Anglican Roundup - Liberals Get Smug While Conservatives Move Toward Rome

(First Things) - Such an event was Benedict XVI’s landmark announcement in October 2009 offering members of the Anglican Communion a fast track into the Catholic Church. Although commentators quickly dubbed this unexpected overture a “gambit,” what it truly exhibits are the characteristics of a move known in chess as a “brilliancy,” an unforeseen bold stroke that stunningly transforms the game. In the short run, knowledgeable people agree, this brilliancy of Benedict’s may not seem to amount to much. Some 1000 Church of England priests may convert and some 300 parishes turn over to Rome—figures that, while significant when measured against the dwindling numbers of practicing Anglicans there, are nonetheless mere drops in the Vatican’s bucket.

But in the longer run—say, over the coming decades—Rome’s move looks consequential in another way. It is the latest and most dramatic example of how orthodoxy, rather than dissent, seems once again to have taken the driver’s seat of Christianity. Every traditionalist who joins the long and already illustrious history of reconversion to the Catholic Church just tips the religious balance more toward Rome. This further weakens a religious communion battered from within by decades of intra-Anglican culture wars. Meanwhile, the progressives left behind may well find the exodus of their adversaries a Pyrrhic victory. How will they possibly make peace with the real majority of Anglicans today—the churches in Africa, whose leaders have repeatedly denounced the Communion’s abandonment of traditional teachings? Questions like these are why a few commentators now speak seriously about something that only recently seemed unthinkable: whether the end of the Anglican Communion itself might now be in sight....

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(Telegraph) - [Anglican] Archbishop Sentamu: “If people genuinely realise that they want to be Roman Catholic, they should convert properly, and go through catechesis and be made proper Catholics. This kind of creation [the Apostolic Constitution] — well, all I can say is, we wish them every blessing and may the Lord encourage them. But as far as I am concerned, if I was really, genuinely wanting to convert, I wouldn’t go into an ordinariate. I would actually go into catechesis and become a truly converted Roman Catholic and be accepted.”

William Crawley: “So those Anglicans who take advantage of the Apostolic Constitution, you’re saying, would not be ‘proper Catholics’?”

Archbishop Sentamu: “Well, I mean, I’d be very surprised –”

William Crawley: “What would they be if they are not ‘proper Catholics’?”

Archbishop Sentamu: “They would be what they are: an ordinariate of the Vatican.”

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(Telegraph) - Ruth Gledhill has been leaked the Bishop of Manchester’s statement to the General Synod today, in which he will reveal that the Synod committee revising the legislation is not offering opponents of women bishops alternative oversight. If they behave themselves, they can keep women bishops out of their churches but, er, that’s it. At least, that’s how I read his long statement, though in the C of E you can never be sure of anything. The Anglo-Catholics were shafted by the full Synod last summer; the revision committee has now confirmed this, apparently; and any last-minute rescue by the full Synod seems jolly unlikely...

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(The Montreal Gazette) - All of the 104 archbishops of Canterbury throughout history have been men, beginning more than 1,400 years ago with Saint Augustine.

Bishop Williams said Monday many Church of England members "maybe felt alienated or grieved" by the vote to permit female bishops, but others "felt elated by the step forward that had been taken."

In her comments, the 54-year-old Bishop Matthews said "it would be difficult to say the timeline" for when a woman might become the archbishop of Canterbury, but noted one-third of Anglican provinces have now given permission for women to become bishops.

Archdeacon Michael Pollesel, general secretary of the Anglican Church of Canada, said yesterday it's conceivable a Canadian woman -- perhaps even Bishop Matthews -- could become archbishop of Canterbury one day.

"It would be possible for a female Canadian Anglican to be appointed to a bishop's post in England, since the Church of England has recently voted to ordain female bishops," he said...

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THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: I realize there are some conservatives within the Anglican Communion who still have some fight left in them, and won't jump ship until they know they've done everything that can possibly be done to prevent it's sinking. That being said the bow of the ship is already under water, so now might be a good time to to get into a lifeboat. I admire the valiant effort of those who won't give up until the last moment, but please, why drag this out any longer than it needs to be? The HMS Canterbury is sinking, and there's nothing anyone can do to save her now.