Pope Benedict XVI has created a new canonical structure that opens the door to what could amount to a half a million Anglicans and some 60 of their bishops entering into full communion with Rome. Under new provisions announced in November, conservative Anglicans – most of whom feel alienated by their own Church’s ordination of women and openly gay men – will be allowed to become Catholics while remaining as communities that retain some aspects of their Anglican spiritual and liturgical heritage.
Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), told journalists at the Vatican that the new development was in response to “many requests” submitted by individual Anglicans and Anglican groups who were asking to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. He said the Pope had decided to allow for the creation of “personal ordinariates” – newly-invented diocese-like entities similar to military ordinariates – which would oversee the groups in different parts of the world who are seeking this “corporate reunion” with the Roman Church. Concrete details were to be contained in an Apostolic Constitution that was not expected to be finalised for another “few weeks”.
Cardinal Levada refused to say which groups or how many people had requested reception into the Roman Church. Archbishop Augustine Di Noia – secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and a former undersecretary of the CDF that helped design the provision – told reporters there could be as many as 50 Anglican bishops. He also clarified that the groups were mainly from the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), although the CDF was apparently not dealing with the TAC in its entirety.
Both the Cardinal and the Archbishop stressed that the establishment of the personal ordinariates was “consistent with the commitment to ecumenical dialogue, which continues to a be a priority for the Catholic Church”. Yet the new development marks a shift in the Vatican’s longstanding policy of discouraging the wholesale reception of breakaway groups from other denominations.
“This changes the context of ecumenism and is a new departure,” said the Rev Dr William Franklin, an Academic Fellow at the Anglican Centre in Rome. “We, as Anglicans, will be interested to hear how the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) responds,” he said. Not a single PCPCU official – including Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president – was at the briefing.
“With this proposal the Church wants to respond to the legitimate aspirations of these Anglican groups for full and visible unity with the Bishop of Rome,” Cardinal Levada said.
He stressed that the Pope’s new document would provide “a reasonable and even necessary response to a worldwide phenomenon, by offering a single canonical model for the universal Church which is adaptable to various local situations”. It was not clear if these ordinariates, which could be headed by priests or unmarried bishops from the Anglican tradition, were to be established at the diocesan or national level. But it appeared that the ordinaries themselves would be appointed by the CDF and be members of the national episcopal conferences.
In the US, Cardinal Francis George, president of the US bishops’ conference, said the American bishops “[stood] ready to collaborate in the implementation of [the Pope’s] provision in our country”.
