Pope Invites Conservative Anglicans to Merge

The Economist has an interesting article which won't be noted in the US press, now totally encased in a secular materialist Marxist-Leninist thought cocoon, about putting the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, into an even more absurd position than the causes he espouses, such as Shar'ia Law for Muslims in England.

The pope’s scheme will make it even harder for the Anglican leader to sustain an already difficult balancing act. To keep his worldwide Communion together, he is hewing to a relatively conservative line on homosexuality that would involve gay-friendly Americans settling for a sort of associate status. But in his own Church, he has gone along with a liberal policy on women. Preparations are in train for the ordination of female bishops. And there is likely to be an end to the procedural devices allowing traditionalist clergy to avoid serving alongside (or, in future, under) women. That may have persuaded the Vatican to act: it had to decide how to respond to conservatives who felt the Church of England was about to make their position untenable.

Hitherto, an uneasy alliance of low-church evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics has struggled to resist liberal Anglicanism. “This will change the balance in the Church of England in favour of the liberals,” says Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia, a think-tank. “The evangelicals won’t go to Rome and they may now be abandoned by their Anglo-Catholic allies.” Some think (or fear) that as many as one in seven Church of England priests could convert.

However, in balance, allowing large numbers of married Anglican priests to enter the RC communion will present another large reason for diocesan priests in the Catholic Church to themselves be allowed to marry.