Sooner or later, they will have to learn to play nice

Former Anglicans who migrate to the Roman Catholic Church will have to learn how to build bridges with other Roman Catholics, lest they ghettoize themselves.

Austin Ivereigh wondersif these former Anglo-Catholics, who got their ordinariate in motion without the knowledge of the Roman Catholic or Anglican Bishops in England and Wales, will really become an integral part of their new church or will they use their perch to continue to meddle in the Church of England and the other Anglican Churches they have left.

Earlier this week... the Guardian was leaked a sensitive email from the Anglican Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Andrew Burnham, who was one of those who originally approached Pope Benedict seeking an ordinariate, to Peter Elliott, the Australian Catholic bishop in charge of negotiating the ordinariates down under.

What it reveals is the way in which Bishop Burnham has been negotiating closely and directly with a CDF official, Mgr Patrick Burke, under the radar of the bishops' conference of England and Wales.

Anglicanorum coetibus was a CDF creation on Pope Benedict's orders. It bypassed the Archbishop of Canterbury, the English & Welsh bishops, the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity and virtually everyone else. It was the result of secret talks between CDF officials and Anglican bishops looking to defect. So it's hardly surprising that Bishop Burnham has closer contacts with CDF officials in Rome than with the English and Welsh hierarchy.

But the decision to create an ordinariate -- and its terms -- will be taken by the bishops of England and Wales, not Rome, as Mgr Andrew Faley of the bishops' conference told Andrew Brown at the Guardian: "the authority of the Church in working this out rests with the bishops' conferences and not with the CDF".

Sooner or later, therefore, the Anglican traditionalists in England and Wales are going to have to build bridges with the pastors of the English Catholic flock. The longer they leave that task -- out of suspicion of a post-Vatican II hierarchy, or a desire to play politics within the Church of England -- the harder it will be.

Posted by Andrew Gerns on February 19, 2010 11:50 AM | |
Comments (5)

I wish the Anglicans who join the RC ordinariates well, but they should remember that they will be Roman Catholic converts. They can call themselves whatever they like unless the pope tells them to cease and desist, but they will still be Roman Catholics.

And they surely should begin to establish relationships with the local Roman Catholics amongst whom they will live sooner rather than later.

June Butler

Posted by GrandmèreMimi [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 19, 2010 12:44 PM

Mimi says it well. But I am not optimistic that those who join the RC ordinariates will give up meddling in Anglican matters. My suspicion is that they really just want to be (as Eric Mascall put it 50 years ago) "Ultra-Catholics" but substituting the Pope-in-far-off-Rome for this (to them) untrustworthy Archbishop-in-nearby-Canterbury. They will discover that Benedict will not be having any of that. Those who have sincerely believed their conscience calls them into communion with Rome have already gone. And gone to Rome, not to let's-pretend-we're-still-Anglicans.

Posted by Bill Moorhead [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 19, 2010 4:08 PM

One has to wonder how it is more acceptable to be part of a church with massive amounts of child abuse, deliberate cover-ups and an official decision to subvert civil consequences. The voices of Irish victims are being heard on NPR today.

All of this to escape women and gays. Of course the officially required secrecy surrounding these cases, instituted by Ratzinger himself may be appealing to people who seem to prefer to work in secret and live in denial.

Posted by Michael Russell [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 19, 2010 4:11 PM

I've long that we get the BEST from the RCC (Hi June!), whereas we send Rome our worst. I feel genuinely sorry for the faithful Roman Catholics (as opposed to power-hungry Popoids) who have to deal w/ them. We can hope that they'll be ghettoized in their Ordinariate, so that that faithful RCs don't have to deal w/ them . . . but I suspect that, if Papa Ratzi likes them so well, the Anglo-Popoids will be insinuated upon RCs, like 'em or not!

JC Fisher

[I hope June, that you and other former RCs will, when circumstances are right, continue to throw TEC's life-line to your former brethren in the RCC!]

Posted by tgflux [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 20, 2010 1:10 AM

Rome plays nice?

Murdoch

Posted by garydasein [TypeKey Profile Page] | February 22, 2010 3:46 PM

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