More Anglicans Crossing the Tiber

TIM DRAKE, Register Senior Writer Monday, Jan 25, 2010 2:01 AM Comments (0)
ORLANDO, Fla. — As 2010 gets under way, many in the Church are anxious to see how last year’s apostolic constitution inviting disaffected Anglicans into the Catholic Church will play out.

While the expectation is that more significant numbers of Anglicans in Britain, Africa and India will accept the offer outlined in Anglicanorum Coetibus, observers say that the decree will impact traditional Anglicans in the United States, as well.

The Traditional Anglican Communion includes approximately 400,000 Anglicans worldwide. The American province, known as the Anglican Church in America, includes approximately 5,200 communicants in four dioceses. Over the next few months, all of the provinces will be holding synods to put forward the question of how they will be responding to the apostolic constitution.

“The expectation is that our general synod will accept the Holy Father’s offer,” said Christian Campbell, senior warden of the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Orlando, Fla., and a member of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Church in America’s Diocese of the Eastern United States. “It is not so much a question of whether or not we desire to avail ourselves of the offer — inasmuch as it is a direct and generous response to our appeal to the Holy See. The question now is how the apostolic constitution is to be implemented. We have practical concerns, and we are presently working with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to resolve any outstanding questions.”

Campbell said that the first Traditional Anglican Communion provinces will be entering the Catholic Church within the next six months.

One example of a parish that stands ready to enter en masse is suburban Philadelphia’s Church of the Good Shepherd, an “Anglo-Catholic” parish.

“We’ve been praying for this daily for two years,” said Bishop David Moyer of the Traditional Anglican Communion. Moyer was one of 38 bishops in the communion who signed a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and petitioned Pope Benedict XVI in October 2007 for a way for disaffected Anglicans to be united with Rome.

“The majority of our members will be on board with this,” said Father Aaron Bayles, assistant pastor at Good Shepherd. The parish has approximately 400 members who could come into the Catholic Church.



Anglicans Who Won’t Join

Yet, many Anglicans will not be embracing the offer.

“The Episcopal Church will be only mildly impacted,” 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. “Most 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.”

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.

For those seeking to accept the Vatican’s offer, examples do exist of communities that have already done something similar. Since the implementation of the Pastoral Provision in 1980 — which allowed for the Catholic ordination of married Episcopal priests and authorized the establishment of personal Catholic parishes that retained certain Anglican liturgical elements — several Anglican-use communities have been created in the United States.

San Antonio’s Our Lady of the Atonement became the first to enter the Church in 1983. At the time, it consisted of 18 people. Today, the Church has more than 500 families. Three Anglican-use communities exist in Texas. In addition, since the Pastoral Provision was made available, more than 100 Anglican priests have gone through the process to become Catholic priests.

The Pastoral Provision, however, differs from the apostolic constitution.

“The story of the Pastoral Provision is that of a hard-fought battle by a few courageous pioneers,” said Campbell. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t implemented in such a way as to bring a large number of people into the Church. It was perceived as being primarily a mechanism for the reconciliation of individual Episcopal priests. By comparison, the apostolic constitution is not about reconciling individuals, but groups of Anglicans in a corporate fashion.”

h/t: Doc Frey

Training Anglican Priests in the Immemorial Rite

Yet another one of the benefits of the Anglican Reunion is that these incoming Anglicans are serious about Tradition.

EXTRAORDINARY TRAINING

A couple of Anglican priests have suggested the possibility of a teach-in for Anglican priests in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite; probably in Oxford. I recall one or two enquiries some time ago about this; but I don't recall from whom.

I have done no research on where, how, or when in Oxford this could happen; and so I have no idea what the cost might be. Before I do that, I would like to know if there is any wider interest.

It has been suggested that, properly packaged, it might be able to claim CME grants!

Fr P; will you take this as an acknowledgement of your very interesting email?
Posted by Fr John Hunwicke SSC, at 10:46

Priest [ess] may be first female bishop

The Pope is coming to Scottland just in time to scoop up some Traditionalists from Church of Scottland. COS is about to get more irrelevant then it already is.

The Holy Father defends this long disused practice, here.

Dr Peden is among three candidates being considered for the bishop's post
A Scottish Anglican priest will learn later if she is to become Britain's first female bishop.

