In a momentous move on Tuesday, the Vatican said it would help Anglicans uncomfortable with female priests and openly gay bishops join a new Anglican rite within the Catholic Church.
The invitation also extends to married Anglican clergy. And so some have begun to wonder, even if the 82-year-old Benedict himself would never allow it, would more people in the Roman Catholic Church begin to entertain the possibility of married Catholic priests?
“If you get used to the idea of your priests being married, then that changes the perception of the Catholic priesthood necessarily,” said Austen Ivereigh, a Catholic commentator in London and a former adviser to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster.
“We face the prospect in the future of going to a Catholic church in London and it being normal to find a married Catholic priest celebrating at the altar, with his wife sitting in the third pew and his children running up and down the aisle,” he said.
Rome’s offer to Anglicans in regard to married priests is little different than that common in condominium units catering to old people — you can bring your existing pet with you and keep it until it dies … but no more pets later.
Coupled with Rome’s refusal to recognise Anglican holy orders it is clear their intention is basically to subsume Anglo-Catholics within a generation or two. That may not be a bad thing, for if relieved of its liberals (such as ECUSA) and pilfered of the more militant Anglo-Catholics by Rome, perhaps Anglicanism can get back to being an evangelical Reformation faith.
“would help Anglicans uncomfortable with female priests and openly gay bishops”
Rather than just for those who are “uncomfortable” with female priests and openly gay bishops, how about those – regardless of their “comfort” – simply don’t believe in such things as female priests and gay bishops?