According to the Associated Press,
"Pope Benedict XVI has created a new church structure for Anglicans who want to join the Catholic Church, responding to the disillusionment of some Anglicans over the ordination of women and the election of openly gay bishops.The new provision will allow Anglicans to join the Catholic Church while maintaining their Anglican identity and many of their liturgical traditions...The new church structure, called Personal Ordinariates, will be units of faithful within the local Catholic Church headed by former Anglican prelates ... Those Anglicans who have approached the Holy See have made clear their desire for full, visible unity in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. ... The new canonical provision allows married Anglican priests to become ordained Catholic priests — much the same way that Eastern rite priests who are in communion with Rome are allowed to be married.
The announcement was kept under wraps until the last moment: The Vatican only announced Levada's briefing Monday night, and Levada only flew back to Rome after finalizing the details at midnight."
Here's a different perspective:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.liturgy.co.nz/blog/end-of-anglican-communion/1756
There's a rather apocalyptic take on this event over at First Things. http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2009/10/20/pope-anglicans-liturgy-welcome/
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This is very big. If this reconnection is well-facilitated, we may see the entire African arm of the Church of England (which is currently its most vibrantly-growing branch) cross the Tiber, and that will be a very interesting development, especially as Catholics are exposed to the Anglican-use liturgy, which will remind many of everything they loved about the Latin mass, but in the glorious language of the Anglican liturgy. This may accelerate the already-growing movement within the Catholic church to correct some of the liturgical excesses and errors we’ve seen in the last 40 years.
As a Roman Catholic, I am confused on one point. The Church says that married Anglican parish priests coming into the church will be good and effective priests, despite being married, and it has said for centuries that Eastern Rite Catholic parish priests are good and effective priests, despite being married. Why then the irrational insistence that all other parish priests must be celibate? in order to be good priests? Originally, ALL Christian priests (aside from monastics and bishops perhaps) could be married. I just don't get it.
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