Theology: Anglicans and Rome (Martin Marty: Brilliant!): October 28, 2009

*Sightings* 10/26/09

Anglicans and Rome

– Martin E. Marty

The top ecumenical, some are saying un- or anti-ecumenical, news of the year occurredOctober 20th with a Vatican announcement. Bypassing forty years of Anglican-RomanCatholic conversations-cum-negotiations and blindsiding Archbishop Rowan Williams, thehead of the seventy-million-member Anglican Communion, Vatican officials announced thatthey were taking steps to receive Anglican (in the United States, Episcopal) clergy through conversion into the Roman Catholic priesthood. Headlines had it that Romewanted to ‘lure,’ ‘attract,’ ‘bid for’ or ‘woo’ priests *and* congregations to make the drasticmove, while the Vatican front man, as he fished for Anglicans, said he was not fishing forAnglicans.

What was behind the move? It was hard to read as a positive ecumenical gesture, PopeBenedict XVI has made some, since it did not revoke or revise what the Pope in 1896declared and what is always reinforced: Anglican ‘orders,’ for sacramental credentialing,were ‘absolutely null and utterly void.’ As recently as last year, Rome’s ecumenical officerand Anglicanism’s ecumenical partner, ‘good guy’ Cardinal Walter Kasper, spoke softly butcarried a huge stick when he charged that some parts of Anglicanism had made things worse:Is it that the orders are now absolutely-absolutely and utterly-utterly null and void? The popevisits the U.K. next year. Wait and see.

What was at issue? There were subtleties on the side, irritations which had not yet prompteda radical twist, but observers agreed that a) ordaining women as priests and b) ordaining agay bishop and more gay priests were the grand offenses. In the good old days Christianbodies fought over the Trinity, the Incarnation, Salvation, and Sacraments. In our epoch theyand the media who cover them converge obsessively on issues of sex-and-gender, wherecontraception and abortion, ‘women’ and ‘gays,’ are the flame issues. Some Anglican moveshave long alienated significant minorities; four dioceses and some parishes beyond themhave pulled out of the Episcopal Church in the USA. They already sought and found whatis legitimate and strategic in their sight, the cover provided by especially African Anglicanswho also abhor gay and women priests.

Some Episcopal priests seemed ripe for plucking, and Rome set out to harvest, even ifthe Church will thus be accepting some married priests, while leaving their own home-grown priests-who-marry in exile. Those with even slight suspicion suspect that the Vaticaninitiative is also a desperation move to help solve the shortage of priests in the Romancommunion. Some of the only half-gruntled Anglicans have uttered some ‘not-so-fast!’or ‘count-me-out!’ cautions. As one leader among them reminded, ‘there was a Reformation,you remember,’ as he spoke for those who knew that being received by Rome, even withgestures that would allow Anglican converts some liturgical and traditional free range, stilldemands a great doctrinal gulp. Converts would have to accept papal infallibility and, withit, the infallible doctrine (1950) of the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin and otherteachings which long offended non-Roman Catholics.

Archbishop Rowan Williams, though embarrassed by the surprise announcement ofdealings behind his back, was characteristically Williamsian and old-style Anglican, as hereacted not in anger but with patience. The Anglican communion for centuries aspired topromote ‘comprehension,’ doing what it could to prevent heresy and schism but in a spirit of openness. The papal visit next year will occasion fresh thinking and policies.

Martin E. Marty’s biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can befound at http://www.illuminos.com.
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*Sightings* comes from the Martin Marty Center<http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/about/>at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Attribution
Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author of the column,*Sightings*, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

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