C of E Proposes Division...
...in attempt to keep Anglican Communion from splitting. The traditionalists may get their own church-within-a-church, with an all-male clergy. The immediate issue is the impending promotion of female priests to the Anglican episcopacy, though I can't help but think that recent dust-ups over the Communion's position on homosexuality (is it incompatible with the Bible? is it A-OK for bishops to be sexually active homosexuals? amazingly, the Anglican Communion seems to take both positions) played some role as well. The idea, I guess, is to give the traditionalists their own church within the Communion before they storm off and found their own outside of it. Gotta love Protestants; if there's one thing they're good at, it's founding new churches.
I wonder if this isn't good news for the Church. (The real one in Rome, not those wacky jokesters operating out of Canterbury.) If the traditionalists are formally organized as a group, it'll be easier to have them return, en masse to communion with the See of Peter. I can't believe that there's not going to be some movement in that direction, as the Archbishopric of Canterbury moves further and further away from the Christianity of their ancestors and becomes increasingly focused on global warming and celebration of Jesus as "the complete person". Sure, there'll be some who took fear of Rome with their mothers' milk who'll refuse to come back, but they'll come increasingly to be a small and isolated band in an ecclesial community that more and more resembles the Unitarians.
Not to be presumptuous, but may I recommend 2034 as a date? Precisely 500 years of Anglicanism will be, I think, precisely enough. And as a two-fer, we can finally beatify John Henry Newman that day too. When does Luke 15:11 fall in that year's liturgical calendar? It'll all be such fun, that 20 years later we can do it again with our Eastern brethren.
I wonder if this isn't good news for the Church. (The real one in Rome, not those wacky jokesters operating out of Canterbury.) If the traditionalists are formally organized as a group, it'll be easier to have them return, en masse to communion with the See of Peter. I can't believe that there's not going to be some movement in that direction, as the Archbishopric of Canterbury moves further and further away from the Christianity of their ancestors and becomes increasingly focused on global warming and celebration of Jesus as "the complete person". Sure, there'll be some who took fear of Rome with their mothers' milk who'll refuse to come back, but they'll come increasingly to be a small and isolated band in an ecclesial community that more and more resembles the Unitarians.
Not to be presumptuous, but may I recommend 2034 as a date? Precisely 500 years of Anglicanism will be, I think, precisely enough. And as a two-fer, we can finally beatify John Henry Newman that day too. When does Luke 15:11 fall in that year's liturgical calendar? It'll all be such fun, that 20 years later we can do it again with our Eastern brethren.
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