Bishop John Broadhurst
Posted on 10/26/2009 3:22:02 PM PDT by NYer
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Members of the traditionalist Anglican group Forward in Faith recently concluded their annual gathering, which was dedicated to discussing Pope Benedict's overture to Anglicans. The general impression left by the conference was the “Anglican experiment is over,” a mood that was reinforced by Bishop John Hind officially announcing he is ready to become Catholic.
The 2009 National Assembly of Forward in Faith was held in the Emmanuel Centre, Westminster, London, October 23-24. The Assembly was originally scheduled before the Vatican announced its unprecedented move, but the issue dominated most of the discussion.
Speaking to the press during the event, the Right Reverend John Hind, Anglican Bishop of Chichester, announced he is considering becoming a Roman Catholic.
Hind, the most senior traditionalist in the Church of England, told “The Telegraph” that he is willing to sacrifice his salary and palace residence to join the Catholic Church.
“This is a remarkable new step from the Vatican,” he said. “At long last there are some choices for Catholics in the Church of England. I'd be happy to be re-ordained into the Catholic Church.”
The bishop said that he expects his previous ministry will be recognized in the Catholic Church, but stressed that the divisions in the Anglican Communion could make it impossible to stay. “How can the Church exist if bishops are not in full communion with each other?” he asked.
During the conference, the Right Reverend John Broadhurst, who is the Anglican Bishop of Fulham and the Primate of Forward in Faith, affirmed that “the Anglican experiment is over.”
Bishop Broadhurst said that Pope Benedict has made his offer in response to the pleas of Anglicans who despair at the disintegration of their Church. “Anglicanism has become a joke because it has singularly failed to deal with any of its contentious issues,” said the bishop.
“There is widespread dissent across the [Anglican] Communion. We are divided in major ways on major issues and the Communion has unraveled. I believed in the Church I joined, but it has been revealed to have no doctrine of its own. I personally think it has gone past the point of no return. The Anglican experiment is over.”
In an emotional closing speech on Saturday, Bishop Broadhurst used the metaphor of the frog and the boiling pot to describe the current Anglican status.
"The temperature at the pot has become intolerable, but the process of boiling started before the ordination of women… The truth is, the tragedy for us is the Church of England has presumed. It's presumed to know better than the tradition on many matters and it's presumed to know better than Jesus Christ about some matters,” he explained.
“And It is the presumption of our Church in this present period that has caused such pain and anguish to many of us.
“Oh yes, the ordination of women was the water being turned up; we knew that we were going to be cooked to death ...
“And what the general (Anglican) Synod did, was to say, ‘We will push the pot towards the edge of the gas, as long as you stay on this side of the pot, with a few ice cubes, it'll be all right,’” Bishop Broadhurst said.
Then he explained: “We've never claimed that Anglicanism is the Church of Jesus Christ, and we've always claimed and believed that there needs to be catholic unity.”
“This is about Anglicans in communion with Rome and not about Anglicans ceasing to be Roman Catholics,” he also said.
The Right Reverend Martyn Jarrett, Anglican Bishop of Beverley, also insisted on the fact that “there are questions over the church's survival,” explaining that the Church of England has changed too dramatically for some traditionalists.
“The offer from the Vatican is momentous and I felt a great sense of gratitude that the Roman Catholic Church is thinking about the position of traditionalist Anglicans,” he added.
Another participant at the “Forward in Faith” conference, Fr. Edward Tomlinson, Anglican Vicar of St. Barnabas, said that he would be following the lead of Bishop Hind.
“The ship of Anglicanism seems to be going down... We should be grateful that a lifeboat has been sent. I shall be seeking to move to Rome. To stay in the Church of England would be suicide,” Fr. Tomlinson said.
Forward in Faith is a worldwide association of close to 1,000 clergy and thousands of lay Anglicans founded in 1992 in opposition to the ordination of women as priests or as bishops, and most recently, to the ordination of active homosexuals. The association says that it finds such practices not only “contrary to the Scriptures as they have been consistently interpreted by the two thousand year tradition of the churches of both East and West,” but also as a “new and serious obstacle in the way of reconciliation and full visible unity between Anglicans and the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.”
No price too great!
Ping!
NOW can they burn Rowan Williams at the stake?
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Would they be called “Anglican Catholics”?
As the titular head of the Anglican Church, can the Queen step in and tell these bishops to stay where they are? Just wondering. Obviously, her position is little more than ceremonial. I don't know what, if any, power she might have over the bishops and their desire to return to the Roman Catholic Church after six hundred years.
There are, and have been, a lot of good people in this church and it is not their fault how their Church was founded. The East-West schism came down to bickering about supremacy, as Henry did, though the Eastern Church left because they see it as a Communion of Bishops of sorts (with the Pope on equal footing with Constantinople.)
If you see an Anglican service, it has become more respectful and sacred than the American (Roman) Catholic church’s has become. At least they still kneel for Holy Communion. We should go back to doing that ourselves.
I am so happy to see this.
They will be following the Anglican Use Rite, so that seems like a reasonable title. I am Roman Catholic but practice my faith at a Maronite Catholic Church. They are called Maronite Catholics.
Correction: ...after 500 years or so...
DUH Tell me something I don’t know Archbishop
I believe you told me about a priest in Greenville, SC who is of your Rite. I just emailed him a letter today!
