Today's edition of The Telegraph contains this news:
Senior Church of England bishops have held secret talks with Vatican officials to discuss the crisis in the Anglican communion over gays and women bishops.
They met senior advisers of the Pope in an attempt to build closer ties with the Roman Catholic Church, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was not told of the talks and the disclosure will be a fresh blow to his efforts to prevent a major split in the Church of England.
In highly confidential discussions, a group of conservative bishops expressed their dismay at the liberal direction of the Church of England and their fear for its future.
They met members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the most powerful of the Vatican's departments, the successor to the medieval Inquisition, which enforces doctrine and was headed by Pope Benedict XVI before his election.
The names of the bishops are known to The Sunday Telegraph, but they have asked for anonymity because the talks are of such a sensitive and potentially explosive nature.
The disclosure comes on the eve of a critical vote as members of the General Synod – the Church's parliament – prepare to decide whether to allow women to be bishops without giving concessions to staunch opponents.
Up to 600 clergy gave warning in a letter to Dr Williams that they may leave the Church unless they receive a legal right to havens within the Church free of women bishops.
Damian Thompson of The Telegraph adds the following on the newspaper's blog:
The attitude of Pope Benedict is crucial. He is very well aware that, in the years 1992 to 1994, the Bishops of England and Wales put pressure on Cardinal Hume to resist any concessions to Anglicans wishing to convert en masse.
The Pope's closest advisers are not in a mood to allow the bishops the same freedom this time. They are already cross at the poor English response to the Motu Proprio liberating the Latin liturgy - and have conveyed their displeasure to the relevant bishops in no uncertain terms.
It's no surprise that the Anglican bishops are talking to the CDF, where the former Cardinal Ratzinger always lent a sympathetic ear to potential converts - and also expressed his appreciation of the Anglo-Catholic tradition. His warm personality, his intellect and his programme of liturgical renewal are tremendous incentives for traditionalists to take the plunge.
Hmmm...I recall that more than a few critics (many of them Catholics) were fearful that the election of Benedict XVI would signal the start of an ecumenical crisis. But it ain't so. The crisis, in this case, is within the Angelican Communion. And as Thompson points out in a July 2nd article titled "Apocalypse of the Anglo-Catholics", it was bound to to come to a head sooner or later:
But the real traditionalists, the Anglo-Catholic opponents of women priests and bishops? They're fast running out of incense.
Here is the pdf of
the letter signed by 11 serving Church of England bishops (none of them
diocesan) and 1,300 priests demanding legal protection from women
bishops. I personally hope they don't get it.
After 1994, they decided to stay in a Church that ORDAINS WOMEN
PRIESTS despite their belief that women cannot be priests, and now they
are throwing up their hands in horror that - duh! - it is planning to
consecrate women bishops. What did they expect? Sorry to sound so
unsympathetic, but I always thought that the "flying bishops" expedient
reeked of the home-made network of episcopi vagantes described by Peter Anson in his book Bishops At Large.
Thousands of (supposed) Anglo-Catholics have seen the logic of this,
it must be said, and taken the Lambeth shilling: I'm amazed by how many
former opponents of women priests have quietly dropped their objections
to them. Their situation is made easier by the fact that many liberals
have come over all "Catholic" and dress up like my dear friend the late
Brian Brindley (who left the C of E for Rome at the earliest possible
opportunity).
The conservative signatories of the letter aren't in this camp, of
course. Some of them will stay regardless and keep on plotting feebly -
but others (including bishops) don't really expect to remain in the
Established Church for much longer and are hoping to become Roman
Catholics.
Why did it take them so long? Well, one answer is that some Catholic
Bishops of England and Wales have done everything in their power to
make them feel unwanted, while insisting that converts attend services
that (in style if not in content) are more drearily Protestant than
anything the Anglo-Catholics have ever experienced.
He then notes (as he did in his blog post) that it is the presence and actions of Benedict that have helped paved the road for those Anglicans tired of dancing the priestette two-step. As someone who is not well-versed in matters Anglican, I have been puzzled about the very point made by Thompson: if an Anglican accepted priestettes a number of years ago, how he can now demonstrate sincere anger when the (inevitable) issue of Anglican bishopettes comes up? For example, this is from today's edition of The Guardian:
Traditionalists are demanding the right to opt out of the
jurisdiction of a woman into special dioceses headed by male bishops,
or at least to have guaranteed access to male bishops. Some of them
argue that Jesus chose only men to be his 12 apostles, who were given
leadership of the early church, and that an unbroken chain of male
bishops has led the church since then.
The Rev Angus Macley,
from Sevenoaks, Kent, said: 'For some of us, we feel that the argument
has still not been made that the consecration of women to the
episcopate is the word of God. The view that women bishops are
repugnant to the word of God is an accepted position.'
Fr. Dwight Longenecker, a former Angelican priest, is keeping up with some of these happenings. Check out his blog, Standing On My Head. Here is a snippet from my March 2005 interview with him:
IgnatiusInsight.com: Why did you leave the Anglican Church (and priesthood)
to become Catholic?
Longenecker: When the Church of England decided to ordain women to
the priesthood in the early nineties it made me think more seriously about
the nature of authority in the church. The Anglican church claimed to be
a branch of the Catholic Church–rather like a latter day Orthodox Church.
Many like me felt that if this claim were valid the Anglican Church did
not have the authority to unilaterally break from the ancient tradition
and ordain women as priests.
If she did this she was not just making a decision about women's ordination;
she was also making a statement about what sort of church she really was.
That is to say, she was stating that the Anglican Church was not, in fact,
a branch of the Catholic Church, but simply another Protestant sect who
could decide to do whatever she wanted to do in her own backyard.
I felt that this sort of decision making would only lead to a further secularized
agenda. I remember saying to my parishioners when discussing the matter,
"Mark my words, women priests now; homosexual marriage ten years from now."
I was right. While the two issues are not in themselves, necessarily connected,
the way the decision on the matters are made are identical: if you campaign
long enough, get enough votes and shout loud enough you can change the historic
rule of the Church. While this seems 'democratic' it actually ignores what
G. K. Chesterton referred to as the greatest majority: the dead. In other
words, it ignores tradition.
Read the entire interview.
On a related note, Joanna Bogle (a frequent contributor to Catholic World Report) has written an article, "As it was in the beginning" (July 1, 2008), for MercatorNet that discusses why and how the issue of "same-sex marriage" is also causing splitting, division, discord, and assorted tensions within the Anglican Communion.
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