(First Things) - Such an event was Benedict XVI’s landmark announcement in October 2009 offering members of the Anglican Communion a fast track into the Catholic Church. Although commentators quickly dubbed this unexpected overture a “gambit,” what it truly exhibits are the characteristics of a move known in chess as a “brilliancy,” an unforeseen bold stroke that stunningly transforms the game. In the short run, knowledgeable people agree, this brilliancy of Benedict’s may not seem to amount to much. Some 1000 Church of England priests may convert and some 300 parishes turn over to Rome—figures that, while significant when measured against the dwindling numbers of practicing Anglicans there, are nonetheless mere drops in the Vatican’s bucket.THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: I realize there are some conservatives within the Anglican Communion who still have some fight left in them, and won't jump ship until they know they've done everything that can possibly be done to prevent it's sinking. That being said the bow of the ship is already under water, so now might be a good time to to get into a lifeboat. I admire the valiant effort of those who won't give up until the last moment, but please, why drag this out any longer than it needs to be? The HMS Canterbury is sinking, and there's nothing anyone can do to save her now.
But in the longer run—say, over the coming decades—Rome’s move looks consequential in another way. It is the latest and most dramatic example of how orthodoxy, rather than dissent, seems once again to have taken the driver’s seat of Christianity. Every traditionalist who joins the long and already illustrious history of reconversion to the Catholic Church just tips the religious balance more toward Rome. This further weakens a religious communion battered from within by decades of intra-Anglican culture wars. Meanwhile, the progressives left behind may well find the exodus of their adversaries a Pyrrhic victory. How will they possibly make peace with the real majority of Anglicans today—the churches in Africa, whose leaders have repeatedly denounced the Communion’s abandonment of traditional teachings? Questions like these are why a few commentators now speak seriously about something that only recently seemed unthinkable: whether the end of the Anglican Communion itself might now be in sight....
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(Telegraph) - [Anglican] Archbishop Sentamu: “If people genuinely realise that they want to be Roman Catholic, they should convert properly, and go through catechesis and be made proper Catholics. This kind of creation [the Apostolic Constitution] — well, all I can say is, we wish them every blessing and may the Lord encourage them. But as far as I am concerned, if I was really, genuinely wanting to convert, I wouldn’t go into an ordinariate. I would actually go into catechesis and become a truly converted Roman Catholic and be accepted.”
William Crawley: “So those Anglicans who take advantage of the Apostolic Constitution, you’re saying, would not be ‘proper Catholics’?”
Archbishop Sentamu: “Well, I mean, I’d be very surprised –”
William Crawley: “What would they be if they are not ‘proper Catholics’?”
Archbishop Sentamu: “They would be what they are: an ordinariate of the Vatican.”
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(Telegraph) - Ruth Gledhill has been leaked the Bishop of Manchester’s statement to the General Synod today, in which he will reveal that the Synod committee revising the legislation is not offering opponents of women bishops alternative oversight. If they behave themselves, they can keep women bishops out of their churches but, er, that’s it. At least, that’s how I read his long statement, though in the C of E you can never be sure of anything. The Anglo-Catholics were shafted by the full Synod last summer; the revision committee has now confirmed this, apparently; and any last-minute rescue by the full Synod seems jolly unlikely...
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(The Montreal Gazette) - All of the 104 archbishops of Canterbury throughout history have been men, beginning more than 1,400 years ago with Saint Augustine.
Bishop Williams said Monday many Church of England members "maybe felt alienated or grieved" by the vote to permit female bishops, but others "felt elated by the step forward that had been taken."
In her comments, the 54-year-old Bishop Matthews said "it would be difficult to say the timeline" for when a woman might become the archbishop of Canterbury, but noted one-third of Anglican provinces have now given permission for women to become bishops.
Archdeacon Michael Pollesel, general secretary of the Anglican Church of Canada, said yesterday it's conceivable a Canadian woman -- perhaps even Bishop Matthews -- could become archbishop of Canterbury one day.
"It would be possible for a female Canadian Anglican to be appointed to a bishop's post in England, since the Church of England has recently voted to ordain female bishops," he said...
