A Reverse Reformation?

Analysis…

The Vatican announced yesterday that it would accomodate Anglicans wishing to join the Catholic Church.  For instance, Anglican priests who had married, could become married Catholic priests, a practice forbidden to traditional Catholic priests.  Also, Anglicans could keep their “elements of distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony.”  The Anglican Communion has been somewhat unstable while debating and discussing issues of human sexuality, thus creating an opportunity for Catholics to allow conservative Anglicans into the Catholic Church without fully assimilating.

Get Religion |  Yet, please note, that this discussion of Anglo-Catholics fleeing to Rome — once again — is not essentially rooted in the ordination of one noncelibate gay bishop in the micro-tiny Diocese of New Hampshire here in the American colonies.  After all, Father William Oddie was writing his trailblazing book “The Roman Option” in the mid-1990s. It is also interesting to note that a major theme in that book is behind-the-scenes opposition on the Catholic left to the creation of an Anglican home within Catholicism in England. You see, liberal Catholics — those seeking the ordination of women, in particular — did not want the wrong kind of Anglicans swimming the Tiber. That’s a story worth watching, now that Benedict XVI has opened a gate for the Anglo-Catholic refugees.

The Anchoress  | This is very big. If this reconnection is well-facilitated, we may see the entire African arm of the Church of England (which is currently its most vibrantly-growing branch) cross the Tiber, and that will be a very interesting development, especially as Catholics are exposed to the Anglican-use liturgy, which will remind many of everything they loved about the Latin mass, but in the glorious language of the Anglican liturgy. This may accelerate the already-growing movement within the Catholic church to correct some of the liturgical excesses and errors we’ve seen in the last 40 years.  As I said earlier, as secularism and evangelical atheism gain in influence and power, we may well see the a new unity among Christians, ut unum sint, (that they all may be one).

America Magazine |  The most important point to stress is that the Vatican is responding to a request from others who wish to join the Catholic Church. They are not merely going out to pick some low-hanging Anglican fruit or, as Cardinal Walter Kasper put it, “We are not fishing in the Anglican lake.” There are members of the Anglican Church who have come to question the catholicity of their communion, and like John Henry Newman before them, their questioning is leading them to turn to Rome.

The Telegraph |  This from a good source in Rome: apparently both Lambeth Palace and elements in the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity were “implacably opposed” to Pope Benedict XVI’s dramatic new arrangements for Anglicans. The source also reports speculation that Archbishop Rowan Williams put pressure on Vatican ecumenists to stop the Apostolic Constitution being issued.

Change.org |  If you’re an Anglican and you don’t like women priests, gay bishops, or same-sex couples infiltrating your church, Pope Benedict XVI has a message for you: try becoming Catholic! Hey, it comes with free wine once a week, and support for all the anti-gay ballot measures you can muster.

Episcopal Life Online |  In a statement from the Episcopal Church, Bishop Christopher Epting, ecumenical and interfaith officer, said that the announcement “reflects what the Roman Catholic Church, through its acceptance of Anglican rite parishes, has been doing for some years more informally … We are in dialogue with the archbishop’s office and will, in the coming days, continue to explore the full implications of this in our ecumenical relations.”

News & Analysis …

Morehouse Men Don’t Wear Dresses – Womanist Musings

We have invested a lot into the male/ female binary and many feel threatened when the line is even slightly blurred. As part of its appropriate attire policy, Morehouse has banned wearing of women’s clothes, makeup, high heels and purses.  It seems that Morehouse men are expected to send a very specific message to the world about what exactly Black masculinity entails.

Drop-Kick Me Jesus – Spiritual Politics

For the past six years, the cheerleaders at Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School in the northwest corner of Georgia had taken to displaying Bible verses on banners such as the above, through which their football team would burst onto the field. Then, last month, the banners were banned on advice of counsel, after a local woman wrote to the school superintendent to suggest that they might provoke a lawsuit.

NPR Sort of Hates “Black Music” – Racialicious

Rosen argues that music of black origin usually selected by NPR: (1) tend to be either from obscure or dead artistes black people don’t listen to (2) are restricted based on genre, and (3) heavily influenced by the majority white and male (with beards and guitars) NPR audience.