The Independent, an newspaper in Ireland, has the story of three hundred Anglicans who are about to be received into the Roman Catholic Church.
Why did they leave the Anglican Communion? They left over their disagreement over the ordination of women. "But wait", you say, "I thought it's only the Roman Catholic Church that loses members over women's ordination?"
Read the story. The membership of these three parishes left the worldwide Anglican Communion because they're against women's ordination.
1 comment:
Honestly Father, as much as I would love to donate a few extra place settings for these folks, I am pretty sure that this article got it wrong in about 6 ways.
There is no impending reception - there is a letter to Rome that is rather open-ended, leaving the Devil in the details... To make it sound like arrangements are being made for them to come in en masses in the near future at a set date (which I fear the article might lead one to think) is probably not terribly accurate.
This group is likely not as large as the oft-touted 400,000 members. But then again, there are lies, damned lies, statistics, and ecclesial statistics.
To say that they are asking to come home to Rome because of the women's ordination issue is a bit of a half-truth. There is truth to that being part of the reason they split, to be sure... But I think the isolation combined with looking at the success rates of all other "Continuing Anglican" bodies coupled with the state of liturgical (mainline) Protestantism today... I think the writing is on the wall.
Time will tell what comes of this. It has been their stated goal to "pope up" for some time. Maybe something will get off the ground this time around.
Let's pray for it.
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