"No Half-Way House Between Canterbury and Rome"
If the synod votes in favor of female bishops, it may spell a major break in the Anglican Communion, as the Telegraph of London reported on Sunday, July 6, that "Senior Church of England bishops have held secret talks with Vatican officials to discuss the crisis in the Anglican communion over gays and women bishops."
Will the remaining traditional Anglicans return to Rome? The Guardian reports that "as many as six Church of England bishops" are involved in the talks, and "More than one thousand traditionalist clergy have threatened to leave the Church of England."
For its part, Rome appears to be ready to receive the Anglican traditionalists. For well over a year, there have been rumors that Pope Benedict XVI is prepared to liberalize the celebration of the Anglican-use rite, which some ex-Anglican parishes now use. That would allow Anglo-Catholic converts to maintain their identity while returning to union with Rome.
In the end, of course, "we are still talking about Anglicans becoming Roman Catholics," as Catholic Herald editor Damian Thompson writes on his blog, "Holy Smoke," on the website of the Telegraph. As Thompson concludes, "There is no half-way house between Canterbury and Rome, as more and more Anglo-Catholics are now aware." The attempt of traditionalists to maintain communion with an Anglican Church that is spiraling out of control is no longer viable.
Now more than ever, we should join our voices in A Devout Exercise for the Unity of the Church.
One of the problems is that the Forward in Faith people, ie. those Anglicans who adhere to Catholic theology, do not use the Book of Common Prayer but the Modern Roman Missal for their services. If Benedict XVI were to allow the use of an amended BCP it would not affect them. What they want is to be just like the Catholics whom they join but with their own structure. This is irrational and probably unlikely to be accepted by the Catholic authorities in England.
“Anon” is correct. Forward in Faith UK’s main problem is that its 1300 married clergy want to separate from the C of E, while retaining (tax supported) incomes. And their leaders tell me that, since roughly 160 married former Anglicans are now Catholic priests, British Catholic bishops can’t accept many more.
So, FiF hoped that, a kind of a special structure, would allow them to continue to function as Anglicans, and then (perhaps) to transfer allegiance to Rome. –Those who would really become Catholics anyway!
But the C of E has refused that special structure. And it has always been absurd to hope that FiF clergy who became Roman Catholics could retain tax-support; or that Rome would allow England to be swamped with roughly a thousand married Catholic priests!
Christ had prayed “that they may be one”. This happening might be the beginning of the coming together of the Church of England and the Church of Rome under one umbrella which was how it was from the beginning. The worry about the maintenance of the married priests with tax payers money would end when the Churches and priests depend fully on Rome and the dioceses. Materialism will not be a stumbling block in the unification of the Church which Christ Himself founded .
In this union, what will be the effect of the role of the Pope on Anglicans? What of the idea of papal infallibility and such doctrines as the Assumption and Immaculate Conception? What of the Real Presence. These have been insoluble questions that have riven the two Churches. My guess is that the Anglicans who enter the RCC have already been Catholics, Protestant in name only.