One of the Vatican’s most senior cardinals has dismissed the idea that a breakaway group of Anglicans might be received into the Catholic Church en masse – despite Benedict XVI’s personal support for such a move. Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, told The Catholic Herald: “It’s not our policy to bring that many Anglicans to Rome.” The cardinal’s comments refer to the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), a rebel group which claims to represent 400,000 people. Its bishops sent a letter to Rome last month requesting “full, corporate and sacramental union”.
But the bishops did not send their letter to Cardinal Kasper. Instead they addressed it to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), where, it is understood, they expected a warmer reception.
It has been claimed that 60 Anglican parishes have joined the rebel group since their request became public. Vatican insiders say that Benedict XVI is scrutinising the matter very closely and believes that the TAC is setting out a path that other Anglicans will follow.
Cardinal Kasper may speak more hopefully than descriptively: it is hardly in his and other liberal Catholics' best interests for a large influx of Anglican traditionalists being received into the Holy Catholic Church, especially now, knowing most of them are hardly disposed toward the post-Vatican II radical reforms of the past thirty years. For at the same time the Roman Church was going through the wrenching and destructive reforms which she is only now beginning to shake off and reverse, so too, the Anglican Church, particularly in England and in North America, has undergone similarly destructive innovations. The outcome of the battle for the Anglican Communion as a whole, while not favorable, is still not determined but for England the battle is all but lost and for North America it is lost, decisively.
Weary Anglicans who flee the heresies of the past thirty years and relievedly embrace the full Catholic Faith and her undisputed sacraments, will cast a jaundiced eye upon those in Holy Mother Church who insist she must take the same broad path the Episcopalians and others took, leading to their perdition. Anglicans who pope may be battle weary but they are also battle hardened and are not likely to stand by (as many of us did in the early years of the assault on our former Church) to see a similar fate befall the One True Church, indeed they will fight more fiercely than ever. Innovators in the Catholic Church have good reason to fear and lobby against their en masse reception for they will present formidable and spirited opposition to their heterodoxy.
(h/t Creative Minority Report.)
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