Fact-Checking Pope Francis: Saints and Monasteries

I posted yesterday on Pope Francis's visit to All Saints, the Anglican Centre in Rome, on Sunday. In The Catholic Herald, Father Alexander Lucie-Smith commented on the Q and A that took place after Evensong, noting that "Ecumenism can't be based on wishful thinking about the past":

When wishing to emphasise what Anglicans and Catholics share, the Pope had this to say:

“We have a common tradition of the saints … Never, never in the two Churches, have the two traditions renounced the saints: Christians who lived the Christian witness until that point. This is important.

“There is another thing that has kept up a strong connection between our religious traditions: [male and female] monks, monasteries. And monks, both Catholic and Anglican, are a great spiritual strength of our traditions.”

This is interesting from a historical perspective and suggests that the Pope should perhaps take a close look at the history of England or the Thirty-Nine Articles.

Anglicanism was born out of a movement that saw the destruction of all of England’s religious houses, many of whose mute ruins stand as a witness to this catastrophe today. Moreover the Thirty-Nine Articles specifically forbid the cult of the saints, and our Tudor forebears made a point of destroying all the shrines of England bar one (that of Saint Edward the Confessor, who was spared as he was a king.) The XXII article states:

“The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping, and Adoration, as well of Images as of Reliques, and also invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.”

If ecumenism is to progress, it has to do so on a sound historical basis. There is no other way. It is true, as the Pope avers, that there are Anglican monks and nuns, but these religious foundations date to the nineteenth century at the earliest, and are fruits of the Oxford Movement. For four hundred years there was no religious life lived under vows in community in the Church of England. Many (though not I) would see the influence of Anglican religious life as marginal in the Church of England. Again, Anglican devotion to the saints of our own times is certainly present and to be encouraged . . .

Perhaps Pope Francis should read Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation? A few people have mentioned to me that they were reading my book for Lent; my husband considers it to be perfectly penitential reading!