The Apostolic Constitution

Anglicanorum coetibus Providing for Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans Entering into Full Communion with the Catholic Church (November 4, 2009) - in English

Complementary Norms for the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus (November 4, 2009) - in English

I'm waiting to see what some canonists think, but at a first reading, it all looks pretty impressively done.

Notes on All Saints Day

I've read through the clarification from the Press Office on married men being ordained and I've read reaction and analysis to it around the blogosphere both saying that it both clarifies and muddies the issue. We'll wait for the apostolic constitution.

For those of you who have come upon this blog looking for information on papal appearances, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I do not have the fluency in Italian to serve as the Holy Father's social diary. I wish you well though in finding what you're looking for.

Rorate always has good posts compiling relevant excerpts from Catholic history and tradition: this is one of them.

Homeless Widows and Orphans

From the Belfast Telegraph care of Kendall Harmon:

At the moment when a Catholic priest retires, the church only has responsibility towards him.

But what if the priest was married, has a wife and family?

Where would they go if they had to vacate their parochial home? What would they live on? What would happen to clerical widows or, even more distressingly, orphaned children?

Secondly, how could the Catholic Church maintain its stance on clerical celibacy?

It cannot argue logically that it is permissible for married Anglican clergy to convert to full communion with the Catholic Church and yet deny Catholic clergy the right to marriage.

Bolding mine. I don't bring all these questions up in my posts because I'm opposed to this move by the Pope. On the contrary, I am all for it. The Anglican Communion has been a mess for years now and it's about time Rome stepped in in an authoritative way, especially with the TAC petitioning for entrance. However, these are all questions that are going to need to be answered in the Apostolic Constitution or any companion documents before people start coming over or else Rome is going to have a real mess on its hands as the usual circumstances of human life rear their ugly heads.

Kudos to Kendall Harmon for bringing together so many good links on all of this.

Contraception

From a Commonweal blog post linked to by Kendall Harmon:

A friend of mine, a former Anglican actually, brought up an issue that I hadn’t thought about with respect to the new Anglican rite: contraception. In 1930, the Lambeth Conference declared that contraception was not always immoral, and could be used (for serious reason) to regulate the number of children that a married couple had. That declaration prompted a negative response from the Roman Catholic Church–the encyclical Casti Connubii, which declared that the use of contraception was never morally permissible. As most people know, that stance was reaffirmed by Humanae Vitae.

Now, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that the prohibition against contraception is not a matter of “rite” or religious practice–it is a matter of natural law, binding not only upon Catholics, but upon all persons. So Anglicans who join the Catholic Church will be expected to conform to the prohibition There is no such thing as a dispensation from the strictures of negative moral absolutes. It’s true, of course, that many Roman Catholics make their own decisions about this matter, and come to their own private peace with God in the “internal forum” of their conscience. But the new influx of Anglicans will include people who will not be able to come to a purely private peace–the married members of the clergy, who will be required to follow Humanae Vitae no less than other married persons.

As far as I am aware, however, the morality of contraception under certain circumstances has been more or less a settled issue among Anglicans–even traditionally minded Anglicans. How will this change work out?

As we know, the leaders of the Traditional Anglican Communion have already signed the Catechism of the Catholic Church and they and their followers must be prepared to accept Catholic dogma and doctrine and all that it requires.

But for other Anglicans who may have issues with the Anglican Communion, but are not so interested in all that comes with Rome, one hopes Rome is prepared with its requirements for ordaining married Anglicans that this is singled out as a primary point.

Marriage

From Rorate, a quote by John Hepworth in an interview:

JH: Bishops in the new Anglican structure will be unmarried. This is out of respect for the tradition of Eastern and Western Christianity. But priests who come from Anglicanism will be able to serve as priests in the new structure, whether married or not, after satisfying certain requirements. The truly radical element is that married men will be able to be ordained priests in the Anglican structure indefinitely into the future. It is anticipated that Anglican bishops who are married when they joined the new structure will still be able to serve as priestly ordinaries, exercising some of the responsibilities of bishops.

