Pope talk

[CSLewis]

Vatican seeks to lure disaffected Anglicans

By NICOLE WINFIELD - Associated Press Writer

E-MAIL

PRINT

REPRINT

COMMENTS (0)

RECOMMEND (0)

TEXT SIZE:

VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican announced Tuesday it was making it easier for Anglicans to convert to Roman Catholicism - a surprise move designed to entice traditionalists opposed to women priests, openly gay clergy and the blessing of same-sex unions.

The decision, reached in secret by a small cadre of Vatican officials, was sure to add to the problems of the 77-million-strong Anglican Communion as it seeks to deal with deep doctrinal divisions that threaten a permanent schism among its faithful.

The change means conservative Anglicans from around the world will be able to join the Catholic Church while retaining aspects of their Anglican liturgy and identity, including married priests. Until now, disaffected Anglicans had joined the church primarily on a case by case basis.

Britain's Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, left, from the Anglican church listens as Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols from the Roman Catholic Church speaks during a news conference in London, held in reaction to the announcement of a new church structure for Anglicans who want to join the Catholic Church, Tuesday Oct. 20, 2009. Pope Benedict XVI has created a new church structure for Anglicans who want to join the Catholic Church, responding to the disillusionment of some Anglicans over the ordination of women and the election of openly gay bishops.

- Matt Dunham /AP Photo

CLICK FOR MORE PHOTOS

AP VIDEO: Vatican seeks to lure disaffected Anglicans

"The unity of the church does not require a uniformity that ignores cultural diversity, as the history of Christianity shows," said Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in announcing the decision.

The spiritual leader of the global Anglican church, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, was not consulted about the change and was informed only hours before the announcement. He nevertheless tried to downplay the significance and said it wasn't a Vatican commentary on Anglican problems.

"It has no negative impact on the relations of the communion as a whole to the Roman Catholic Church as a whole," he said in London.

The decision could undermine decades of talks between the Vatican and Anglican leaders over how they could possibly reunite. Although Levada insisted such discussions remain a priority, the Vatican move could be taken as a signal that the ultimate goal of ecumenical talks is to convert Anglicans to Catholicism.

Still, the decision confirmed Pope Benedict XVI's design of creating a unified, tradition-minded Catholic Church - a goal he outlined at the start of his pontificate and has been steadily implementing ever since.

This drive also involved a recent move to rehabilitate four excommunicated ultra-conservative bishops, including one who denied the full extent of the Holocaust, in a bid to bring their faithful back under the Vatican's wing.

Levada made the announcement hours after briefing Williams and Catholic bishops in London about the decision. Notably, no one from the Vatican's ecumenical office on relations with Anglicans attended; Levada said he had invited representatives but they said they were all away from Rome.

Austen Ivereigh, a former adviser to the Catholic archbishop of Westminster, called the Vatican announcement historic because it allowed for the "gradual absorption into the Catholic Church of huge numbers of Anglicans," who are conservative in their theology and liturgy.

Until now, Anglicans had been allowed to join the church primarily on an individual basis. With the new provision, groups of Anglicans from around the world will be able to join new parishes headed by former Anglican prelates, who will provide spiritual guidance to Anglicans who wish to be Catholic. Called personal ordinariates, they will be established within local Catholic dioceses.

The new provision also allows married Anglican priests and even seminarians to become ordained Catholic priests - much the same way that Eastern rite priests who are in communion with Rome are allowed to be married. However, married Anglicans cannot become Catholic bishops.

A model for the future exists in the United States, where a handful of such parishes function - including three in Texas - thanks to a 1980 Vatican decision to accommodate Episcopal faithful and priests who wanted to convert. These parishes use a Vatican-approved Book of Divine Worship, based on the Book of Common Prayer, that includes Catholic and Anglican rituals, said Monsignor William Stetson, who manages the initiative.

The new entity is also modeled on Catholic military ordinariates, special units of the church established in most countries to provide spiritual care for members of the armed forces and their dependents.

In addition, within the Catholic Church there are ancient communities in the Middle East and others in Eastern Europe that follow different rites and allow married priests while remaining loyal to the pope.

The new model doesn't create a new rite, but rather an Anglicanized liturgy within the Latin rite.

Levada said Tuesday's announcement was in response to many requests that have come to the Vatican over the years from Anglicans disillusioned with the progressive bent of the Anglican Communion. Some have already left and consider themselves Catholic but have not found an official home in the 1.1-billion strong Catholic Church.

Levada declined to give exact figures, though he said 30 to 40 bishops had been in touch, accounting for a few hundred would-be converts.

One group, known as the Traditional Anglican Communion, has publicly stated its desire to join the Catholic Church. The group, which split from the Anglican Communion in 1990, says it has 400,000 members in 41 countries, although only about half are regular churchgoers.

"This is a moment of grace, perhaps even a moment of history, not because the past is undone but because the past is transformed," the group's leader, Archbishop John Hepworth said in a statement welcoming the Vatican decision.

Anglicans split with Rome in 1534 when English King Henry VIII was refused a marriage annulment.

Since then, the Anglican Communion, which includes the Episcopalian Church in the United States, has fashioned itself as a kind of big tent of fellowship with a wide variety of worship styles and theological outlooks that include Anglo-Catholics.

It's not known how many Anglicans consider themselves Anglo-Catholic. However, the biggest impact of the Vatican announcement is likely to be felt in England, where the Church of England has been involved in a bitter battle over whether female priests can become bishops. British Anglicans opposed to the ordination of women simply leave and join the Catholic Church.

