After the Vatican invited Anglicans to return to the Catholic fold, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, went to Rome. He met the Pope and his cardinals, and the holy father will reciprocate next year in Canterbury.<\/p>\n
The invitation allows Anglicans to retain their distinctive customs, but the unavoidable conclusion is that millions of Anglicans would, for the first time in 470 years, kneel and accept the Pope as boss. I expect the meetings in Rome have begun an inexorable reabsorption of the Anglican Church into the world’s oldest institution. The church created by the charismatic King Henry VIII has found its current archbishop, an undertaker, appearing to see his mission as an orderly burial.<\/p>\n
Our children will barely distinguish an Anglican from a Catholic church and their children will be baptised in merged congregations. In the absence of a unifying vision, and dynamic global leadership, we must assume the Anglican idea is fast reaching its use-by date.<\/p>\n
It has, however, been a great innings, and the Pope’s move is less hostile takeover than reverse takeover. Over the past half millennium, Anglicanism has transformed Catholicism and the world. The Anglican Church was never a truly Protestant church, but a halfway house between Luther and Rome. It leaned Protestant more by accident than design – to keep the peace, it became the original broad church.<\/p>\n