Since the Vatican launched its bold bid Tuesday to make it easier for Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church, the question on everyone’s mind has been: How many will convert?
Will the much ballyhooed Anglican divide over the Church’s moves to accept openly gay and female clerics now cause hundreds of thousands of conservative Anglicans ”“ mostly in Africa and parts of the US ”“ to flock to Catholicism?
Early indications from African bishops are that most Anglicans, despite their fierce opposition to homosexuality, will be saying “thanks but no thanks” to Rome’s new offer, largely because of the autonomy that they enjoy within the Anglican church.
“I don’t think that priests in Uganda are going to leave and join the Roman Catholic church,” says Bishop Stanley Ntagali, head of an Anglican diocese in the east African country of Uganda. “Uganda is [already] a separate region from the Church in Canterbury. They are able to do things their way, and we have to do things our way.”
This papal offer isn’t even directed at the African Anglican Communion bishops. It’s a response to the TAC and some others who already accept all Catholic Church doctrine. This speculation is nonsense, I think.
“It’s a response to the TAC and some others who already accept all Catholic Church doctrine.”
Not least among them FIF/UK. In fact, I’d say that it’s as much and rather more a response to the privately-expressed acceptance by the great majority of FIF/UK’s bishops of “all that the Catholic Church teaches to be revealed by God.” There are implications in this for Anglo-Catholic dioceses and church provinces (Papua/New Guinea & Central Africa, to mention but two) throughout the world.
I have read once or twice that Abp. Akinola expressed interest in joining a rapprochement with Rome. I don’t know how widespread the sentiment was in Nigeria, but that would be a game-changer. My experience in Africa was that the Reformation doctrinal battles tended to pale when confronted with animism and Islam.
#2 Dr. William Tighe says:
But here’s what I wonder: if one comes to accept “all that the Catholic Church teaches to be revealed by God” — and that includes, as the joint Canterbury/Westminster statement put it, “the Petrine ministry as willed by Christ for his Church” — then what excuse does one have for not, immediately and with all possible expedition, converting to the Catholic Church?
Have the FIF/UK bishops been saying to themselves for some time now, “Yes, I’m quite certain that God wishes all Christians to be under the authority of the Bishop of Rome… but, eh, I’d rather stay here in the C of E”? If they were saying that, how could they justify it? And if they weren’t, had they really accepted all that the Catholic Church teaches?
I would be interested to hear what the African Anglican hierarchy think of this. On the one hand, I think they are cut more from the Evangelical theological cloth. I don’t know how much they would be a theological fit with Roman doctrine and dogma.
However, by the same token, they have a much more rigid hierarchical polity that would seem to fit the Catholic model. And, having been to Africa, I can attest to the fact that denominational lines in Africa are much, much more fluid and blurry than they are in the West.
I will be interested to watch the reaction.
Yes, Dr. Tighe, I can see the places you cite, but people have been speculating about Uganda and Nigeria, and the likelihood of those Anglican Communion bishops accepting this offer seems very low; they are evangelical Anglican in their theology, although as people above point out their hierarchy is stronger than ECUSA used to be before the recent changes.
The Christian Science Monitor should be corrected in several key particulars. For instance, it refers to “2003, when the Church of England formally ordained the first openly gay Anglican bishop, Gene Robinson.” This gives a completely erroneous impression of what happened. And the CofE should be particularly concerned to correct it. But it serves +Rowan right for not proclaiming the Anglican mainstream values more forcefully and distancing the faithful from the Episcopal Church in America. Moreover, of course, he allows the Episcopal Church to propagate its false teaching while still under cover of seeming (in other countries) a legitimate representative of the Anglican doctrine. I notice that a number of the present news story about the Papal decision do illustrate confusion about the global Anglican position on sexuality.