Catholic Church says, 'Welcome home'

The Catholic Church will never be the real church of its followers, until its priests are honest and open about their own, personal sexuality and how they express that sexuality in their personal lives. You need to do this, Tom. The Pope needs to do it. Until you do, you are calling people to Jesus under false pretenses. You are not who you purport yourselves to be.

Is the Roman Catholic Church, with a primarily closeted, homosexual clergy, the right choice for traditionalist Anglicans, unable to tolerate clergy who are openly Gay or female?

The Catholic Church will never be the real church of its followers, until its priests are honest and open about their own, personal sexuality and how they express that sexuality in their personal lives. You need to do this, Tom. The Pope needs to do it. Until you do, you are calling people to Jesus under false pretenses. You are not who you purport yourselves to be.

Is the Roman Catholic Church, with a primarily closeted, homosexual clergy, the right choice for traditionalist Anglicans, unable to tolerate clergy who are openly Gay or female?

Well said Monsignor, there are a LOT of haters out there clinging to what once may have been good protestant churches, but have over the past few decades(!) become a religion in name only. Twisting the Word into whatever makes them feel better to POACH more women and gays is just as bad if not worse.

Actually it IS worse, the Catholic Church isn't changing itself fundamentally to bring in converts. It's catching those poor souls jumping from their burning building in a net of love and homecoming. Welcome back!

Also, I think there are MANY protestant sects that would be very fertile ground for the church to welcome converts. Lord knows that they are being held hostage by institutions that are ever changing to appeal to whatever is fashionable to attract the confused and easily led.

As an ordained clergyperson, and the widow of an Episcopal priest, I am deeply saddened by the daily and insistent teaching of the Roman church that the Episcopal Church cannot offer a valid Mass because our Holy Orders are not valid. In other words, my husband's entire ministry -- including administration of the Sacraments -- was invalid by Roman standards. How, then, will Rome welcome our priests? No doubt by offering them the ONLY ordination that is valid! And of course since I am an ordained woman, I am forever outside the pale. THIS from a Church which traces its apostolic succession to Peter, who not only was not celibate, but was MARRIED -- as recorded in Scripture by Jesus' healing of his mother-in-law. Jesus never recognized any classification of "second-class citizens" in His earthly ministry. By His obedient offering of Himself for us, he has made all of us worthy of God's mercy, grace, love and forgiveness. I don't have answers to these questions of womens' ordination, enforced celibacy, or barring homosexuals from ordination. I DO believe that declaring Sacramental baptism, confirmation, absolution and the Eucharist to be invalid if not received from the hands of RC priests is decidedly unScriptural, unpastoral and incredibly judgmental. What a shame!

My ancestors didn't fight and die for Henry VIII so that this half-breed dog of a church could come into being.

Shame!

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.”

Thank you, Monsignor Bohlin. A few links about Anglicanism that might interest any who are intrigued by the Holy Father's action:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3612824/Anglicanism-is-going-to-tip-into-the-sea.html

"There is a big hole at the centre of Anglicanism - its authority. I don't think it's a Church; it's more of a religious society." This is the most hurtful criticism that one can make of any Church: to say that it is not a Church.

And Norman's seminal lecture some six years earlier:

AUTHORITY IN THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION

by Edward Norman

Ecclesiastical Law Society Lecture given during Lambeth Conference, 1998

The Church was not founded at Pentecost, as is sometimes said, but by Christ during the course of his ministry in Galilee and Judea. It was he who appointed the twelve to become what today, perhaps, would be called teaching officers, and who commissioned the seventy as a corps of evangelistic missioners. In the ancient world religious knowledge was sometimes committed to sacred writings, sometimes to a school of ideas, sometimes to a priestly caste or an assemblage of cultic observances, and sometimes it emerged episodically through the translations of oracles. Christ, in contrast, revealed his truth to a living company of people - "the People of God" ....

http://justus.anglican.org/resources/misc/norman98.html

Odd that the papacy, the Eucharist, and the Virgin still divide the communions, but the urgent matter of gay and women clergy appears so much more important than 500 years of controversy on these other matters.

"Christ's truth is not something that can be re-invented by a vote of the latest synod. "

Hmm. I guess one should expect nothing less from Opus Dei than a selective vision of history. I seem to remember that ex cathedra was articulated by Vatican I along with the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Of course, the latter was needed to get rid of Mary's original sin after microscopes were invented showing the truth of Mendel's genetics work - women's ova contributed genetic material to the child, they weren't just incubators for the male sperm. Can't take away any possibilities of original sin theology being the ultimate stick to accompany the carrot of salvation only within the Roman Catholic Church.

I also seem to remember that little business about Galileo, and the Inquisition and the role in the Holocaust, and... Clearly the church has changed its mind on a number of things as well it should have. Sad that the current Vatican regime appears not to have learned Santayana's observation about the failure to learn from one's own past.

As Bishop Spong notes in one of the other columns on this subject, these kinds of claims would be amusing if they weren't so ludicrous.

The "On Faith" panel discussion regarding the outreach of the Roman Catholic Church to the Anglican clergy is a travesty. First, there is nothing wrong with the Roman Catholic Church extending its hand.

What is wrong with this whole discussion is that the viewpoint is very pro-catholic and carries the implication that the Catholic Church is the definition of Christianity. The Roman Catholic does NOT define Christianity.

Furthermore, I find this so-called analysis to be misleading. If one where to really question the issue of Anglicans moving to the Roman Catholic Church, we should have a panel of Anglicans analyzing this issue. (True Roman Catholics need to examine this issue too.)

If disaffect Anglican clergy need to find another church, move to the Christian Orthodox Church. The Christian Orthodox Church is already theologically "closer" to the Anglican church than the Roman Catholic Church. The Orthodox Christian church already allows married priests.

"Not poaching," Bohlin says, your first clue that this is all about, and only about, raiding someone else's church.

Ecumenical relations are thrown backwards by Roman claims that Jesus established the Roman church. What Jesus established was the church, period.

Rome isn't home. The Roman church is a dictatorship, more interested in its own power, wealth and market share than fidelity to Jesus, who came to set us free. If I wanted to live under an infallible dictator I'd move to North Korea.

In common, indeed. Militant homosexual clergy along with a legacy of child predatory homosexuality.

Could have been a lovely family reunion after centuries of estrangement. Shame it has to be about gender and the unseemly things other people might be doing with their genitals.

"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.

Thank you, Father, for stating the Good News of Christ and for recounting the history of the two Churches.

There can be but one Christ. There can only be one Mind of Christ.

I believe that Christ would not be silent if those Anglicans and Catholics sought His Word on these matters in 2009. He is alive. He reigns.