Church of England clergy who resign and become Roman Catholic priests in the new Ordinariate group set up by the Pope could be subject to Anglican “heresy trials” for disobedience.
As the General Synod, the Church’s parliament, opens today in Westminster, legal advisers have warned in a note to members that clergy who defect to Rome must first “relinquish” their orders under the 1870 Clergy Disability Act.
The link doesn’t take you to the article. What would constitute heresy in a Church where virtually anything goes?
1, are you talking logic or getting even? As TEC has shown if its getting even any reason will do. It’s sort of like heresy on demand.
Hilarious. Actually very funny.
So my punishment for highlighting the heresy of the Church of England is to be tried for heresy by them!
Hilarious and perhaps the perfect definition of irony!!!
Bring it on. We have nothing left to lose.
#4 Where’s your blog gone RPP? Don’t tell me it was burned at the stake for heresy?
#1 the link takes you to the article, but the Times decided a while back to go behind a pay wall.
#4 – It will return but is taking a short pause amidst the mayhem.
I don’t understand. Why not relinquish orders in a church you believe to be heretical? Why not relinquish orders that are “absolutely null and utterly void?”
Isaac,
Apparently, the relinquishing of (Anglican) orders that Rome requires does not meet the technical definition of the act of 1870. It would be entertaining if such a thing went to trial. Perhaps Cardinal Levada will show up as a witness for the defense. If you are looking for an expert witness on heresy, he would be the guy. And it would make a great backdrop for the next ARCIC session, what with a Canadian woman bishop representing the Anglican side, Pentacost letters about not appointing ACoC members to ecumenical councils notwithstanding. Papal ambassador might be withdrawn from the Court of St. James. Archbishop of Canterbury will sponsor an Indaba on how those who have not altered the Faith as they received it are the heretics, while those who change on a daily basis are the orthodox. KJS and the standing committee will declare the seizures of all the monasteries and other Catholic property in the British Isles and North America……
Off hand I’d say those dogs better stay on the porch.
Still doesn’t answer my question, though. If you are explicitly becoming Roman Catholic why not completely relinquish orders in the manner the Act requires?
Isaac,
Given that it was passed originally in 1870, and amended many times since, with this paragraph struck and another added, and various and sundry wording changed here and there, and hasn’t been used for the purpose at hand in 100 years (where, after all, were all the heresy trials of priests who left with WO in the 1990s?), it will take an army of attorneys some amount of time just to figure out what the law currently says. I tried, but cannot find a current, as amended, copy of the law on the web.
Perhaps, given the numbers likely to be on their way to Rome, the CoE should put all the necessary paperwork on a convenient webpage, to see that those bound for the Ordinariate can get their paperwork in order, as I doubt very much that Her Majesty’s Government has any real desire to prosecute heresy cases against traditional clergy, as that sort of thing will make the post-modern persecution agenda of the revisionists in the CoE rather obvious.
It’s long overdue to quote Bishop Stephen Bayne, Anglican Executive. Recall when he was called upon to consider trying his pal Jim Pike for heresy? He famously said there can’t *be* heresy in the Anglican communion! No such thing. If it was true in the ancient times of 1967, it must be true now, right?
nwlayman- I have always heard the quote as “there is no such thing as heresy in the Episcopal Church.” Which is definitely not the same thing as the Anglican Communion (just ask any of the 78 million Anglicans from somewhere else). In 1967, the majority of Episcopalians were unaware of communion with Canterbury (not sure if this might not still be true)- it was almost actively denied that Christianity existed east of Long Island or west of San Francisco, although they might allow that Episcopal Church missionaries had gone to Hawaii and Alaska by 1967. When the Archbishop of York visited the Anglo Catholic parish of my youth, 1/2 the congregation assumed he was Roman, as they knew perfectly well there were no Piskie archbishops.
TJ, something like the Unitarian “Fatherhood of God, brotherhood of man and neighborhood of Boston”?
It seems to me that the use of the “Heresy” accusation has, historically, been applied to those who have overstepped their political bounds rather than to those who, like Bishop Spong, have actually preached heretical blasphemy but considering recent actions of the revisionists and their claim to be a hierarchal church I would not be surprised to see them revive a perverse new inquisition.
I never knew that ‘heresy’ is considered a disability. Does that mean that clergy who have joined the Ordinariate can claim disability benefits from the CofE?
Let’s see…..with reference to the earlier post about multiculturalism failing in the UK, the figure who sat calmly in Westminster Hall last September and reminded the assembled dignitaries of the foundational values of their Judeo-Christian heritage was:
(a) +++Rowan Williams
(b) ++Michael Nazir-Ali
(c) Pope Benedict XVI
(d) Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
(e) Prince Charles, future Defender of (the) Faith
And now that the Prime Minster has taken up the theme with his ‘core values’, and the ABC has been to Belgium (of all places!) to remind fellow boffins, however backhandedly, of Europe’s Christian foundations, the CofE is considering prosecuting adherents of the correct answer to the above quiz question – for [i]heresy??[/i]
That’s so cognitively dissonant, perhaps only R. Gledhill could have come up with it……
Has the PBess lent the services of Mr. Booth Beers to the archbishop?
Just noticed on Anglican Mainstream:
“…..At a meeting of the General Synod in London, [b]Dr John Sentamu[/b] warned that the “counter-cultural vision” of the church mission did not promise a “life of ease, but of criticism, even persecution”.
He told the assembled clergy and laity that people lived in “fractious and uncertain times” in which the national church was “constantly questioned and attacked”.
[b]His words echoed those of Pope Benedict XVI[/b] who, during his historic visit to the UK last September, told Catholics that fidelity to the gospel involved being “dismissed out of hand, ridiculed and parodied”. ”
Obviously, another heretic!