The Reverend Canon Dr Alison Peden, 57, is on a shortlist of three for the role of Bishop of Glasgow & Galloway in the Scottish Episcopal Church.

The two other candidates are the Very Reverend Dr Gregor Duncan, 59, and the Venerable Dr John Applegate, 53.

An electoral synod, made up of clergy and lay church members from the Diocese, will decide on Saturday.

The decision will be taken after all three candidates have met members of the electoral synod.

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Alaska's Episcopalians Prepare to Ordain another Woman Bishop!

Alaska's troubled Episcopal Church is getting ready to possibly ordain another woman Bishop. It will be good for Catholics if this happens, because it will give many Episcopalians a not-so-subtle reminder why they should leave.

The candidates are:

• The Rev. Canon Virginia Doctor, canon to the ordinary, Diocese of Alaska, and assisting vicar, St. James' Mission, Tanana.• The Very Rev. Mark Lattime, rector of St. Michael's Episcopal Church, Geneseo, New York (Diocese of Rochester)
• The Very Rev. Timothy W. Sexton, provost and canon administrator, Cathedral Church of St. Andrew, Honolulu (Diocese of Hawaii)
• The Rev. Suzanne Elizabeth Watson, congregational development officer, Episcopal Church Center, New York.
"We're thrilled, joyous and very excited about these candidates," said Dan Hall, the chair of the bishop's search committee. "We're satisfied that each is the kind of candidate we need to move the Diocese of Alaska forward," he added.

Hall said a previous bishop search ended without an election when "for various reasons and circumstances … we ended up with only one candidate and the standing committee decided not to go to an electing convention with just one person."

The Jan. 11 announcement also opens the way for a process by which clergy and laity in the diocese can nominate other candidates. The deadline for those nominations is Feb. 12, according to Stacy Thorpe, diocesan communications officer. Information about that process is available here.

The election will take place during an April 9-10 electing convention at the Meier Lake Conference Center in Wasilla, Alaska.

The person elected will succeed the Rt. Rev. Rustin Kimsey, who has served as interim bishop for three years, since Bishop Mark MacDonald left in 2007 to become the first indigenous bishop of the Anglican Church of Canada.

As Virtue Online reports, one homosexual Episcopal activist was arrested for offering his 5 year old son up to be abused. He was also a big fan of Gay Bishop Gene Robinson.

Come All Ye Faithful: Benedict's Counter-Reformation

William S. Lind is a doctrinaire sort of man with his own axe to grind. His prose resembles the stiff powder blue suit of an Evangelical protestant going door-to-door. We couldn't even finish reading his article, but made comments before we started to fall into a torpor of sleep by the protestantic contempt for the First Vatican Council which many Bishops and Cardinals, even those who resisted, backe with their lives, like the Cardinal of Paris who was murdered by the spiritual descendants of the Protestants, the Communists in the 1870 Commune. This periodical isn't conservative, it's dead.

When my mother was a young woman, in the 1930s, Cousin Lily, then in her 80s, gave her some sound advice: “Wherever you go, join the Episcopal Church and you will meet all the best people in town.” “Best” in this instance referred not to the Book of Life but the Social Register. The staid, proper, elevated Episcopal Church, the Republican Party at prayer, was respectability’s keep.

Starting sometime in the 1960s, God’s frozen people melted, generating the mother of all theological mud puddles. From the abandonment of Thomas Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer to the introduction of priestesses in the 1970s and the ongoing election of homosexual bishops, the Episcopal Church forsook traditional Christian doctrine in favor of its own invented religion. Not surprisingly, this apostasy fractured both the Episcopal Church and the larger Anglican Communion. The upshot has been a variety of continuing churches that maintain historic ties to Anglicanism, multiple movements within the Episcopal Church to restore orthodoxy, and the breaking away of many Anglican churches in the Third World, where most Anglicans now live.

On Oct. 20, Rome parachuted into this dogfight like a division of Fallschirmjager. [Yes, we wrote "Benedict's Ecumenical Blitzkrieg"] In a move that stunned the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anglicanism’s titular leader, Pope Benedict XVI, opened the Roman Catholic Church’s door to Anglicans as Anglicans. He invited them to move in—individuals, parishes, whole dioceses—while retaining their Anglican identity. They could keep their Book of Common Prayer, their liturgies, their priests—even married ones.