Yeah...

...I was afraid of this. Ruth Gledhill yesterday:

A source in Rome tells me that the African bishops have been watching the Anglican developments with interest, in some cases with amazement. Even though England, Wales and the US have been quietly receiving married former Anglican priests to work as Catholic priests for decades, it seems that until this new Apostolic Constitution with its juridical implications was announced, the African bishops had no idea this had been going on.

Now that it is to get canonical standing, some of these bishops are asking, understandably, 'If they can, why can't we......?'

Maybe those who are suggesting the Anglican annexe about to be built onto Rome may be better described as a Trojan horse are on to something. Even the superbly-informed Francis Rocca is writing about the new light this throws on the celibacy issue, so you never know.

Ruth certainly represents a specific constituency (above the passage cited here, she was giving praise to NCReporter for its reporting on the Anglican ordinariate announcement), but if her source is reliable, then certainly such rumblings will have to be headed off immediately. Hard and fast rules are needed now to both clarify the situation for possibly incoming Anglicans and answer those Catholic clerics who are less attached to celibacy than the Pope, especially with Archbishop Milingo still in recent memory.

Anglican Ordinaries

I don't have all the links to the statements and responses just now as I've been off to the dentist this morning. As it has been noted by various people, there are several key points that await clarification when the apostolic constitution is made public:

-There there be one uniform 'Anglican' liturgy?

-Will married clergy be permitted past the first generation?

-What are the differences between the new structure and existing ones?

And so on. Past posts at this blog do much to lay out the background of today's announcements.

TAC News

From Father Z and Rorate Caeii.

Some kind of prelature by Easter? We'll see.

Cardinal Newman's Feast

Last June 29, I posted a few comments culled from another blog's comments section regarding the negotiations between the Traditional Anglican Communion and Rome. Today, I came home and checked my email and found a comment to be moderated for that post.

The anonymous commenter posted the following: "Look for something to happen on this concurrent with +JH Newman's beatification."

Consider, for what it's worth.

Comments on the Anglican Situation

Mr. Peter Karl T. Perkins of Victoria, Canada is one of many contributors to the comments over at Rorate Caeli. In one of his various comments, he asserts that after the Traditional Anglican Communion and those of the Church of England who wish to enter into communion with Rome complete an organizational structure, the GAFCON/Global South community of Anglican churches will "join a uniate TAC within five years, bringing one-third of the world's Anglicans with them."

I bring this up because I wish to invite Mr. Perkins to lay out his thoughts on why the Global South and GAFCON would be willing to enter into communion with Rome when so much of their theology and practice seems to me more along the protestant rather than the Catholic tradition.

The Anglican Situation

As I reported the other day, various sources familiar with the situation with the TAC say that things are moving forward and that it could be resolved anytime now.

In the meantime, the Church of England voted to 'ordain' women. Due to this, a sizable group led by an Anglican 'bishop' has asked to come over to Rome. All kinds of links can be found at the blogs listed at the left under Daily Readings, so I'm not going to link to them all here.

As one commenter at one of those blogs pointed out, this situation with the Church of England has been on its way for years and years, so it stands to reason that Rome has a contingency plan for just this situation. What it turns out to be remains to be seen.

Coming Home to Rome

With events with the SSPX moving forward to some form of conclusion (or at least a new condition), there is also word out there that the process continues for the Traditional Anglican Communion's petition for communion with the Church of Rome. Two comments at the blog TitusOneNine shed light on the subject.

In the first comment, 'Ad Orientem' has this to say:

TAC has pretty much written off the Anglican Communion and the ABC. They are mostly Anglo-Catholic in their orientation and are far more conservative than most of the GAFCON crowd rejecting women’s ordination among other things. They really would have no reason to participate in GAFCON since they have submitted a petition to the Pope in Rome asking to be received into communion with the Holy See as a sort of uniate Anglican Rite Church analogous to the Byzantine Rite Catholics.

