Catholic Church Opens Door to Anglicans· January 13, 2010On October 20, 2009 the Vatican announced that it will welcome Anglicans into the Catholic Church in groups, not merely as individuals. The Vatican also said that there could be a special Anglican rite within the Catholic Church that recognizes the pope as their leader. The new rite would include former Anglican priests who would serve their former parishes and be re-ordained as Catholic priests, and who could remain married. It is thought by some that thousands of Anglican priests, in England, America and Australia could switch to Rome. There are some 80 million Anglicans world-wide. The sweeping move on the part of the Catholic Church is outwardly said to be an accommodation for conservative Anglican parishes who are upset with Canterbury over openly gay and women priests and offers a new ecclesiastical structure to absorb them. The new structure would in effect create a non-territorial diocese in which the former Anglican priest would be its personal ordinariate and who would be responsible to the local national Catholic bishops conferences of their relevant countries. Though the leaders of both communions downplay the papal move as merely a helpful gesture, it is apparent that much more is involved. Rome has strategically seized upon the new opportunity and aims to decimate the English church, one of the key protestant churches that arose during the Reformation. The Anglican Church helped spread the protestant faith and the protestant Bible (the King James Version) around the world through the growing British colonial superpower. Protestant Britain also became the parent nation of the United States of America, the first protestant country with a complete separation of church and state. The Anglican Church split from the Catholic Church some 450 years ago in the 16th century over an argument between King Henry VIII and the pope over a papal refusal to annul his marriage. Since the second Vatican Council in the 1960s however, the Vatican and the Anglican churches have been in ecumenical dialog leading to closer and closer relations. But as the Anglican Church has become more liberal, it is apparent that though relations between the two communions are cordial and friendly, long term prospects of official full sacramental union seem as distant as ever. Up until the Papal offer to disenchanted Anglicans, the Church of England has had continual declines in attendance of one percent each year. Though there are large numbers of baptized Anglicans, the rate of decline in attendance suggests that the church cannot survive for more than 30 years. “If decline continues,” wrote the UK Telegraph, “Christian Research has estimated that in five years’ time church closures will accelerate from their present rate of 30 a year to 200 a year as dwindling congregations find the cost of keeping them open too great.” Moreover, statistics show that only 128 live births in England are baptized for every 1000. The open doors of the Catholic Church will, no doubt, add to this decline. Instead of full official and sacramental unity with the Catholic Church, the Anglican communion is more likely to disintegrate and lose its justification for being the established church in England. In 2008, the Anglican General Synod known as the Lambeth Conference took the decision to ordain woman priests. Since there was no special provision for conservative congregations to bypass women priests and seek Episcopal oversight by male priests, many Anglican conservatives saw the 2008 decision as the “last straw.” The Anglican Church was already fragmenting over the ordination of openly gay priests and the blessing of same-sex unions. But the Lambeth decision, according to the UK Independent, “radically shifted attitudes in Rome.” Rome decided that the Synod vote had decisively answered the question about Anglican unity. Their view, wrote the Independent, was that “Anglicanism was a lost cause.” Suddenly the new situation provided a significant opportunity to the Vatican which Rome is not going to let pass without improving upon it to her own advantage. Cardinal Levada, Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, who made the announcement, “said ‘hundreds’ of Anglicans around the world have expressed their desire to join the Catholic Church. Among them are 50 Anglican bishops, said Archbishop Joseph Augustine Di Noia of the Congregation for Divine Worship,” wrote CNN. “The Holy Spirit is at work here,” he said. The open arms of the Catholic Church will certainly be appealing to many Anglicans. Two years ago, the Traditional Anglican Communion, an association of churches that is separate from the Anglican Communion and has hundreds of thousands of members worldwide, “petitioned the Vatican for unity with the Catholic Church with the stipulation that the group retain its Anglican rites,” continued CNN. “The TAC’s primate, Archbishop John Hepworth of Australia, said in a statement Tuesday that the Vatican’s announcement ‘more than matches the dreams we dared to include in our petition two years