Well, you have to admit that this is a very shrewd move on the part of the
Roman Catholic Church at a very opportune time, when the Anglican Communion
is so divided over the issue of homosexuality. It will be interesting to see
how this situation plays out, and how many conservative Anglican folds
actually choose to join the Roman Catholic Church. The RCC may get fewer
returns on this than they expect.


Vatican Bidding to Get Anglicans to Join Its Fold

By RACHEL DONADIO and LAURIE GOODSTEIN - NYT

October 20, 2009


VATICAN CITY -- In an extraordinary bid to lure traditionalist Anglicans en
masse, the Vatican said Tuesday that it would make it easier for Anglicans
uncomfortable with their church's acceptance of female priests and openly
gay bishops to join the Roman Catholic Church while retaining many of their
traditions.

Anglicans would be able "to enter full communion with the Catholic Church
while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and
liturgical patrimony," Cardinal William J. Levada, the prefect for the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said at a news conference here.

It was unclear why the Vatican made the announcement now. But it seemed a
rare opportunity, audaciously executed, to capitalize on deep divisions
within the Anglican Church to attract new members at a time when the
Catholic Church has been trying to reinvigorate itself in Europe.

The issue has long been close to the heart of Pope Benedict XVI, who for
years has worked to build ties to those Anglicans who, like conservative
Catholics, spurn the idea of female and gay priests.

Catholic and Anglican leaders sought on Tuesday to present the move as a
joint effort to aid those seeking conversion. But it appeared that the
Vatican had engineered it on its own, presenting it as a fait accompli to
the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual
head of the Anglican Communion, only in recent weeks. Some Anglican and
Catholic leaders expressed surprise, even shock, at the news.

The move could have the deepest impact in England, where large numbers of
traditionalist Anglicans have protested the Church of England's embrace of
liberal theological reforms like consecrating female bishops. Experts say
these Anglicans, and others in places like Australia, might be attracted to
the Roman Catholic fold because they have had nowhere else to go.

If entire parishes or even dioceses leave the Church of England for the
Catholic Church, experts and church officials speculated, it could set off
battles over ownership of church buildings and land.

Pope Benedict has said that he will travel to Britain in 2010.

In the United States, traditionalist leaders said they would be less
inclined than their British counterparts to join the Catholic Church,
because they have already broken away from the Episcopal Church and formed
their own conservative Anglican structures (though some do allow women to be
priests).

The Vatican's announcement signals a significant moment in relations between
two churches that first parted in the Reformation of the 16th century over
theological issues and the primacy of the pope.

In recent decades, the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church have
sought to heal the centuries of division. Some feared that the Vatican's
move might jeopardize decades of dialogue between Catholics and Anglicans by
implying that the aim was conversion.

The Very Rev. David Richardson, the archbishop of Canterbury's
representative to the Vatican, said he was taken aback.

"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," he said. "I think some Anglicans
will feel affronted."

The decision creates a formal universal structure to streamline conversions
that had previously been evaluated case by case. The Vatican said that it
would release details in the coming weeks, but that generally, former
Anglican prelates chosen by the Catholic Church would oversee Anglicans,
including entire parishes or even dioceses, seeking to convert.

Under the new arrangement, the Catholic practice that has allowed married
Anglican priests to convert and become Catholic priests would continue.
(There have been very few such priests.) But only unmarried Anglican bishops
or priests could become Catholic bishops.

Cardinal Levada acknowledged that accepting large numbers of married
Anglican priests while forbidding Catholic priests to marry could pose
problems for some Catholics. But he argued that the circumstances differed.

Under the new structure, former Anglicans who become Catholic could preserve
some elements of Anglican worship, including hymns and other "intangible"
elements, Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, the Vatican's deputy chief
liturgical officer, said at the news conference.

Cardinal Levada said that the Vatican had acted in response to many requests
from Anglicans since the Church of England ordained women in the 1990s, and,
more recently, when it faced what he called "a very difficult question" --
the ordination of openly gay clergy and the celebration of homosexual
unions.

He said that 20 to 30 bishops and hundreds of other people had petitioned
the Vatican on the matter in recent years.

In the United States, disaffected conservatives in the Episcopal Church, the
American branch of Anglicanism, announced in 2008 that they were
reorganizing as the Anglican Church in North America.

Bishop Martyn Minns, a leader of that group, welcomed the pope's decision.
"It demonstrates his conviction that the divisions in the Anglican Communion
are very serious and these are not things that are going to get papered
over," he said.

However, both Bishop Minns and Archbishop Robert Duncan, primate of the
Anglican Church in North America, said that they did not expect many
conservative Anglicans to accept the offer because the theological
differences were too great.

"I don't want to be a Roman Catholic," said Bishop Minns. "There was a
Reformation, you remember."

In Britain, the Rev. Rod Thomas, the chairman of Reform, a traditionalist
Anglican group, said, "I think it will be a trickle of people, not a
flood."

But he said that a flood could in fact develop if the Church of England did
not allow traditionalists to opt out of a recent church decision that women
could be consecrated as bishops.

Some said the move would probably not win over traditionalist Anglicans in
Africa.

"Why should any conservative break away from a church where the moral
conservatives represent the overwhelming mass of opinion, such as in
Nigeria?" said Philip Jenkins, a professor at Pennsylvania State University
and an expert in the Catholic Church's history in Africa and Asia.

The plan was announced at simultaneous news conferences at the Vatican and
in London.

The Vatican's archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, and Archbishop
Williams of the Anglican Church issued a joint statement in which they said
that the new structure "brings to an end a period of uncertainty for such
groups who have nurtured hopes of new ways of embracing unity with the
Catholic Church."

In London, Archbishop Williams minimized the impact of the announcement on
relations between the two churches. "It would not occur to me to see this as
an act of aggression or a statement of no confidence, precisely because the
routine relationships that we enjoy as churches will continue," he said.



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