The last I heard was their petition is being handled by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in Rome, and they are waiting for a reply from the Vatican. In making this petition they have of course petty much signed onto all of the dogmatic teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. They hope to retain a distinctly Anglican liturgy and a married clergy. There have been a number of rumors circulating of late that Rome might be preparing to make some sort of decision but are holding off until after the Lamberth meeting as a courtesy to the ABC. This however is strictly rumor, and the sources are not what I would call reliable.

In the second, Dr. William Tighe follows up with this bit of information:

This accords with what I have heard, too. However, since all the TAC bishops who were present at their Portsmouth Synod in England last October individually signed their names to both a copy of the *Catechism of the Catholic Church* and to a document declaring their acceptance of all that that catechism contains, and sent a delegation to Rome immediately thereafter to deliver the document to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, I see no reason for the qualification “pretty much” in “they have of course petty much signed onto all of the dogmatic teachings of the Roman Catholic Church,” as they have clearly and unequivocally done so.

There was a rumor that Rowan Williams had made a direct appeal to the pope to defer the promulgation of any “Anglican Uniate (sic) Church” until after the Lambeth Conference. I understand that Lambeth Palace issued a formal disavowal in late May that any such request had been made. Whatever the truth of this, I have heard from several well-informed (and separate) sources that the project is progressing slowly in Rome, and has the favor of the pope himself.

The comments come from a post at TitusOneNine regarding the meeting of Anglican bishops in Jerusalem that has just concluded. If you're interested in that event, Times of London correspondent Ruth Gledhill has more.

As for the Priestly Society of St. Pius X and its travails, Father Z and Rorate Caeli are doing an outstanding job keeping us up to date.

The Future of Europe?

Spengler's essay posted today needs to be read.

Salient points:

Europe’s Man of Destiny is Geert Wilders, the 35-year-old leader of Holland’s tiny Freedom Party. He has provoked the world Muslim community in order to draw the violent jihadists out of the tall grass, and he seems to be succeeding. Call what Wilders has done nasty but necessary, and blame Europe’s so-called mainstream leaders for abandoning their posts, and leaving the standard in the hands of a young man with the courage to grasp it. At the moment the Dutch government is quaking over the consequences of a 10-minute film that Wilders plans to release in April denouncing the Koran.
[...]

Thus far, the authorities of Europe have made clear that they will do nothing to prevent the murder of a prominent citizen. If Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose plea to the European Parliament made headlines, can expect no help from the authorities when her life is at imminent risk, what succor can the anonymous victims of Islamist violence expect?

I am ashamed to say that it did not become clear to me that Wilders has taken the only appropriate course of action until I read carefully the Archbishop of Canterbury’s now-infamous "sharia" speech. Stripped of casuistry, he proposed that Muslim women subject to forced marriages, genital mutilation, or domestic violence should be handed over to Muslim religious courts, rather than be offered the protection of English Common Law. To my knowledge, this is the first time that one of Europe’s spiritual leaders has proposed to abandon innocent victims to their fate.

Archbishop Dr Rowan Williams, to be sure, has a point. But he should have stated plainly what he really thinks. What he wanted to say is more or less: "To protect a few hundred or a few thousand colored ladies, the English state will have to put its big boots on, kick down the doors of Muslim homes, trample through Muslim living rooms, tear up the fabric of Muslim communities, and disrupt the social order. Why not turn such cases over to religious courts and wash our hands of them?" I reiterate: this is satanic hypocrisy.

If decent and well-meaning men like Dr Williams are so afraid of communal violence as to abandon the founding principles of common law and Judeo-Christian ethics, it is long past time to debate the fine points. Blessed are the pre-emptors, for they will get on with it.
[...]

The man must be batty?

Almost a thousand years of slow and steady legal evolution that has defined the rights of Englishmen...

Dr. Williams thinks we all can't get along without separate courts:

An approach to law which simply said - there's one law for everybody - I think that's a bit of a danger...

You, sir, are the danger!

