Thousands of Anglican Priests Ready To Join Catholic Church

(Times Online) - As many as 1,000 priests could quit the Church of England and thousands more may leave churches in America and Australia under bold proposals to welcome Anglicans to Rome.

Entire parishes and even dioceses could be tempted to defect after Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to offer a legal structure to Anglicans joining the Roman Catholic Church.

His decree, issued yesterday, is a serious blow to attempts by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, to save the Anglican Communion from further fragmentation and threatens to wreck decades of ecumenical dialogue...

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THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: Ecumenical dialog has been stalled for years. There is nothing to wreck. So long as the Anglican Communion continues to ordain women and homosexuals to the priesthood, there can be no meaningful ecumenical dialog with Rome.

Now let's get the chronology of events straight. Every honest Anglican will admit that the entire English Church was stolen from Rome immorally and illicitly by King Henry VIII. No Anglo-Catholic wanted that. They were taken against their will, and made due with the hand they were dealt. In the 1800s Anglicans began moving back to their Catholic roots via the Oxford Movement. Then about thirty to forty years ago, events transpired in the Anglican Communion which effectively alienated those most traditional Anglo-Catholics, causing many to break with Canterbury, forming their own "Continuum," and many more to demand exceptions (such as flying bishops) to the liberal trends unfolding in exchange for staying within the Communion. Around the turn of the millennium these trends became so profound as to cause great disturbance among even the moderates in the Communion, to the point where many national provinces expressed their disunity with Canterbury and the North American Anglican provinces. Finally, when events in North America reached such a breaking point as to consecrate an openly homosexual bishop, who left his wife and children to marry another man, all with the blessing of the Episcopal Church USA (or "The Episcopal Church"), it led those in the Continuum to pound on the gates of St. Peters, begging to be admitted into the Catholic Church, and clandestine meetings were initiated by unnamed Anglican bishops still within the Communion, meeting with Vatican officials, seeking a way to be let in as well; it became apparent to Rome that Christian charity demanded an accommodation for these spiritual refugees. So on October 20, 2009 such provision was finally made after much patience and anticipation.

Rome made every effort imaginable to work this out with Canterbury, waiting for decades in the hope the Anglican Communion would come to it's senses. All to no avail. The liberals within the Communion were hell bent on having their agenda fulfilled. They still are. Is it any wonder then why so many Anglican priests are now ready to swim the Tiber?