I was thinking the same thing when watching Fr. Geldard and Marcus on the Journey Home last night. When the Anglican Church was debating whether to ordain women, Marcus asked why didn’t the Catholic Church make contact with the Oxford Movement/Anglo-Catholics in the Anglican Communion. Fr. Geldard’s response was enlighting, Rome’s policy was not to get involved at this point as Rome did want to be seen as causing division within the Anglican Communion. Rome, for its part, as Fr. Geldard put it, would rather deal with the entire Anglican Communion as long as there was an intact “Anglican Communion”. However, at the point when the “situation on the ground” changed as in the case where the Anglican-Communion agreed to ordain women, a large number of Anglicans approached Rome about reconciliation. Only at this point did Rome enter into negotiations and how the various options were discussed was really interesting such as 1) Should there be an Anglican-Usage in the UK, 2) Should it be sui juris Church, etc, etc.
Anyway, in the end Rome was very accomodating and according to Fr. Geldard, some 790 Anglican Priests came into Full Communion, of which 480 were ordained as Catholic Priest, and of those, some 120 came in under Pastoral Provision as married Latin-Rite priests.
In summary, that interview gave clear evidence that Rome handles situations where a group wants to be reconciled to Rome in a a very delicate manner and after seeing this show, I think the criticisms put forth by Kolokotronis do not have merit.
In closing, I would encourage everyone to watch this show when it is reaired. IN addition, later this month, I think Marcus is going to have a roundtable with former Anglicans and Fr. Geldard will be appearing again.
Regards
In other words do not egg it on.