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Loading ...Vatican offer may lure Church of England priests
10.22.2009 2:49pm EDT
(London) On the surface, it looks like a polite tug of war between two of the world’s great churches, each saying nice things about the other.
But the ramifications of the conflict between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England are broad and not yet completely clear, with details of the Vatican’s offer to help Anglicans convert still unpublished.It is not yet known what part of the Anglicans’ liturgy and rites will be incorporated into Catholic worship under the surprise offer made earlier this week in a bold bid by Pope Benedict XVI to capitalize on sharp divisions within the Anglican community over the proper role of women clergy and the acceptability of openly gay priests.
Nor is it evident how many Anglicans will seek to switch churches because of the pope’s new policy. The Right Rev. John Broadhurst, the Bishop of Fulham, believes roughly 1,000 Church of England clergy will seek to join the Roman Catholic Church. He is chairman of Forward in Faith, a group of traditionalists opposed to the ordination of women.
He said this was not a direct result of the pope’s new policy but a reflection of widespread unhappiness with liberal Church of England policies.
“There are 1,000 priests who are totally disenchanted with the position on women bishops, and if there is no provision for them, they will inevitably leave the Church of England,” he said. “The Church of England is in a crisis because of its own internal policies and has been for a long time.”
Others predict the exodus will be smaller.
Some changes are certain: it will, for example, be possible for married Anglican clergy to become Roman Catholic clergy under the new rules, a prospect that some believe may open the door, slowly, to the acceptance of married Catholic priests.
The Rev. Thomas Reese, a Vatican expert at Georgetown’s Theological Center in Washington, predicted the Vatican announcement may have “significant and unforeseen consequences” for the Catholic Church.
“It may in fact provide the Catholic Church with a steady supply of married priests,” he wrote.
Several commentators have suggested that the Catholic Church will be increasingly pressured into relaxing its own celibacy rule for priests because of the expected influx of married Anglican priests. For years, there have been calls for so-called “viri provati” or tested men to perform priestly functions to help relieve the priest shortage in the United States and much of the developing world.
The Vatican has always rejected those calls, saying the celibacy rule is not up for negotiation.
Cardinal William Levada acknowledged that the influx of married Anglican priests into the Catholic Church could create problems. But he said he didn’t think the problem would be “insurmountable.”
“It’s a question of education, of the reasons for this kind of a disposition among our faithful,” he told a press conference earlier this week. “And I think that experience has already shown us that if an explanation is given, that people understand that and accept it as an exception.”
Part of the problem stems from the fact that, according to the new Vatican norms, Anglican seminarians will be trained alongside Catholic seminarians. It stands to reason that that the already difficult decision a Catholic seminarian must make to live a celibate life will be made even more difficult if his schoolmate is allowed to have a wife.
“I think for some people it seems to be a problem because as you know there have been many catholic priests who have left the priesthood to get married, and the question rises: ‘If these former Anglicans can be married priests, what about us?’” Levada said.
But he said the two circumstances are completely different. The Vatican grants an exception to Anglican priests as a way of respecting that their calling to be Catholic happened to have occurred after they were married.
Already, some Catholic groups that have long advocated making celibacy optional for priests are seeing the new ruling as a lever to be used to force the Roman Catholic Church to liberalize its policies on married clergy.
“We’re surprised and pleased to see Vatican flexibility in permitting married priests for Anglican converts, but we need the option of a married priesthood in the Latin rite of the Catholic Church too,” said Christine Schenk, director of FutureChurch, an Ohio-based coalition that favors liberalization of Church rules.
Other group members predicted that Catholic seminarians who wish to marry will likely join the Anglican branch to take advantage of the new situation. They say acceptance of married priests is a vital step needed to help combat the shortage of priests, both in the United States and around the world.
The number of priests in the US has dropped from about 58,000 in 1965 to 40,000 today. The number of priests worldwide has declined slightly since 1970, during a time when the number of Catholics in the world has nearly doubled to an estimated 1.1. billion, according to figures compiled by the Center for Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.
The shortage is caused not only by men leaving the priesthood, many in order to marry, but also by the difficulty of recruiting qualified candidates for the seminaries.
The surprise Vatican move, designed to make the Roman Catholic Church more attractive to Anglicans, seems to have caught senior Anglican officials flatfooted.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the global Anglican church, told followers in a letter that he only learned of the Vatican’s plans at the very last minute.
He seemed uncomfortable at a press conference announcing the change, and has said he is waiting for details to see how it will be put in practice.
Do Catholic priests want wives? Well, I guess there must be a few straight ones out there.
The most inclusive church will win in the end.
Traditionally, the Anglican/Episcopalian communion has believed that controversial theological and other issues must be discussed within the church, not set down from above. Anglicans moving to the Roman Catholic church will have to face the fact they are moving to a church that demands obedience to Rome and the Pope above all things. Very traditional Roman Catholics also oppose married priests and relaxing rules of celibacy, and they want a return to the traditional liturgies of the Council of Trent. With this move to capitalize on differences in other churches, they will have to accept reforms they have opposed since Vatican II. The Vatican may find this dishonesty and opportunism only causes causes more problems than it solves. The Roman Catholic Church continues to defy Christ’s command to bring ALL people unto Him, not just all people except women and those who are from the LGBT community.
