Pope to allow Anglicans to convert en masse
Anna Arco

21 October 2009

Cardinal Levada gestures during Tuesday's press conference at the Vatican (CNS)

Groups of disaffected Anglicans can become Catholics while keeping elements of their cultural and liturgical heritage, the Vatican announced this week.

In a move that took the English-speaking Christian world by surprise, Pope Benedict XVI signed an Apostolic Constitution which offers a universal legal structure for Anglicans seeking "corporate reunion" with Rome.

The Pope is said to have reached his decision in July and it was announced at parallel press conferences in Rome and London on Tuesday - less than a month after senior Church leaders in England were notified by the Vatican.

Under the Apostolic Constitution, the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith (CDF) has introduced a legal structure that resembles the structure of military dioceses, called a "Personal Ordinariate". These Ordinariates would cover the geographical area of a bishops' conference and would be led by an Ordinary, usually chosen from unmarried former Anglican clergy.

Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the CDF, said the decree was a response by the Pope to a demand repeatedly expressed by a number of Anglicans. According to the Zenit news agency, between 20 and 30 Anglican bishops worldwide have already asked for this sort of provision.

A Vatican statement said: "In this Apostolic Constitution the Holy Father has introduced a canonical structure ... which will allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spirituality."

Cardinal Levada said: "We have been trying to meet the requests for full communion that have come to us from Anglicans in different parts of the world in recent years in a uniform and equitable way. With this proposal the Church wants to respond to the legitimate aspirations of these Anglican groups for full and visible unity with the bishop of Rome, successor of St Peter."

He said he had informed Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and head of the Anglican Communion, about the decree a month ago and met him personally to discuss it on Monday.

Sources in Rome have told The Catholic Herald that at one stage Lambeth Palace was "implacably opposed" to the Pope's dramatic plan. In London, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster joined Dr Williams for a press conference at which both men insisted that the decree would not damage ecumenical relations.

Dr Williams rejected the idea that the decree could be seen "as an act of aggression or a vote of no confidence precisely because the routine relationships that we enjoy as churches continue".

He added: "What has been presented by the Vatican, as I understand it, is not a response to our situation in the Church of England. There are members of the Church of England who are uneasy about where the Church of England is who would not want to become Roman Catholics whether they would call themselves evangelicals or Anglo-Catholics. This will not resolve their challenges, and we in the Church of England have to continue to engage with that. The last thing I'd want is for this to be seen as some kind of short cut.

"This is for people who feel that visible union with the Holy See now is what God is calling them to."

Archbishop Nichols said he was surprised by the decree but welcomed the "generosity of its measures".

He explained that groups of former Anglican clergy, religious and lay people could avail themselves of the Personal Ordinariate which would be established by the Holy See.

They would put themselves under the jurisdiction of the Ordinary, who would in turn work together with the local bishops.

The process will allow married former Anglican clergy to be ordained priests, as is already the case. There is also the possibility that married laymen could be ordained.

Significantly, ex-Anglicans will be able to put forward their own candidates for seminaries. They will attend existing seminaries but will be able to establish "houses of formation to address the particular needs of formation in the Anglican seminary".

A spokesman for the bishops' conference of England and Wales said that, while an Ordinariate would follow the Church's tradition of celibacy for its seminarians, married men might be considered for ordination to the priesthood on a case-by-case basis.

Archbishop Nichols said the decision opened up the possibility of "a liturgical form which had the resonances of Catholic elements of the tradition of the Anglican Communion" but that "such new material would have to be approved by the Holy See" before it was implemented.

He added: "I would describe this as a courageous and generous response by Pope Benedict, which is not at all out of character.

"He has said over and over again that his priority is the proclamation of the Gospel in what he describes as a world in which the roots of faith are gradually drying up. And he says that an essential part are acts of reconciliation - small and not so small. He sees this as a response to the possibility of little churches breaking out which does nobody any good."

Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, said: "We are not fishing in the Anglican lake; proselytism is not the policy of the Catholic Church. But if thereare people who, obeying their consciences, want to become Catholic, we cannot shut the door."

The Anglican Bishop of Fulham, the Rt Rev JB Broadhurst of Fulham, and Fr Geoffrey Kirk of Forward in Faith, a traditionalist group within the Church of England, said in a joint statement: "We rejoice that the Holy Father intends now to set up structures within the Church which respond to this heartfelt longing.

"Forward in Faith has always been committed to seeking unity in truth and so warmly welcomes these initiatives as a decisive moment in the history of the Catholic Movement in the Church of England."

Archbishop John Hepworth, primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, which separated from the Anglican Communion in 1991 and has been seeking communion with Rome, said "this is an act of great goodness on the part of the Holy Father".

He said: "He has dedicated his pontificate to the cause of unity. It more than matches the dreams we dared to include in our petition of two years ago.

"It more than matches our prayers. In those two years, we have become very conscious of the prayers of our friends in the Catholic Church."

Dr William Oddie, author of The Roman Option, a 1997 book about Anglican conversions to Catholicism, and former editor of The Catholic Herald, said: "The announcement of an Apostolic Constitution permitting Anglican communities to be received into the Catholic Church as communities, and for them to have their own bishops who will be selected from among former Anglican clergy, appears to be almost identical to proposals which were being discussed in the early 1990s after women's ordination had been agreed in 1991 by the Church of England's General Synod."

"The proposals then were widely known among Catholic-minded Anglicans as 'the Roman option' and they were made impossible by the opposition of some English Catholic bishops and most Anglican bishops, particularly the then Archbishop of York, John Habgood.

"The striking thing today is that the agreement has been announced jointly by Archbishop Vincent Nichols and Archbishop Rowan Williams, as an ecumenical advance rather than as a possible source of disunity. This is a heartening and astonishing outcome after all this time."