ago.’” There are other groups of conservative Anglicans that want to join with Rome as well. The move by Rome came as a surprise to Canterbury. Dr Rowan Williams, primate of the Church of England, “wrote to his bishops,” said the Independent, “to say that the move was not ‘an act of proselytism or aggression’ or ‘at all intended to undermine existing relations between our two communions.’” Yet the dramatic change cannot be understood as merely a practical accommodation for those unhappy with the recent Anglican decisions. This move threatens the stability of the Anglican Church. In spite of denials to the contrary and the spin put upon it by the Catholic and Anglican clergy, this is an obvious attempt to strip the Anglican Church of at least some of its members and bring them into the Catholic Church. “The Pope’s plan” said the Independent, “will allow traditionalists to defect… leaving the Archbishop of Canterbury and a dwindling centrist core with an ever more difficult job to fend off calls for disestablishment from increasingly aggressive secularists,” not to mention the outright loss of members. Disestablishment is the term used to describe the process of removing government support for the church through taxation. The papal move could be a death blow to the Anglican Church. “Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican’s top ecumenical official,” reported the National Catholic Reporter, “went out of his way during a Vatican news conference to insist that, ‘We are not fishing in the Anglican lake.’ Yet out of respect for freedom of religion, Kasper said, the Catholic Church has a responsibility to respond when someone knocks on its door.” If an Anglican rite within the Catholic Church is “successful” in terms of bringing many Anglicans into the Church of Rome, perhaps other churches will also find a way to unite with Rome. Imagine a “Lutheran rite” within the Catholic Church, or a “Dutch Reformed” rite, or even a “Methodist” rite, and perhaps others. Maybe that idea is a little far-fetched, but when you think about the ecumenical movement and its impact on the protestant churches, this kind of solution could seem very attractive to these other churches severely compromised by liberalism and the ecumenical movement. No doubt they will be watching. In a written joint statement, reported by the U.S. National Catholic Reporter, the Catholic and Anglican churches in Britain said: “The apostolic constitution [creating the new structures] is further recognition of the substantial overlap in faith, doctrine and spirituality between the Catholic Church and the Anglican tradition… Without the dialogues of the past forty years, this recognition would not have been possible, nor would hopes for full visible unity have been nurtured. In this sense, this apostolic constitution is one consequence of ecumenical dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion.” “The provision of this new structure is consistent with the commitment to ecumenical dialogue, which continues to be a priority for the Catholic Church, particularly through the efforts of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity,” it said. Imagine what the loss of thousands of priests would do to the Anglican Church! Lacking a truly biblical alternative to the teachings of either Anglican or Catholic Churches, many of the conservative members of the Anglican communion will follow their priests and bishops into the Church of Rome. What an opportunity for the full truth of the three angels messages to be presented to them at this time! The papal move is very important in light of the forthcoming Sunday laws. Rome can never pressure the nations effectively to enact a universal Sunday law unless she has first regained control of most of the protestant churches, and has their support. This move may well be casting a wider net far beyond the Anglican Church. There is a very important lesson here. As liberalism engulfs a church, it leads to a conservative reaction and a splintering in which those who hold to the conservative view of scripture split from their church. Many, who do not have a clear understanding of the truth of scripture for the last days, return to Rome because Rome presents a conservative religious authority. One wonders if the Vatican itself can quietly claim that it was partly responsible for the Anglican “lost cause.” Perhaps it would be no surprise to learn someday that the liberalism of many protestant churches has been fostered by Rome through its own agents who infiltrated them. The Church of England said the move ends a “period of uncertainty” for Anglican groups who wanted more unity with the Catholic Church.” Both groups have a “substantial overlap in faith, doctrine and spirituality” and will continue to hold official dialogues, the archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster said in a joint statement. “And all the world wondered after the beast.” Revelation 13:3. “And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him…” verse 8. |
||||
|
This is a non-profit website | YouTube Videos |
||||