The announcement is likely to have far less impact in the U.S., where many Anglo-Catholics left the Episcopal Church more than a decade ago. More recently, four theologically conservative Episcopal dioceses and dozens of individual parishes broke away and formed a rival church in North America.

Still, no one expects a sudden mass exodus out of the Anglican Communion because of the Vatican announcement.

"We're not talking floodgates," said Paul Handley, editor of the Church Times a London-based weekly that covers Anglican affairs.

"There are a significant number of people who remain loyal Anglicans who will be seriously (tried) by this," he said, adding that they may want to remain part of the Church of England but will "feel increasingly exposed if their friends start disappearing to Rome."

Some Anglo-Catholics who have not yet left the Anglican fold could choose to stay for a variety of reasons, including a desire to avoid lengthy and expensive battles over parish property. Others may oppose the ruling that married Anglicans cannot become Catholic bishops.

The Rev. Christopher Stainbrook, pastor of St. Timothy's Episcopal Church, an Anglo-Catholic parish that is part of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, said it was far too soon to know the implications for his parish or others like it in the U.S.

Indeed, Levada made clear that the next step - publication of the pope's Apostolic Constitution outlining the new provision - would be the start of a lengthy process of consultation with Catholic bishops around the world about how to implement the change.

Still, Stainbrook and other traditionalist Anglican groups were elated by the Vatican announcement.

While some Anglicans will want to remain in the Anglican Communion, others "will begin to form a caravan, rather like the People of Israel crossing the desert in search of the Promised Land," said two traditionalist Anglican clerics in Britain, Bishop Andrew Burnham of Ebbsfleet and Bishop Keith Newton of Richborough.

The Anglican Communion has been divided for decades over interpreting the Bible on many issues, including ordaining women. But the rift blew wide open in 2003 when the Episcopal Church consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Williams has struggled ever since to keep the church from splitting, frustrated by moves by churches in the United States, Canada and elsewhere to bless gay relationships.

At least four conservative U.S. dioceses and dozens of individual Episcopal parishes have voted to leave the national denomination, with many affiliating themselves with like-minded Anglican leaders in Africa and elsewhere.

[Guest]

Simply

Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.

Jeremiah 17:5

Jesus

Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.

Jeremiah 17:7

For There Is No Other

But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.

And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.

Matthew 23:8-10

Believe

And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the LORD hath said, and in the remnant whom the LORD shall call.

Joel 2:32

And Be Blessed Beloved

Love, Joe

I Love You Jesus

[amor]

Lot's of Anglicans, including the then Bishop of London, poped back in the 1990's when the C of E ststred ordaining women. It irritated lots of Catholics then because, of course, standard Catholic priests can't mary and married men in the Roman section of the Church can't get ordained

[leoxiii]

Lot's of Anglicans, including the then Bishop of London, poped back in the 1990's when the C of E ststred ordaining women. It irritated lots of Catholics then because, of course, standard Catholic priests can't mary and married men in the Roman section of the Church can't get ordained

Matthew 19:11 Who said to them: All men take not this word, but they to whom it is given. 12 For there are eunuchs, who were born so from their mother's womb: and there are eunuchs, who were made so by men: and there are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. He that can take, let him take it.

[Smalcald]

It makes sense for Anglicans and Episcopalians who are serious Christians to convert to the Roman Catholic Church (I don't think we can snag them over to the LCMS).

When our Lutheran ELCA brothers started going off the rails back in the 1970's we tried to find ways to welcome them into the LCMS. Some came, although most did not.

The thing that I would find irksome if I were a Catholic would be how much accommodation will be made for them. There was a case over in NY a couple of years ago of an Episcopal Bishop who converted to the RCC AFTER he retired, got to keep his wife and his pension, he had converted to the Episcopal Church after getting married, the whole thing really worked out for him.

[nebula]

It makes sense for Anglicans and Episcopalians who are serious Christians to convert to the Roman Catholic Church...

Ummm . . . why?

I'm an ex-Lutheran, and the Catholic Church was one of the last directions I wanted to head in to pursue the Lord.

[MorningGlory]

It makes sense for Anglicans and Episcopalians who are serious Christians to convert to the Roman Catholic Church...

Ummm . . . why?

I'm an ex-Lutheran, and the Catholic Church was one of the last directions I wanted to head in to pursue the Lord.

I'm an ex-Lutheran too. I never even considered Catholicism.

[Botz]

It makes sense for Anglicans and Episcopalians who are serious Christians to convert to the Roman Catholic Church...

Ummm . . . why?

I'm an ex-Lutheran, and the Catholic Church was one of the last directions I wanted to head in to pursue the Lord.

I'm an ex-Lutheran too. I never even considered Catholicism.

You must understand that here in the UK there is a branch of Anglicism that is really what is known as very 'high church'...they love all the robes and trappings, incense and formality that they would argue lends order to their worship of G-d....many are really considered more catholic than the Catholics....so for them to shift allegiance to Rome under a new dispensation that alleviates former restraints is not really a hardship as they feel their Church has become tainted with apostasy. Mind you if you lifted your hands to praise the L-rd in their services it is likely the left boot of fellowship would be swung in your direction.

[CSLewis]

This supposed olive branch doesn't include female clergy or homosexual clergy only single male or married male clergy.

[CSLewis]

There is a time during the offeratory that it is right to lift your hands and bow.