Catholics and Anglicans: Related but can they live together?

I grew up in a East Texas in a Protestant enviroment, My wife is a Methodist and I respectfully subject submit that Mrs. Steinfels doesn't understand how Protestant churches actually function.

Maureen Dowd, October 24th:

“Most of the Anglicans who want to move over to the Catholic Church under this deal are people who have scorned women as priests and have scorned gay people,” Briggs said. “The Vatican doesn’t care that these people are motivated by disdain.”

Isn't this an attempt by two shrinking religions to bolster their numbers?
RC services are nothing but repetitious chants and the sermons are usually boring enough to put everyone to sleep.

I don't expect the Vatican's announcement to have much impact in the USA. For a conservative Episcopal parish in, say, Kentucky, there is no shortage of options for them. My prediction is that fewer than 10 parishes across the USA will make the switch.

Where it will likely have more impact is someplace like Australia, where there are few established denominations outside of the Anglican Church and the Roman Catholics, so there are few other places for these conservatives to go.

Ultimately, that conservative parishes feel the need to break away at all is cause for tremendous sadness. One of the most divisive issues for these would-be breakaway congregations is, believe it or not, the ordination of women.

Women today can command the space shuttle, perform the most complex surgeries, serve as prime ministers, supreme court justices, and CEOs. And yet there are some protestants who somehow still believe that women are unqualified to stand up before a congregation and preach the Good News on Sunday mornings. Utterly pathetic.

Evidently a handful of Episcopal parishes are still able to fill the pews with a roomful of these mental midgets. That such dimwitted souls exist in this day and age is itself a cause for shame and sadness.

I don't think the Anglican converts acceptance of the Pope's hierarchical dominance should be a problem. Most US Catholics ignore most of the doctrinal rule making by the Pope and the bishops. I believe the bigger problem will be around the allowance of the Anglican clergy to switch teams with their wifes and families. It shows how trivial the celebecy ban for priests has been. The losening of firm doctrinal principals will always weaken a dogmatic organization. The church has lost a good deal of its moral authority already through the programs instituted to make life easier for believers that are more well off, the money making annullment process. Marriages that have lasted for decades and containing children are made to disappear in a costly fee for service arrangement called annullment. Those with the resources to follow through with the process can get the church's variation of a divorce, with the added benefit of making their children bastards in the process. Annullment means no marriage ever existed and as such leaving the children bastards to an unwed mother. For secular people, that title has little meaning except to describe an umpire at a football game, but the church uses these types of labeling as part of its hierarchy reinforcement. It will be harder now to use any theological mumbo jumbo to explain why Priests that were consecrated through normal church function must be celibate and those that converted can have wives and families. Even when you are infallibile, it is hard to be inconsistent and hypocritical.

Actually the systems are closer than you stated. Before a priest moves to a parish he or she must receive permission from the Bishop. In other words, the final say for a parish in the calling of a priest is not vested with the parish but with the local Bishop. Additionaly, Bishops in the Episcopal Church like the Catholic Church are appointed for life.

SDChandler:
"What's to stop the Anglican Church, or more specifically the Episcopal Church in the US, from doing the same thing?"

I think the Anglican/ Episcopal Church is already doing the same thing in Anglo-Catholic parishes, churches. These parishes incorporate many Roman Catholic practices into their liturgies, traditions.

What's so radically different with the pope's initiative is the incorporation of Anglican practice into Catholicism, then setting up an Anglican Use/Rite Church.

There are already Anglican Use/Rite Catholic parishes in the US, but Benedict is leaning to incorporate them into a newly formed Anglican Use/Rite Catholic Church in communion with Rome, similar to the 22 Eastern Catholic Churches (as Ukraine Catholic Church, Maronite Catholic Church, etc.).

That is so radically different for the Western Catholic Church as we know it, which has only know ONE SINGLE Rite, the Roman or Latin Rite Catholic Church. Now there could be two Western Catholic Rite Churches:The Roman Rite Catholic Church and the Anglican Rite Catholic Church, along side all 22 Eastern Catholic Churches.

This is quite extraordinary
william27

The final paragraph of your article is interesting. Here's a potential unintended consequence. What's to stop the Anglican Church, or more specifically the Episcopal Church here in the U.S., from doing the same thing. Currently, around one in seven Episcopalians are former Roman Catholics. Parishes led by former RC priests and performing a RC version of the liturgy would, I'd bet, attract many ex RC's and even current RC's. We Episcopalians have been searching for a way for years to expand our numbers. The Pope may have unwittingly just handed us a great marketing plan. If only a few percent of the ex RC's out there chose to join, it would be huge.

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"It is for this reason that Pope Benedict's invitation must be seen as an opportunity for Anglicans to consider the claims of church unity against the strengths and attractions of the Anglican tradition before they send their RSVP's."

-Lord George Carey

How about the Pope and his Roman Church considering whether to join and be absorbed into the Anglican-Episcopal Church, rather than the other way around.?

That would be a better approach toward improving God's world.

I don't know if Ms O'Brien has ever visited an Anglican Use parish. I have and it seems to be working out in those US parishes. So the new Anglican structure or "Anglican Use Catholic Church" (probably incorporating those already existing Anglican Use Catholic parishes) will just become one of many Catholic Churches (23 in all -- 22 Eastern Catholic Churches and 1 Western Catholic/ Latin Rite/Roman) within the global Catholic Church (of 1.1 billion), to say nothing of the Charismatic Catholic Churches in the Third World. I just marvel at the diveristy of the global church already. In Brazil, for example, lay preachers preach fiery sermons as good as any Pentecostal preacher, if not better. And the drum beats and dancing in the Ethiopian Catholic Church is simply amazing. All this is the Catholic Church.

Finally, from what I read and hear, the new Anglican structure already has an international group working on the liturgical books for this new "church within a church." A group in Australia, for example, is way ahead of the US church in this regard.

It is all very interesting and exciting to watch unfold!

It is not plausible that the Vatican would overlook the differences the author cites. Remember that the Vatican is opening the door, but once a person or the congregation crosses the threshold they're leaving the past behind and accepting the conditions.

It would be interesting reporting for someone to look further into the Anglican traditions that the vatican is saying these folks can bring with them. That might give an insight into how any mergers might go, particularly because it is the difference in tradition, e.g. smaller congregations with closer ties among members and attitude of acceptance of everyone as part of the body of Christ, that American Catholics who go over to the Episcopal church cite as the best parts of making the change.

For the most part, for most people and most of the time doctrine doesn't come into it over the long haul.