Vatican Invites Anglicans To Come Home After 450 Years.
Email This Post
- 
Print This Post
-
The Vatican said Tuesday it has worked out a way for groups of Anglicans who are dissatisfied with their denomination to (re)join the Catholic Church.
The process will allow groups of Anglicans, including bishops and married priests, to join the Catholic Church some 450 years after King Henry VIII broke from Rome and created the Church of England. The schism is usually described as happening because King Henry VIII wanting a divorce from Catherine of Aragon seemed incapable of producing a son and heir to the throne anad after the Vatican would not grant their separation. Other reasons as sometime included but that is the simple reason and most important.
The number of Anglicans wishing to join the Catholic Church has increased in recent years as the Anglican church has welcomed the ordination of women and openly homosexual clergy and blessed homosexual partnerships, said Cardinal William Joseph Levada, the head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Their talks with the Vatican recently began speeding up, Vatican officials said, leading to Tuesday’s announcement.
“The Catholic Church is responding to the many requests that have been submitted to the Holy See from groups of Anglican clergy and faithful in different parts of the world who wish to enter into full visible communion,” Levada said.
Levada said “hundreds” of Anglicans around the world have expressed their desire to join the Catholic Church. Among them are 50 Anglican bishops, said Archbishop Joseph Augustine Di Noia of the Congregation for Divine Worship.
The Anglicans will be able to retain their Anglican rites while recognizing the pope as their leader, Vatican officials said. The British monarch is the head of the Anglican Church.
While married Anglican priests may be ordained as Catholic priests, the same does not apply to married Anglican bishops, Levada said.
“We’ve been praying for this unity for 40 years and we’ve not anticipated it happening now,” Di Noia said. “The Holy Spirit is at work here.”
The Church of England said the move ends a “period of uncertainty” for Anglican groups who wanted more unity with the Catholic Church.
Both groups have a “substantial overlap in faith, doctrine and spirituality” and will continue to hold official dialogues, the archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster said in a joint statement.
“Those Anglicans who have approached the Holy See have made clear their desire for full, visible unity in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,” Levada said. “At the same time, they have told us of the importance of their Anglican traditions of spirituality and worship for their faith journey.”
Preserving Anglican traditions, such as mass rites, adds to the diversity of the Catholic Church, he said.
“The unity of the church does not require a uniformity that ignores cultural diversity, as the history of Christianity shows,” he said. “Moreover, the many diverse traditions present in the Catholic Church today are all rooted in the principle articulated by St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians: ‘There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism.’”
Comment by slowsmile on 22 October 2009:
More tinpot religous politics which has nothing to do with the Bible or God, and will only function to increase the Catholic Church’s greatly depleted numbers. They even concede marriage to their new priest recruits, whatever next !?!
Comment by Richard Cochrane on 22 October 2009:
Slowsmile:
There are Episcopal (Anglican) clergy in my near family who, were they still alive, would be like me distressed by the direction or misdirection of the Episcopal Church.
I am fond of saying that I know nothing about religion because I am an Episcoplain, and we do not have to know.
Notwithstanding the rather suspect founding including King Henry VIII and King James rewriting of the Bible - I expect the Vatican’s invitation will raise a dust cloud but it will waft away very quickly because Episcopalians don’t really give a damn.
Comment by gospelaccordingtohate on 14 December 2009:
“While married Anglican priests may be ordained as Catholic priests, the same does not apply to married Anglican bishops, Levada said.”
The Roman Catholic Church’s logic is so messed up. So, what’s a bishop to do with his wife?
I’m a former Catholic priest, and happy, I left it all behind. Pronouncements like this one from the Vatican only show how desperate the RCC is to fill pews in the wake of the sex abuse and cover up scandal that is continuing to drain the coffers. The RCC is getting in bed with any disgruntled right wing-leaning folks that it can and is squeezing out any reasonable members from its own pews, not in the name of ecumenism, but in the name of bigotry for those who are different than the shallow boxes prescribed by Pope Ben.
