British Anglicans Preparing Mass Defection to Roman Catholic Church

FOXnews ^

[fabrizio]

LONDON -- Hundreds of disillusioned Anglicans were preparing Sunday to defect from the Church of England to the Roman Catholic Church in time for Lent, Sky News reported.

It follows a campaign by a former Anglican bishop in protest at its stance on the ordination of women and gay clergy.

Father Keith Newton has encouraged Anglicans to join the Ordinariate -- a special branch of Catholicism established by the Pope -- to welcome protestant defectors.

Despite the efforts of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anglo Catholics have begun leaving following the conversion of three Anglican bishops in mid-January.

[AnAmericanMother]

Because the King and Parliament stopped following their own rules and denied American colonists the rights of Englishmen -- imposing taxes, ex post facto laws, and various penalties, and denying them representation in Parliament.

It's as though a lord started treating one of his freeholders like a serf. Ordinarily, even a serf and certainly a freeholder would have resort to the King's Justice in that case -- but Americans were stymied at every turn.

That - in contrast to the monastic orders' administration of their estates - was not in accordance with the accepted law of the time.

I disagree with you re the Wars of the Roses and the Black Death. Certainly a few (the number is greatly exaggerated) old families were wiped out and new families came up, but the basic structure stayed the same. It was not until some years into the Tudors that things started to change -- and you can debate cause and effect on that til the cows come home. Was it Henry VIII and his father before him who brought about the changes, or were they organic changes that would have happened regardless of their actions? Maybe a little of both . . . but the spoliation of the monasteries was sudden, traumatic, and did a great deal of harm. Even the revisionists who believe in economic forces as the be-all and end-all of causative factors attribute that to Henry's greed (exacerbated by his profligate spending and bad monetary policy) not to the end of the feudal system. Certain aspects of the feudal system survived right up into Victoria's time.

The change from "medieval" to "Renaissance" is one of those handy watersheds that historians like to bandy about . . . but like the fall of the Roman Empire you probably didn't notice it while you were living through it. Individual events (like the Sack of Rome or Bosworth Field) weren't the obvious milestones that they have become when people are trying to make some linear sense out of "history".

[Vanders9]

Certain aspects of the feudal system survive to the present time! Look, I understand fully how the process you described in your last paragraph works. Major changes which we sum up with phrases like "classical", "dark age", "medieval", "rennaissance", "enlightenment", "modern" and now "post-modern" do not happen overnight, and in fact aspects of the preceding systems survive long after they have been officially declared dead. It is a gradual process. I agree that the Wars of the Roses and the Black Death did not destroy the feudal system (although I would argue they hastened it), but they were certainly symptomatic of its decline.

But if you hold that to be true, the monasteries were not immune to the same processes. The monastic system was in decline by even before Henry VIII'x reign. The numbers of monasteries had stopped increasing long before. Membership of monasteries was falling fast. As a way of doing things, monasteries were yesterdays news. You might argue thats a sad thing, and even a bad thing, and I would agree with you. But it was happening. Sure the dissolution was sudden, but is that because Henry VIII was a greedy nasty person, or because it had to happen that way because the institution was so hidebound and rigid that it would NOT change. Truth be told, it was probably a bit of both. As I have argued before, even an absolutist monarch must have had a considerable amount of public suppport to pull something as drastic as the break with Rome off. And as evidence for that - Yes people were upset by the dissolution, but they weren't so upset they were prepared to challenge it violently, which they certainly would have done a hundred, even fifty years previously.

[Vanders9]

So by considering it are they admitting that an anglican, protestant rite has a merit that their own rites do not?

[Vanders9]

I understand THAT! What I want to know is why you directed that statement to me and AnAmericanMother.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

‘So by considering it are they admitting that an anglican, protestant rite has a merit that their own rites do not?’

For Anglicans, yes.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

‘as evidence for that - Yes people were upset by the dissolution, but they weren’t so upset they were prepared to challenge it violently’

For your edification: the ‘Pilgrimage of Grace’
Wiki—The reforms, which closed down monasteries that were the only support of the impoverished,[18] alienated most of the population outside of London and helped provoke the great northern rising of 1536–1537, known as the Pilgrimage of Grace.[19] It was the only real threat to Henry’s security on the throne in all his reign. Some 30,000 rebels in nine groups were led by the charismatic Robert Aske, together with most of the northern nobility. Aske went to London to negotiate terms; once there he was arrested, charged with treason and executed. About 200 rebels were executed and the disturbances ended.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

See 186.

[Vanders9]

That wasn’t a rebellion. It was little more than a badly organised riot. As it says, the ONLY real threat to Henry’s security on the throne (although I’m not so sure about that - I seem to recall the French sent an armada to coerce the country back to Catholicism).

[Vanders9]

Thanks for that.

[Vanders9]

You mean that Anglicans have different souls from Catholics? Or perhaps they are not descended from Adam?

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

‘It was little more than a badly organised riot.’

A badly organized riot with more folks in the opposition than the royal army, led by the political leadership of the area, lasting about a year, and apparently being settled by a peace conference until the white flag was dishonored? If calling it that makes you happy, fine.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

‘You mean that Anglicans have different souls from Catholics? Or perhaps they are not descended from Adam?’

No. Anglicans have a shared history and liturgy distinct from the Catholic Church, same as the Maronites, the Byzantine Rite Catholics, etc. Since any theological errors which might have entered the Anglican liturgy is being expunged from the proposed Anglican Catholic Rite, your other questions are nonsensical and seem to arise from nothing except malice. With the disinterest of others in this topic, and your retreat from reason into calumny it looks like further conversation would be pointless.

[Vanders9]

I agree further conversation is pointless, although not for the reasons you cite. It never ceases to amaze me how arrogant, elitist and smug some Catholic Americans can be. It hardly surprises me that my ancestors rejected Rome.