Gerns is delusional. The Holy Father never once claimed to value what the Episcopagans have to offer!

Also, notice how he shows his hand on what his version of ecumenism looks like: “It would be a shame for this turn of events to further deepen the divide between our churches and between our two traditions.” Dude, the divide you’re pretending to care about started with your boy Henry VIII and hasn’t stopped widening since. Everything TEC has done since the mid-60′s was designed to deepen that divide. Don’t go wagging your finger at Papa Benny for being pastoral toward besieged Anglican conservatives when His Grace the Eyebrow couldn’t find the time to write them a coherent get-well card.

The problem here for the Episcopagans, of course, is that they might be losing thousands of potential targets for their venom. Oh, and their checkbooks. That’s gotta sting. Remember: the self-proclaimed oppressed always need an “oppressor” upon which to project their deeply seated anxieties.

Fr. Philip, OP

…oh, and one more thing…

Why is the Piskie Left angry about all this?

Simple. Benedict has potentially relieved them of thousands of individuals who have managed to resist their revisionist indoctrination. Not only can these individuals move on to a Church where they will be valued, they will also escape the punishment due them for defying their Ecclesial Betters in the TEC.

Fr. Philip, OP

“…separated former Anglicans can now become Roman Catholics in such a way as to allow them to keep their prayer books and the clergy to keep their wives.”

This might be very good news for Fr. Cutie.

“this seems to be designed to divide us.” My, these people are sooooo important. The spiritual leader of nearly a billion Catholic Christians has nothing more important to do than dividing a tiny, insignificant, irrelevant gay cult in America. “Mein Gott,” Benedict XVI exclaimed, “If ve can shake loose a few tousand of dese Anglicos, ve can conquer zee vorld!” Yeah right. I believe the Pope’s motives are purely pastoral triggered by a request from the Anglo-Catholics. I doubt if he gave any thought at all to how cruel this would be to the homosexuals and their allies who are “doing a new thing” with some unidentified “spirit.” Forthermore (a wink to Mr. Johnson), what business is the “polity” of the Roman Church to the Epsicopos? Wasn’t this THEIR battle cry a while back?

I share your irritation: FW doesn’t stand for Forth Worth. Why that would happen amazes me. Spell check should recognize “Fort” just as easily as “Forth”.

And Katie Sherrod – yeah, Miz Diversity herself. A white middle class liberal ensconced in a white middle-class liberal parish. If you don’t know, it’s adjacent to TCU, a white middle to upper middle class university. As a matter of fact, my own movement towards the Episcopal Church in 1971-72 included attendance at Trinity for awhile, including singing in the Christmas and Easter choirs that year. Take my word for it, the parish was mighty white then, and I have no reason to doubt it’s white now. I’m not interested enough to check, but I doubt they even have a Spanish Mass – heaven knows it might bring in the wrong sort and the Spanish have their own parish not too far away. If you look at the stats for the diocese of FW (Episcopal) before the split, you see a growth at Trinity matched by a decline in some other, more conservative parishes. I strongly suspect Trinity became the ghetto for liberals in Fort Worth – white and middle class to the core, no doubt.

Besides all the Episcopalians who were asking for clarity from their own church, Cardinal Kasper also asked for clarity in order to continue ecumenical talks. Well, we are all being gifted by clarity in spades these days. I think that Cardinal Kasper can put down his pen and notebook now.

Actually Ms. Sherrod has a point. The theologicians tasked with finding the arguments for recognizing SSMs in Canada have recognized that they are inconsistent with the doctrine of male/female complementarity. Their solution: the doctrine of m/f complementarity is wrong and must be abandoned: http://notweighingourmerits.blogspot.com/2009/06/interchangeable-units-i-hath-made-thee.html

It’s interesting that among the growing crowd of responses, one voice has not been heard: that of the Madwoman of Second Avenue herself. The Archbishop of Canterbury couldn’t escape the press conference, so he’s been heard from, Hiltz of Canada has issued a statement, the leaders of the various conservative groupings in the U.S. and England have put their thoughts on record. Even the evangelical Africans, who aren’t particularly interested or involved in this scenario, have made a statement. But Mrs. Schori seems to have lost her voice.

