Yet, many Anglicans will not be embracing the offer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Episcopal Church will be only mildly impacted,\u201d\u009d said Father Douglas Grandon, a former Anglican pastor who was ordained a Catholic priest in May 2008 and serves as associate pastor at Sacred Heart in Moline, Ill. \u201cMost of those clergy and bishops have already left who had any Catholic sense. In the U.S., the primary ones who will consider this would be the Anglo-Catholics.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
Some Episcopal pastors and parishes upset with the direction of the national Episcopal Church (it has elected two bishops who are openly homosexual and has given the nod to blessing same-sex unions) have placed themselves under the leadership of more conservative bishops in the U.S., Africa or the Americas. For example, approximately 20 Episcopal parishes in California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Texas and Canada have left the Episcopal Church to join the Southern Cone of the Americas, an Anglican province in South America.<\/p>\n
For those seeking to accept the Vatican\u2019s offer, examples do exist of communities that have already done something similar. Since the implementation of the Pastoral Provision in 1980 \u201d\u201d which allowed for the Catholic ordination of married Episcopal priests and authorized the establishment of personal Catholic parishes that retained certain Anglican liturgical elements \u201d\u201d several Anglican-use communities have been created in the United States.<\/p>\n