Importantly, Anglican parishes affiliating with Rome would not come under the authority of local Roman Catholic bishops. In the U.S. and UK, most of those bishops are liberals. They dislike traditional Anglicans as much as they dislike traditional Roman Catholics and the Latin Mass. Given the chance, they would simply close down any Anglican parish that swam the Tiber, telling the congregation to go to Roman Catholic churches. This would leave most former Anglicans unchurched, as few could stomach the snakebelly-low post-Vatican II vernacular Roman Mass. To Anglicans, no sin is more grievous than bad taste.

Not to worry: Anglicans rallying to Rome will stay under their own bishops, or priests acting as bishops, known as “ordinaries.” Pope Benedict knows his American and British bishops all too well. His whole package is neatly wrapped up just in time for Christmas in an Apostolic Constitution, the most definitive form of papal legislation. The rough American equivalent would be a constitutional amendment. It’s not just a bon-bon.

How Anglicans will react to Rome’s offer has yet to be seen. [Rome already knew how they would react, since there were many letters asking for this, and it was well known in the news that Liberal Prelatistas in the Magic Circle hated the idea that these people were coming. Anglican Bishop Ebbsfleet himself threatened to swim the Tiber and has yet to do so, although he said something last time about Advent.] Many details remain unclear. One problem is likely to be the doctrine of papal infallibility, [Not really, where do you people come from?] a 19th-century Roman innovation. [Is this really a conservative publication?] The Apostolic Constitution stipulates that Anglicans would have to accept “The Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church as the authoritative expression of the Catholic faith professed by members of the ordinariate.” [Many of them already do] This could mean accepting papal infallibility as expressed in the catechism, and if Rome remains inflexible on that point, Pope Benedict’s initiative seems likely to fail. [Wishful thinking on your part, no doubt.]

But should it succeed, Rome’s offer has implications far beyond Anglicanism. Pope Benedict just might have taken the first step toward a second Counter-Reformation. The split within Anglicanism between those who believe the Christian faith was revealed and is to be received and those who think you just make it up to accord with the temper of the times is duplicated within virtually every other denomination. [Yes, that was the problem in the first place]

The root cause is the cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School, [You'll probably never appreciate just how much the Frankfurt School is indebted to the Protestant Revolt] commonly known as political correctness. Following Antonio Gramsci’s plan for a “long march through the institutions,” cultural Marxists have penetrated every mainline church. Their driving force is political ideology, not theology. They view the church as just one more venue for radical politics.

Their goal is Nietzsche’s “transvaluation of all values,” where the old sins become virtues and the old virtues, sins. In churches where they take power, the Holy Trinity is replaced by a trio of bogeymen: racism, sexism, and homophobia. Every denomination so afflicted is bitterly split between remaining Christians and the politically correct. (No, you can’t be both, as Marxists would agree.)

What is now happening, and what Rome may have discerned, is that the people on each side of this division find they have more in common with those in other denominations who share their basic faith, Christianity or cultural Marxism, than with the people on the other side of that divide within their own churches. A potential is emerging for a vast realignment, one transcending the divisions that came out of the Reformation. [Uh, Protestant Revolt] That realignment, in which the remaining Christians in every church would gather in a single, new (small “c”) catholic church, needs a leader. Who better than Rome? Indeed, who other than Rome could possibly pull it off? [No one]

Seen in that light, the Pope’s offer to the Anglicans takes on broader meaning. Some observers have seen a parallel with the arrangement a number of Eastern Catholic Churches have had with Rome since 1595. Those Churches recognize their own liturgical rites, systems of canon law, and procedures for ordination. Immediately after the announcement of the constitution—before the document was published—Father Dwight Longenecker, a former Anglican now Roman Catholic priest, wrote on the Inside Catholic website:

It has always been Benedict’s view that the way forward ecumenically is to replicate the existing structures that the Eastern Rite churches enjoy, and that this can be done with new flexibility and creativity.