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Monday, February 8, 2010
Anglican Roundup - Liberals Get Smug While Conservatives Move Toward Rome
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The proposed arrangements for traditional Anglicans seem like the arrangements given to traditional Catholics before Summorum Pontificum. They can practice their traditional way under the permission of the local bishop (who for goodness sakes may be a woman!)
Given that the lines have been drawn sharply in the CoE and TEC, no trendy woman bishop or any trendy male bishop for that matter is likely to give the "indult".
Many liberals now openly foment revolt against Pope Benedict and the goals of his pontificate. They are quite worried about, inter alia, the new translation of the Roman Missal.
I have a suggestion for these Vatican II Spirit defending "Vat-trads".
It’s time to get organized!
Since you seem to want to be Anglicans, leave that closet and ask Archbishop Rowan Williams for your own Ordinariate.
You could get your own "Vat-trad" corner safe from Rome and its interference!
Within your "Spirit of Vatican II Ordinariate" you will enjoy your most cherished traditions. Think of all the ceramic, guitars, hip music, big puppets and, above all, an English liturgy loaded with perpetually revised dynamic equivalence.
After all, the old lame-duck ICEL translation has been in use for almost 40 whole years! That certainly constitutes a tradition worth fighting for, doesn’t it?
If the Pope wants priests to "turn back the clock", to turn their backs on the people, turn your backs on him, I say!
"Hell no! Let’s just go!" See? Slogans are easy!
"Why don’t we just say ‘Anglican’?" There’s another.
I encourage these Lefebvrists-of-the-Left to walk the labyrinth together and journey to a safe haven amongst the Anglicans.
Freedom from Roman encroachment can be yours!
There you go, Mr Knight, advice for liberals from Fr Z, sort of fair turnaround isnt it??? We get their trads, they get our libs. Pete Frey
"Describing the present state of the Anglican Communion is one of “chaos-- local schisms, outside interventions,” the Archbishop of Canterbury, issued a plea for unity amid doctrinal differences over homosexual activity, assisted suicide, and the ordination of women bishops.
“The debate over the status and vocational possibilities of LGBT people in the Church is not helped by ignoring the existing facts, which include many regular worshippers of gay or lesbian orientation and many sacrificial and exemplary priests who share this orientation,” said Dr. Rowan Williams. “There are ways of speaking about the question that seem to ignore these human realities or to undervalue them; I have been criticised for doing just this, and I am profoundly sorry for the carelessness that could give such an impression.”
“Equally, there are ways of speaking about the assisted suicide debate that treat its proponents as universally enthusiasts for eugenics and forced euthanasia, and its opponents as heartless sadists, sacrificing ordinary human pity to ideological purity,” he continued. “All the way through this, we need to recover that sense of a balance of liberties and thus a conflict of what may be seen as real goods-- something of the tragic recognition that not all goods are compatible in a fallen world And if this is true, our job is not to secure purity but to find ways of deciding such contested issues that do not simply write off the others in the debate as negligible, morally or spiritually unserious or without moral claims.”
“Most hold that the ordination of women as bishops is a good, something that will enhance our faithfulness to Christ and our integrity in mission,” he added. “But that good is at the moment jeopardised in two ways-- by the potential loss of those who in conscience cannot see it as a good, and by the equally conscience-driven concern that there are ways of securing the desired good that will corrupt it or compromise it fatally (and so would rather not see it at all than see it happening under such circumstances).”
Archbishop Williams concluded by issuing a call for “three-dimensionality"
Typical of liberal Anglicanism, they want their cake and eat it too, which speaks volumes about your post on the imminent collapse of the C of E. Pete Frey
It really doesn't matter. The Church of England is done being 'Christian'. A female ABC will be after the next male ABC who will be so liberal and open the church up to the last vestiges of heresy and apostasy that all that will be left is, well, the left.
The conservatives will stay to the bitter end because they have no where to go. They don't want to lose what they have. If they leave they have no pension, insurance, vicarage, and lay people will stay even if their priest leaves. Most of all they will have no churches. The CofE and parliament would rather the empty churches rot or be turned into pubs or mosques or just bulldoze them out of existence.
ICOBOD! ICOBOD! They Glory has departed!
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