Wednesday, October 21, 2009

My concerns about the recent news about the Pope and disaffected former Anglicans

Man. This is... awkward. I started out in the Roman Catholic Church in the early 1980s. I wound up Episcopalian though I wondered off and on, especially while wrestling with certain doctrinal issues, if I'd end up coming back to Rome. Some of those issues are ones held in high importance by the "continuing Anglicans," though it still saddens and frustrates me that it was sexual and not Creedal matters which led to their departure. The RCC that I experienced back in those days was very Vatican II. A new openness to dialogue, etc. [i]Christ Among Us[/i] as the CCD book. And so on. Things seem to me to have changed, especially recently with the current Pope, in the RCC. I perceive a kind of reactionary anger -- bumper stickers that say "The cafeteria is CLOSED!" and things like that. A growing sense that Rome is trying to throw out Vatican II. I'm very much a doctrinally orthodox Anglican/Episcopalian Christian who almost left over issues like the ordination of women (since convinced of their validity). My views on sexuality don't easily fit into any specific modern model (and I don't want to derail this into that). I'm aghast when clergy deny the Incarnation, redemptive death, and Resurrection of Jesus. But the people who left the Episcopal church for "continuing Anglican" churches -- at least the ones I have known personally, and much of what I have read by other people who have left -- have seemed to me to be full of shrill anger, not trying to build bridges and have dialogue with those with whom they disagree, but with bitter, venomous invective, full of malice and resentment, even once they've left still talking nonstop about how those horrible liberal people are destroying all that is good. Honestly, I'm concerned that Rome bringing these people in will not help the former Anglicans to be healthier, and will hurt the RCC -- it sounds like it's bringing in precisely the people who will continue to attack Vatican II and related things. I fear that this is the intent -- that these people are being approached because they seem focused on fighting (and not dialoguing with) those who argue for "liberal innovations" -- in order to shore up the "cafeteria is closed" direction. If this is true, it saddens me. David