Rome & Canterbury - A Tale Of Two Cities

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(Catholic Register) - The primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), feeling “overwhelming joy,” says he hopes to deliver a “yes” before Easter to the Holy See’s offer of Personal Ordinariates that would welcome his members into the Catholic Church.

Archbishop John Hepworth called the apostolic constitution published Nov. 9 by Pope Benedict XVI “generous at every turn” in its description of the Anglican heritage, dogmatic provisions and pastoral language. It followed the Pope’s dramatic October offer to welcome Anglicans into the Catholic Church without abandoning their prayer books or liturgical traditions.

The TAC comprises several Anglican Churches that parted with the 77-million strong Anglican Church’s Canterbury Communion over the ordination of women — some as early as 1977. The TAC, with about 400,000 members, is among the largest group of Anglicans likely to embrace the Personal Ordinariates offered by the Holy See.

Hepworth said Rome went even farther than the TAC had asked in its formal request submitted to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in October 2007. He now expects a positive response from TAC member churches....

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(Times Online) - The Archbishop of Canterbury yesterday made his most outspoken challenge to the Roman Catholic Church since the Pope invited disaffected Anglicans to switch to Rome.

Speaking before he meets Benedict XVI tomorrow, Dr Rowan Williams told a conference in Rome that the Catholic Church’s refusal to ordain women was a bar to Christian unity.

“For many Anglicans, not ordaining women has a possible unwelcome implication about the difference between baptised men and baptised women,” he said.

The Anglican provinces that ordain women had retained rather than lost their Catholic holiness and sacramentalism, he said....

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THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: Therein lies the rub, and that's why Rome will never take Canterbury seriously again. For that matter, neither will Canterbury be taken seriously by Constantinople nor Moscow. In fact, the entire Catholic and Orthodox world (consisting of 2/3 of all the world's Christians) will never regard the Anglican Communion as anything more than a PROTESTANT organization, on par with the Lutherans, Methodists and Baptists. A mitre and crosier doesn't make one a bishop, no more than using incense and liturgy makes you "catholic." Authentic Catholicism has to do with authority and succession. To be a bishop you must have authentic apostolic succession, and in order to have that, the Church must have the authority to ordain you.

Pope John Paul II made it clear, that Jesus Christ has not given the Church the authority to ordain women. There was nothing he could do about it. The matter was closed. In his 1994 Apostolic Letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, the Holy Father reminded both Anglicans and the Bishops of the Catholic Church. "I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful." In other words, not even the pope can make it okay to ordain women. The only way women can be ordained is to take it to a higher authority than the pope. I suppose that would be Jesus Christ himself. So if Jesus Christ were to return to earth, and ordain a bunch or women, then the Church would have the authority to do the same. Barring this miraculous event however, things are destined to stay exactly the way they are, and any Christian organization that takes it upon itself to ordain women, has stepped completely outside the pale of Catholic Orthodoxy. The ordination is invalid, and the organization permitting it is committing heresy.

It was the ordination of women that prompted traditional Anglicans and Episcopalians to split from the Anglican Communion back in 1977, eventually resulting in the formation of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC). Simultaneously, another group of traditionalist Anglicans in the United States sought reunion with Rome, and that was granted by Pope John Paul II back in 1980 with the Anglican Use Pastoral Provision. In 2007 the bishops of the TAC also petitioned to enter the Catholic Church as well, and in November of 2009 that request was granted (and then some) by Pope Benedict XVI's Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.

The moral to this story is that liberalism kills churches. It destroys them from the inside-out. While liberalism infects all churches, (including the Catholic Church), it seems that Protestant communities have no immunity to it. Their institutions appear completely incapable of defending themselves against it. Their only effective defense appears to be amputation. In other words, Protestant traditionalists must cut themselves off from the infected body and attempt to survive on their own.

In some cases, Protestant churches actually embrace liberalism. Such was the case with the Anglican Communion, and Rome has made it very clear that ecumenical reunification will be impossible with an ecclesiastical body containing female clergy. Hence the reason for Rome's generous provision to all Anglicans willing to leave the Communion and pursue membership in the Roman Catholic Church. Now there are two ways to "be Anglican." You can either be Anglican within the PROTESTANT Anglican Communion that bucks 2,000 years of Church history, tradition and authority. Or you can be Anglican within the Catholic Church, among true Anglo-Catholics who have retained their Anglican traditions and patrimony to the fullest, yet are fully incorporated into the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.