Has anyone noticed the link between, St. Wilfrid who founded the See of Chichester, and the current Anglican Bishop of Chichester? Bishop Hind apparently made trips to Rome to appeal for a way for groups of Anglican to come into the Catholic Church and retain some of their Anglican patrimony. Now he is taking a leadership role in bringing Anglo-Catholics into the Catholic Church.
In his day, Wilfrid, a Celt himself with roots in the monastery at Lindisfarne, made several visits to Rome to study and to ask for Rome’s adjudication of English disputes. He began as a Celtic Christian and ended as a Catholic Celtic Christian. This is what St. Wilfrid said at the famous Synod of Whitby over which St. Hilda presided. His argument carried the day and brought all of England into harmony with the Catholic Church, especially in way the date of Easter is calculated.
“For although your Fathers were holy men, do you imagine that they, a few men in a corner of a remote island, are to be preferred before the universal Church of Christ throughout the world? And even if your Columba – or, may I say, ours also, if he was the servant of Christ – was a Saint potent in miracles, can he take precedence before the most blessed Prince of the Apostles, to whom our Lord said, “Thou art Peter ….” (Ecclesiastical History of the English Church and People, Chapter 26.)
I have to say that I am devoted to the Celtic saints for their gentleness, their love of the poor and their closeness to nature. St. Adian, St. Hilda, and St. Chad were admirable. St. Bede, although he always reminded his readers that the Celts were in some ways deficient, honored them for their holiness of life.
Are St. Wilfrid, St. Hilda, St. Chad and St. Bede also adding their prayers for the Anglican Ordinariate?
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