The RCC is more about adherence to “orthodoxy” out of fear and hatred than it is about helping people to become who they truly are and to find peace and love in life.
http://www.gospelaccordingtohate.com
Comment by Richard on 14 December 2009:
I often joke that I don’t have to know anything about religion because I’m an Episcopalian and we don’t have to.
But, this whole brouhaha is befudling
Comment by slowsmile on 14 December 2009:
The concept or mis-described concept of any religion is certainly befuddling. My opinion has steadily moved on from relating any religion to God or Gods, to finally agreeing that both modern and primitive religions have nothing remotely to do with God and everything to do with self-perpetuation and the political and social power that is derived from numbers of believers. Is it also not the case that all religions — of whatever breed — tirelessly and unceasingly compete to drive countries, societies and races apart?
After all, why is it that we must have religion to understand good morals or God?
Religion — any religion when you look at it — only ever serves to seperate people and soceties throughout the world. This insidious tendency has been perfectly exampled throughout history when one looks at the reason and causes of most of the wars down through the ages. And nothing has changed really, it still goes on today.
My simple view is that people seem to find a terrible and disquieting comfort in their religions but not in God himself. Something has been greatly missed here. So if anyone, as an individual, wants comfort and luck from religion then why not buy a rabbit’s foot instead? Same thing, same outcome but a rabbit’s foot will also cost you less.
Comment by Richard on 16 December 2009:
Slowsmile:
I must disagree with your religion “serves to separate” people. To the contrary Christianity and Islam have for better or worse been the greatest unification movements in the 10,000 years. Before them much of humankind were disparate tribes or small states without the size or resource to advance.
Conversely denominations have not always unified.
At least for the last 1,000 years religion has unified. Whether that will be true from now on is in doubt.
Many years ago in a collegiate debate it was successfully argued that humankind has been better for religion than it otherwise would or could have been. I continue to agree with that argument while often dismayed by thoise that would misuse the faithful for their own nifarious purposes.
Comment by slowsmile on 16 December 2009:
Richard…Perhaps you are correct in what you describe as the importance of religion in raising us from our past heathen state to our civilized state. But certain contradictions occur when you look at the Popes from the past and how they behaved during, say, the debauched Medici period, or the fact that Henry Vlll devolved from Catholicism to create the Church of England merely so that he could divorce and chop the heads off his inconvenient wives. Although this could well be described as immoral behaviour, I would paint this more as political manouevers. So, therefore, one could perhaps fairly safely argue that the C of E religion was not born of faith or Godly differences at all but was indeed more derived from the social politics and the necessities of a single King from that period. A good religious foundation?
I live in the Philippines now, and a few years ago the last Pope visited and blessed his Filipino flock in Manila. Hundreds and thousands of poor peasant adorers were present. Then he preached his sermon or message which was simply to have many more children. Because, the Pope earnestly intoned and assured, God likes large families. So this message went out to a flock that are all currently banned from using condoms and whose average individual earnings (if they are even lucky enough to have a job) are about $3 a day. I would judge that this kind of social or political message from a religious leader is exactly what the uneducated struggling Filipinos do not need.
And as for the Pope recently trying to coax Anglicans into Catholicism — this just illustrates my point — assuring that everyone lower than a bishop may remained married and join his church. So that means that this new Pope’s rule will not only assure that the numbers of Catholics may increase significantly, but also discreetly assures that no married Anglican padre from the C of E will every progress within their new-found faith.
All of this purely political, manipulative and insidious, having little really to do with religion or God at all.
Comment by Richard Cochrane on 16 December 2009:
Slowsmile:
A man may diminish his denomination, be a heretic or simply a horse’e ass. But, he can not destroy the good faith and the teaching brings.
My grandmother, from Northern Ireland, would agree with you about Papal practice and intent, and believe me she would do so with indelible clarity.
Despite that there has been more good than evil.
By the way what on earth is going on in the Southern PI?