Without legal safeguards many traditional Anglo-Catholics claim that they will in conscience have no recourse but to convert to Rome, a decision recently made easier by Anglicanorum coetibus, which creates an “ordinary” within Roman Catholicism for Anglican converts. Whether this will amount to the great exodus some traditionalists have predicted remains to be seen, but even the loss of a few Forward in Faith congregations will have a potentially serious effect on the income of some dioceses in an already ailing church.
So far, however, Anglicans have again demonstrated an inability to proceed toward difficult decisions in a way that is constructive and charitable. With similarly divisive issues on the horizon, such as the approval of the Anglican Covenant and questions surrounding human sexuality, it seems likely that the church will remain polarized, inwardly focused, and combative.
The great irony of our age may be that the avowedly more tolerant Church of England of today is in practice less compromising than the supposedly less tolerant Church of England of yesterday. As in the Episcopal Church the divide between “liberals” and “conservatives” may therefore prove to be far more unbridgeable than the historical divide between evangelicals and Catholics.
Congratulations to Mark Clavier for this fine, balanced article, and to TLC for selecting him to write it and for running this even-handed assessment.
I thought he saved the best for last. I think that final sentence is highly pertinent and important. And I feel confident that indeed the gaping chasm and bitter animosity between the “liberal” and “conservative” sides in the CoE (as in the rest of the AC) makes the historic divide between the evangelical and catholic wings look small and less vitriolic. The low church vs. high church divide is manageable; a bridge can be built across that old chasm, as is evident in the ACNA. But the liberal vs. conservative divide, or more accurately, the chasm between the advocates of the so-called “inclusive gospel” vs. the defenders of the biblical, authentic gospel is such a vast chasm that it makes the Grand Canyou look small. And there is simply no way to build a bridge across it.
David Handy+