Posted on 02/18/2007 5:09:43 PM PST by kalee
The Catholic Church has accepted married priests from other denominations. What I wonder is whether this will happen with similarly conservative churches that have allied to the Episcopal church, like the Lutheran church.
I'm going to mention this to our priests Tuesday night. Our church is having a dinner that night and I'll see what they have to say about all this.
One of our priests was formerly an Episcopal Priest. The other one has always been an Anglican priest.
"....But it will require lots of patience from the Orthodox...)"
We can wait. It will take a while for you to learn to speak Greek (or Russian or Serbian or Arabic or...)! :)
LOL, not the kind of patience I meant.
But... are Scots Gaelic and Farsi not sufficient? *\;-)
The Church of Rome has been "continuing" for 2000 years.
Don't worry. Won't happen. Most Episcopalians, no matter how conservative, aren't interested in becoming Roman Catholics. Are you? I doubt it, if you're a typical Episcopalian.
(My second attempt to reply -- something went haywire first time...)
The issue of married priests has, I think, been answered already.
Divorce and remarriage is another issue altogether. I cannot speak with any confidence about any jurisdictions other than PECUSA / ECUSA / TEC / What-We-Call-Ourselves-Today and my own, but the former jursdiction has been very sloppy over the past 4 decades about divorce and remarriage, and I doubt Rome would accept a number of priests on that basis. (I doubt Orthodoxy would either, and so I ask K. to speak to this issue.)
The proposed unification would leave an awful lot of Episcopalians (and others) behind, which is one reason I do not think it will happen.
Even the anglo-catholic TAC has not managed this yet. Add in the Evangelical wing and the (sub-Evangelical?) Charismatic wing of the American church, and it seems clear it won't happen.
But what do I know? I'm a chronicler, not a pundit.
Yes, it's bizarre - to "annul" a marriage is to say it never existed in some objective sense; but to say that about a longtime marriage that produced children is pretty farcical. Didn't one of the Kennedy kids insist on an annulment, but his Episcopal-raised wife balked? (They had kids if I recall). The absurdity of the annulment process is a result of the RC church trying to hang on to its traditional ban on divorce while also hanging on to its flock, many of whom - in this modern age - get divorced. The result is a mishmash that doesn't make sense.
You wrote: "Sorry to disappoint, I'm not coming. I'm in a Continuing Church."
What exactly are you continuing to?
I posted this because I think the timing of it is very interesting in light of the Primates meeting in Tanzania. I also wonder if this was part of the discussion when the Archbishop of Canterbury met with the Pope.
I am not anti-Rome, but I'm not in the churches being discussed in this article.
You wrote: "I'm not going to pretend that a marriage before wasn't valid or was made under some kind of coercion or something."
Who would ask you to pretend? No one. And are you saying it would be okay to leave behind a VALID marriage? So pretending (which no one asked you to do) a marriage is invalid bothers you, but breaking a valid one doesn't? Strange indeed.
"I have a relative who went through this process (annulment) after being married to his wife for ten years. His 4 children were not pleased."
I know someone who got an annulment after 26 years and 9 children. And yeah, her marriage was invalid. It turns out her husband was already married to someone else!
"But... are Scots Gaelic and Farsi not sufficient? *\;-)"
Farsi might cut it today, but since the Council of Whitby, Scots-Gaelic has sort of been off the radar, with all due respect to my Kerry ancesters who came here speaking that angels' tongue! :)
Interesting article.
Married Anglican priests have remained married and become Catholic priests. I believe we have two in our Archdiocese.
I would not want to touch the divorce/annulment issues at this time.
I recall that the rector at ChristChurch Plano is divorced and remarried. I don't think that would fly in the RC church.
I am not yet Catholic, but I have studied this issue a bit, and it seems clear to me that the Catholic definition of annulment is widely misunderstood. My understanding is that annulment is a process whereby the divorced person comes to terms with the terminated marriage, and his or her part in that, repenting of whatever sins they are guilty of. Finally, the official annulment is NOT a statement that the marriage never happened, nor does it at all deny the legitimacy of the children, if any, of the union. It is a religious, not a legal declaration, which states that the marriage was not a sacramental marriage in the eyes of God. One common reason is immaturity on the part of one or both parties to the marriage, which, as most people who have been divorced, and have honestly come to terms with that experience can attest, is frequently the case.
What a freakingly stupid and arrogant question from one who hangs out and posts nasty snarky remarks on Anglican threads. Go ask your great high pope, Vlad.. He can tell you. Maybe your cardinal can. Maybe your bishop can. Maybe your priest can. I guess you can't.
Are your superior authorities so high & mighty & inaccessible that you have to rely on informational responses from non-Catholics? Or do you trust non-Catholics more than Catholics?
Everye you post, I learn more and more about your Roman Catholic church. It's not a very pretty picture that's forming here. At the rate it's going one of these days I might even be persuaded the (IMHO canard that) one of your popes took the low road with Hitler.
I sincerely hope that is not the case. There are some Roman Catholics for which I have much respect, WFB for example, -- but I also see that that church also permits without correction quite arrogant twits in their midst.
vladimir998 is a perfect example of why I will never become Roman Catholic (were I even looking to change), and exactly what I present to those who indicate an interest in that direction.
If you really desire to undergo unChristian abasement and abjection, go here... and see what you're headed into. If kissing the toes of the arrogant self-righteous is what you desire, go ahead. If you want real salvation, re-think. The likes of vladimir998 is what you're going to encounter in the Roman church, and it doesn't look very Christian to me.
Power. It's all about power. And that church has established a major record about being powerful.
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