I think it’s for the same reason that she ran away from her chance of a meeting with Benedict when he visited the U.S. ‘Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. He always flees from stout resistance.’

“At the heart of all of this is the reality that the Roman Church is willing to welcome angry, reactionary, misogynistic, homophobic people.”

I love it when the love of Christ shines through the words of church leaders.

“Benedict XVI has managed all at once to intrude into our own church’s internal struggles for a very narrow strategic purpose”

So I’m guessing Mr. Gerns will be instructing Bishop Frade to tell Fr. Cutié “Sorry, Alberto, we can’t intrude into the internal struggles of another church, so better go back to your former bishop and see what he says”?

Yeah – didn’t think so. I don’t see what all the fussing and moaning is about; it’s very amusing, especially when the good old-fashioned conspiracy theory about Papists under the bed and the Spanish Armada and the Inquisition and the Horrid Popish Plot are being regurgitated, but what is the big deal?

Myself, I don’t expect hordes of former Anglicans to be knocking down the doors of RC churches in the near, mid or even distant future. So if a few malcontents and bigots shake the dust of TEC off their feet, what is the problem? Isn’t that what they want to happen? No room for tolerating intolerance, and all that jazz? Particularly if we’re talking about bodies that have not been part of PECUSA/ECUSA/TEC for “forty or fifty years”?

And to top it off, I’m rather confused by what Bishop Spong had to say about it all; he takes a dim view, naturally, but I don’t get what he’s saying, unless it is that the Archbishop of Canterbury has not been prejudiced enough to retain the conservatives:

“Here we have two unimpressive Christian leaders, rooted deeply in yesterday, jockeying publicly to see who can be the most prejudiced about the role of women and the place of homosexual people in the life of the Christian Church.

…The Archbishop of Canterbury, on the other hand, long ago sacrificed a commitment to truth on the altar of church unity, made peace with those infected with the prejudices of sexism and homophobia and acted as if unity could actually be achieved by rejecting women or gay people.

In this embarrassing conflict the Pope seeks to gain an advantage by making Roman Catholic Christianity more welcoming to those Anglican clergy and members who cannot adjust to new truth and new consciousness, while the Archbishop grieves over the results of his own inept leadership.”

Pausing to wipe away the tears of laughter caused by Bishop Spong talking about “unimpressive Christian leaders”, I don’t get his point. Teh Pope is Ebol!!! Okay, sure. The Archbishop is also Ebol!!!, but apparently not Ebol!!! enough, since he can’t retain “those Anglican clergy and members who cannot adjust to new truth and new consciousness” despite his best Ebol!!! efforts to accommodate their homophobia, sexism, racism and using the wrong knife to eat their peas with.

Anthony “Tony the Pro” Provenzano is a Bishop in the Episcopo church now? Wow! Talk about your diversity. A “made guy” is a bishop! Hey, fuggedaboudit! If I was one of his sheep, don’t think I would want to go for “a ride” with him. Spaghetti Nights in the diocese must be grand. Wise guys are like me – they like it with alot of garlic. Fuggedaboutit! What? This is a different Tony Provenzano? Um….never mind.

My suspicion is that Albert Cutie, or any other Catholic priest who broke their vows would only be allowed to comeback, after.

1. Being defrocked. He will no longer be allowed to be a priest
2. Having made a sacrament of penance.

Being married and coming in is totally different than Vowing celibacy to God and Breaking it, and then trying to Comeback as a priest. Thats not going to happen.

So what was that Council of Trent all about again?

Hi Chris,

I agree that this is beneficial to Benedict’s vision for the Roman Catholic Church. He is bringing in more people that share his conservative theology.

And this further isolates TEC, clarifying how different it is than RC.

So, how come these folks do not exhibit similar rage WRT Western Rite Orthodoxy? Doesn’t WRO appeal to the same sort of Anglicans this Catholic initiative does? You know — “angry, reactionary, misogynistic, homophobic” ones…?

Some of this is just too funny. Andrew Sullivan’s devotion to “eternal truths,” for instance. Things that are plainly stated in Scripture, and presumptively expressing an eternal truth, have the life expectancy of a Mayfly if they get in the way of Sully’s sexual preferences.

