Doing the Rite Thing?
Vatican makes it easier for Anglicans to convert; creates new provision within Catholic Church.
When the disciples were enjoined to be fishers of men, was the body of water specified? It must have been, for Cardinal Walter Kasper of the Vatican (and therefore an obedient follower of the fisherman, Peter) has said: “We are not fishing in the Anglican pond”.
This was in reply to a reporter’s question about the provision the Holy See has made to allow Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church. Exemptions granted to these newly-Catholic churches will allow the worshipping communities to retain much of their liturgy and tradition, including married clergy.
Did I just write ‘newly-Catholic’? I was forgetting that Anglicans were in full communion with Rome until 1534, when Henry vee eye eye eye opted out and made the monarch both spiritual and temporal head of the English. Much has changed in both churches, but the catholic heart of the Church of England still beats strongly and the yearning for more than mutual recognition and dialogue that many conservative Anglicans have expressed has finally been recognised and rewarded by Pope Benedict ex vee eye.
A former Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism for principled and honorable reasons, John Henry Newman had inscribed on his memorial, Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem (From darkness and guesswork into the truth). I don’t see it quite like that myself, but I am happy that disaffected Anglicans have been given a new home for their misogyny and homophobia outside the Church of England, which they have torn apart for long enough.
As long as carp is on the menu, let the Catholics fish long and hard in the Anglican pond.