Everyone seems to be upset by this article from the Toronto Star.
ST. CATHARINES–An invitation from Rome to join the Catholic Church is “offensive in the extreme,” the head of a breakaway group of Canadian Anglicans says.
“Apart from being an intrusion at the very highest levels of one major church into the internal affairs of another, under the guise of being ecumenical, this invitation offers very little that is new,” Bishop Don Harvey, moderator of the Anglican Network in Canada, told the group’s annual synod Thursday morning.
Well, it is an intrusion at the highest level and it does offer little that is new: if I had wanted to become a Roman Catholic – in the unlikely event that they would take me – I would hardly have needed to wait until this offer. I seem to recall that the operative word was actually “distressing”, not “offensive”, but I could be wrong. I don’t find the fact that Bishop Don is distressed or offended by what some see as a “generous offer” and others as opportunistic poaching particularly…. offensive. It may not be tactful or politically correct but that is entirely in its favour; which brings me to the other politically incorrect sentence in the article:
David Jenkins of Oakville said he likes the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion and homosexual rights.
Much as I like to be politically incorrect, I am not about to say something so idiotic to a newspaper reporter; what I actually said was that I liked the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. Still, I am not offended or distressed by the misquote, although the next time I see Stuart Laidlaw we will be having a little chat.
Well, he already received a little comment from me explaining how tactless his misquote was… tactfully of course. I noted that comments on that story were closed. Are they normally closed that quickly on a story?
It does seem rather soon to close the comments; many of them are so clueless, though, perhaps it is just as well.
The Pope’s defence, I fancy, would be that he is responding to strong requests for help that have been coming to him, from some C of E Anglicans, for some time; the actual timing of his response might be due to … well, the new (more “conservative”)Abp of Westminster, now settled into the job; the recent decisions of the TEC US (what America does today …); clear signs from the British Government that it is not going to compromise on its pc/gay power/anti-orthodox-Christian positions; the likelihood that the C of E will have women bishops before long …
The requests came from TAC, which is NOT in communion with the Anglican Communion (as Card. Kasper points out). C of E Anglo-Catholics have very mixed feelings about the Vatican move as the recent Forward in Faith assembly showed.