On Wednesday, leaders of the U.S. branch of the Traditional Anglican Communion formally requested to enter into communion with the Catholic Church.
In a statement released yesterday from a meeting of the House of Bishops in Orlando, the Church announced, “We, the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America of the Traditional Anglican Communion have met in Orlando, Florida, together with our Primate and the Reverend Christopher Phillips of the ‘Anglican Use’ Parish of Our Lady of the Atonement (San Antonio, Texas) and others.”
How far behind will be organizations like the APA and other FiF groups be in following suit?
When you look at the tremendous growth in the ‘Anglican Use’ parishes in San Antonio and Houston you how many Episcopalians are truly fed up with the shenanigans of TEC.
#1, I could easily be wrong, but I don’t think you’ll see lots of APA or American FiF folks follow suit. Even some of the ACA parishes won’t go.
Our diocese is a member of FiFNA, but I doubt there’ll be very many takers here.
Good news.
Quibble: they’re not a ‘traditional Anglican’ community (Cranmer, surplice and the north end) but Anglo-Papalists. And they’re not Anglican. Anglican bishops are invited to Lambeth: that’s the Episcopalians, whom the Pope’s offer won’t affect (everybody of that view has already left).
Most American Anglo-Catholics don’t want to be Roman Catholics; that’s why the Continuum exists. FIFNA likely will stay with ACNA (Episcopalianism Pre-1989, or Slightly Less Liberal Protestantism).
Who else thinks it’s funny that the would-be converts call themselves the Traditional Anglican Communion and a group wanting nothing to do with Rome call themselves the Anglican Catholic Church? Sounds like a name swap is in order.
Young Fogey,
You have made some very good points. It is indeed a strange irony of the names of these groups. I happen to be a North-Ender, although that is perhaps lost on most of the Convergence-Anglicans like those in AC/NA and TEC. An excellent book which I highly recommend to anyone wanting to understand what genuinely Traditional Anglicanism is, would be The Protestantism of the Prayer Book by Dyson Hague. My former APA parish went from being a 1928 Prayer Book parish to an ACA Missal Parish and now they are on their way to being second-class Roman Catholics.
Katherine, the ACA website claims that all of its parishes and Cathedrals will go over to Rome.
Ut unum sint!
RMBruton, I am aware of one ACA parish that won’t go. We’ll just have to see. Perhaps the shifting from Catholic-wannabe to actual Catholic or actual continuing Anglican will be a positive process. Clarity is good.
[blockquote]…now they are on their way to being second-class Roman Catholics.[/blockquote]
That was true under John Paul the Overrated, with his charismatics and giving red hats to liberals like Roger Mahony, but I hope this Pope has their back. All signs are that he does!