to God, this species of superstition is mortally sinful.

(Fr. Thomas Slater, S.J., A Manual of Moral Theology, vol. 1, 5th ed. [London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1925], p. 140; underlining added.)

This is standard pre-Vatican II Catholic moral-theological doctrine. We find it confirmed also, for example, by the Dominican Fathers McHugh and Callan:

False worship is opposed to the truth of religion (e.g., Old Testament rites which signify that Christ is still to come), or of rites (e.g., Mass by a layman, Mass according to a form disapproved by the Church), or of facts (e.g., fictitious revelations, ecstasies, mysticism, miracles, relics), or of morals (e.g., human sacrifice, praises of God to the accompaniment of lascivious words or music, etc.).

…

False worship is from its nature a grave sin; it is seriously insulting to God because it offers Him dishonor as honor, and it is also seriously harmful to man because it casts discredit by its falsity on the name of religion.

(Rev. John A. McHugh and Rev. Charles J. Callan, Moral Theology [New York, NY: Joseph F. Wagner, Inc., 1958], nn. 2274a, 2275a)

As we can see, the matter is rather serious, and people who were raised in the Counterfeit Catholicism of the Vatican II religion will have a hard time coming to terms with this because it is so contrary to what they were taught as ‘Roman Catholic’.

To forestall the most obvious objection, let’s acknowledge that a multitude of people who habitually engage in objectively false worship are probably in good faith, that is, sincere. They are not trying to displease God, they simply happen to be mistaken about the true religion and consequently the true worship. However, this fact is relevant only to the individual’s subjective relationship with God, because it pertains to the forum of conscience only and does not change the objective external order.

What this means is that certain individuals (who are ultimately known to God alone) are perhaps not guilty of sin before God for their false worship; but it does not mean that they are not engaging in false worship. (To use a simple analogy: One may legitimately be excused for speeding and therefore have no fault in the matter — for example, if a speed limit sign was not seen because a fierce storm had just knocked it over — but that doesn’t mean one wasn’t speeding.)

In addition to Anglican worship being false insofar as it is the worship of a heretical and schismatic sect, there is another matter to consider: Anglican priests are, with very few exceptions, not validly ordained. That is, they are mere laymen in priests’ costumes, and this is even the official position of the Vatican II Church. In 1896, Pope Leo XIII had issued a definitive judgment against Anglican ordinations, declaring them to be invalid across the board.

It so happens, however, that the Rev. Arens of St. Andrew’s was ordained in the so-called ‘Old Catholic Church’, which has retained valid orders, at least in part. This means that, depending on the particulars, Arens might actually be a valid priest, albeit not a Catholic. His Masses, therefore, even if valid, would still constitute false worship, objectively speaking, since they are the worship of a false church, a false religion, a counterfeit Christianity.

By the way, Crux conducted a video interview with Arens, in which he speaks about particulars of the fire and explains how it came about that Leo in Rome communicated his sympathy to the parish to begin with:

(Direct link here)

Does all of the above mean, then, that we should be unkind to non-Catholics? Far from it. In an 1863 encyclical letter, Pope Pius IX made clear:

God forbid that the children of the Catholic Church should even in any way be unfriendly to those who are not at all united to us by the same bonds of faith and love. On the contrary, let them be eager always to attend to their needs with all the kind services of Christian charity, whether they are poor or sick or suffering any other kind of visitation.

At the same time, Pius IX immediately hastened to add:

First of all, let them rescue them from the darkness of the errors into which they have unhappily fallen and strive to guide them back to Catholic truth and to their most loving Mother who is ever holding out her maternal arms to receive them lovingly back into her fold. Thus, firmly founded in faith, hope, and charity and fruitful in every good work, they will gain eternal salvation.

(Pope Pius IX, Encyclical Quanto Conficiamur Moerore, n. 9)

The Anglican religion is a false religion and, as such, intrinsically evil. A sect that was created by King Henry VIII in the 16th century, it is a perversion of Christianity. Never has this been more evident than in our present time, when the doctrinal aberrations held, accepted, taught, and tolerated by the so-called ‘Church of England’ and the ‘Anglican Communion’ are numerous and clearly at odds not only with divine revelation but sometimes even with natural law. At this point, their highest ecclesiastical position, that of ‘Archbishop of Canterbury’, is held by a woman!

A Catholic is morally required to be willing to die rather than to accept the Anglican loony bin as legitimate. St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More gave bloody testimony to this truth at a time when most other Catholics, clergy as well as laity, valued their bodies more than their souls and betrayed Christ the King so as to escape the wrath of an earthly king.

Leo XIV’s expressed wish that Anglican services might quickly resume at St. Andrew’s Church becomes even more explosive in light of the fact that the Vatican, at Leo’s direction, recently condemned the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) for its illicit episcopal consecrations of July 1. A decree released by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith stated that all who formally adhere to the SSPX are schismatics and thereby automatically incur excommunication. SSPX Masses, therefore, are strictly forbidden, and so is attendance at them; although the Vatican did clarify that mere attendance at such Masses without sharing the Society’s condemned positions, does not incur automatic excommunication.

If an SSPX church burned down in Italy, would Leo XIV send the same kind of letter and express his wish that Masses “can return to the church as soon as possible”? Hardly, because Leo does not want SSPX priests to offer Mass; whereas he does want Anglican ‘priests’ to offer (invalid) Anglican Masses. In a way, this echoes the words of ‘Pope’ Francis, when in 2017 he suggested in a candid moment that where there is no Catholic Mass available, one could simply go to an Anglican service instead.

That is the same ‘Pope’ Francis who in 2014 allowed the Archlayman of Canterbury to give him an invalid blessing and later permitted certain Anglican clergymen to use Roman basilicas, including St. Peter’s Basilica and the papal cathedral of St. John Lateran, for Anglican worship, including the offering of an invalid Mass (‘Eucharistic celebration’). Who can’t read the writing on the wall here?

The typical Novus Ordo apologist will probably zero in on Leo’s expressed wish that the fire in Leicester “bring about a renewal in the life of the parish” and claim that this means he is praying for all the parishioners to be converted to Catholicism. But that would be pure spin, and entirely gratuitous.

There is nothing — absolutely nothing — in Leo XIV’s record so far that would indicate he seeks the conversion of Anglicans to Catholicism, considers the Church of England a false church, or believes that Anglicans are in danger of eternal damnation. On the contrary, the opposite is evident:

So, what should Leo XIV have done instead?

Quite simply, he could have first expressed his goodwill to Arens and then used the opportunity to do what Pope Pius IX’s Holy Office did in 1865, when Cardinal Costantino Patrizi Naro sent a letter to certain High-Church Anglicans (so-called ‘Puseyites’). This letter, driven by true Christian charity — rather than the fake charity of not trying to cause offense — did not gush over all the things Anglicans hold in common with Catholics, nor did it exchange ecumenical platitudes about mutual respect and authentic dialogue. Instead, it called these men, whose souls have been redeemed by the Precious Blood of Christ, to convert to the Roman Catholic Church:

To summarize: Yes, it is important to be charitable and kind to our neighbor, but never at the expense of offending God. For we must love God first, and our neighbor (as ourselves) only second, and for the sake of God (see Mt 22:36-40; Mk 12:28-34; Mt 10:37).

Genuine good will can be expressed without endorsing heresy or blasphemy. It’s not difficult.

Image source: composite with elements from standrewsjarromstreet.org and cruxnow.com
Licenses: fair use

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