On second thought, maybe he agrees with Irene's friend that imposing one's creed upon another is 'a damned cheek'?

The Good Friday Prayer, Continued

Ruth Gledhill quotes a blogger named Irene who in turn quotes a friend who commented about the revision of the Good Friday prayer:

Irene, who is currently refreshing her knowledge of Latin at Haifa uni, says: This text would not be acceptable to the majority of the Jewish people, for whom any attempt to get us to convert to belief in Jesus as Messiah goes against the tenets of Judaism. This prayer would appear to be on a par with those evangelical Christians (not all, of course) who wish all Jews to emigrate to Israel, in order to hasten to second coming of Christ.

'I have an Anglican friend staying with me at present and I read it to her and she wasn’t very amused and thought it a damned cheek, actually.

'She said. ‘It implies that if you don’t recognize Jesus Christ, you won’t be saved’. In Judaism you can be ‘saved’, or at least be worthy of heaven without being a Jew. This would appear to be the main difference between the Jewish and Catholic approaches.'

It is difficult not to conclude that this represents a re-emergence of supercessionism. A discussion of the Pope's views when he was still Joseph Ratzinger shows that the former Pope clearly regarded the 'new covenant' as the fulfilment of the covenant of Sinai.

Bolding of Irene's friend's comment is mine. A damned cheek indeed. But then of course, Jesus is only the Son of God...

Union by wallpapering

Sunshine Coast Daily:

"Any idea of unity would have to be an arrangement where the Anglican Church exists with its particular theology and practice side by side. It would be a unity of diversity. But sadly it is a long way off."

Father Gowty said the main divide between the two churches was "a question of authority".

Just come right out, there's no reason to be afraid. Just string your two thoughts together so that everyone can understand.

It's a question of authority to keep our own theology (even it is totally different from Catholic theology).

That wasn't so hard.

The big things have been the Anglican primatial meeting in Tanzania and the alleged report (that didn't say what it was reported to say) that the Anglican-Catholic commission was to boldly call for union.

To summarize:
1. The Anglican primates gave the US church until September.
2. The report said no such thing.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Rowan Cantaur meets Benedict PP. XVI

David Virtue wrote last year about the first meeting between the two men after the inauguration:

At Benedict XVI's inaugural mass Dr. Rowan Williams was invited but Frank Griswold was not. Archbishop Drexel Gomez (West Indies) was invited, but the Canadian archbishop was not. The US church was represented by Bishop Pierre Whalon of Europe, and Bishop Christopher Epting, the Griswold's deputy for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations.

Symbolism is everything. When the new pope met with the patriarchs from the Orthodox churches there were public embraces and kisses, but when Benedict XVI met Williams there was only a handshake. Dr. Williams edged forward perhaps hoping for a papal embrace but it was not forthcoming.

By the way, read through all of David's letter. It is a well-written personal encounter with the Southeast Asian Anglican community that illustrates 'orthodox' Christianity growing by leaps and bounds within the communion while ignoring the northern craziness.

The Independent has a profile of Dr. Williams:

Instead, [the Anglican Communion] needs at its head someone who will take a clear line over divisive issues such as the ordination of women and gay priests, so that the whole communion doesn't just tear itself apart. Yet the confused signals that Dr Williams repeatedly sends out on these and other subjects have caused a dramatic reversal of fortunes for the 56-year-old, Welsh-born archbishop.
[...]

Expectations were high. But some of Dr Williams's friends believe he was always too clever for the job. It is better suited to a dully plodder, like the previous incumbent, George Carey, or a high-profile man of certainties, like the cleric hotly tipped to be the next, Archbishop John Sentamu of York. Dr Sentamu's interventions on Islam and secularism have been in marked contrast to Dr Williams's invisibility on such subjects, though you could argue that it is easier to take risks in speaking out when you're second-in-line rather than the primate.

That could very well be true about Sr. Sentamu. Of course, if Dr. Williams didn't think he was up to the task of dealing with everything wrong with the Anglican Communion, he could have declined. After all, he was chosen through a political process (is there any Anglican theology out there declaring the Prime Minister and the Queen as acting as divine instruments?).

