Blog Template Theology of the Body: The Plan: to think, to imagine, to talk, to think some more, to think about talking, etc.

Monday, February 19, 2007

The Plan: to think, to imagine, to talk, to think some more, to think about talking, etc.

Anglo-Catholics are excited today. Habemus a Document and Dialogue, etc. etc. going on about plans for sad Anglicans to run to Rome- which, in the proper context, is as happy and consoling a prospect as Running Home to Mother ever was.

Fr. Christopher of Our Lady of the Atonement was the first Anglican priest to convert to Rome and thereafter establish an Anglican Use RC parish under John Paul II. He is a gentle and sober pioneer- a good one to ask about such tantalizing prospects. He says:

"It’s one of those things that would be amazing if it were true. Headlines are all over the place today in newspapers and on web news sites: “Churches back plan to unite under Pope.” The claim is that “senior bishops” (whatever that means) have agreed on proposals which would unite Anglicans and Roman Catholics. The media make it sound as though it will take place at the snap of the fingers and everyone will live happily ever after. If only. When we read a little deeper we find that a forty-two page report published by the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission states within it, “Anglicans and Roman Catholics are urged to explore how they might reunite under the Pope.” So apparently there is no actual “plan” to back, more like a “plan to explore.” And that would be very nice.

It’s a sad fact that Anglicanism is disintegrating faster than a sand castle at high tide. The American expression of Anglicanism, the Episcopal Church, is led by a Gnostic woman who can’t quite decide what Jesus came to do. The Archbishop of Canterbury is trying to hold together some seventy million people with no single accepted teaching about anything.

...it’s silly to think there is some “plan” providing a way for corporate reunion. It’s a matter of the conversion of individual hearts and lives, and headlines such as the ones we are seeing today don’t help. They give a false sense of hope to those who might be on the verge of returning to the Church, and they add fuel to the anti-Catholic bitterness of those who would rather drink poison than “submit to Rome.”

The whole post is here.