Posted on 10/26/2009 6:58:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Church of England has survived the Spanish Armada, the English Civil War and Elton John performing “Candle in the Wind” at Princess Diana’s Westminster Abbey funeral. So it will probably survive the note the Vatican issued last week, inviting disaffected Anglicans to head Romeward, and offering them an Anglo-Catholic mansion within the walls of the Roman Catholic faith.
But the invitation is a bombshell nonetheless. Pope Benedict XVI’s outreach to Anglicans may produce only a few conversions; it may produce a few million. Either way, it represents an unusual effort at targeted proselytism, remarkable both for its concessions to potential converts — married priests, a self-contained institutional structure, an Anglican rite — and for its indifference to the wishes of the Church of England’s leadership.
This is not the way well-mannered modern churches are supposed to behave. Spurred by the optimism of the early 1960s, the major denominations of Western Christendom have spent half a century being exquisitely polite to one another, setting aside a history of strife in the name of greater Christian unity.
This ecumenical era has borne real theological fruit, especially on issues that divided Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation. But what began as a daring experiment has decayed into bureaucratized complacency — a dull round of interdenominational statements on global warming and Third World debt, only tenuously connected to the Gospel.
At the same time, the more ecumenically minded denominations have lost believers to more assertive faiths — Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism, Mormonism and even Islam — or seen them drift into agnosticism and apathy.
Nobody is more aware of this erosion than Benedict. So the pope is going back to basics — touting the particular witness of Catholicism even when he’s addressing universal subjects, and seeking converts more than common ground.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
To which Reginald replied: Certainly, but no gentleman would accept it.
But in making the opening to Anglicanism, Benedict also may have a deeper conflict in mind — not the parochial Western struggle between conservative and liberal believers, but Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam. Here Catholicism and Anglicanism share two fronts. In Europe, both are weakened players, caught between a secular majority and an expanding Muslim population. In Africa, both are facing an entrenched Islamic presence... Where the European encounter is concerned, Pope Benedict has opted for public confrontation. In a controversial 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, he explicitly challenged Islam’s compatibility with the Western way of reason — and sparked, as if in vindication of his point, a wave of Muslim riots around the world.
By contrast, the Church of England’s leadership has opted for conciliation...
The Church is open to everyone, even non-Cristians, who wish to convert. As far as I know, the Church allowed even married Anglican priests to convert—and remain married. No mass invitation or drama were necessary.
Someone needs a reality check.
I suspect Benedict is actually creating a plan to eventually SUBSUME the entire Church of England into the Roman Catholic faith. Tony Blair is simply one of the latest high profile converts.
Eventually, I think Benedict hopes that even the King and Queen will repudiate what King Henry VIII did and return to the arms of Mother Rome.
This is more than an invitation. It's essentially an Anglican-Catholic "uniate" church (but one requested by the people involved, including the >400,000 strong TAC, not imposed from the outside), with its own hierarchical structure, its own seminary or seminaries, probably the right to continue to ordain married men to the priesthood (not only former Anglican clergy), its own liturgy, etc.
Why do they need this? The only current structure allowing Anglicans to enter the church and maintain some of their traditions and heritage is the "Pastoral Provision," and that is a reality only in the US, and only in some dioceses. Why? Because it's subject to the local bishop, and some bishops have blocked it ... they don't want more traditional Catholics demanding to worship in a traditional and reverent manner.
This Apostolic Constitution does an end-run around those bishops.
It is probable that Benedict will offer Anglicans a place in the Church similar to what the Maronite Rite enjoys.Its own liturgy and relaxed rules on celibacy.
Exactly what "fallout" will be "felt"?
Will the world hate us more? That's not possible.
Will the Anglicans ordain more homosexuals and women to spite us? That will simply hasten the already accelerating disintegration of their Church.
Will the Anglo-Catholics refuse to cross the Tiber and remain where they are in a sinking ship? That's their loss.
The Catholic Church gets "fallout" every day. It's in the fallout business.
“And the fallout from this undiplomatic move by the Vatican is yet to be felt” Pope Benedict’s overture to languishing Anglicans is hardly undiplomatic. I agree with the NYT author that it is a very symbolic gesture made in a Europe of increasingly anti-Christian sentiment. The Anglican Church is filled with ex Catholics and historically Anglo-Catholics who have changed not only the evangelical nature of the Anglican/Episcopal Church but have placed in question its very Protestantism. Because so many Roman Catholics exited their church because of divorce or birth control issues, the churches that they subsequently adopted took on a more Romanish air. Even the Methodist Church, so long a bastion of Protestant American homespun, recently embraced the Roman Catholic/Episcopal event of Blessing of the Animals in early October. The Episcopal Church in America and the Anglican Church in Britain are suffering from the liberal influence of leadership that has lost any sense of Christian identity or purpose. Many congregants have sought to be placed under the authority of the Anglican Church in Africa, a very conservative and orthodox branch of the denomination. Of course, the RC church has welcomed anyone wishing to convert to its doctrine, but Pope Benedict’s “mass invitation” comes at a time when traditional Christians, and there are many left in Anglicanism, are seeking to be led by someone who at least recognizes that “the devil”, in the guise of the enemies of Christianity,” still prowls looking for someone to devour.”
