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To: NYer
I really wonder whether this isn't a sign of the ultimate breakup of the Anglican Communion.

In England and the U.S. (the only areas I am really familiar with) you have a wide range of customs and beliefs gathered under "one big umbrella" -- the church was designed this way by Elizabeth I, who was trying to bring the English religious wars to a peaceful end. She managed to include everybody but the extreme Puritans on the one hand, and the extreme Roman Catholics on the other.

The way this has developed in the U.S., you have two poles or lines of continuum within the church: (1) "high" versus "low" in belief - in other words more-Catholic-than-Rome on one end (with devotions to the Blessed Virgin and the saints, Eucharistic Adoration, etc.), and straight-arrow Protestant on the other, with Sola Scriptura and the XXXIX Articles' condemnation of anything that "smacks of Popery"; (2) "high" versus "low" in ritual - from lots of vestments, incense, bells, processions, etc. to a bare-bones Morning Prayer and Communion on the other end with "Virginia clericals" (business suit and a dog collar).

Like the X-Y graph political test you see on the internet, a church may be just about anywhere along these two lines -- there are churches that are very high in ritual but very Protestant in theology (the old "high and dry" of the pre-Oxford Movement English church), likewise there are very Catholic churches theologically that conduct a bare-bones service with very little in the way of vestments, music, etc. But I would say that most of the "low" churches are low in both ritual and belief, ditto most of the "high" churches.

The standout conservative holdouts in the ECUSA are mostly the "low" and evangelical churches. This doesn't leave much of a place for the "high" churches, whose Catholic ritual makes the evangelicals suspicious. They also don't approve of the ordination of women.

These two groups have made common cause in opposing the radical lib ECUSA leadership, but I don't think they can reconcile their differences sufficiently to maintain a new church body together.

Which means, I think, that the High Anglicans will split off and join the Catholics.

4 posted on 05/17/2005 6:46:03 AM PDT by AnAmericanMother (. . . Ministrix of ye Chace (recess appointment), TTGC Ladies' Auxiliary . . .)
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To: AnAmericanMother
Which means, I think, that the High Anglicans will split off and join the Catholics.

What about the African Churches?
6 posted on 05/17/2005 7:25:17 AM PDT by Dominick ("Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought." - JP II)
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To: AnAmericanMother
"Which means, I think, that the High Anglicans will split off and join the Catholics."

It's difficult to see what the RCC offers Anglicans nowadays. Most of the Catholic parishes in my area are extremely "progressive". In ritual they are very bland. You can sit through several weeks (or months) of homilies and never hear a shred of doctrine other than social activism.

The Continuing churches here are growing and I think that is the direction of the future. We can emphasize solid doctrine and still have a mass that is frankly more visually "Catholic" than the Catholics have.
14 posted on 05/17/2005 7:53:20 AM PDT by Gingersnap
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