IN A move of potentially huge significance, the Vatican yesterday announced the creation of new ecclesiastical structures to absorb disaffected Anglicans.
Dissident Anglicans will now be able to join the Catholic Church while at the same time maintaining their own distinct religious identity.
Making the announcement in Rome yesterday, US cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said the creation of a “personal ordinariate” with which to absorb the dissident Anglicans came by way of response to “many requests” from different groups of Anglican clergy.
Vatican commentators suggest that the “personal ordinariate”, which will be explained in a new apostolic constitution from Pope Benedict XVI, will have a similar canonical status to that of a “personal prelature”, a status currently held by only one Catholic group, Opus Dei.
Inevitably, many will see this new “ordinariate” as a sharp rebuke for the Anglican Communion from those Anglicans unhappy with recent liberalising moves such as the ordination of women, the ordination of openly gay clergy and bishops and the blessing of same-sex unions.
At a joint news conference in London yesterday, however, the Archbishops of Westminster and Canterbury, Vincent Nichols and Rowan Williams, went out of their way to play down any negative impact on relations between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church.
Calling their relations “business as usual”, Dr Williams suggested that yesterday’s announcement should not be seen as “a commentary on the Anglican Communion by Rome”, an observation with which Archbishop Nichols clearly agreed.
Yet, despite the attempts of the two church leaders in London to create an atmosphere of “nothing new” and diplomatic entente, yesterday’s announcement is of huge significance.
This is the first time since the Church of England split from Rome in 1534 that a canonical structure has been created which allows Anglicans to join the Catholic Church.
Furthermore, by creating a parallel jurisdiction for disaffected Anglicans, Rome has rewritten the road map in a way which may well strongly affect long-term Anglican-Catholic relations.
The most prominent recent Anglican convert to Catholicism was former British prime minister Tony Blair, who joined the church after leaving office in 2007.