Economist–Five Anglican bishops defect to Rome. Now they need followers

Since its split from Rome (in a messy row about King Henry VIII’s divorce in 1529) the Anglican church has evolved into a curious hybrid. It tries to be both Catholic and Reformed (Protestant). Its adherents include people who believe every word in the Bible is true, modernists who consider it a collection of inspiring fables, and traditionalists who cherish archaic English.

One exotic bit of that ecclesiological cocktail is shrinking. Five bishops from the Anglo-Catholic strain in the Church of England (dubbed “smells and bells” for its love of incense and ritual) are leaving to join the Ordinariate. This is a new outfit set up by Pope Benedict XVI for Anglicans unable to accept their church’s decision this year to let women be bishops.

The move follows a crisis in the early 1990s over ordaining women priests, which Anglo-Catholics saw as dooming their hope for eventual unity with the (male-only) Roman Catholic priesthood. Around 500 Anglican priests switched to Rome then. Others decided to stay in the Church of England, in a parallel set-up led by “flying bishops”. This lot, concentrated in 363 of the church’s 13,000 parishes, bemoan its unilateral approach to theology and intolerance of minorities.

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