Comments on: Ordinary Anglicans?

By: Robert Ian Williams

Robert Ian Williams — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:05:06 +0000

A very perceptive analysis by Bosco. The 400,000 figure is a scam…. there are probablly less than a 100 TAC people in the UK. The TAC in Ireland have no intention of going to Rome.

The Bishop of Fort Worth ( Southern Cone ) pointed out many of his Anglo-catholic parishes are full of ex Roman Catholics… who are re-married divorcees.

The Anglican use in the USA is predomiunately attended by cradle Catholics. When the use was petitioned for, thy told the Vatican 250,000 would come over .. in fact less than 500 laity and clergy did.

In TEC there asre 300,000 former Catholics and over 700 ex catholic priests serving.

The proud patrimony spoken of , is Anglicanism excised of Cranmer’s heresies…so is it authentically Anglican.

I think the Ordinariate will be so small..Rome will be embarrased.

The bluff of Forward in faith has been called.

By: Ren Aguila

Ren Aguila — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:07:18 +0000

I think they already published the new Apostolic Constitution, and so it might be best to ask whether the arguments you made still apply to the new text. In one case, the constitution states that “former Anglican bishops” may (if the local RC episcopal conference so allows) be given the same non-voting rights as retired bishops and be allowed to use episcopal insignia.

By: Frugal Dougal

Frugal Dougal — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:07:10 +0000

A very powerful essay – I think anybody thinking of moving in either direction should read it. More reasons not to make such a big decision on single, or very small group of, reasons.

By: TheraP

TheraP — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:38:12 +0000

Is it just irony that your essay ends with the “Psalm of Thanksgiving” following?

Re the twice married bishop who now wants to “return” to his former faith, which he already left – gee, if he can’t make up his mind to be faithful to anyone, this seriously would concern me! JMVHO here.

By: Mynsterpreost (=David Rowett)

Mynsterpreost (=David Rowett) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:23:57 +0000

St Katherine? According to David Brown’s book ‘Discipleship & Imagination’ an entirely fictitious saint? How appropriate a base for the TAC!!!!

By: Bosco Peters

Bosco Peters — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:19:07 +0000

This, according to Wikipedia, is the URL of the website of the Traditional Anglican Communion – with “over 400,000 members”:
http://acahomeorg0.web701.discountasp.net/tac/tac_index.aspx
Hmmmm… what shall I say? … memorable? Looks like a 21st century URL of such a significant body? It’s hosted with discountasp.net at $10 a month. I could have shown them how to run a site from wordpress.com for free.
See: http://ttac.wordpress.com
(I was not allowed by wordpress to use less than four letters or I would have made it tac)

I made the following to also get to their site:
http://tinyurl.com/difficulttorememberurl

By: Bishop Alan Wilson

Bishop Alan Wilson — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:10:46 +0000

Thanks for a comprehensive summary that brings this whole discussion back to planet earth. Bearing in mind the numbers of Anglicans Fleet Street hysterics have been proclaiming will become RC through this route (50 Bishops, 2,000 clergy and 400,000 laypeople), it is useful to be reminded that TAC aren’t in any structural sense Anglicans in the first place.

So I am left wondering who these “Anglicans”restored are. Loking at the picture on the UK TAC website of their synod in the UK, there don’t seem to have been more than a dozen people involved. TAC appears to be a rather grandiose astroturf organisation. There are some 16 clergy names for the whole of England, but only two or three apparently at the national synod. Curiously the only working parish website link on the site takes you to a community centre in a converted Victorian Methodist church in Lincoln, restored with lottery cash (revolve in your grave, John Wesley), which rather curiously makes no mention of TAC and has no clergy named on it. However that’s where the synod was held, and the rather, er, disingenuous claim on the site that this Victorian chapel is is people go in Lincoln for “900 years of history” had me chuckling — if you wnted 900 years of history in Lincoln there are all sorts of more obvious places you could get it. Unless you are Damian Thompson of the Telegraph the whole thing is rather ludicrous in UK terms. Perhaps what the Vatican is actually trying to do is set up a filter for some of the more esoteric Episcopi Vagantes around … not a bad idea, I would have thought.

By: Bosco Peters

Bosco Peters — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:37:00 +0000

In joining the RC Church, Susan, TAC bishops will be accepting the Vatican teaching that TAC is not a church and that they are not actually bishops. So in joining the RC Church they are not “stepping down from being bishops” as they are accepting that they have never been a bishop. They may then be ordained deacon and then priest (but, if married, not bishop). They do not have to be a bishop to be an Ordinary – abbots, for example, are ordinaries of their monasteries. So whereas they may have functioned as a bishop in TAC, they may end up being a priestly ordinary in an Anglican Ordinariate.

By: Susan Bowen

Susan Bowen — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:12:58 +0000

I keep thinking about how small the pool of candidates for ordination as bishops will be if only unmarried, never divorced men are eligible for ordination. Furthermore, will the current married Anglican bishops who wish to join the Roman Catholic church be willing to step down from being bishops in order to do so?

By: Rev. David Sheen

Rev. David Sheen — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:40:39 +0000

Oh, how true! I couldn’t have put it better myself.

By: Ernest

Ernest — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:51:08 +0000

I think that you give a well thought through summary of the situation arising from the Pope’s announcement.

From my perspective, I will be staying put, the Church of England, for all of its problems, is more of a home to me than the RC Church ever was.