Bishop Hind said he would be “happy” to be reordained as a Catholic priest and said that divisions in Anglicanism could make it impossible to stay in the church.
He is the most senior Anglican to admit that he is prepared to accept the offer from the Pope, who shocked the Church of England last week when he paved the way for clergy to convert to Catholicism in large numbers.
The Daily Telegraph misquoted/misunderstood me today. (For I am Fr. Tomlinson!) I said at a meeting in London, that Anglicanism is sinking and therefore, when the Pope sends lifeboats, it would be suicidal not take his offer seriously…..they translated that, I am leaving for Rome! hmmm not quite the same point! Why leave when I might get validated where I am?
In any case FAR too early for decisions…we dont have either the details or synods response!
[blockquote] “The Anglican experiment is over,” [/blockquote]so claims Bishop John Broadhurst, the chairman of FiF. He said it has been shown to be powerless to cope with the crises over gays and women bishops. [blockquote] “The ship of Anglicanism seems to be going down,” [/blockquote] says vicar Ed Tomlinson, vicar of St Barnabas, who indicated he would be following the lead of Bishop Hind.
Archbishop Williams, rather than standing up for the faith, has doggedly followed a path to hang on to all the disparate elements in the Anglican Communion, and has thereby opened the door for its virtual destruction. This man is simply not up to the task.
Who can move to boot him out? Who can gently (with a club behind his/her back) suggest it is time for him to resign? The Queen? Who?
Thank you, Fr. Tomlinson. I know the propensity of the press to get it wrong. This article is full of juicy sound bites, and I highlighted one attributed to you above. The other juicy sound bite attributed to you was [blockquote] “I shall be seeking to move to Rome. To stay in the Church of England would be suicide.” [/blockquote] Can you correct these quotations, if they are indeed wrong?
read my post carefully the quote is there!
Re: #3,
Listen to Bishops Hind’s talk, among the others, here:
http://www.forwardinfaith.com/news/na09-10.html
In fact, listen to them all.
Bishop Hind has denied the claims made in the Telegraph, see
http://www.diochi.org.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=news.story&newsid=71&view=current
Thanks for the recommendation to listen to Bishop Hind’s speech, Dr Tighe; it was admirable in many ways and further strengthens this papist’s conviction that the Catholic Church will be much enriched by full communion with Hind and his like.
Two questions arise in my mind. First, I don’t quite get the doubt Hind expresses about the [i]ecclesial[/i] standing of the new ordinariates. It seems to me that the ordinariates don’t raise ecclesiological issues, because what is of ecclesiological substance here is that the members of these ordinariates (whatever form they take) will be in full communion. While undoubtedly organization under a bishop/ordinary is a substantial issue, my understanding of Catholic thought is that this is seen as less fundamental than the principle of communion. (And maybe today, with global communications and greater social mobility, the traditional importance of the territorial diocese is best understood as an accommodation to a reality that is less constitutive of our existence than formerly.)
I understand Hind’s concern that a future Anglican ordinariate not be a kind of museum or ghetto within the Church. This really is an issue, but not I think an ecclesiological one. Maintaining a “distinctive” use or sub-culture is to risk ghetto formation, there’s no denying it. What I would prefer to think, and it seems to be part of the thinking of Benedict and the CDF, is that there could be a sort of cross-fertilization, a mutual enrichment in which [i]occidentale lumen[/i] will burn all the brighter. Of course it is understandable, particularly when considering the huge discrepancy in numbers, for Anglicans to fear that they will vanish without trace in the vast Catholic sea. I trust that mutual charity will alleviate that fear and show it to be unfounded.