Posted on 10/21/2009 6:17:48 AM PDT by La Lydia
In a remarkable bid to attract disillusioned members of the Anglican Communion, the Vatican announced Tuesday that it is establishing a special arrangement that will allow Anglicans to join the Catholic Church while preserving their liturgy and spiritual heritage, including married priests. The worldwide Anglican Communion, which includes the 2.3 million-member U.S. Episcopal Church, has been racked by years of conflict over the interpretation of Scripture that has led to clashes over female clergy and, more recently, gay clergy.
The Catholic Church's plan "reflects a bold determination by Rome to seize the moment and do what it can to reach out to those who share its stance on women priests and homosexuality," said Ian Markham, dean of the Virginia Theological Seminary, an Episcopal seminary in Alexandria. "It is very, very bold and very interesting."
The new system will give the Catholic Church a way to capitalize on tensions within the Anglican Communion and make potentially large inroads into its worldwide network of 80 million members...
In establishing the new structure, Pope Benedict XVI is responding to "many requests" from individual Anglicans and Anglican groups -- including "20 to 30 bishops," said Cardinal William J. Levada, the Vatican's chief doctrinal official.
At a joint news conference in London, Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican spiritual leader, sat next to the Catholic archbishop of Westminster. But Williams said he had no role in developing the plan. Nevertheless, Williams said the move "is not an act of aggression. . . . It is business as usual."
For years, the Anglican Communion has struggled to reconcile its warring factions. Racial and class tensions have grown between the Communion's wealthy but shrinking Western congregations and its rapidly growing, more conservative, membership in the developing world, particularly Africa....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I don’t think that this is news. Married Anglican priests have been welcome in the RC church for some time now. Maybe its that whole parishes are jumping.
Definitely it is that whole parishes are jumping, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury is saying, “Whatever.”
I think you're wrong. I think this is big news. This is not directed primarily at groups within the "official" Anglican Communion. It is directed primarily at groups of anglo-catholic "continuing" Anglicans who left the formal Anglican structures over the issue of priestesses 30 years ago.
That the Apostolic Constitution will be potentially applicable to other groups is a great credit to those who have worked very hard over a very long period of time to respond to the petitions of the continuing Anglicans.
This isn't about individual priests or even parishes in the United States - which as you correctly say have had that option available for some time. This is about entire "ecclesiastical communities" being received corporately and being allowed to maintain their pre-existing ecclesiastical structures and liturgical traditions while being received into the full communion of the catholic church, provided that they conform to the Catechism of the Catholic Church in its entirety, and is applicable world wide.
What adjustments in beliefs will conservative Anglicans have to accept to make the move to the Anglican-rite Catholic church?
1) Accept the Pope as the head of the Church
2) Accept the concept of transsubstantiation (?)
3) Reconcilliation (?)
?)
16 years ago I was told that if I wanted to be ordained in the RC Church I would have to move to a new diocese and I could never be a pastor of a parish.
This latest attempt I was told that I would certainly be a pastor, except that that wasn't going to happen.
So "welcome" is not the word that leaps to my mind.
That’s “18 months” not “q8 months.”
...angling for Anglicans?
I think that this is aimed as much at “continuing Anglican” communions not in communion with the worldwide Anglican Communion (AC) as it is at Anglicans who are in communion with the AC.
As an example, the Traditional Anglican Communion is a continuing Anglican community with something like 400,000 laity, a bunch of priests and bishops. They are not in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Anglican Communion. They formally petitioned the Catholic Church two years ago for corporate reunion while preserving their distinctive Anglicanism.
This new Apostolic Constitution is precisely the Church's answer to the TAC (and other similarly-situated continuing Anglicans) request. They will be permitted to retain their own hierarchy, their own parishes, their own priests. They will be permitted to appoint their ordinaries from within their own communities. Unlike the Pastoral Provision of 1980, they will not be incorporated into the hierarchical structure of the local Roman Catholic Church. In other words, currently, Anglican Use parishes are part of territorial Roman Catholic dioceses. An Anglican Use parish in the diocese of, say, Ft. Worth, Texas, is part of that diocese, and the priest is accountable to the bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Ft. Worth.
But with the new Apostolic Constitution, a parish of the former TAC in Ft. Worth, Texas would belong to the Personal Ordinariate (sort of like a diocese, but perhaps non-territorial, to a degree, in nature) that arose from the TAC on its reception into the Church.
This may also serve folks still part of the Anglican Communion who wish to flee, and apparently, their numbers in Great Britain itself may be large enough to constitute a Personal Ordinariate or two right in Great Britain.
But my own view is that this is as much, or more, aimed at various continuing Anglican bodies that desire full communion with the Bishop of Rome.
sitetest
The primacy of the Pope, Papal infallibility, and the great Marian Dogmata might give pause.
I'm not sure that I understand part of your post.
What do you mean by “...I wouldn't say ‘Welcome’,” and “So ‘welcome’ is not the word that leaps to my mind.”
Do you think that this Apostolic Constitution is a good thing or a bad thing?
Thanks,
sitetest
I hope it increases the choices I have as a RC since they keep dumbing down the liturgy at Mass.
I understood Mercat to be saying that the RC Church "welcomed" married Anglican clergy. I was not "welcomed". I was barely tolerated.
I'm sorry if I was unclear. I hope this is mo' better.
Got it.
I'm sorry it worked out that way for you. My own impression is that you'd have made a very good Catholic priest. The fact that you accepted the rejection offered to you by the hierarchy of the Church is evidence for that.
I've firmly believed for many years that the stupidity, the malfeasance, the poor judgment and general incompetence of many in the hierarchy of the Church are proof of her divine constitution. No merely human organization this poorly run would have lasted for 20 years, no less 20 centuries.
sitetest
Me, too.
FISHING????
Good deal. I'll take a dozen a t that rate!
But thank you for your very kind words. After the latest rejection from the Diocese of Richmond I was settling into looking forward to the day when I am released from my well-deserved and merciful purgation and invited into the priesthood of the saints. Now I'm back to wondering and sitting on the edge of my chair.
I think it is a lame Post attempt to make a reference to Saint Peter.
More likely a play on angling for Anglicans but without the offensive direct pun. Perhaps both.
I don’t know the details of your situation, but it sounds like you may have encountered a bishop or diocese that was not thrilled about converting Anglican priests. One of the points of genius of Pope Benedict XVI is how he has tried here to create a bypass around truculent bishops with the establishment of a personal ordinary. This is similar to what he did with the Extraordinary form with Summorum Pontificum. I don’t know if it is too late for you or if your plans have moved on, but you could certainly make inquiries once the ordinariate is set up in the US.
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