THE P RTAL
October 2013
Page 13
The Popes and
the Ordinariate
by Harry Schnitker
I
t is
a famous scene: Pope Gregory the Great
(c.540-604) is going through the slave market in
Rome. The Bishop of Rome, presented with the sight
of fair-haired northerners for sale, asks who these
people are. The reply comes that they are Angles,
from the former Roman province of Britain. “These”,
the Pope answers, “are Angels, not Angles”, and
there and then he resolved to send a mission to these
faraway folk from the misty north.
a great yarn
It is a great yarn, and unfortunately nothing more
than that, from the pages of the man who almost
singlehandedly thought up the idea of the English and
England, St Bede. The monk from Yarrow is one of
the great figures of English and English ecclesiastical
history, and with his story he highlighted one important
aspect of that history: it is intrinsically entwined with
the Papacy.
their communities at the Council of Arles, and until
the collapse of the Empire we find British bishops at
Church Councils on the Continent.
Wales, Scotland the Anglo-Saxons,
looked to Rome
If Bede conjured up the English, and correctly
identified the strong ties between the Anglo-Saxon
Church and Rome, he also did a great disservice. He
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