At her blog this Thursday last, Ruth Gledhill linked to an interview of the archbishop in which he declared, "And the thing that always held me back from becoming a Roman Catholic at the points when I thought about it is that I can’t quite swallow papal infallibility. I have visions of saying to Pope Benedict: “I don’t believe you’re infallible” — I hope it doesn’t come to that. [Laughs]" Perhaps he ought to ask for some helpful hints on how to be a leader since he'll be meeting with someone who in the last year and a half has proven himself to be quite able.

Times (of London) Online has a story about the Pope's recruitment efforts:

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.

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 [and bypassing the national church] in protest at the election of Robinson.
[...]

While the Pope is keen to welcome any conservative Anglicans, he is also keen to forge good relations with Williams. “The Vatican will do nothing to undermine Williams at such a precarious moment in Anglican history,” one source said.

Despite the friendly overtures, the Pope believes the Anglican Church faces a difficult future. Graham Leonard, the former Bishop of London and now a Roman Catholic monsignor, said: “The Pope’s view is that theologically Anglicanism has no guts in it.”

The Times story makes no specific mention of the pastoral provision in the United States, the ongoing efforts to broaden it or the talks between the Traditional Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church. I discussed the rumors regarding a proposal to facilitate the entry of Anglicans a few days ago.

Catholic News Service and The Tablet both have stories suggesting that the rifts in the Anglican Communion will be the primary points of discussion rather than the issues that separate the Catholic Church and the communion. In its story, The Tablet calls for a 'wait and see' approach on the part of the Holy See to see into what the communion evolves.

The question I have for the writers at The Tablet is for what are we waiting? It's been posited at different places at different times that whatever the Anglican Communion ends up as, the Anglo-Catholic faction will be a dead letter. There will be those who are pro-sexual liberation and there will be the evangelicals dominated by the Global South and the Anglo-Catholics will be gone to Rome.

Complete credit goes to titusonenine for pulling together these stories. That will be the blog to check out for all things Anglican this coming week.

My assessment (what you've all been waiting for)
One thing the Russian Patriarch can be admired for is the fact that he is serious when it comes to meeting the Pope. He isn't going to meet with Benedict XVI until real progress is made and the meeting can be more than just a photo op. The Archbishop of Canterbury will go to Rome. Gifts will be exchanged. He and the Holy Father will meet for one of Benedict's usual 25-30 minute private audiences (probably longer though). Then he'll make the rounds to the various dicasteries that concern him. All the while, the basic message will be, "It's great having you here. We're sorry about your troubles at home. We'll talk again soon. Good luck and ciao."

In the spirit of all these documents I've been reading, I'll sign off this this...

Given in IC on the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time of the year 2006, the second of our blogificate.

Documents

• Apostolicae Curae (Leo PP. XIII, 1896)
  Declared Anglican orders to be null and void.
  
• Saepius Officio (F. Cantaur, Wilhelm Ebor, 1897)
  The Anglican response to Leo XIII.
  
• Doctrinal Commentary On the Concluding Formula of the Professio Fidei (CDF, Ratzinger, Bertone, 1998)
  Identified Apostolicae Curae as an example of the ordinary Magisterium that must be accepted.
  
• Dominus Iesus (CDF, Ratzinger, Bertone, 2000)
  On salvation for those outside the Church.

The Anglicans

I was going to wait and post on this closer to the Archbishop of Canterbury's visit to Rome, but with the recent remarks of Professor Tighe making the rounds, I think I'll take a moment to contemplate the situation.

