First ordinariate slated for England, Wales
My fiance's mom got me a subscription to Our Sunday Visitor this year. So I was just having a late lunch, reading the article "First ordinariate slated for England, Wales" by Austen Ivereigh in the 12 December 2010 edition. [I was going to link to the article online, but apparently you need to login in order to access it.]
Anyway, when the news first broke about the Anglican ordinariate, I didn't have much of an opinion on it. I figured, if these Anglicans want to place themselves under the jurisdiction of the papacy, more power to them.
However, reading this article about the first Anglican ordinariate to be formed made me slightly uncomfortable. It says:
Why will the ordinariate be so much larger than at first through? The answer lies partly in internal Church of England politics. Ever since the Church of England decided to proceed to ordain women as bishops, Anglo-Catholics have argued for a continuation of the special provision for those who object to the move, an extension of the separate episcopal oversight ("flying bishops") of Anglo-Catholic parishes put in place after the decision to ordain women as priests in 1992. Knowing that this year the Church of England Synod would be passing various measures enabling female bishops, even those Anglo-Catholics who were delighted by the pope's offer stayed quiet, not wanting to weaken their party's bargaining power.
After voting in February to proceed to ordaining women as bishops in 2012, the July synod delivered the final blow -- a narrow but decisive vote against allowing exemption from the authority of a female bishop. In July, some 70 Anglo-Catholics met an English Catholic bishop, Malcolm McMahon of Nottingham, for "preliminary discussion" on applying for an ordinariate. Although many Anglo-Catholics remained determined to continue to play synod politics, the majority realized that the time had come to choose between a Church of England that had gone in a decidedly Protestant direction, and a place in the Catholic Church that would enable them to retain their sense of separate identity.
So, I read that as basically saying that the reason these people are putting themselves under papal authority is NOT anything to do with seeing the Catholic Church as the place they belong, per se, but rather because they don't want women having authority over them? Is that how it sounds to anyone else?
I would be more comfortable if the decision of Anglo-Catholics to join the Catholic Church was because they feel that theologically the are so close to Catholicism that papal authority is a logical next step. But according to this article, the decision isn't really theological, it's political. It's not that they think Catholicism is right, it's that they think Anglicanism is wrong.
And that, just makes me a bit uncomfortable.
x-posted to my journal
Anyway, when the news first broke about the Anglican ordinariate, I didn't have much of an opinion on it. I figured, if these Anglicans want to place themselves under the jurisdiction of the papacy, more power to them.
However, reading this article about the first Anglican ordinariate to be formed made me slightly uncomfortable. It says:
Why will the ordinariate be so much larger than at first through? The answer lies partly in internal Church of England politics. Ever since the Church of England decided to proceed to ordain women as bishops, Anglo-Catholics have argued for a continuation of the special provision for those who object to the move, an extension of the separate episcopal oversight ("flying bishops") of Anglo-Catholic parishes put in place after the decision to ordain women as priests in 1992. Knowing that this year the Church of England Synod would be passing various measures enabling female bishops, even those Anglo-Catholics who were delighted by the pope's offer stayed quiet, not wanting to weaken their party's bargaining power.
After voting in February to proceed to ordaining women as bishops in 2012, the July synod delivered the final blow -- a narrow but decisive vote against allowing exemption from the authority of a female bishop. In July, some 70 Anglo-Catholics met an English Catholic bishop, Malcolm McMahon of Nottingham, for "preliminary discussion" on applying for an ordinariate. Although many Anglo-Catholics remained determined to continue to play synod politics, the majority realized that the time had come to choose between a Church of England that had gone in a decidedly Protestant direction, and a place in the Catholic Church that would enable them to retain their sense of separate identity.
So, I read that as basically saying that the reason these people are putting themselves under papal authority is NOT anything to do with seeing the Catholic Church as the place they belong, per se, but rather because they don't want women having authority over them? Is that how it sounds to anyone else?
I would be more comfortable if the decision of Anglo-Catholics to join the Catholic Church was because they feel that theologically the are so close to Catholicism that papal authority is a logical next step. But according to this article, the decision isn't really theological, it's political. It's not that they think Catholicism is right, it's that they think Anglicanism is wrong.
And that, just makes me a bit uncomfortable.
x-posted to my journal