Sionnsar - what do you think the chances are this will happen?
What will the Roman Catholic Church do with divorced and remarried couples? And our Anglican priest is married. I must be missing something here...
The same thing they do with divorced and re-married Catholics--discern whether the original marriage was valid (annulment). It "does" happen in the RC church.
As to what happens to the married Anglican priest--that depends on what HE wants. Quite a few married Anglican priests have converted, and are now Roman Catholic priests (and still married). I think the only caveat is that if his wife dies, he cannot marry again. And, or course, the church has to agree to accept him. But, in any event, the precedents are already in place.
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.
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.
As to divorced and remarried Anglican laity, the Roman Catholic Church uses annulment in many cases where it perceives that no genuine marriage ever occurred. Children of such annulled marriages are regarded as legitimate so long as the marriages appeared publicly to be valid which most marriages appear. Annulments are given far too generously within strictly Catholic circles and there is no reason to believe that it would be otherwise as to converts.
Individuals may well disagree with the annulment path. No one says that they have to convert. No one says that they MUST seek annulment although receipt of the Eucharist would generally be an ethical and moral problem if they did not.
Personally, I wish Anglicans well whatever they may decide, welcoming the converts and praying in solidarity for those many good Anglicans who suffer as we Catholics have often suffered from deficient leadership. Both Faiths are carrying His Cross as He promised that we would and to the extent that we are loyal to Him, the world will still hate us for it. Life is brief and eternity is not brief.