Ha ha ha!!!! Boy oh boy (regardless of whether I put myself under Benedict XVI’s authority, I treasure him, his leadership and his love for Our Lord)!!!

All hail to homophobia, misogyny, reactionarism and all the rest of the stuff those Commies attack us as being!!!

Personally, I’m exceedingly PROUD to be a militant homophobe (and the rest of it all…)!!!! It’s infinitely better than to be a heterophobe and openly wish for Mankind’s destruction by His Own Hand using the Devil’s tools Marx, Engels, Ljéñin, Stáljin, Mao, Kún, Pol-Pot and all their sympathisers like Schori-Jefferts, Anderson, Russell, Bennison, Provenzano et al.

[While we're at it: when the original Stonewall riots erupted in NYC, instead of kowtowing to those militants, THAT'S when one instead needed to put them ALL in their place - in prison if they surrendered peacefully, else in the grave (even by mowing them all down...)!! That way the Pandora's box wouldn't have been opened. Woe's us all for allowing those "flower-children" all they wanted, whereas they needed the knout...]

I am NOT a homophobe: I am not scared of them. However I am a homonauseaous: I am sick of them being always in my face. The same thing about Islamophobia.

The next shoe to drop will be a declaration from Rome that further relations between the Catholic Church and TEO/AOoC will be handled by the Secretariat for Non-Christian Religions, and not by the Ecumenical Secretariat. I can’t wait for that.

Well said, LaVallette!!!

I used not to be scared of them (while agreeing with you to the fullest about finding them as disgusting in their acts as anybody else!!); nowadays, yours truly prefers to shun them all if in groups of any size whatsoever; and the same applies to Muslims in identical measure.

[The next step would be to get some Mace or something, maybe pepper spray, to keep on hand if forced to be in any such public places...]

As to McGrath, I can hardly wait for that declaration from Rome (and also from the Orthodox Patriarchs), for truly those entities have lost every last trace of Christianity, period!!!

Finally, I’ve not forgotten “Sinner’s” description of the knout – that was actually known as the Great Knout (when in such total length as > 2 metres…), and 20 blows from it would be amply sufficient to kill!

“After all, the RCs have plenty of emptying church buildings…”

To hear a liberal Episcopalian say this with a straight face is high comedy.

The truth is that the Sullivans and Gerns of the TEC are not happy with traditional Anglicans staying or with them them going to Rome or even with them setting up their own structure. They will only be happy when they cease to exist.

One obstacle to ex-Roman Catholic Anglicans returning to Rome is that, technically, they’re apostates. While they might be allowed back in after penance and confession, I can’t see them being allowed ordination.

Another obstacle would be that the reason many of them left and became Anglicans in the first place is because they divorced and remarried. I imagine that ex-Catholics would be treated just as ex-Catholics, regardless of whether they were Anglican in the interim or not.

This is a contribution to the another site, who like many other sites,senior liberal TEC/Anglicans and the usual uninformed media types quoted here, insist that the Catholic Church is misogynistic and anti-feminist:

“Protestants, including Anglicans and Episcopalians need to make up their mind: Are Catholics “scared of the feminine” or are they “heretics and extra/ contra biblical” for having accorded to a woman (only)i.e.Mary,the Mother of Jesus, a Divine status, through their Mariology or the teachings about Mary? Furthermore, what about the status it has given to other women in its Canons of Saints,like Saints Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila and Theresa of Liseaux, all accorded the rank of Doctors of the Church, a status equivalent to that of Saint Augustine, St.Thomas Aquinas and St.Jerome.? Can they point to women like those,with the same status, in their traditions. Do they know or have they even heard of them? What about the hundreds and hundreds of other women saints,many of them Martyrs for the Faith, who are held up by the Church as exemplars of courage,commitment, honour and sanctity and to be imitated and emulated by all Catholics, men and women? Are they aware that the church was the first organisation in western civilisation to deliberately place ordinary base-born women,(as against accident of aristocratic birth) in positions of power and influence as Heads of Religious Orders(many exerting influence on the Regulation and Rules of Orders of monks and priests e.g. Descalced Carmelites), Heads of Abbeys, convents,priories,etc. with authority over Religious regulation and rules, and also lands, property and significant regional administration in both church and civil matters? In the two thousand years of its existence the Church has never ordained women to the ranks of the priesthood because it does not have authority from Christ to do so: He only ordained men as priests and having been very close to and reached out to many women during the course of his Mission on earth, when he disregarded many of the contemporary mores of male/female relationships,this decision must have been very deliberate. Particularly at Mass, the peak and epitome of the sacerdotal role,the priest stand in “Loco Christi”,that is in the “place of Christ” who called Himself the “Bridegroom” (a male term)while the Church was His “Bride” (a female term).”