For background, Professor Tighe left a comment to the post on the Archbishop's trip to Rome at titusonenine. In the midst of talking about the plight of the Archbishop of Canterbury's own making as far as the Church of England's support of women's ordination and actively gay clergy, Tighe noted the following (bolding is mine):

However, one would really like to be privy to their conversations, especially as I have heard that a proposal is due to land on the pope’s desk on November 16, a proposal that has something to do with facilitating the entry into the Catholic Church of disgruntled Catholic-minded Anglicans. I know nothing of the details, but I would guess that it might involve some sort of expansion and “globalization” of the present “Pastoral Provision” set up some 20+ years ago here in the USA for Episcopalians distressed over WO. My guess is that it may involve a “Personal Prelature” for these people (as for Opus Dei) or else an “Apostolic Administration” like that that was erected a couple of years ago for a whole schismatic “Tridentine Mass” group and their bishop in Brazil. (And it may be that certain ECUSA bishops received a “sneak preview” of what’s in the works on September 6th, but verbum satis sapientibus est, ans we won’t know about it till after January 31st at the earliest.)

Following up yesterday on Professor Tighe's comment was The Times' (of London) religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill at her online column. In part (be sure to read Ruth's actual post, she had all kinds of relevant links throughout her post):

The comment on Titus was posted by the well-informed US church history professor William Tighe. So it cannot be discounted. But the truth actually might be a little more complex. One possible option, for example, is that the document Tighe refers to and the [Tridentine Mass] indult are one and the same. That the indult will contain a more general permission for the Anglican Use rather than it being confined to the US. This was not adopted as the solution to the Anglican women priest's crisis in the first place because it was opposed by the late Cardinal Hume, as William Oddie reported in his book The Roman Option.

This speculation is not, according to a well-informed Anglican source, a step too far. Fr Aidan Nicholls wrote a wonderful essay on the Anglican Use recently. And Paddy Power has him as 5-1 to be the next Archbishop of Westminster. He was also the theologian offered by the Archbishop of Westminster to Forward in Faith, when they asked him for a Catholic to contribute to the discussions for their recent paper, Consecrated Women.

Kudos to Amy for pulling all this together.

So...

1. I think the major indicator in this not being likely in the near term is the fact we have not seen any kind of response from the hierarchy. On the one hand, this document could be really secret and people are being discreet in their comments. However, as we've seen from the French response to the alleged motu proprio on the Mass of Pius V, the hierarchy isn't afraid of publicly making its thoughts (both for and against) known.

2. Benedict XVI has if nothing else proven himself to be a step-by-step kind of man. The tsunami of curial reform never materialized. In place of it, the Pope has steadily appointed people over the months. It just doesn't seem likely that any progress on an Anglican Use document would be pursued while the Tridentine Mass document is still out there. The latter could realistically take months to be processed. When Professor Tighe suggested nothing would be seen of the Anglican Use document until after January 31st of next year, I would agree with that assessment.

3. The Milingo factor. As it was mentioned at some point out there, a canonical framework for the Anglican Use as suggested by Professor Tighe would grant the ability to form seminaries for Anglican Use clergy. Let's consider a hypothetical. The Pope creates an Anglican Use prelature. Masses of Anglo-Catholics make the transition around the world. We now have the Latin Rite with its celibate clergy and the Anglican Use with its married clergy coexisting in may locales. Without trying to generalize the dynamics, it stands to reason that Benedict XVI would be considering such possibilities and any messages that might be sent while Archbishop Milingo's actions remain in recent memory.

Finally,
4. The time factor. It's November 15th. Ash Wednesday falls on February 21st, 2007. That is just over three months away. Assuming that Benedict follows the precedent he set this year during Lent, it's quite possible we'll see another consistory in early to mid-March. I would suggest that unless things breaks sooner rather than later, a lot of what everyone is waiting for could be held in limbo until March at the earliest.

Where we stood/Where we stand

The BBC reports that the General Synod of the Church of England has "approved the concept of women bishops as "theologically justified" by 288 votes to 119."

Last month, Cardinal Kasper addressed (Zenit) the English bishops on what the reaction of Rome would be to the ordination of women to the episcopate.

When such a situation becomes a reality, it is not a purely inner-Anglican matter, but also has consequences for the ecumenical relationship between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church. We had invested great hopes and expectations in the Catholic-Anglican dialogue.

