You are here
Anglo-Catholics Lose Their Escape Hatch-Good
by Pat Archbold Sunday
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/anglo-catholics_lose_their_escape_hatch_--_good/
July 11, 2010
Over the weekend, the protestants of the Anglican communion acted like protestants. Good.
This past weekend the General Synod of the Church of England rejected a compromise over women's ordination aimed at maintaining the unity of the Church of England. The compromise would have allowed for male Bishop's only for those who reject female ordination and female bishops for the rest. A two-tiered episcopacy intended to maintain some semblance of unity.
The acceptance of women Bishops in the Church of England is now a foregone conclusion. Believe it or not, this is a good thing.
This closes for the good the escape hatch for those in the Church of England who maintain they are orthodox in belief. Without the escape hatch of a dual episcopacy, Anglo-Catholics will finally have to decide. Are you in or are you out.
Is maintaining allegiance and unity with the Church of England more important than maintaining allegiance and unity with the teachings of Christ? The can no longer pretend to have both.
Of course, many of those who professed some sort of Catholic identity will just accept women's ordination to the episcopacy. In truth, they probably accepted it long ago. But there may be others who had really convinced themselves that the Church of England had maintained orthodoxy. But the lie has now been exposed for all eternity. In order to be Anglo-Catholic you have to be Catholic first, Anglo second. It is the Ordinariate or nothing.
Damian Thompson writes:
This point would not need spelling out but for the myth that has grown up that the Ordinariate creates "Anglicans in communion with the Holy See". Nonsense. What it creates are former Anglicans who worship together in a new juridical structure which allows them to retain elements of their patrimony (which may be as major as adopting an Anglican-influenced translation of the Roman Rite, or as minor as not singing out of tune)... But every single member of the Ordinariate, clerical and lay, will be a member of the Latin-rite Church governed by the Supreme Pontiff and therefore - though it is not the Church's preferred term - a Roman Catholic. And I know I speak for many Catholics when I say that they will be very welcome indeed.
He is exactly right. The only people who can now call themselves Anglo-Catholics must become Roman Catholics of the Anglican Ordinariate.
Unity is a good which cannot be achieved at the expense of truth.
Anglo-Catholics must take the Pope up on his offer or call themselves by their proper name. Protestants.
END