The thought of many Liberal Cafeteria “Roman Catholic brothers and sisters, both lay and ordained, conservative and liberal, who wish to belong to a church that treasures diversity of thought.” moving over to the Anglican/Episcopalian Church is something to be regretted: Its always sad and a cause for sympathetic head-shaking to see someone trading down from the Rolls Royce versions to the current models with the inbuilt obsolescence that goes with the current fad. However it has the great moral advantage of making honest people of them because it will force them at last to admit to themselves publicly what their position really is. No organisation has any need for fifth columnist. As Jesus Himself said, a “house divided against itself will not survive” so these people moving out will be an act of purification for the Catholic Church and it will make it stronger. God certainly moves in mysterious ways..

My, my, my, some people do seem to have their panties in a wad, don’t they? I think the main reason for the rage on the Piskie Left is not so much that conservative Anglicans might leave them (although they will miss the cash), it is more because they have a choice. What the Left wants is to be able to dictate to the conservatives and throw them out with no place to go.

The Pope has rained on their parade, looks like.

Peter C., they are not apostates – an apostate has renounced the faith entirely.

You’re right that they will be treated as bad Catholics cleaning up their act. To formally leave the Church requires a lot more than most of them will have done. I’m not a canon lawyer, but I’ve been told by people who would know that a layman would have to write a letter to his ordinary stating that he was renouncing membership of the Church. The vast, overwhelming majority of departing Catholics are not sufficiently well-instructed to know that, and even most of them would not take the trouble.

“Benedict XVI has managed all at once to intrude into our own church’s internal struggles for a very narrow strategic purpose; insult the very validity of who we are;…”

Aaahhhh, haaaa, haaaaaa!

Hooo, hooo, hooo!

Mmmfffttt! gurgle…, snort!

(Wipes tears from eyes) Well, thanks very much! I have been reduced to making unladylike snorting noises. (And it’s a good thing I already finished my coffee, or someone would owe me a new keyboard.)

“Take a nice long swig of STFU.”

I have the Motivational Poster to go with that sentiment.

“After all, the RCs have plenty of emptying church buildings…”

I think a lot of this depends on geography. Most of the emptying churches that I’ve heard about are in typically liberal states in the north and northeast. Here in Texas, we can’t seem to build them fast enough…literally.

BDS* all over the place! I love it.

(*Benedict Derangement Syndrome)

To my understanding, a Catholic who reverts simply goes to Confession, says his/her penance and that’s it. No years of hairshirts or Friday nights with the discipline. I’s true they can’t be ordained to the Catholic priesthood.

I’ve got a confession: I REALLY wish some accomodations could be made on this and the marriage issue. Can you imagine men like Steenson, Herzog and Lipscomb exercising episcopal ministry? It’s a loss.

Mark –

We have the hispanic in-migration here in the southwest plus lots of other population growth in general (yes, I remember when Sachse was a gas station and a feed store on Hwy 78).

But even liberal northeastern dioceses like Rochester are holding their own. The empty buildings are mostly due to people moving out of older urban neighborhoods. I guess those dioceses have a stronger tradition of geographical parishes, because here in Fort Worth people drive all the way from Johnson County (south) to attend our inner city parish. Of course, they drive in to work, shop, eat out, and just about everything else. Let’s face it, Texans drive.

Chris,
Regarding your final 8 words on the subject: I love you.

A different talking point was on the Channel 11 news here last night, but I can’t find it online. Maybe in a day or two.

