Posted on 09/27/2005 12:38:03 PM PDT by gbcdoj
PORTLAND (Sept. 24, 2005)--The Traditional Anglican Communion is a small step closer to reestablishing unity with the Roman Catholic Church after a separation of five centuries.
Leaders of the Anglican Church in America, one of the 44 national churches in the conservative body, were in Portland this week considering a plan to begin formal conversations with the Roman Catholic Church about establishing intercommunion.
"It is a quest of being a single Eucharistic community," said Archbishop John Hepworth, the spiritual head of the Traditional Anglican Communion. "It would mean Roman Catholic people could receive communion in our churches and we could receive it in theirs."
(Excerpt) Read more at virtueonline.org ...
O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that, as there is but one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
You may find this interesting.
Many prayers for reunification!
Ping
What is the traditional Anglican Communion? Are they a denomination?
Thanks for posting this!
Per their website:
The Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) is a worldwide association of orthodox Anglican churches, working to maintain the catholic faith and resist the secularization of the Church. Our member churches comprise more than 400,000 members on 6 continents.We strive to faithfully carry the catholic message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to a world which desperately needs it, and to preserve the "faith once delivered to the saints" in its Anglican form as the true and valid expression of that message.
I found the follow up story and the posted comments interesting. Quite a variety of perspectives represented in the comments.
I assume that the Anglican Church is proposing intercommunion. If so, I thought the Catholic Church has long since declared Anglican ordinations and sacraments invalid, which would make the proposition of intercommunion absurd.
Now receiving this church into the Church would be something that could happen, with the Anglican Use and everything that would go with it.
Please correct me if I am wrong on any of this.
Dear gbcdoj,
Is the TAC pretty thoroughly Anglo-Catholic, or are there evangelical elements?
I pinged sionnsar because he may have a better feel for my question, and also, he may want to ping his list.
Thanks,
sitetest
I know some of the people in this church. They are good Christian people and are what I suppose we outsiders would call "Anglo-Catholics". This is a good move for them and I hope Rome will accept them in due time and with the appropriate catechesis.
To tell the truth, I don't know. Perhaps sionnsar does.
My understanding is that the TAC clergy may be willing to submit to reordination "sub conditione" by Catholic bishops. There have already been a considerable amount of informal discussions between TAC and Vatican officials and this problem of the ordinations presumably would have been brought up (we know that B-16 is not willing to budge on this question and so does the TAC). There is some info about this in the comments of the article on VirtueOnline.
This proposal would not be the same as the Anglican Use because it would involve the maintenance of separate ecclesiastical structures, just like the Eastern Catholic Churches have. So they'd have their own Bishops, one or more Seminaries, etc., unlike the current AU situation where it is carried out under the aegis of the local Latin Rite bishop.
The subject of the validity of Anglican orders in general may be more complex than most of us realize. It is true that Leo XIII declared in "Apostolicae Curae", that Anglican orders are (or at least, were at that time) invalid, and also that then Card. Ratzinger listed "Apostolicae Curae" as a document entitled to near infallible weight, in his note on the assent to be given to pronouncements from the Holy See.
On the other hand, several things have happened in the more than 100 years since A.C., most notably the practice, apparently widespread in Anglo-Catholic circles, starting about in the 1920's I think, of having ordination conferred jointly by Old Catholic or Orthodox bishops (whose ordinations are accepted by Rome), in addition to the regular Anglican bishops, thus allowing for what some call a "revival of orders" position.
This situation is one reason why the lineage of the orders of any Anglican priest who wishes to convert and become a Catholic priest is studied. While most of the time we Romans re-ordain such priests, in some few cases, most notably that of (now) Msgr Graham Leonard (former Anglican Bishop of London), the ordination is conditional, allowing for the possibility of prior valid order.
If the intercommunion movement gets going, I would expect the same kind of study to occur, and some kind of re-ordination (or maybe confirmation of orders) to take place, so that everyone is sure of things. My friends in the TAC tell me the tracing of their orders is in fact being prepared and documented now for submission to Rome at the proper time.
First they NEED to CONVERT to Catholicism totally !
Conversion,conversion ,conversion...a word almost forgotten..BUT nevertheless NECESSARY for Salvation!
This is what Christ meant when He said"that we all may be one" they broke off a LONG time ago from the beliefs and teachings of the Church which Christ founded. CONVERSION
ping.
"This proposal would not be the same as the Anglican Use because it would involve the maintenance of separate ecclesiastical structures, just like the Eastern Catholic Churches have. So they'd have their own Bishops, one or more Seminaries, etc., unlike the current AU situation where it is carried out under the aegis of the local Latin Rite bishop."
The article notes that they're looking to be the 27th ecclesial group accepted into communion with Rome. I think their number might be wrong, but the number is somewhere in the 20's.
Anyway, that's not an obscure quote. It looks like a reference to the eastern Catholic churches in communion with the western (Roman) Catholic church. It would appear that they're looking to come into the universal Catholic church as a separate "sui iuris" church in much the same way that we already have 20+ sui iuris eastern Catholic churches. I know that some Anglicans have been discussing the possibility of becoming a sui iuris Catholic church.
Pope Benedict is deadly serious about his vision on ecumenism and I wouldn't be at all surprised if this comes about.
Something to pray for.
Welcome back. Been too damn long.
I couldn't tell if they were part of Canterbury or not. Can you?
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