Ecumenical News International
Daily News Service
21 October 2009
ENI-09-0829
By Martin Revis
London, 21 October (ENI)--Predictions that 50 bishops as well as thousands
of clergy and laity might leave the worldwide Anglican Communion for the
Roman Catholic Church have followed a Vatican announcement of new procedures
for admitting discontented Anglicans.
The Vatican announced on 20 October that Pope Benedict XVI is to set up a
structure to "allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the
Catholic Church, while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican
spiritual and liturgical patrimony".?
Cardinal William Levada, who heads the Vatican's doctrinal office, the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said efforts by some Anglicans
to "accommodate current cultural values" by ordaining women and "practising
homosexuals" as priests and bishops are "not consonant with Apostolic
Tradition", Religion News Service reported.
The Vatican statement had taken note of efforts over four decades to promote
"full and visible unity" between Catholics and Anglicans. However, in recent
years, the prospect of unity had "seemed to recede", Levada said.
Archbishop Joseph Augustine Di Noia of the Vatican's Congregation for Divine
Worship said 50 Anglican bishops had expressed a desire to join the Catholic
Church, CNN reported.
In London, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who heads the
77-million-strong Anglican Communion, and the spiritual leader of Catholics
in England and Wales, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, held a joint media
conference. In a statement, they described the move as, "further recognition
of the substantial overlap in faith, doctrine and spirituality between the
Catholic Church and the Anglican tradition".
Under the apostolic constitution, as the scheme approved by the Pope is
formally described, Anglicans will be able to enter into full communion with
Rome while retaining features of the Anglican liturgical tradition. Those
who choose to join the Catholic Church will be organized in "personal
ordinariates", similar to dioceses, to be led by former Anglicans, probably
bishops or other senior clergy.?
Williams said in a letter to Anglican leaders around the world that he had
been informed of the Vatican decision only at, "a very late stage".
The Times newspaper in London in an editorial described the Vatican
announcement as "potentially the most explosive development in Anglicanism
since the Reformation", in which the "most learned of primates [Williams]
has been outclassed as a politician".
The bishop of Fulham in London, John Broadhurst, chairperson of Forward in
Faith, an Anglican group that opposes women bishops, predicted that up to a
thousand Church of England clergy would leave for Rome.?
A Forward in Faith statement said it had been the, "fervent desire of
Anglican Catholics to be enabled by some means to enter into full communion
with the See of Peter whilst retaining in its integrity every aspect of
their Anglican inheritance which is not at variance with the teaching of the
Catholic Church".
The Rev. David Richardson, the Archbishop of Canterbury's representative to
the Vatican, said he was taken aback by the Vatican decision, The New York
Times reported on 21 October. "I don't see it as an affront to the Anglican
Church, but I'm puzzled by what it means and by the timing of it,"
Richardson was quoted as saying. "I think some Anglicans will feel
affronted."
Still, the Rev. George Pitcher, an Anglican priest who is religion editor of
Telegraph Media based in Britain said that the Vatican had thrown a
"lifeline" to the Church of England over women bishops.
"This is marvellous news for the Church of England?s prospects for making up
women priests to bishops, without creating an Anglican schismatic
bloodbath," Pitcher wrote on a blog on the Telegraph Web site. "There really
is no excuse for Anglo-Catholics who can't accept women bishops now. They
must accept the Pope's offer, or stay in the Anglican Church and accept
women bishops."
The National Secular Society said in a statement, "This is a mortal blow to
Anglicanism which will inevitably lead to disestablishment [of the Church of
England] as the church shrinks yet further and becomes increasingly
irrelevant."
After his election as pontiff in 2005, Pope Benedict said that his first
priority would be to work "to reconstitute the full and visible unity of all
Christ's followers".
The Vatican statement announcing the setting up of the new structure said
the move could be, "seen as another step toward the realisation of the
aspiration for full, visible union in the Church of Christ, one of the
principal goals of the ecumenical movement".
In Kenya, where Anglican leaders have spoken out against gay clergy and
same-sex blessings in the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Eliud Wabukala of
the Anglican Church of Kenya acknowledged that discontented Anglicans had
been in discussions with the Vatican on linking to the Catholic Church.?
"It is not surprising there is this formal recognition of these ongoing
discussions," Wabukala told Ecumenical News International on 21 October.
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