Anyway, Father Christopher C. Stainbrook of St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church here in Fort Worth was on the news very happy about the new arrangement. St. Timothy’s probably qualifies as “Anglo-papalist”. I visited there once maybe 40 years ago, and the intercessions included a petition for “Paul VI, our patriarch”. Even for Fort Worth, St. Timothy’s is HIGH church. I know they left TEC with Bp. Iker, but you have to wonder what they might do now…

Allen Lewis is correct. The thongs of the lefties are all frayed and knotted up because there’s another credible choice for disaffected Episcopalians. Otherwise why would they care what the people they despise do? The lefties are also pouty because a Person in Authority exercised his authority. I heard one Episcopal priest say about swimming the Tiber: “ooh, I couldn’t give up my reformed view of the authority of scripture.” Ha, ha. Like remaining in the Episcopal Church is a statement of principle on that score.

Thanks for the clarification, Ed and Ken. The one case I was remembering was a former Catholic priest who became an Episcopal priest and the word “apostasy” came up in the discussion about why he could never go back to being a Catholic priest.

St. Timothy’s under the late Fr. Acker was the High Church parish in Fort Worth. A friend of mine who grew up there is now an Orthodox priest. He tells the story of how, one Sunday, Fr. Acker was censing at the Offertory and was laying in a pretty thick layer of smoke. An acolyte is said to have asked Fr. Acker, “Don’t you think that’s enough?” Fr. Acker replied, “No, I can still see the altar.”

Has His Homosexualency, Bishop Robinson, made a comment? Or will he just go with an Urkel-esque “did I do that?”

Chris: Let’s hope the third time’s the charm. Please post this one and scrap the other two. Cheers. Foags.

Catching up online after working hard all week (including 26 hours nonstop). As I wrote in my combox at my place on all this I first noticed all this negative attention to this news from the Episcoloopians at Naughton’s Café: the dean of Atlanta’s back-handed slaps about being happy for those poor unenlightened folk who need authority and structure and finding such with the wops.

By George you’ve got it, Chris.

Of course they believe their denomination teaches the truth – I don’t begrudge them that.

But all this venom over a move NOTHING to do with them really – this is for English Anglo-Papalists and will affect neither the Piskies nor the conservatives in ACNA, who simply aren’t interested in it – says:

1. Yep, they’re still bigots and snobs just like many country-club Episcopalians 50 years ago. The class markers have changed – they’ve pigged out on granola so hauteur seems out of style – but the class makeup is dead the same.

2. Coming from that old sense of entitlement they’re crybaby a$$holes.

3. Deep down they really respect the Holy Father and want his approval. The law of God is written in the hearts of all people, and in their hearts – perhaps more in the case of these ex-RC spokespeople – they know Catholicism’s right and they’re wrong.

I’ll admit it’s rather fun to see these folk tie themselves up in knots over this.

Bonus: Anglicanism in less than 100 words.

The state dragged the English from being Catholics to ‘parish anglicans’, Christopher Haigh’s description of villagers around 1600 who accepted the new religion but treated it reverently like the old; then the English Civil War dragged them through Calvinism; then as Archbishop Robert Morse said that inevitably shattered into unitarianism and agnosticism, and Freemasonry, in the 1700s whence came America’s founding fathers. The Methodists and later the Anglo-Catholics were trying to revive a corpse essentially. Not that there aren’t good Christians among the Anglicans today but that’s the ecclesiastical reality.

Sorry, conservative Protestants, but if you believe in a fallible church, you may not be where the Piskies are but are on the same track. It’s inevitable. Get off the death train. Bill Murchison gets it: the ‘Reformation’ was a mistake.

We all need on some terms or other to be back together. The Reformation, as time marches on, looks more and more like the worst idea in human history.

Chances are only a handful of C of E people will switch – a replay of 1993 – but then again I didn’t predict Pope Benedict’s Catholic revival.

Te Deum laudamus: te Dominum confitemur…

Let’s see…it is meet and right for liberal Episcopalians to send missionaries to Latin America in search of disaffected, wayward and nominal Catholics to boost TEC’s international profile and episcopal clout at Lambeth Conferences, but it is not okay for the Catholic Church to give shelter to some of Anglicanism’s most beautiful and ancient elements threatened with extinction by these same liberals.

The liberal mind makes me go “Hmmm….”