:)
May Christ heal His Church...I welcome them as brothers and sisters in Christ. :)
FWIW, as I mentioned on another thread, my husband is Anglican, and we are very excited about this. :)
I was an acolyte (at 40) in an Anglican church in Los Angeles. The service was far more orthodox, reverential and sacred than anything I’d ever experienced before or since - and that includes quite a few Catholic churches.
That said I have decided to swim the Tiber without waiting to see what traditionalist Anglicans will do.
I sometimes wonder what the Queen herself thinks of gay marriage and these other changes.
Wonder if she will at least allow Roman Catholics to be reigning monarchs now?
Taking the Plunge? LOL...
The Masses in other countries are far more reverent, trust me.
I attended a Jesuit high school way back when and was horrified by the “folk mass” we attended monthly next door.
If it were up to me, guitars would be banned from Mass. :-)
I believe you are referring to Fr. Bartholomew Leon, O.S.B. He is bi-ritual and a veritable dynamo. He probably won't remember me. At one time, he hosted a Maronite group before the invention of blogs. Fr. Dwight Longenecker did a post on him a few years ago, here.
Folk Masses were in vogue when I was a small child..still do not like them though I grew up with them.
Sad to say I do know remember anything about the Latin Tridentine Mass.
(I am 45 years old)
He’s the one! :)
That is a point that I have never understood as well. It is time for me to petition to be admitted to the Catholic Church as well. I have been procrastinating too long as it is.
No, I am not an Anglican. I am not much of anything.
What a shame! The Latin Mass is incredibly beautiful. http://www.latinmass.org/faq.html
http://web2.airmail.net/~carlsch/MaterDei/churches.htm#massachusetts
The second link states it is for MA, but it contains much more.
The Tridentine Mass can still be said, and it is very beautiful, especially High Mass.
I love how they do it on EWTN. (The daily masses the Brothers say...it’s a mix of both English and Latin)
The homo Bishops will be threatening to boil RC converts in hot KY over this one.
Naw, just ‘homophobes’. ;)
Short answer: No.
What he said!!!
Then they can jolly well mince over the Tiber in the other direction, and join the gay agnostics, neo-druids, happy-clappy holy rollers and crew-cut priestesses in the C of E.
This is wonderful news and we welcome our Anglican brethren into our wonderful Catholic Church..The bottom line is that we all have the same God, and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and many of our religious practices are nearly the same...The world may be falling apart in some areas but this overture by Pope Benedict XVI must be very welcome in Heaven and on earth..Tensions will ease and Rome and England will be reconciled at long last..Thanks be to God !
>>>If it were up to me, guitars would be banned from Mass. :-)
As a compromise maybe you could keep the guitars but instead ban the Bob Dylan and Woodie Guthrie catalogs ?
This is almost certainly not going to be the case.
Why do you say that?
**They will be following the Anglican Use Rite.**
***This is almost certainly not going to be the case.***
Yes, it is. You are correct that the current “Book of Divine Worship” will probably not be used. But that is because a new missal is being worked on now and is supposed to be ready by Christmas. I heard about it at church on Sunday (St. Mary the Virgin Anglican Use Catholic). It will be influenced by the English Missal (Knott Missal), the American Missal, the Sarum Rite, and the Coverdale translation of the (Tridentine) Roman Canon, all very English and all very Catholic.
Interesting! I don’t see the BCP in your list of sources; is the new Anglican Use going to be essentially a Sarum/Tridentine sort of rite in dignified KJV English?
Personally, I take the plight of 80 million people very seriously.
Anglo-catholics.
You’ll not get the whole Anglican church. Neither the liberal wing nor the evangelical wing of the Church of England will buy into this.
I don’t know anything other than what I’ve said, as my source didn’t elaborate. However, my own personal opinion is that I can’t imagine that the most loved prayers from the BCP (the prayer at the beginning of Mass “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open,” the prayer of Humble Access “We do not presume to come to this thy table”, and the prayers after Communion “Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank thee”) would be absent. Those prayers are from Rite I, which is more Anglo-Catholic than Rite II, which is more “Novus Ordo.” Rite I of the 1979 BCP also follows more closely the 1928 Prayer Book, which is why so many people loved it. If it is to be truly an “Anglican” missal, I can’t imagine that it would have anything other than the King’s English (or rather the Queen’s [Elizabeth I]), otherwise it wouldn’t be “Anglican,” and why bother when the new ICEL English translation is coming out next year? From what I understand from last week’s press conference, the new Apostolic Constitution specifically allows Anglicans to keep their traditions and liturgy, which are special and unique, so I can’t imagine that the new missal would be bereft of all that would make it Anglican. Catholicism in England has always been different from that on the continent and it seems that the Holy Father recognizes that and wants to preserve it. After all, England was once “Our Lady’s Dowry,” and I would expect it was precisely because of the beauty of English worship and devotion, including architecture and music. Think of all the unique traditions and customs surrounding Holy Days (i.e., Shrove Tuesday Pancake Suppers), which will be preserved and celebrated. It’s just truly mind-boggling and exciting to think of the ramifications of all of it.
The Queen is the governor of the Church of England, not its head.
She swore an oath to “Defend the faith”, and she is a lady to whom that is important. Theoretically she could do something, but practically she probably won’t.
The fact that you are still wondering is a tribute to her discretion. The Monarch does not make statements on such matters. Her private thoughts are her own.
Its not her call as to whether Roman Catholics can be reigning monarchs.
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Maybe not, but I know one day Christ will unite His Church into One again. :)
Is your understanding that they will be required to use this new missal as the means by which they are allowed to keep their liturgy? If so, what is the basis for your understanding?
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