Anglican Reunion will Create "Huge Cultural Shift" to the Extreme Left in Anglican Church

Lifesitenews ^ | October 26, 2009 | Hilary White

[Pope Pius XII]

By focusing on the issue of married clergy in the Catholic Church, the secular media has got the thin end of the story of last week's offer of reunion from the Vatican to "traditionalist" Anglicans. The more interesting story, says Fr. Philip Powell, a Dominican priest based in Rome and a former Episcopalian, is the "huge cultural shift" in the Anglican Church that it presages.

Fr. Powell gave his analysis of the move in an interview with LSN, saying that despite accusations from the left and from some quarters of the Anglican Communion, it was not an opportunistic grab for numbers by the Vatican preying upon the Anglican Churches. The decision, he said, is purely a matter of pastoral concern and a provision for people in real spiritual "distress."

"It was a request that has been made twice now by the traditional Anglican community in England and Australia and this is a very pastoral response," said Fr. Powell, a popular clerical Catholic blogger and a graduate student in philosophy at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome.

[Pope Pius XII]

What is this now?

[Reaganesque]

can you say schism?

Not without spitting a little. ;-)

[C19fan]

With noting to stop the heretics in Europe and America from pushing the Anglican church further into apostasy the next big step is the whole scale crossing of the Tiber of traditonal Anglicans in Africa and other parts of the 3rd World.

[sitetest]

Dear C19fan,

I'm under the impression that the Anglicans of the Global South are more evangelical than Anglo-Catholic. As well, the Anglicans in the Global South apparently outnumber the liberals in the USA and the United Kingdom.

Thus, I think that it may be more likely that there will be a rupture within the Anglican Communion between First World liberals and Third World conservative evangelicals that may leave the Archbishop of Canterbury in communion with little more than the pansies left in the Church of England that still even bother, the eight or nine folks left in the US Episcopal group, and the folks left in the Canadian Anglican community.

The question is, what will the Anglican Communion then be? The rump Americans, British and Canadians (and any other stragglers along for the ride) still recognizing the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the 40 - 50 million or so evangelicals who keep communion with each other, but not with Canterbury?

sitetest

[Donald Rumsfeld Fan]

Powell also noted the irony of the situation of the traditionalist Anglicans, who are being accused of being "bigots and homophobes and sexists" by the left, whose mantra all these years has been "tolerance."

"Tolerance"....is overated.

[stripes1776]

can you say schism?

Not without spitting a little. ;-)

LOL

[stripes1776]

Fr. Powell has been in Rome too long and does not understand the situation in the Anglican Communion. The cultural shift has already happened in English-speaking countries. Anglo-Catholics are a minority in the Anglican Communion. Most of those who are not happy with the direction the church is taking have already left. And most of those have simply started their own continuing churches. Probably many of these Anglo-Catholics who are former Anglicans will take advantage of the new personal ordinariates and convert.

I don't look for most of the Anglo-Catholic still in the Anglican Communion to convert. They like their parish churches. They will just hunker down and withdraw into the smoky incense of their liturgy. The priests will wait until they see what happens to their salaries and pensions. Perhaps the left-wing that has taken control of the national Anglican churches will speak a little more politely to Anglo-Catholics, but the politics will not change.

As for the Anglican churches in Africa and Asia, the Evangelicals are in control. Not much will be changing there, except in the continuing churches that have already left.

[kosta50]

Maybe many of those who decide to take the offer will find out that perhaps thet are not as Catholic theologically as they are liturgically. What are Anglo-Catholic doctrines? Do they now profess the Westminster Confession and tomorrow they will profess that the Pope is the infallible Vicar of Christ and believe it?

Just how Catholic are they in their beliefs, besides their views of homosexuality and women in church? I used to know one Episcopalian who was allowed to worship in a Catholic chapel in the military because there was no Anglican Chaplain available. She was permitted to take the Catholic communion (after the Catholic Chaplain "determined" that her understanding of the Eucharist was the same as the Catholic understanding).

But, in private conversation with her it was obvious that she was a declared feminist desiring to become an ordained Anglican minister. While she was extremely conservative and "Catholic" on some issues (divorce, homosexuality, etc.), on others she was as far from Catholicism as it gets.

How many married Anglican bishops will take a step-down to being married priests taking orders from bishops? And what happens in the majority of converts discovers that the liberal side of the Catholic Church is much closer to their way of thinking and believing than the traditional Catholic one?

It's one thing to have a liturgy that looks like the TLM, it's an altogether different thing what is being professed in it.

[bobjam]

Good points. This move by Rome largely impacts England only. With even a moderate exodus of Anglo-Catholics, England’s liberals, already a majority, will steam roll the opposition. The GAFCON provinces will shake the Canterbury dust from their feet and move on.