www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Hundreds of Anglicans to become RC

Its funny because the Anglican Church is in reality on its death bed, breathing its last belabored few breaths; at least in Europe and America. Yet they still push foward, full steam ahead, with this radicalist agenda. But that was the problem in the first place!
Ask English Anglican ministers how many attend their parishes in England on Sundays. It is down to around 10 people each!
It is sad because most Anglicans have just become neo-pagans; they are thoroughly de-Christianized wanderers. Ask young men in England who Saint Augustine of Canterbury was and they just might give you a puzzled look.
And the Catholic Church in England is in no way picking up the slack. True there is a weak undercurrent of curiosity about the Old True Faith.
I thoroughly believe the old-time prophecies about England's return to the True Faith, but the near future is terribly bleak.
God save England! God save English souls (including my own English soul)!

This is a "cry wolf" scenario yet again. Anglicans for the last thirty years have been threatening to swim the Tiber (or in some cases the Dnieper or Bosphorous). They are forever declaring lines in the sand the crossing of which will immediately send them into the arms of Rome: first it was divorce in the 60s; then it was liturgical reform in the early 70s; then it was the ordination of women in the mid-70s in North America and the early 90s in England; then it was homosexuality; now it is female bishops. On this one, I am strictly from Missouri, the show-me state: I'll believe it when I see it.
Sure, you get a few individual converts, but in no case at all in the last three decades has there ever been the much-promised mass exodus. Rome may be the Eternal City, but most of these people are eternally talking about going there but never make it.

Dear Useadmortem,

Yes, but the REAL numbers of Anglicans are out there in Africa and Asia.

And they are getting nice and cozy with their RC friends . . .

We'll see what they do.

Alex

This is my experience with Anglo Catholics:

Circa 2002 I went to an Anglo Catholic Liturgy in a house north of Denver with a congregation of maybe a dozen souls. The A/C priest was a neighbor of a dear friend, a deep-rooted Protestant, with whom I was visiting. Since my friend introduced me as �a Catholic�, the Priest and his wife invited me, rather us, to attend. I am glad that we accepted the invitation. This was my experience.

Father Dale was a working class man with a late vocation. Their congregation was a dozen people, all old. I am 65. There was an old priest who seemed to be his mentor.

My friend had trouble with the very concept of Catholicism. But she treasured the priest and his wife as close friends and wanted to attend the service. Since I had no other choice to attend a valid Mass in that area of CO, I decided to go and participate, and if the service seemed valid to me, to partake of the Blessed Sacrament.

Thinking back, perhaps I was remiss in that I did not question the matter of our Priest friend�s having valid orders, apostolic succession. He well might have, but I didn�t ask. But I did feel and did think that everything I was experiencing was correct. So I received Holy Communion because I felt it was right.

I myself am a child of the 50's, Roman, a traditionalist and a Byzantine Catholic since 1970. I have 16 years of Catholic education, half of that Jesuit. I feel deeply that I, and my family, were disenfranchised of the Faith by the way the American Roman Catholic clergy enacted their version of the changes of VII in the US. In a way I am angry. We had to literally hunt for regularity.

I was an Altar Boy and know the Tridentine Mass quite well (from a lot of repetition ). And, to me, this A/C Liturgy that I was participating in offering, was a valid Mass in the English language. So I feel what I did was efficacious and proper. I am delivering all this background for a reason.

Now and since V II, I cannot even enter my parish where I was raised or any R.C. parish because I feel the mass is invalid. Even burying my close relatives was difficult. I attended the N-O-M maybe 3 times and would never even consider going up for communion. I feel it is very wrong to receive when I know that can not be the Body and Blood of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Many good priests that I know would not go that far. I just intellectually and feeling wise know it is wrong for me.

During my personal Diaspora, I learned I have many options to receive the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, and the sanctifying grace that I desperately need to get through life. Most people have the same options here in the USA and Canada.

When traveling, the A/C is an option for me.

Maybe I am too hard on the RC's but I remember the words;" By their fruit you shall know them". I see poison fruit.

So I hope the A/C shall bolt from their capture and have their own Rite within the Catholic Church. But who am I to say.

Many Happy Years,

Jim

This is good in firts place, that they will leave a Church without Holy Orders and will join one that has preserved them, but if I was them I would think it twice.

The present reforms adopted by Roman Catholicism were performed decades ago by the Church of England and the so-called Old-Catholics. Everybody said they could never happen and they indeed happened!

