Pope Benedict’s sudden move is bound to have a negative impact on ecumenical dialogue between the two communions. It may attract some of the Catholic wing and perhaps some evangelicals, although they tend to prefer the option of Orthodoxy with its pattern of local bishops without the centralised control structure.
Anything that weakens the Church of England, at a time of real embattlement with radically secularist agendas now under way, must ultimately be a bad thing for the nation from a Christian perspective.
Bradshaw moans: “Anything that weakens the Church of England, at a time of real embattlement with radically secularist agendas now under way, must ultimately be a bad thing for the nation from a Christian perspective. ”
Two comments: Before Bradshaw blames Rome (after all, that is what a good Protestant does), he ought to first take a close look at the gentleman occupying the See of Canterbury. Archbishop Williams by his failure to exercise even the moral authority of his office (yes, I realize he believes he has no power to do anything because Anglican hierarchs have no power) has singlehandedly done more to harm the Anglican Communion than any batch of Anglican heretics. Secondly, weakening the Church of England may or may not be a bad thing from a national perspective, but it has certainly already demonstrated that it can do nothing (and has done nothing) to stem the dogmatic secularism of English society. If what the Pope has done stimulates spiritual revival in both Catholic and Anglican Communities, he may actually have done a world of good for “the nation”.
f real embattlement with radically secularist agendas now under way,
The Barbarians (secularists) are not at the gates, they are inside the gates. If the Anglican Communion can’t discipline itself – communion wide or within the national churches, there seems little hope of either converting them or getting them back outside. You don’t battle secularism by inviting it in, allowing it to flourish in your living room, offering it the easy chair.
Wow – the Pope’s decision is surely a symptom, not a cause, of the COE’s (and Western Anglican) inability to resist secularization.
CoE (and TEC and the ACoC) have been doing a bang-up job of wiping themselves out without any assistance at all from Rome/
Evidently, dithering has its repercussions. I’m not even sure that this doesn’t render proposed Anglican Covenant as tragically useless as Rome has already proposed an attractive alternative option for some of the orthodox (not sure about the evangelical perspective on this option). It also provides GAFCON, ACNA and FCA additional leverage now within the Communion. I don’t know how much of the AC that the Global South represents (50+ million or so) but the potential for all that to end up under the RCC is a very powerful incentive for the ABC to his act together.
#5, pelagious, the vast majority of the Global South Anglicans are “evangelicals,” having been converted by evangelical missionaries. These are mostly unlikely to become Roman Catholic; indeed, the Catholic Church is very active in many of the same areas.