CJ,

I’d like to propose my own thoughts on why TEC liberals hate this proposal. I think they hate it for the same reasons they hate the ACNA. Both the ACNA and the new Ordinariates make possible permanent structures which will challenge TEC’s claim to being the authentic and only voice of Anglicanism. Suddenly, those that had been marginalized by the left virtually out of existence are at center stage, have the bulliest of pulpits, clout and institutional heft many, many times greater than their numbers alone would suggest.

The previously freaky fringe in the liberal mind now is the bridge to the weightiest body in Christianity. Those who once could see their own machinations in TEC as the destiny of all Anglicanism have just witnessed their worst enemies become the ones with the greatest opportunity to thrive into perpetuity. Who looks like the outsiders now, folks?

Not only that, but these ordinariates may prove in the long run to be models for communion between East and West, making the nobodies of TAC actually the linchpin of the Christian future. TAC a virtual unknown before 2 years ago now has the eyes of the world upon it…and that was supposed to be Susan Russell’s place. SHE was the one who was to write the future of Christianity!

To quote myself from T19 earlier today:

[i]What I see most of all in the pope’s offer is perhaps a kind of divine irony.

Anglicanism which did its best at one time to destroy the Catholic Church in England and which so fervently reviled the office of the papacy, now finds the greatest hope of saving its most beautiful elements in a Dunkirk-like rescue by a pope offered as a protection from its own.

Such historic alignments and ironies seem surely to many to be the work of the Holy Spirit.[/i]

On a lighter note, what will these new Catholics be called? They wont be Roman Catholics. I’m one of those.

Western Uniate Catholics? no way.
Anglo-Catholics? taken.
English Catholics. nope, those are Latins in England.
Anglican Catholics? maybe. but sounds awkward to me.
Sarum Rite Catholics? hmmmm…. has possibilities. It is just exotic enough to capture the imagination!

My guess would be either Anglican Catholics or Anglican Use Catholics.

Given “Anglican-Catholic” churches being in existence already, wouldn’t that term be likewise already taken? Maybe not, given that a number of those bodies are anyway favouring Rome and are more than likely planning on joining that camp on the newly-offered terms…

Thus, it’s either Anglican-Catholics (Anglicanates?) or Sarum-Rite Catholics (becoming Sarumites?)…

A previous contribution”

“What’s wrong with: Catholic Church, Anglican Rite. This would be consistent with Catholic Church, Maronite Rite or Catholic Church, Greek Rite, Catholic Church, Chaldean Rite etc etc etc. You can’t use “ROMAN Catholic” and “Anglicans” in same title as it would be a contradiction in terms. Besides the term Roman Catholic is riddled with “equivalency” issues having originally been coined by the Anglicans to indicate that they are another equal branch of the “world wide” Catholic Church, which they now refer to as the “Church Catholic”. The correct title for the main and most common rite in the Catholic Church is “Catholic Church, Latin Rite.”

I think a lot of this depends on geography. Most of the emptying churches that I’ve heard about are in typically liberal states in the north and northeast. Here in Texas, we can’t seem to build them fast enough…literally.

Same for North Carolina. Catholicism flourishing in the Bible Belt…who’d-a thunk it?

With all this talk about skivvies getting in a twist — well, I can’t resist posting this:

http://www.pnj.com/article/20091023/NEWS01/910230346/1037

Off topic…sorry.

I work for the company mentioned in the article. Found the article on the company intranet.

Bp Provenzano (his real name is Larry, not Tony)is from my diocese. I met him almost twenty years ago, and he was fairly conservative and active in Cursillo and other aspects of the Renewal Movement. I ran into him once at a Promise Keepers event in Philadelphia; he was seriously interested.

He is himself a former Roman priest. He seems to have drunk the Kool-Aid over the last twenty years. I have some ideas as to why, but I am not confident enough of their accuracy to speculate in public. I do imagine that his Roman Catholic background gives some of the impetus to his violent response to the Pope’s offer.

Via con dios, amigos.

Actually, go with God would be “vaya con Dios.” “Via con dios (sic)” means “road with God.” Then again, that’s not so inaccurate when you think about it.

[...] about the Vatican’s recent Anglican initiative. Dr. Williams’ predecessor is furious”; A standard liberal reaction seems to be emerging to the Vatican’s recent Anglican [...]