ANY HOPE of the Catholic Church recognising Anglican religious orders have been dashed by the consecration of women bishops, the head of the Vatican’s office for relations with other Christians told Anglican bishops attending the 10-yearly Lambeth Conference.
Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said he wanted to be “clear about the new situation in our ecumenical relations”, and said: “The ordination of women to the episcopate effectively and definitively blocks a possible recognition of Anglican orders by the Catholic Church.” The Anglican bishops were unsurprised by the cardinal’s words and acknowledged in their final document that other Churches were “bewildered by apparent Anglican inconsistency”. Disappointed by the fruits of formal dialogue with Rome, the bishops suggested in their document of reflections from the conference that “the future of ecumenism should be from the bottom up, not the top down. However, whatever we do at local level must accord with dialogue at the top.”
With all due respect to His Eminence he is a bit behind the times. I think this issue was addressed by the Romans in the middle of the century preceding the last one.
ICXC NIKA
[url=http://ad-orientem.blogspot.com/]John[/url]
From the way I read the article, it appears that the Romans had been considering some way to overturn the “‘Apostolicae Curae’, which declared Anglican orders ‘absolutely null and utterly void.'”
Of course, for some of us Rome has nothing to do with Canterbury, so I’ve always seen Apostolicae Curae as an example of the Bishop of Rome’s meddling around in things that are really none of his business.
However, I also recognize that Christianity is nowhere more divided than at the Lord’s Table – and I certainly believe that Christians should be looking for ways to come closer.
Of course, I’m also “bewildered by apparent Anglican inconsistency.”
Now, the Roman Catholics are expressing dismay and surprise over lady bishops? I wonder what they thought one could do with a lady priest, once you made one, that you couldn’t do with a male one? How can an organization with Pontifical Institutes, Universities, Colleges, High Schools, Elementary Schools to educate their people throughout the world be so ignorant of the last 30 or so years? Did it actually some as a shock that after the US has been ordaining anything and everything, Britain has decided to? Maybe the Anglo-Catholic remnant has had more in common with Rome than I thought. Both groups have thought it just wouldn’t happen here..Or here…Or here…Surely not here…Oh!
“On the last day of the conference the cardinal preached on what the Catholic Church could learn from the Lambeth Conference and the way the Anglicans debate, listen to each other and produce decisions that come from within and are not imposed from above.”
Careful now, without a Curia and Peter-incarnate you would have to deal with chaos as we now do. Not that that is a bad thing mind you, but it would happen. And though it may seem a nice sentiment it seems a million miles from the desire of Rome right now. Last time you did that sort of thing, Vatican II turned you into reasonable batch of believers! 🙂
Oh well –no big loss for me…. see Article XXII of the 39 Articles!
BINGO, stevejax!
What it means is that if the CoE goes with women bishops, there is no possibility that the other constituents will back off; it is not possible to treat it as a reversible local error. It is part of the basic package.
Adhunt, enjoy your chaos, and may in comfort you in days to come of plummeting attendance and further demands for theological and sexual latitude.
I think I remember, back when ++KJS was elected as Presiding Bishop, someone asked an American Archbishop if this would pose a problem for ecumenical relations with the Catholic church. His reply was something along the lines of, “No more so than having women bishops in the first place, and that ship sailed years ago.”
In the article here, Cardinal Kasper is quoted as saying, “The Catholic Church must now take account of the reality that the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate is … increasingly the stance of the Communion.” I am bemused by the implication that it wasn’t really “the stance of the Communion” until the C of E did it; I guess what we get up to out here in the colonies doesn’t count as much 🙂
Stance? What stance?
Ed,
I was trying to keep it lighthearted, that’s what smiley faces are for. As I recall attendance is down dramatically in the US for Roman Catholics yes?
[blockquote]
As I recall attendance is down dramatically in the US for Roman Catholics yes?
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Err… no. See for example:
http://cara.georgetown.edu/bulletin/index.htm
There is no decline in the last few years.
Misinformation… it’s not just for TEC’s bishops!
“…the Catholic share of the U.S. adult population has held fairly steady in recent decades, at around 25%. What this apparent stability obscures, however, is the large number of people who have left the Catholic Church. Approximately one-third of the survey respondents who say they were raised Catholic no longer describe themselves as Catholic. This means that roughly 10% of all Americans are former Catholics. These losses, however, have been partly offset by the number of people who have changed their affiliation to Catholicism (2.6% of the adult population) but more importantly by the disproportionately high number of Catholics among immigrants to the U.S.†(p. 7).”
Source: Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, “U.S. Religious Landscape Surveyâ€
So if not for the massive immigrations of Catholic believers the rate would be significantly different. All the news stations, including EWTN consistently commented that one of the goals of the Pope’s recent visit was to address declining attendance. Besides statistics are rather unreliable with Catholics as they count as members all the baptized. The percentage of Roman Catholics that actually attend mass often is less than 1 in 3 ‘catholics.’
Again, try to not be nasty
#9, “Stance? What stance?”
That would be the wide stance if I have my journalist reported usages correctly.
Just consider it inclusive of all who believe it and incidentally exclusive of all who don’t! It’s the Expiscopal Way to Truthiness and EgoLightenment.
12 – Attendance can and should be higher, but that that has been so for many years. Attendance is not *currently* declining, let alone “down dramatically”.
Again, try to be accurate.
dromboo,
I think that what I just posted at #12 speaks for itself, I do believe I am being accurate. Besides how did all this commenting come to be? We were talking about WO and (re?)union the Roman church. It was only in defense of my being called inaccurate that all this came to be. I posted the statistics, read the study, and would like to keep the comments on task, not respond to defensive Roman Catholics.