He is willing to take risks to welcome those who follow the historic Christian faith, although separated from full communion with Rome. On the other hand, he sees those who prefer the modern gospel of relativism, sexual license, and a denial of the historic Christian faith that have taken over the mainstream Protestant churches. He knows there are plenty of them in the Catholic Church, and to them Benedict is quietly saying, “There’s the door.”

Yet what the Apostolic Constitution actually offers Anglicans is substantially less accommodating than Rome’s deal with the Eastern Rite churches. While Anglicans could keep their historic liturgical rite, Anglican churches affiliating with Rome would come under what are in effect non-geographical dioceses. That is a long way from the independence of the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches. [I'm not getting the relevance or truth value of this statement?]

Here we come to the crux of the matter: is Rome’s offer final, or is it negotiable, an opening gambit? If it is final, it is not likely to draw many Anglicans and would have virtually no appeal to other Protestants. Papal infallibility alone might doom it, and as a vehicle for Christian unity, it would prove, well, fallible. But let us hopefully assume that the Apostolic Constitution is not Rome’s last offer, that something closer to the arrangement given to the Eastern Rite churches could prove acceptable to Rome.

What then? It is possible to visualize not only Anglicans but all Protestants, in a new Counter-Reformation, leaving behind the cultural Marxists in the husks of their denominational institutions and joining in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. They could do so while remaining what they are—Lutherans and Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists, even some evangelicals—just as Greek Catholics remain in their Eastern rite. To Rome, they would give formal allegiance, recognizing the Pope as the titular and symbolic head of the Church. What both would gain would be a reunion of Christendom in the West in a church free of cultural Marxism—no small thing.

It is obvious that we are talking about a big leap for the Protestants. While few still speak openly of the “tyranny of the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities,” that attitude has shaped their histories. [Much to the diminishment of European Civilization and involving the loss of many souls.] Interestingly, however, one of the more enthusiastic responses to the constitution came from the Methodists. A senior official told the Methodist Recorder that “[the constitution] may open up ways in which Methodism, whose origins were as a movement in the Church rather than a separate denomination, may find its place in future, as a Church, alongside others within the universal Church.”

Protestants’ usual Sunday services would have to alter little, if at all, except for communion services, which are infrequent. Less obvious, perhaps, is the height of the wall the Roman Catholic Church would have to vault. That barrier is built largely of beliefs that, in the Ultramontane years of the 19th century, were turned into formal doctrines. [These dogmas were defined because the world needed to understand them, things that Christians had always and everywhere believed] Neither Anglicans nor Protestants are likely to swear to any of them, although they ought to be willing to accept them as what they were before the 1800s, long-standing traditions that were widely believed. (Papal infallibility is an exception; it was an invention rammed through Vatican I in 1870.) [What's with this guy?]

For Rome, there is a possible way around this wall rather than over it: status quo ante. Anglican and Protestant congregations and jurisdictions joining in full communion with Rome would not be required to accept as doctrine anything postdating their split from Rome. The Catholic Church would lead a second Counter-Reformation by backing away from some of the first.

Before the Council of Trent (1545-63), which begat the Counter-Reformation, Rome’s hand rested lightly on national churches. For example, we think of the Roman Catholic Church as having a single rite, after Trent the Tridentine Rite and following Vatican II the sad and dispiriting Novus Ordo. Before Trent, Rome allowed a vast variety of rites, as she would again. England alone had three major rites and a host of minor ones in a country of 4 million people. Rome saw no problem as long as the rites for communion services followed what Dom Gregory Dix called “the shape of the liturgy.” Anglicans might again chant in the litany, “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us.”

Pre-Trent, the same decentralization reigned in other matters as well. Kings generally had a good deal of say in who became a bishop. The Church might “volunteer” to pay some form of tax to a needy monarch. (After all, Church lands might make up a third of his kingdom.) When, occasionally, a Pope would overreach, king and bishops would come together to oppose him.

If Rome’s ambitions for a reunited Western Church go beyond Anglicans, and the Vatican is willing to bend beyond what the Apostolic Constitution currently offers, it may be time for Vatican III. The goal of such a council would be twofold: to sweep away obstacles to Christian unity stemming from the Council of Trent and Vatican I and reverse the disastrous consequences of Vatican II, including the vandalizing of the liturgy and abandonment of practices (such as fish on Friday) that buttressed Roman Catholic identity among laymen. Ultramontane doctrinal innovations would all have to be on the table; they might remain for Roman Catholics but would not be required of others seeking full communion with Rome.

