If you want a general idea of the complications that will inevitably come with the Vatican’s new provision for Anglicans seeking communion with the Catholic Church, Father Dwight Longenecker’s piece in the London Times is a good place to start.
Describing the situation as a game of “Ecclesiastical Pick up Stix,” Father Longenecker – himself a former Anglican clergy member who converted to Catholicism – does not mince words:
The Anglican Communion is more like a confederation of contradictions than a communion of the saints. At one point Anglicans worldwide were united in their shared understanding of the historic Christian faith and their shared ancestry in English language and culture. As time has progressed like an ever rolling stream the Anglican Communion has become more and more disparate. Now there are Charismatic Anglicans, Traditionalist Anglicans, Catholic Anglicans and Protestant Anglicans and New Age Anglicans and Liberal Anglicans.
... For all sorts of reasons Anglicans (and their American cousins the Episcopalians) have done the Protestant thing and quarrelled and split and quarrelled and split and quarrelled and split. Now there are over 125 independent 'Anglican' churches.
“What will the Vatican do?” Father Longenecker asks. “That’s where the game of pick up stix comes in. They will have to pick and choose carefully. ... The Vatican’s skills will need to be exercised with delicacy and tact for the good of each person and group, but also with a view to the unity of Christ’s whole church.”
(He goes into further depth on the subject on his blog).
That need for “delicacy” is being seen on the Anglican side, as well, even as the leader of the traditional Anglican group Forward in Faith conjectures that up to 1,000 clergy could convert.
“It could well be a flood, provided the terms and conditions are favorable,” said Stephen Parkinson. “We haven’t seen the fine print yet.”
Similarly, Primate John Hepworth, head of the 400,000-member Traditional Anglican Communion, expressed gratitude for Pope Benedict’s actions and hoped Anglicans can “find in this canonical structure the opportunity to preserve those Anglican traditions precious to us and consistent with the Catholic faith.”
Then from New York, Father George Rutler – who also came to the Church from the Anglican tradition – discussed the document in even blunter terms than Father Longenecker.
“It is a dramatic slap-down of liberal Anglicanism and a total repudiation of the ordination of women, homosexual marriage and the general neglect of doctrine in Anglicanism,” he said in a statement yesterday.
Father Rutler zeroed in on the announcement’s implications for ecumenism, saying that the Vatican’s emphasis on the “spiritual patrimony” of Anglicanism, rather than its doctrine, is telling.
“Indeed, it is a final rejection of Anglicanism,” he said. “(It) makes clear that it is not a historic “church” but rather an “ecclesial community” that strayed and now is invited to return to communion with the Pope as Successor of Peter.”
“The Apostolic Constitution is not a retraction of ecumenical desires,” Father Rutler continued, “but rather is the fulfillment of ecumenical aspirations, albeit not the way most Anglican leaders had envisioned it.”
Still, the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster and Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury expressed hopes for continued ecumenical dialogue, even as the latter, Archbishop Rowan Williams, admitted that he was “informed of the planned announcement at a very late stage.”
Here in the U.S., USCCB president Cardinal Francis George issued a similar statement, affirming the bishops’ desire for deeper unity with the Episcopal Church while working to implement the Vatican provision in American dioceses.
-- Elizabeth Hansen, Headline Bistro editor
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