Vatican Plan to Oversee Conversion of Anglicans - NYTimes.com Tom Smith

VATICAN CITY — In a move expected to cause confusion within Anglican and Catholic parishes alike, the Vatican on Tuesday announced it would make it easier for Anglicans uncomfortable with the Church of England’s acceptance of women priests and openly gay bishops to join the Catholic Church.

via www.nytimes.com

Nothing like a little editorializing in the lede. You would think the Times could save it at least until the last clause of the first sentence, but no. Anyway, I say you go Church. A tender offer is usually a good thing.

Not only that, but if this means there will be a Mass more like the traditional Anglican Mass, I'm all for it. I hate holding hands at Mass.

THIS is interesting and much more informative about the canon law structure.  It's quite interesting.  The Code of Canon Law will apparently be amended to set up "Personal ordinariates" which are similar to the personal prelature that Canon Law fans will be aware is the status enjoyed (solely at the moment) by Opus Dei.  Another analogy is to the structure used to minister to members of the military.  The personal ordinariate is in effect a separate non-territorial diocese which will have its own bishop and priests.  Priests may be married, but married priests won't be ordained as bishops.  I don't know what they will do with married bishops that that want come over.

Comments

[pcharles]

Wow, I didn't realize the Anglican Church was still considered a religion. It just got so diluted that I thought it was now considered a club, like the Unitarians.

[dearieme]

Bah. If women ministers are good enough for God's Kirk, they are good enough for Mrs Battenberg's.

[john knox]

For its serious congregants, all two dozen or so, it's been a halfway house on the road to Rome for several decades. For everyone else pcharles is right.

[jimbino]

I just got attacked at my local Senior Citizens' center by a cane-wielding RC who got very upset at my singing a couple of bars of Tom Lehrer's Vatican Rag ("fiddle with your rosary, genuflect, genuflect, genuflect) and Plastic Jesus (the whole damn holy family sittin' on the dashboard of my car). Or maybe because I also remarked that Tom Lehrer noted that "irony died the day they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize."

[hedberg]

It strikes me as funny that Anglicans and Episcopalians who are not happy about the acceptance of gay clergy in their current churches would want to join the Roman Catholic church in response. Frying pan and fire an all that, you know.

[john knox]

Hedberg, Is the RC really theologically liberal? I know you have the Jesuits and all that but the official doctrine coming from Rome would seem to be amenable to conservative anglos. In other words, what's the fire? A curious presbyterian would like to know.

[krome]

Now, now Hedburg. The RC doesn't condone gay marriage among its clergy.

It does have a distressing tendency to ignore/cover up the rather too common occurences of its clergy buggering boys. But it doesn't openly condone that either.

[john knox]

Aaah. Very clever Hedburg. Bonus punkte! Of course, it sounds like ratzi is allowing them to have their own organizational structure avoiding the lavender mafia.

[Lou Gots]

The Roman Catholic Church got itself in a bind over homosexual clergy because of the rule of priestly celibacy. There may have been practical reasons for the rule once, but changes in property laws and customs haver largely removed them. Moreover, medical science has rendered large families obsolete, so no longer are there third or fourth sons available for holy orders.

The reason for the rule changed, and what made the rule possible changed, but the rule persisted. This meant the Church had to reach toward the bottom of the barrel to fill its ranks. Families became loath to accept sole sons entering the celibate priesthood. On the other hand, asking homosexuals to remain unmarried is, in theory asking them to refrain not from a good thing, as would ber the case of heterosexuals, but from an intrinsically bad thing, which they should have avoided in any case. In the old days, we spoke of three states in life, clergy, married and single, that is those persons who, while not called to religious life, were nontheless not suited for marriage--not the marrying kind, if it must be spelled out. We got into trouble with individuals who chose the priesthood as an alternative to the married state less because of vocation than out of aversion to heterosexual marriage.

The Holy Father has announced that those predisposed to the disorder of homosexual behavior should be excluded from the priesthood. This is easier said than done, for the foregoing economic and demographic reasons. None of this changes the Church's teaching of homosexual practice as intrinsically disordered, in contravention of divine positive law and contrary to natural law. For this reason, as well as all the other dissonances between traditional Christian culture and neopagan, antinomian chaos, all Christians for whom the Bible makes a difference need to hang together or we shall surely go ad leones separately.

[Johnny]

Anyone who uses the expression "disorder of homosexual behavior" should be tarred and feathered.