Is all this just wishful thinking? The division between Christians and cultural Marxists in every denomination is certainly real: it screams from the religion page of every newspaper. With that division comes the potential for realignment and Christian reunion. Understanding the mind of the Curia is more difficult than penetrating North Korea, but Rome’s offer to the Anglicans suggests that Pope Benedict XVI is looking beyond the usual games. The ice has cracked, and a new spring may be coming.

Pope Benedict is a good German. Perhaps the question he could put to himself is this: who do I want to be, Kaiser Wilhelm II or Bismarck? Kaiser Wilhelm II was a bright and well-intentioned fellow. He was almost always right in what he wanted to do (including not going to war in 1914). But over and over he deferred to his advisers, who were almost always wrong. Bismarck, in contrast, knew exactly what he wanted—the reunification of Germany—and was both opportunistic and ruthless in making it happen. He brooked no opposition. As Kaiser Wilhem I once said, “Sometimes it is a hard thing, being a Kaiser under Bismarck.”

Now there’s a vision to gladden the heart: a German Pope proclaiming the reunion of the Western Church in the hall of mirrors at Versailles. Be a Bismarck, Benedict, be a Bismarck.
__________________________________________

William S. Lind is author, with Paul Weyrich, of The Next Conservatism.

The American Conservative...

Anglican Church in Crisis

Roger Gray / KETK News
December 11, 2009 - 10:18pm
The Episcopal Church is in a crisis. The election of a second gay bishop has many wondering about the future of the denomination…

More US Presidents have been Episcopalians than any other faith, but the modern church us splintering fast.

I’ll confess upfront, I am what is known as a cradle Episcopalian. And I like many Anglicans, wonder where the church is going…

In 2003, the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire selected an openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, and ignited a firestorm in a denomination formed from the old Church of England right after the revolution.

h/t: Virtue Online

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The Anglo-Catholic reflects on the events Thiberville

The response to the usual ecclesiastical bullying on the part of modernist ordinaries at places like Thiberville has precedent in history. At some point people get fed up and decide to do something against the effrontery of a class of sneering ecclesiastics who wish merely to subvert and destroy. Their sly jibes, administrative demotion of actual Catholicism, petty persecution of its exponents is designed to make Catholicism go away while they wed what remains of its physical plant to the predominant secular vision; it would explain why so many of them are so keen on advocating the same sorts of things throughout the world, as if a mock magisterium were giving some order to their efforts on behalf of the religion of man. Again, it's the part of Catholics to resist these things.

It reminds us of that time when the SSPX stormed and took over a church not so long ago. This is a response they don't expect.

The Anglo-Catholic

The events of Thiberville have provoked me to a reflection about the pastoral ministry in the diocese and the parish. I find parishes and pastoral matters as fascinating as theology and liturgy. I think this issue is highly relevant in our present Anglican communities and the future Ordinariates we hope to become in the near future. I have touched upon the issue of Thiberville, which is not that of the traditionalist reaction, but rather a conflict between two ecclesiologies and pastoral visions. We are moving towards the communion of the Catholic Church and must be open-eyed about what this means, both at the level of the Universal Church and the local diocesan Churches.

We know that what is distinctly Catholic about the Church is the liturgical and sacramental life that owes everything to the Apostolic Priesthood. If there were no priesthood, there would be no Eucharist, and without the Eucharist, there is no community or communion. This Catholic notion of the Church is founded upon the presence of the incarnate Christ in the Church on earth.

[cut]

This is the war, the battle, the real enemy we have to fight with spiritual weapons. That is why the Pope needs traditional Anglicans as much as he needs traditional Catholics and the Orthodox. All hands on deck!

Read entire article...

Related Stories:

Arm in Arm in France, Norman townsfolk block Bishop from entering sanctuary, here.

More response on the event in Thiberville here.

Good News Roundup! Pope to Revise 83' Code of Canon Law

It has been mentioned that in addition to working out some of the details of meeting the Anglicans and moving them in an orderly fashion to the Barque of Peter, there is talk about a revision of the 1983 Code of Canon law, which is in great need of revision, clarity and decisiveness.

