The pope and the Anglicans

DURHAM -- In a stunning move that took both Roman Catholics and Anglicans by surprise, Pope Benedict XVI issued an Apostolic Constitution that made it much easier for Anglican traditionalists, particularly of an Anglo-Catholic disposition, to convert to the Roman Catholic Church.

Some Anglicans, including some members of the American Episcopal Church, have been unhappy with the decision of various Anglican churches to ordain women and gays and to bless same-sex unions. Many of the unhappy Anglicans have already left their home churches to join dissident Anglican groups, while others have stayed uneasily inside, hoping for some protected space for their dissent.

The offer of hospitality from the Vatican may be an answer to the prayers of some, though by no means all, Anglicans.

Evangelicals within the 77-million member Anglican Communion agree with Pope Benedict about the consecration of gay bishops and the blessing of same-sex unions, but about little else. In issues of faith, evangelicals are firmly Protestant.

Some Anglo-Catholics may not be interested in the pope's proposal for a very different reason. They think they are already living as catholic Christians and do not readily concede the point that they need to convert to Rome to become at long last genuinely Catholic with a capital C.

Such Anglo-Catholics may regard the pope as the legitimate patriarch of Western Christendom and even pray for him on a regular basis, but without subscribing to the Roman Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility or the notion that there is no true catholicity without obedience to the pope. Like Eastern Orthodox Christians, these Anglicans regard themselves as Catholic but not Roman.

For the Anglicans who are interested in the possibility of conversion, Pope Benedict's proposal is clear in its outline but not yet in its details. In general, the Vatican intends to treat Anglicans who convert to Roman Catholicism very much as it treats the Maronites or other Eastern Catholic churches in communion with Rome. Like the Maronites, Anglicans may have married priests and celibate bishops, which means that former Anglican bishops, who are usually married, are candidates, not for a Roman Catholic bishopric, but for re-ordination as simple Catholic priests.

Anglicans will be allowed to keep their liturgy and their form of life together. They will be organized in nongeographical groupings like military chaplaincies and to some extent will be self-regulating under the supervision and ultimate oversight of a Roman Catholic bishop.

The advantage of conversion for Anglicans over joining a dissident Anglican group is that their place in apostolic succession cannot be challenged as in any sense irregular (a point of some importance to all Anglicans). Moreover, Anglicans-turned-Roman-Catholic will belong to a church in which orthodoxy and traditional Christianity are supported and enforced and in which traditionalists will not be regarded by their new hierarchy as hopelessly out of step with the official, more liberal, consensus of their church.

At the same time, converts will be dispensed from having to adopt the flat and colorless English of the contemporary Roman Catholic mass or the ubiquitous ditties, choruses and guitars once blamed on the St. Louis Jesuits. Even some cradle Catholics may be attracted to the converted Anglican parishes as primary places of Roman Catholic worship

Other things are less clear. What about the status of divorced Anglicans, even former Roman Catholics, who receive communion in their Anglican parish, but might not in an Anglican parish turned Roman Catholic? What about birth control among a population accustomed to a low birth rate? Is celibacy suspended in the Anglican parishes permanently or only for the first generation of married priests?

Are prayers for the dead, intercession of the saints, purgatory, bodily assumption of Mary, papal infallibility -- in short, all the issues that have often divided Roman Catholics and Anglicans -- resolved in a Roman Catholic direction or simply put on a "don't ask, don't tell" list? Cradle Catholics are rarely asked embarrassing questions about their orthodoxy, but converts often are.

In other words, things are not as simple as they may at first seem. The fact that Roman Catholic and Anglican priests wear similar liturgical garments; have a threefold order of deacons, priests and bishops, and can tell a thurible from a paten may nevertheless cloak wide diversities of theological opinion among them, issues that can be postponed over the short term but not avoided -- at least not if a genuine unity of faith is the ultimate goal.

Latest Comment View all comments

Images