Following the historic encounter of Pope Paul VI and Archbishop M. Ramsey on March 24, 1966 [8] -- 40 years ago now -- ARCIC was, together with the Lutheran-Catholic and the Methodist-Catholic dialogues, among the first dialogues we initiated after the Second Vatican Council.

Since that time it has in many respects brought great progress, for which we thank God and all those who have taken part. Thus the meeting of Catholic and Anglican bishops in Toronto-Mississauga (2000) was filled with great hopes.

The progress made relates not least to the question of a shared understanding of ministries. Even in the first phase of dialogue positive results were achieved in this fundamental question, and later we were able to expand upon these gains.[9]

Besides the official dialogue there was a thorough historical and theological discussion of the Bull of Pope Leo XIII, "Apostolicae Curae" (1896) (DS 3315-3319). All of these discussions have not led to a conclusive resolution or to a full consensus, but they achieved a pleasing rapprochement which justifiably aroused promising expectations.[10]

But then the growing practice of the ordination of women to priesthood led to an appreciable cooling-off. A resolution in favor of the ordination of women to the episcopate within the Church of England would most certainly lower the temperature once more; in terms of the possible recognition of Anglican orders, it would lead not only to a short-lived cold, but to a serious and long-lasting chill.

Three provinces within the Anglican Communion have already ordained women to the episcopate; several other provinces have authorized such ordinations, though none have taken place in the latter to this point. These developments already stand as a major obstacle in Anglican-Catholic relations.

But the Catholic Church has always perceived the Church of England as playing a unique role in the Anglican Communion: It is the church from which Anglicanism derives its historical continuity, and with whom the divisions of the 16th century are most specifically addressed; it is the church led by the archbishop of Canterbury who, in the words of the Windsor Report, is " the pivotal instrument and focus of unity" within the Anglican Communion; other provinces have understood being in communion with him as a " touchstone of what it was to be Anglican" (99); finally, it is the church which we in continental Europe directly associate with Anglicanism, in part because of your many Church of England chaplaincies spread throughout the continent.

For us, the Church of England is not simply one province among others; its decisions have a particular importance for our dialogue, and give a strong indication of the direction in which the Communion as a whole is heading.

Because the episcopal office is a ministry of unity, the decision you face would immediately impact on the question of the unity of the Church and with it the goal of ecumenical dialogue. It would be a decision against the common goal we have until now pursued in our dialogue: full ecclesial communion, which cannot exist without full communion in the episcopal office.

Such a decision broadly taken within the Anglican Communion would mean turning away from the common position of all churches of the first millennium, that is, not only the Catholic Church but also the ancient Eastern and the Orthodox churches.

It would, in our view, further call into question what was recognized by the Second Vatican Council (Unitatis Redintegratio, 13), that the Anglican Communion occupied " a special place" among churches and ecclesial communities of the West. We would see the Anglican Communion as moving a considerable distance closer to the side of the Protestant churches of the 16th century. It would indeed continue to have bishops, according to the Lambeth Quadrilateral (1888); but as with bishops within some Protestant churches, the older churches of East and West would recognize therein much less of what they understand to be the character and ministry of the bishop in the sense understood by the early church and continuing through the ages.
[...]

Above all we could unite in joint prayer and pray for one another. All of that is, God knows, not negligible. But the loss of the common goal [the restoration of Church communion] would necessarily have an effect on such encounters and rob them of most of their élan and their internal dynamic. Above all -- and this is the most painful aspect -- the shared partaking of the one Lord's table, which we long for so earnestly, would disappear into the far and ultimately unreachable distance. Instead of moving towards one another we would co-exist alongside one another.

For many that may seem a more realistic path than what we have attempted previously, but whether it is in accordance with the binding last will and testament of Jesus, "that all may be one" (John 17: 21) is of course another question. The answer would have to be in the negative.

