Anglicans Wonder After…· March 29, 2010

      The leaders of the Anglican Catholic Church of the United States and Canada separately sent petitions to the Vatican requesting full communion with the Catholic Church through the implementation of ‘Anglicanorum Coetibus,’” the new papal constitution that allows groups of Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church en masse through a new type of canonical structure that permits them to retain their Anglican rites and priests though under the authority of the pope.

      “The Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), which is not connected to the Anglican Communion whose head is the Archbishop of Canterbury. It has some 400,000 members worldwide. The leaders of the TAC sent a letter in October 2007 to the Vatican to request full unity with the Catholic Church. They declared their adherence to Catholic doctrine, but expressed the desire to retain some distinct Anglican traditions. Rome, through its Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, reviewed the matter and proposed an alternate regional dicastery in the country where each branch is located in November of last year.

      The leaders of the American and Canadian branches of the TAC have each requested that the Vatican set up a regional dicastery in the U.S. and Canada respectively so that their communions can be taken into the Catholic Church.

      “Leaders of the Anglican Church in America announced on March 3 the decision to formally request the implementation of ‘Anglicanorum Coetibus’ in the United States,” wrote Zenit.

      Then on March 12, the leaders of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada sent a letter to Cardinal Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctine of the Faith requesting full communion through the establishment of a regional dicastery for them.

      In their petition, the [Canadian] leaders expressed the desire to ‘seek a communal and ecclesial way of being Anglican Catholics in communion with the Holy See, at once treasuring the full expression of Catholic faith and treasuring our tradition within which we have come to this moment.’”

      Traditional Anglicans will have taken the final step back to Rome after leaving the Anglican Church over liberal issues related to ordination of gay priests, and blessing of same sex unions. But instead of pursuing the real truth, they are returning to the Catholic Church. Perhaps this has been Rome’s aim all along. Encouraging liberal theology and practice, always leads to a conservative reaction, which can bring the conservatives right back into the bosom of Rome.

      Zenit News Article

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