I Want You
THE POPE, who is this week meeting the Archbishop of Canterbury, is drawing up plans to welcome disaffected Anglicans into the Roman Catholic Church.
Pope Benedict XVI is keen to reach out to conservative Anglicans who have been antagonised by their church’s stance on women priests and homosexuality. Senior Vatican figures are understood to have drawn up a dossier on the most effective means of attracting disenchanted Anglicans.
The recruitment drive is a potential embarrassment for Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is travelling to Italy for his meeting with the Pope.
It is understood that Fr Joseph Augustine di Noia, undersecretary of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the most powerful of the Vatican’s departments, has led a team analysing the current schism in the Anglican world.
...In America, some of the 2.5m Anglicans have already left the church and become Catholics. In some cases, entire parishes have “defected”, but they have been allowed to continue with some of their Anglican traditions and prayers.
John Myers, the Archbishop of Newark, New Jersey, who has been involved in supporting former Anglicans who have converted to Catholicism, has been helping di Noia with his recruitment dossier. He travelled to Rome last month to suggest ways of appealing to Anglicans.
The Pope’s enthusiasm for bringing traditional Anglicans into the fold was expressed powerfully three years ago when as Cardinal Ratzinger he sent greetings to a group of conservative churchmen meeting in Texas in protest at the election of Robinson.
The way the article is framed this seems rather dubious. As if they was planning some specific recruitment drive aimed at conservative Anglicans. For one thing what can the Vatican do compared to what the Anglican communion isn't already doing to repel conservative Anglicans?
There could be some things in the works though. The website for The Pastoral Provision, the process to bring in Anglican priests into the priesthood, has recently been spruced up. There could also be an effort to make Anglican Use parishes more available - though this is just conjecture. Any effort to heal the schism is very unlikely since the split has been widening at a pace to make the Grand Canyon seem like a crack in the sidewalk by comparison. Any efforts at this will primarily be done at the individual and the rare case a whole parish level. Diogneses has a good post on this subject.
Now if there was an actual campaign to attract disaffected Catholics - what would it look like? A campaign could be the reverse of this one in a Simpson's episode.
Though "Welcome pissed-off Anglicans" just doesn't have the desired ring to it.
Maybe something more like this.
Known as 
I love the 'I want you' poster! lol
"Nearest Parish R.C.I.A."
Assuming the rcia program is not run by the same kind of moonmaiden Leftists the Anglicans are trying to get away from. :)
I see the Anglican Church disappearing - the "conservative" wing (I'm not sure why its conservative to hold to traditional Christianity) will mostly defect into the Catholic Church, and the rest will gradually come to believe pretty much anything, in short they will have become Unitarians with priests and bishops and expensive real estate. That won't last.
The Congregationalists used to be Puritans.
Where's the link to the original article?
Would it work to call them "Pisked Off...Palians"?
The Congregationalists used to be Puritans.
And the Unitarians developed out of the Congregationalists.
Actually,
What the Pope could actually do is make an Anglican Rite. Consecrate one of the conservative Anglican Bishops to lead it, allow them to use the book of Common Prayer with the required changes.
This will give the Anglican Exodus a structure, legitimacy, and Apostolic Succession that would make it easier to facilitate leaving.
John:
What the Pope could actually do is make an Anglican Rite. Consecrate one of the conservative Anglican Bishops to lead it, allow them to use the book of Common Prayer with the required changes..
I am not 100% sure, but I think I read somewhere that Pope John Paul II did just that and the Anglo Catholic church is the result. I'm far too lazy to research this thoroughly though......
There are Anglo Catholics who pray daily for the Anglican church to wake up and rejoin the Mother Church.
"...but they have been allowed to continue with some of their Anglican traditions and prayers."
Now if they would only let us Catholics continue our traditions (like kneeling) and prayers (like the Confiditor)...
I think that the "Anglican Rite" mentioned above will come about in the opposite direction. This is the event line I foresee:
Nice dream, PMcGrath, but I don't believe it will happen. Akinola's more evangelical than catholic. If the catholic wing of Anglicanism had legs, I very likely wouldn't be in RCIA right now. As it is, conservative Anglicanism is dominated by evangelicals who are far more committed to sola scriptura than to catholic unity, and who (all too often) sneeze at the mention of the papacy. The Anglo-Catholic movement is a (very) small minority. (Personally, I can't figure out why serious Anglo-Catholics remain separate from Rome--my best guess is an unacknowledged commitment to private judgment, but that's only a guess.)
Not that I wouldn't love to be wrong, mind you...
Peace,
--Peter
I know a few Anglo-Catholics and they seem to stick it out in order to be a landing place for those Anglicans who are getting more and more disgusted with the nonsense of the church. From there in not too many years, I truly believe they will make the formal leap to the Roman Catholic church. It is where their hearts truly are. As of just now, they are the salt in the dough of a very lumpy church!
The anglican church is dead and has been since horny henry 8 declared himself pope of England. It was and remains not only schismatic but heretical. Looking at the debauchery in the so-called anglican communion in Canada and the U.S. in 2006 and the stats that less that 2% of Britains attend services on a weekly bases tells the whole story. Formerly devout anglicans are knocking on Romes door and their not coming in to attend Paul 6/bugnini novus ordo masses.The revisionists like henry 8 & Lizzy 1, cranmer, cromwell etc etc and their actions way back when have encouraged the secular revisionism that is England today and worldwide anglicanism as a whole. The mainstream schismatics like lutherans, anglicans, presbyterians etc are dying world wide. The areas of Christian growth are Orthodox Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy and to a lesser degree evangelicals, J.W's and the mormon fruitcakes. Shalom