Traditionalist Anglicans who remain in the Anglican Church rather than taking up Pope Benedict XVI’s offer of an Anglican ordinariate are wasting their time and spiritual energy clinging to a dangerous illusion, said the Vatican’s delegate for the Australian ordinariate.
Melbourne Auxiliary Bishop Peter Elliott, a former Anglican, urged Anglicans at a Feb. 26 festival in Perth to take up the pope’s offer of “peace.”
“I would caution people who still claim to be Anglo-Catholics and yet are holding back,” he told The Record, Catholic newspaper of the Archdiocese of Perth, Feb. 26. “I’d say ‘When are you going to face realities?’ because there’s no place for a classical Anglo-Catholic in the Anglican Communion anymore.”
The bishop shows just how insulated pro Romanist Catholic Anglicanism has become over the past fifty years. Catholic Anglicans yearn for unity and for unity with the great Roman and Orthodox traditions, without in any way feeling insecure about our own integrity and tradition.
Why am I really aggravated that the RC church is poaching? L
How can a Catholic Anglican NOT feel insecure about their “integrity and tradition” that has, to all practical effect, been proscribed in most of the dioceses of TEC? Will a seminary candidate who does not accept the ordination of women as legitimate be sponsored by a diocese? Will a similar candidate for rector be approved? Generally not. Add the usual list of liturgical, theological, and moral problems with the prevailing ethos in TEC, and one has an environment increasingly poisonous to Catholic belief and practice.
There is very little point in “yearning” if one is in a boat headed away from the longed-for destination.
What does it mean to be “insulated”? From what? If it means rejecting the theological innovations of the last fifty years, that implies refusing to make changes in the common heritage we share with Rome and Orthodoxy.
“there’s no place for a classical Anglo-Catholic in the Anglican Communion anymore.”
Even if true, it does not follow that Rome is the only option. There are the options of Continuing Anglicanism and Orthodoxy (in THAT order, I would say as an ex-Orthodox-turned-Continuing-Anglican). In fact, either one of those would be the better option for the Anglican Catholic.
Caedmon
It’s hard to imagine that any Anglo-Catholic who remains has any illusions about how hard it will be to remain so. By contrast the as yet unrealized nature of the ordinariate is surely a fertile field for the fantasies of those who might join it.
The tone of this bishop reminds me of recordings I’ve heard of Tokyo Rose.
Even as a Catholic I fine the tone of the Archbishop off-putting. One must never be badgered in matters of conscience. On the other hand, if poaching were so against Anglican ideals, there would be no attempts to plant Anglicanism in, say, Latin America.
So, yes, the Archbishop gets bad marks for tone. But, I dont think Anglicans can legitimately take offense at “poaching.”
Does anyone actually read posted texts anymore? There is no mention in the entire article of an ‘Archbishop’ saying anything at all. Archbishop Hickey, Catholic prelate of Perth, and Archbishop Hepworth of the TAC are each mentioned once, and neither is quoted saying anything.
As is frequently the case with the internet there is much context missing here. It may make some difference to know that Bishop Elliott is himself the son of an Anglo-Catholic parish rector, and converted to Catholicism from the lay Anglican state as a university student in the 1960s. It is likely he is simply hoping to help questioning people recognize today what he could discern 40 years ago; events since then have confirmed his accurate discernment. Beyond that, it is pertinent that he said the quoted words to faithful Anglicans who have already been spurned by the mainstream Anglican Communion in Australia.
And he is only stating the obvious to confirm that Benedict XVI is the Pope of Christian unity. Odd how everyone is so surprised when it actually starts happening.
TACit writes:
“And he is only stating the obvious to confirm that Benedict XVI is the Pope of Christian unity. Odd how everyone is so surprised when it actually starts happening. ”
When [i]what[/i] is actally starting to happen, TACit? So far, there has been only a relative trickle of Anglicans swimming the Tiber. Even among your own there in the TAC, some have gotten cold feet. Others are digging in their heels.
As Fr. Hart and others have continually said over at The Continuum blog and elsewhere, the movement of [i]some[/i] Anglicans to the Church of Rome is going to have only a negligible effect — if even that — on “Christian unity.” A kind of “unity”, I might add, that Anglicans don’t need.
I did in fact read the text of Bp. Elliott’s remark, and it did in fact come across as offputting, condescending, and reminiscent of Tokyo Rose, as others have said here.
I agree with Fr. J. The tone of the comments were unfortunate and rather triumphalist. But tone aside, I can’t disagree with the substance of his point.
+Elliott tells his listeners: “there’s no place for a classical Anglo-Catholic in the Anglican Communion anymore”. That indicates that he is not referring to the TAC or other Continuum churches – they are not in the Anglican Communion and show no sign of wanting to join even the Gafcon version of it.
So he must be talking to those within the Anglican Communion. I wonder who? I doubt that a bishop talking to a small gathering of 100 people in Western Australia would be addressing his remarks to Anglo Catholics in England. So who then?
Perhaps he means “classical anglo-catholics’ in the Anglican Church of Australia? There are some – there are two whole dioceses (The Murray and Ballarat), plus scattered parishes. Even here in calvinist Sydney we have at least three strongly Anglo-Catholic parishes that I can think of. Is +Elliott appealing to them to join the Ordinariate? I have never heard that they were interested, but perhaps he thinks they might be.
This isn’t poaching? Out fishing for converts by telling Anglicans they are fooling themselves. (But I am beginning to think
12. When Anglicans leave Latin America all together, they can complain about poaching.