“There are delicate, difficult issues between our two churches at the moment,” Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, head of the 5.2 million Catholics in England and Wales, told Reuters.
But, Nichols said the offer came after groups of Anglicans repeatedly asked for a response to their request for special provision to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church.
“Sometimes people want to say ‘oh, this is the initiative of the pope who is going fishing for Anglicans’. That is not true. He is responding to requests that he has received, and those requests we have to handle sensitively on both sides.”
He doesn’t have to fish for them. They are jumping in the boat on their own.
True. AFAIK FiF [i]et al.[/i] asked to come in.
As for traffic the other way at least in the US it’s almost always because of irregular marriages (divorce and remarriage, like the popular notion of Anglicanism’s founding). A teeny number switch because of issues like WO.
With the Church of England officially on record via vote at the last Synod (including both Archbishops) as rejecting the two proposals put forward by Anglo Catholics that might have permitted them to stay, it seems ludicrous that anyone is suggesting that the Pope is “fishing.” But that is the Anglican way, it seems, just as in the US. Outlaw Anglo Catholic belief and practice, and then express shock and outrage that Anglo Catholics actually leave, whether for Rome, Orthodoxy, ACNA or a Continuing Church. If Sydney goes through with lay presidency, they will no doubt be shocked and outraged when the last Anglo Catholics fold their tents there as well.
No doubt the offer from Rome provides the CoE bishops with a salve for their consciences. But if they examine themselves closely, they will realize that it is the CoE itself that is the author of the Pope’s offer- no one would have approached Rome in the first place had the CoE not adopted the US revisionist attitude, and forced its revisions on the faithful against their will, and contrary to the vows of the bishops themselves to guard the faith as they received it.
Bravo, tj!!
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Nope, the Vatican has no interest in fishing for Anglicans.
Which is why they are making a huge fuss of Newman, with his interesting friendship, and the highest profile Anglican Convert; why they are spending an enormous amount of money on a high profile open air ceremonial stand and huge public arena for his beatification; why they made an enormous effort to set up an ordinariate, and why they put the Archbishop into the most embarrassing position of his entire archepiscopacy with showing him off as a hostage [that is in spite of his best efforts to outdo this with his own efforts].
No they are not in the least bit interested, no sirree, not at all, at all, at all, so it is, it is, it is, begorrah, kiss the blarney and all that.
I don’t think one should underestimate, the impact the reaction of the Church of England had to the Ordinariate proposal in hardening opinion within it. In relation to conservative interests within the Church of England I would say it was extremely negative, TJ.
But what would have happened without the Ordinariate announcement, we will now never really know.
Mind you it has to be said that the humiliation of the Church of England is solely down to the House of Bishops, the committee led by the wretched Bishop of Manchester, and the leadership [if I can say that] of the Archbishop of Canterbury and his liberal catholic [they call themselves ‘affirming’] chums who he is stuffing shamelessly into every vacant see he can.