"You shouldn't feel stupid. They're much the same forces in both churches. But take heed and warning from ECUSA's example."
Agreed.
They are very much the same forces in both Churches, especially in America.
When it all began, for the Catholics back at Vatican II, it was in a sense forgiveable. There were things in the pre-Vatican II Church that didn't work well, and there was a genuine desire to reform. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI supported Vatican II.
But flexibility was taken as license, and bad things happened.
Bad things have happened in the Episcopalian Church too.
The Catholic Church seems to have pulled back from the brink and is now proceeding in a direction that may well cause the liberal Catholics in America to simply stop coming to church.
The Episcopalian Church seems to have come to the brink and headed right over it like a runaway train, dragging along its parishoners with it.
Why the difference?
The only visible thing I can discern is the difference in authority. Papal authority is, and will no doubt always remain, the bugbear of Catholicism as far as both Protestants and the Orthodox are concerned. Here is an instance where, whether one agrees with it or not, it demonstrates its utility.
In the Episcopalian Church, the bishops are in communion with Canterbury, etc., and it is all fine rhetoric, but if Episcopalian Bishops take a turn that sharply differs from the theology of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who ULTIMATELY decides? Who has the FINAL authority? The bishop himself. If he is alone, he will get squeezed out. But if several bishops agree, that is it. Episcopalian America has decided that homosexuality is not a sin, and that open gays should be bishops. Canterbury does not seem to agree, but it doesn't matter. A plurality of Episcopalian Bishops in America sets the law for America.
In the Catholic Church, the Pope is the prince. He has binding and absolute authority. If all of the bishops in America unanimously agree to defy him, they're all excommunicated and damned to Hell, and individual Catholics in America, and everywhere else in the world, are bound to obey the Pope over any subsidiary authority.
Period.
There isn't any ARGUMENT about this. It's a point of THEOLOGY, not just ecclesiology.
Like it or hate it...and the Anglican Communion exists in the first place because a lot of people hated the idea, and still hate it, it is why the American Catholic Bishops, however much some want to, have not been able to take the American Church over the cliff with them (for all their worst efforts at some points). They are lieutenants. They are NOT supreme. They are subjects of the Pope, removable by the Pope, and ultimately answerable to the Pope. So long as the center holds and the Pope does not lapse into apostasy, the worst some bishop, or a whole continent of bishops, can do is to go into schism...at which point they cease to be bishops. There is no dodge around it.
Of course, if the center ever folds in the Catholic Church, if the Pope himself ever lapses over into the popular obsessions and idiocies, it's all over for Catholicism. Catholics believe, as a theological matter, that God will not let that happen. Protestants are unconvinced of that divine protection of the papacy (indeed, if they accepted it, they would be Catholics!)
I have been reading all these threads with increasing sadness and even pity for ECUSA. I was there when it went into apostasy and so I know from the inside what it feels like to have your bishop simply exert his authority to insist you not believe what you have always been taught (and, in my case, have come back to realize was correct, true and salvific after years in the wilderness thinking I could reconstruct it).
So I agree with most of the comments here. I only point out that the RCC has had episodes of papal incompetence and even misguidedness, which she has survived. This can only be the rectifying work of the Holy Spirit. He is also working within the Anglican tradition though the historical rejection of strict authority has made the work that much harder. It really is like trying to herd cats to get Anglicans to all head in the same theological and/or liturgical direction.
So the work of trying to preserve and transmit the Anglican tradition of the Catholic faith goes on, a very fulfilling work. It is also fraught with frustrations because in terms of a human life, it goes slowly. But, that is a teaching in itself. To work to keep the True Faith alive is to dedicate oneself to a project easily greater than the spans of the lives of anyone who takes it on. When the gale is blowing, preserving even a flickering candle is an achievement and an offering to God.
In Christ,
Deacon Paul+
I left ECUSA 22 years ago, long before the current issues had come to the fore. I don't think papal authority necessarily made the difference; I think ECUSA simply had a nastier infection of liberalism (though I will admit that an ultimate authority can slam on the brakes, and I hope Benedict 16 will do so). In my case I had seen a major problem at a diocesan level; I also recall reading for some time after my departure of the problems Rome was having with the American Catholic church.
Look at the other protestant churches in various stages of the same problem; are the ones further along the ones with less authority?