The Pope's Latest Plan
Monday, November 02, 2009
David Gibson, columnist for Politics Daily and author of The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World joins us to discuss his latest article which looks at the decision of the Catholic Church to allow Anglicans to join the Catholic Church.
Comments [5]
This is also not a backdoor to married priests in the Church. Many Anglican ministers have joined the Catholic Church, and the married ones are married Catholic priests. But as married, they can't become bishops, and if their wife dies they can't remarry. Those in the West in general are under the Latin rite, and in the Latin rite priests can not marry as a matter of discipline. The converted Anglicans have a dispensation because of their circumstances.
What is really happening here is pastoral. Over the last twenty years the Anglican Church adopted several practices that many members viewed as non-Biblical. As a result, many Anglicans looked into converting to the Catholic Church.
When Eugene Robinson was made an Anglican Bishop the split in the Anglican Church deepened, and more Anglican individuals and even congregations joined the Catholic Church.
Rome has received so many inquiries in this regard from Anglicans, and from the Church's view they are asking for a good thing and deserve help if it can be provided, that they developed a clear procedure for congregations and even dioceses to join the Catholic Church.
It was a pastoral act on the part of the Pope and the Vatican, not what others portray it to be at all.
Why not a hope, rather than a fear?
read Barbara Pym, this has been a fear for years.
backdoor to bring married priests into the church?
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