I ask you: Is that what we want? Are we permitted to do that? Should we not ponder what Cyprian tells us, namely that the seamless robe of Jesus Christ cannot be possessed by those who tear apart and divide the church of Christ ("De catholicae ecclesiae unitate," 1,6)?
[...]

In 1896, Pope Leo XIII declared in the Bull Apostolicae Curae that Anglican orders were in fact invalid for a number of reasons. Wikipedia's article on Apostolic Succession (which we take with a grain of salt always) notes that the decision was reaffirmed by Cardinal Ratzinger in a commentary accompanying the Apostolic Letter Motu Proprio Ad Tuendam Fidem which added "new norms which expressly impose the obligation of upholding truths proposed in a definitive way by the Magisterium of the Church, and which also establish related canonical sanctions."

In his commentary, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote, "With regard to those truths connected to revelation by historical necessity and which are to be held definitively, but are not able to be declared as divinely revealed, the following examples can be given: the legitimacy of the election of the Supreme Pontiff or of the celebration of an ecumenical council, the canonizations of saints (dogmatic facts), the declaration of Pope Leo XIII in the Apostolic Letter Apostolicae Curae on the invalidity of Anglican ordinations..."

Wikipedia:

The Church of Sweden's apostolic succession is seen by the Roman Catholic Church as having been maintained, and following the establishment of the Porvoo Communion an increasing number of Anglicans will also be able to trace their succession through Swedish bishops as well as Old Catholic bishops, whose holy orders are recognized as valid by Rome and who, at least those of the Union of Utrecht, are in full communion with Canterbury since the Bonn Agreement of 1931. It should also be noted that since the issuance of Apostolicae Curae, many Anglican jurisdictions have revised their ordinals, bringing them more in line with ordinals emanating from the early Church.

It is hard to say just where exactly the Church of England's succession is in the tangled web of validity. For certain, the ancient English succession (according to Rome) is long dead. The efforts made to change the Ordinal back to something more acceptable and to be consecrated by those bishops whose orders Rome still recognizes as valid makes a show of fixing things to some degree, but the entire situation remains murky.

At the very least, the decision by the General Synod of the Church of England that the ordination of women is 'theologically justified' does tend to clear the water quite a bit.

Those Episcopals...

So I'm getting cleaned up in the morning and one of my latest little thoughts is how cool it would be if the Archbishop of Canterbury were to show up for a meeting with the Supreme Pontiff wearing sackcloth or whatever penitents wear. Rather than a procession across St. Peter's Square, the archbishop would crawl on his knees the whole way and upon reaching the steps, he would beg forgiveness or whatever and ask to be accepted back into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church...

While all this is going on, CNN, the BBC, etc. are all watching, as the procession was planned in advance; thus millions will have just witnessed live and in color this act of repentance.

In any case, that has little to do with the Episcopal Church in the USA, since I'm sure they wouldn't care one way or another. This has actually little to do with the modernist folks of the ECUSA (or whatever they're called). This is an indictment of the conservatives.

Let's look at a statement from Jay Ambrose found here:

First, the Episcopal Church is a thing of beauty. Its liturgy as found in the Book of Common Prayer includes some of the most wondrous prose you will encounter in the English language. While this is a creedal faith - meaning you accept certain broad propositions when you are confirmed - there is mystery, subtlety, nuance and room for much disagreement. But the controversy the church is now experiencing seems to me to stem less from theological dispute than from leftist politics that, however well-intentioned, are also superficial and temporally based.

Look at the bolded text. Conservatives in the ECUSA and in general in the wider Anglican Communion keep telling themselves that over and over and then go on to the 'but' statement. That's all they have, 'but'. The entire fate of the soul of their church hangs on 'but'.

The mass exodus that was expected has not come to pass yet. It has only been a few days since their convention concluded. The usual statements have been made (see above) and are circulating around. Now is the time for action. And it is incumbent on upon us to welcome them to something better if they approach us.

In these times we live in, they're probably not going to come to us on their knees out of some medieval play. Instead, we as Catholics will have to reach out. The challenge is ours.