I saw this, this morning, in an interview with Tom Wright, former Anglican bishop of Durham and now a research professor at St Andrews University, and thought it interesting:
`Asked to comment on the Vatican's 'Ordinariate' scheme to enable Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church, and the desire in a parish at Folkestone to change allegiance, Bishop Wright said that people had thought that there were "dozens of parishes ready to jump", adding: "Many of the Roman Catholic bishops that I know in England were not terribly happy at the thought that they might have to administer this kind of whole extra wrinkle on top of the complicated structure they've already got, and I did hear one Roman Catholic priest - how representative I don't know - saying we've got quite enough traditionalists in our own Church without having all yours as well." `
I wasn`t aware that Catholic dioceses were a `complicated structure`. However there is no need for hard-pressed diocesan bishops having to worry about adminstering another structure as the ordinariates will not be under their authority but answerable to Rome.
`Asked to comment on the Vatican's 'Ordinariate' scheme to enable Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church, and the desire in a parish at Folkestone to change allegiance, Bishop Wright said that people had thought that there were "dozens of parishes ready to jump", adding: "Many of the Roman Catholic bishops that I know in England were not terribly happy at the thought that they might have to administer this kind of whole extra wrinkle on top of the complicated structure they've already got, and I did hear one Roman Catholic priest - how representative I don't know - saying we've got quite enough traditionalists in our own Church without having all yours as well." `
I wasn`t aware that Catholic dioceses were a `complicated structure`. However there is no need for hard-pressed diocesan bishops having to worry about adminstering another structure as the ordinariates will not be under their authority but answerable to Rome.
2 comments:
They don't have nearly enough 'traditionalists' in any diocese. What they do have are too many 'modernists', 'liberals' call them what you will among both clergy (of all ranks!) & laity who are ready to both do their own thing & to encourage others to do likewise.
I understand that our Bishops feel that Anglicanorum Coetibus is damaging to ecumenism, and therefore the offer should not have been made. An alternative view, and one I favour, is that ecumenism was severely damaged by intitially, the CofE ordaining women to the priesthood, and that ordination to the episcopacy would follow as night follows day.
The Pope's offer to Anglo Catholics was actually a generous and caring concern for those Anglicans who were, in effect, being driven out of their Church.
The setting up of the Ordinariate should have no impact whatever on the Catholic Bishops' Conference, but the virtual silence from the Bishops in public on this issue is seen as being covertly hostile to the wishes of the Pope.
Traditional Catholics should welcome the reconciliation to Rome of a body of clergy and laity whose liturgical practices are closer to our way of doing things, and who knows? - their influence might even spread to the wider Catholic Church.
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