This is perhaps the most cynical pronouncement of the Roman Crutch — I mean, Church — in its long disgraceful history. It partakes of unsurpassed hypocrisy and a willingness to use issues especially hot in non-Catholic countries in pitiful attempts to gain converts.
In the first place, as has been doccumented, the Church knows that many if not most priests in Europe are secretly married; in effect, the supposed strictness of abstinence have been quietly relaxed in those countries, while in the United States — and to a somewhat lesser degree in Latin American countries — the only supposedly celibate priests are pederastic homosexuals.
As a surviving Episcopalean I must say the Anglicans could be diving from the frying pan into the pits of hell.
What a bad move for the Anglican Church! It should keep as far away as possible from the Arch Homophobe of Rome and his ilk! It would be better siding itself with the Swedish Lutheran Church which is more liberal than most, not putting itself back under the yok of Rome!!!
blah blah blah the bigots move from one cult of oppression to a worse one, having noticed their current one oppresses not enough.
Imagine being quoted as being stark raving mad, to the point of leaving the church you supposedly devoted your life to, over the inclusion of women in the workforce? These men are simply pigs.
And the celibate thing just cracks me up. Its like DADT. We’ve already learned many of them are far, far from celibate.
Can’t wait to book my tickets to Rome for the fabulous auction of all that stuff!
…..And the Catholic “Church” continues to slowly circle the drain… Good riddance!
I don’t see why any anglican would want to move to the Roman Catholic Church, they seem to have totally different views on how ones faith work. The Anglican belief system is best described a three legged stool with includes tradion, biblical teaching and logic all of which are equally important (as focusing on some more then the other causes the “stool” or the faith to be shaky and fall over) The Catholic church seems to be faith based on the words and orders of one man. one man (the pope) is the ultimate power, where his word is as important as the word of god, (sounds a littler heretical to me)
then again I don’t believe that the Anglican Church is in as dire a straight as the Catholic Church officials seem to want to paint it, the Anglican church has a history of being able to put up with differences in theological view and views on the official direction of the church (a good example of that is the divide in the US around the time of the Civil war over slavery) I think all the catholic church will achieve is gaining some of the already splinter ultra conservative parishes (who when the split lose all their property so this offer if it comes with access to a church would make it appealing) on the other hand it may cause some exudes of the more liberal catholic flock when it becomes clear that the Catholic church is becoming far more radically hardline.
The center of the Anglican Communion will hold; it always does.
There was a schism in the 1890s (I believe it was) … the “Reformed Episcopal Church” marched out over prayers for the dead and “catholic” ceremonial … all that was left of them until the present Troubles was a few empty churches (mostly in the Philadelphia area) and a few ancient “cardinal rectors.” They picked up a few members from the more recent Troubles.
The schism in 1976 generated more than 15 breakaway bodies; by their own count, they number less than 3500 souls in all FIFTEEN (!).
The largest parish, where I had the misfortune of being organist for a number of years (family to feed and all that) is St. Matthew’s Anglican Catholic Church in Orange County, CA. They have 350 members.
The newer schismatic Anglican Province of North America is GROSSLY inflating their numbers. There are SUBSTANTIAL groups in the dioceses of Pittsburgh and Ft. Worth who have NO intention of leaving. The dioceses of Quincy and San Joaquin were small weak dioceses that had ALREADY split from their parent dioceses. Quincy has something like 17 PARISHES *total*, none of them large.
Dallas is threatening to leave ECUSA, but I think the unanimous rulings of various courts that the properties and endowments belong to the national Church (per the “Dennis Canon” passed by the General Convention back in the 1970s, I think it was) will give them pause.
St. James “Nigerian Anglican Church” (or whatever they are) in Newport Beach CA, where the American Anglican Council started, is going to lose their brand-new multi-million dollar church, which they built as an act of defiance of ECUSA.
Frankly, one of the BIGGEST problems Rome is going to have with married Anglican priests who swim the Tiber is SUPPORTING them and their families.
Anglican rectors make upwards of $100K per annum in wealthy parishes, and some of these parishes ARE wealthy, though they’re likely to LOSE all that if they go to Rome.
US Roman pastors make something like $900/mo plus room & board (in a common rectory) and healthcare.
No Anglican is going to be able to support a family on THAT.
If you anglicans don’t mind having your kids’ wee-wee in some old virgin’s mouth while having the holy father’s finger up his hoo-hoo then be my guest.
Rome is an evil institution that lives on the submission not to spiritual liturgy but to a few members of the italian mafia whose goal is to take over our banking system and dominate europe by way of the creation of the EU and America by this step as stated in the article. The vatican’s goal is a new world order where the pope will be the pseudo head of state. The black pope (the pupet master) is counting on the failure of our current economic system by having his jesuit soldiers who control 75% of the federal reserve via the london banks that loan money for the printing of US dollars, once the economy fails the world will go into another dark age and the most powerful bankers will secure all the wealth with their cronies in rome. My friends, this is something so complex, I know, but yet so beyond than the gay issue; we must be aware of the ever growing power of the church which is a threat to our basic liberty as gay and lesbian Americans.