In Europe not only the Anglican and Historical Protestant churches are empty and a thing of the past. The Catholic Church is dying even in formerly Catholic countries such as Spain. Today almost no-one believes in anything.

Given the increasing left-ward tendences of most Catholic Bishops nowadays and the changes made:
the abolition of the Orthodox minor orders, the feminization of the liturgy, the secularization of the clergy and the faith, etc. makes me think that after some decades the Roman Church will also starts ordaining women to the priesthood.

Ain't never gonna happen.

If it does, Jesus Christ will be returning within a very very short time

Dear Byzantn you said:

"These same folks complain loudly over every change and innovation, but the truth is simple. They will stay and put up with anything, just like they always do."

I say:

Actually I think most simply 'fall out of Grace', and never know why. They abhor what is happening to their Church, yet can't make the move to another Church. Most Anglicans will either stop attending or start accepting the prevailing 'liberal' attitude of their peers.

No matter, the attendance in the Episcopal or Anglican Church will keep going down; as will the other main stream Protestant faiths with the exception of the Southern Baptist and a few other of the more conservative Evangelical groups.

Zenovia

Maybe so. The Southern Baptists are complaining that their numbers are stagnant and are not increasing anymore. Some very liberal Episcopal parishes are growing because they are attracting very liberal people. I do think that at one time, the more conservative members could have put up a better protest against some of the modern trends in their churches. Many of the conservative Episcopalians I know here, do complain, but they stay. Some have left and one such group even converted to Orthodoxy. Who knows how this will look a few years from now.

Peacock,

I know you have trouble with Paul VI Liturgy, yet as good as it is, Anglican Liturgy in an Episcopal Church is no substitute for valid Liturgy of Catholic Church, either it is Latin or Eastern. Never. Not until the Church says so.

Interesting to note, many Catholic martyrs in England died for the Faith rather than accept the Anglican Liturgy.

As to the amusing claim that whither the Anglicans lead, the Catholics will follow - when those first priestesses were "ordained" in Philadelphia, an Orthodox friend of mine bet me one hundred dollars that Rome would be doing the same thing within a decade. Alas for me; my friend died and never paid up on his bet. I'm willing to make the same bet, right now, that Rome will not be ordaining bishopesses.

Incognitus

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36. Wherefore, strictly adhering, in this matter, to the decrees of the pontiffs, our predecessors, and confirming them most fully, and, as it were, renewing them by our authority, of our own initiative and certain knowledge, we pronounce and declare that ordinations carried out according to the Anglican rite have been, and are, absolutely null and utterly void.

Leo XIII
Apostolicae Curae, 1896
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antonius

Dear Friends,

Perhaps there will be no mass movement from Anglicanism to Orthodoxy or RCism.

Perhaps it will involve the quiet leaving of priests and laity.

I recently met a former Anglican minister who told me he just left the Anglican Church of Canada.

I thought it was because he was disgusted with this or that modernist issue.

No, it was simply because his entire parish left him to go "over to Antioch" (the phrase Anglican bishops up here angrily use to describe the move to Orthodoxy.

Leaving one's church is never easy.

Even when they become Orthodox or Catholic, they want their Rite, traditions etc. in tact.

Roman Catholic bishops tend to look upon the Anglican Use, I've been told, very much as they look on the Tridentine Rite - they are afraid that there will be Latin Catholics who will prefer it to the Novus Ordo.

Orthodox Churches who allow for the "Rite of St Tikhon" tend to want to "Byzantinize" it, very much as the West Latinizes Easterners. There are aspects of the Anglican patrimony that are suppressed as well, for fear of their Protestant roots.

So the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have not been completely fair to the Anglicans wanting to come over either.

A former Episcopal minister now Orthodox once wrote a joke to illustrate why he left Episcopalianism.

He described a service at the Episcopal cathedral in Washington where a woman bishopess was carrying a statue of the Buddha in procession and placed it on the altar to the singing of gender-neutral hymns . . .

At this, an elderly fellow at the front nudged his friend and said, "That does it, one more thing like this and I'm outta here!"

Alex

I heard anecdotally recently that 30% of the priests coming in to my jurisdiction are former Episcopalians.

Dear Rilian,

That certainly is another consideration.

The more married Anglican priests the RC church gets who will serve in parishes who haven't seen their own parish priest for years - how will this ultimately impact the celibacy tradition of the RC Church?

Something RC bishops also think about.

Alex