Open invitations from various prelates of Protestant "churches" to Catholics to leave the RCC. IOW, conversion wars, as if need more drama!
Will the world hate us more? That's not possible
The word doesn't just hate the Catholic Church.
Will the Anglicans ordain more homosexuals and women to spite us?
Catholics ordain homosexuals; they just don't allow them to practice it openly.
As for women, you can thank Apostle Paul for mentioning "Junia" as an apostle.
That will simply hasten the already accelerating disintegration of their Church.
Heretical "churches" have been in existence since the 1st century and show no signs of disintegrating...last time I checked, the numbers of Roman Catholic clergy and nuns suggest the Catholic Church has been nose diving for the past 40 or so years.
The "healthiest" growth is recorded with Islam which approaches if not equals the Catholic Church in membership, and cults such as Mormonism. The only thing that's keeping the Catholic Church numbers in America is a vast influx of (legala nd illegal) Latinos.
Will the Anglo-Catholics refuse to cross the Tiber and remain where they are in a sinking ship? That's their loss.
I don't care, my pay is the same. My point was, which you obviously missed, why was an invitation needed except as a publicity stunt?!
The Catholic Church gets "fallout" every day. It's in the fallout business
Oh, the poor suffering Catholic Church!
Technically, no one needs a formal invitation to convert to Catholicism, but I think the Pope’s move is more symbolic than pedestrian. The Anglican Church is in turmoil; Islam is still the enemy of the church; therefore, all Anglicans who wish to join forces with Roman Catholics are welcome. The evangelical, Protestant nature of Anglicanism is slipping away unfortunately, but the Anglo-Catholic element remains fairly intact. I feel the Pope’s overtures were made to those within the Anglican communion who are sympatico with the Roman liturgy and are discouraged by the liberal bias of the Church of England.
Uh.......you mean Protestants don't already proselytize?
Stop it..........you're killing me!!
I hope they do issue invitations. There's a bunch who do need to leave.
Like, yesterday.
Heretical "churches" have been in existence since the 1st century and show no signs of disintegrating...
Check again.
No "heretical" offshoot of Catholicism has been in existence since the first century. Heretical churches continue to arise (get it right) but they eventually sink.
You're watching one do just that right now. The Pope has launched a few lifeboats for those who'd like to survive.
last time I checked, the numbers of Roman Catholic clergy and nuns suggest the Catholic Church has been nose diving for the past 40 or so years.
The "numbers of Catholic clergy and nuns" have been rising and falling for 2,000 years. Heresy, persecution and apostasy have all played their part. It will be that way until the end of time.
Still waiting for you to tell us about this terrible fallout for the Catholic Church.
THe Slimes has the title wrong. How much more of the article is in error??
“Catholics ordain homosexuals; they just don’t allow them to practice it openly.As for women, you can thank Apostle Paul for mentioning “Junia” as an apostle” Although it is true that many closet homosexuals turn up as RC priests, the Church itself does not “knowingly” ordain them to the pastorate. The Roman Catholic stance on homosexuality is pretty much the same as most Christian denominations, and that is it is incompatible with the tenets of the faith. As for Junia ,the text of Romans 16:7 says that Junia along with Andronicus are outstanding among the apostles, meaning in the opinion of the apostles, these two had a great reputation. It does not mean that Andronicus or Junia were the apostles themselves. The chapter is citing all of those , men and women, who had worked hard for the church.
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Are they being offered their own “rite”?
I agree with you that Paul appears to be saying that Andronikos and Iounias/Iounia were remarkable in the view of the apostles rather than they were apostles themselves. In the latter case, he would be using the word "apostles" more loosely than is usually done, of a larger group than the Twelve.
The “mass invitation” was necessary for the 500,000 members of the TAC. They were the reason why the pope made his announcement in the first place. They wanted a structure to be welcomed in corporately in all but name. And they got it.
>>My point was, which you obviously missed, why was an invitation needed except as a publicity stunt?!<<
The point is, they are being given their own rite.
Like the Chaldeans. They can keep their married priests (although not the Bishops).
Just becoming Latin Catholic wouldn’t do it.
You may think of it as a publicity stunt. The Latin Catholics and Traditional Anglicans think of it as a solution.
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