More proof that liberalism is evil and does nothing but leave behind a wasteland like what T.S. Elliot warned us of. What's even "better" is that this was once one of the most Catholic places outside of the Archdiocese of Rome and Holland (another place liberals had their way with). Trenchent and malevolent liberalism was fueled into this most Catholic region like a persistent nerve agent whose purpose it was to make it so poisonous to Catholics that one couldn't be found anywhere, except perhaps in crowded SSPX Chapels in remote and hidden recesses in lonely Quebec.

Milwaukee Archbishop tells cultural Catholics they can't be pro-abortion, pro-contraception and Catholic.


Wyoming Bishop withdraws and leaves open yet another possibillity for another woman Bishop. That's good.

Msgr Andrew Faley Whinges Pathetically About Anglicanorum Coetibus

Msgr. Andrew Faley isn't very happy. He's like a liberal priest in confession confronted with a penitent who believes in personal sin, and then pops out the word "rigidity" to describe the man's ailments. He wasn't too happy either with Summorum Pontificum and he's been aware of this as a possibility for some time, fighting a rearguard action against the inevitable course he must have foreseen in 2007 when he said this to an interviewer at Churches Together:

The bishops were always aware that it wasn’t a good enough reason for a man who was a former Anglican, became Catholic and wished to be considered for the Catholic priesthood, to do so because he didn’t approve of women as priests. That’s not the issue. [It's a pretty big issue] The issue is clearly to do with what it means to belong to the universal church and the decisions made within a particular church, in this case, the Anglican Church, to ordain women to the priesthood. That decision is much more deeply ingrained as a reason for the deeper reflection that it stirred in Catholics, Anglicans and other Christians as to what it means to belong to a Church that believes itself to be universal, in communion through the bishops with the Holy Father as the first among equals.

So, he has a long and established pedigree working for the liberal wing of the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom and like Archbishop Vincent Nichols, is eager to demonstrate his displeasure at the fact by making passive aggressive jabs like this:

Discontented Anglicans who convert must not become a "sect" within the Roman Catholic Church, a senior Catholic clergyman dealing with church unity has warned.

Anglicans who object to plans for women bishops are considering the Vatican's invitation to become part of a special section - an "ordinariate" - within the church in England and Wales.

Link to original...

Archbishop Nichols warns against "pick and choose" approach to religion

Anglicans should not become Catholic to protest against female clergy or sexual ethics, the archbishop of Westminster said today, as he warned traditionalists against adopting a "pick and choose" approach to the religion.

The Most Rev Vincent Nichols, the most senior Catholic in England and Wales, was speaking ahead of tomorrow's meeting in Rome between Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Pope Benedict XVI. The pair will discuss the recent initiative by the Vatican to allow Anglicans to become Catholics and retain parts of their spiritual heritage – set out in an apostolic constitution – as well as its impact on ecumenical relations.


Link to... Guardian.

Bishop of Blackburn says he will not convert to Rome

Religious Intelligence

Tuesday, 17th November 2009. 12:51pm

By: George Conger.

The Bishop of Blackburn will not be taking the Pope up on his offer of a home for disaffected Anglicans in the Roman Catholic Church.

In an interview given to the Lancashire Telegraph, the Rt Rev Nicholas Reade said “I am Bishop of Blackburn, and I will continue to be until the good Lord releases me from it.”

At a joint press conference in London held by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of Westminster plans for a “personal ordinariate” for Anglicans who sought to enter into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, while maintaining some aspects of their Anglican identity were announced.

Bishop Reade said the Pope’s offer was “very generous” but “I would have to say I don’t expect many to go” over to Rome.

“The Church of England is a big tent and while there are boundaries to what Anglicans believe, we are a Church that makes room for everyone,” he said. The point of friction in the Church of England for Anglo-Catholics today was the issue of “whether we have women bishops. It’s not quite as simple as saying ‘we have women judges and a woman Prime Minister’. I would hope we could come up with a stance that’s able to appeal to both sides.”

Bishop Reade said he would not be going over to Rome. “I would want to see my time out as Bishop of Blackburn. In other words, I could only cease to be Bishop of Blackburn if ill health, death or retirement intervened.”

Link to original...