Bryan Kerns in the Villanovan:

"I am sorry that there has been no opportunity to alert you earlier to this; I was informed of the planned announcement at a very late stage." Those words begin the second paragraph of a letter that Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, sent to all the bishops of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion. The letter was transmitted shortly after Williams appeared at a press conference with Vincent Nichols, the Catholic archbishop of Westminster, where they announced to a stunned Christendom that Pope Benedict XVI would provide a canonical structure for traditional Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church.

Provision will be made to accept already-married Anglican priests into the Catholic priesthood as well as establish leadership of these traditional Anglican communities outside of the standard Catholic diocesan structure. For a pontiff such as Benedict, whose stated goals include encouraging union with various portions of Christianity that have fallen away since the East-West Schism of 1054, this is a massively important ecumenical step, perhaps the most important since the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.

On past occasions, provisions have been made for very specific instances involving very specific problems. Here, however, the pope has created an open-ended process at the request of leadership of the traditional Anglican communion.

Simultaneous to the press conference in London with Williams and Nichols, an availability was held in Rome with William Cardinal Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – Rome’s chief doctrinal officer and Archbishop Augustine DiNoia, O.P., a scholarly Dominican and Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments – the No. 2 official responsible for all liturgical matters. Levada and DiNoia explained the process, years in the making, and how "intake" would occur.
Necessarily, the Anglicans who decide to join the Catholic Church will have to recognize the primacy of the pope, as opposed to the archbishop of Canterbury, whose leadership over the worldwide Anglican Communion has been tenuous at best over the past few years.

Fissures have been developing within this loose confederation of churches over issues such as homosexuality among clergy and the ordination of women. These defections by and large involve disputes over the failure of Anglican leadership to take strong stands on any side of these controversial topics.

KERNS: Christian unity, starting with Anglicans – Opinion

Donald Collins, in a letter to the Editor of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Having been married by an Anglican bishop, I could not but be surprised by the apparent claim of superior morality, under the rubric of greater unity with Anglicans, in the surprise attack by the Vatican welcoming disaffected Anglicans. Doubtless the Vatican plans to use its usual recruitment tools: gay marriage, abortion and the appointment in the U.S. of an openly gay Episcopal bishop.

Hey, be gone if you wish, Anglicans, but remember this is the same outfit whose priests widely abused its choirboys and other young men with great public remorse and far less internal action, a morality exemplified by Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop of Los Angeles, who flouts the rule of law by welcoming and sequestering illegal aliens to expand his flagging Caucasian membership.

Of course, family planning is a no-no. And women priests? Never!

If you like a hard-core, dictatorial, pyramidal hierarchy, this new destination will be right up your alley.

Donald A. Collins

Washington, D.C.

Anglicans, beware! – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Almost all media coverage and many blogs — we might call this the public discourse — has focused on the most visible issues: issues that are more social than theological, more political than fundamental.

Rowan Williams on an essay “Theological Integrity, ” defined integrity as it applied to discourse as to “whether such a discourse is really talking about what it says it is talking about.” But discourse that avoids the genuine issues lacks such integrity. It invalidates the value of any response.

In effect, we are in the short term reacting to irritants and not their underlying cause. Consider this from the New York Times:

In an extraordinary bid to lure traditionalist Anglicans en masse, the Vatican said Tuesday that it would make it easier for Anglicans uncomfortable with their church’s acceptance of female priests and openly gay bishops to join the Roman Catholic Church while retaining many of their traditions.

Anglicans would be able "to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony," Cardinal William J. Levada, the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said at a news conference here.

It was unclear why the Vatican made the announcement now. But it seemed a rare opportunity, audaciously executed, to capitalize on deep divisions within the Anglican Church to attract new members at a time when the Catholic Church has been trying to reinvigorate itself in Europe.
The issue has long been close to the heart of Pope Benedict XVI, who for years has worked to build ties to those Anglicans who, like conservative Catholics, spurn the idea of female and gay priests.

…In the United States, traditionalist leaders said they would be less inclined than their British counterparts to join the Catholic Church, because they have already broken away from the Episcopal Church and formed their own conservative Anglican structures (though some do allow women to be priests).

Walk across the bridge over the Tiber, the pope seems to be saying. We will let you maintain the nature of your liturgy, your priests, your hymns and all of your conservative views (which the pope shares) about gay and women bishops.

Don’t bring along your theology, your salvation by grace, your intellectual freedom to question infallibility. You won’t need those here. As soon as you are across, and we have blown up the bridge . . .

What may happen, and liberal Catholics will notice this, the real issues will be magnified. The public discourse will gain integrity.

Cross posted from http://www.one-episcopalian-on-faith.com/

From: HeadlineBistro: Roundup of reactions to the Anglican provision

Then from New York, Father George Rutler – who also came to the Church from the Anglican tradition – discussed the document in even blunter terms than Father Longenecker.

“It is a dramatic slap-down of liberal Anglicanism and a total repudiation of the ordination of women, homosexual marriage and the general neglect of doctrine in Anglicanism,” he said in a statement yesterday.

Father Rutler zeroed in on the announcement’s implications for ecumenism, saying that the Vatican’s emphasis on the “spiritual patrimony” of Anglicanism, rather than its doctrine, is telling.

“Indeed, it is a final rejection of Anglicanism,” he said. “(It) makes clear that it is not a historic “church” but rather an “ecclesial community” that strayed and now is invited to return to communion with the Pope as Successor of Peter.”

Read the full article.

The headline Ruth Gledhill chose to describe yesterday’s breaking news was ‘Rome parks tanks on Rowan’s lawn’.

The Ugley Vicar: The Papal Bull in the Anglican China Shop

Bishop Harvey, of the Anglican Network in Canada wants to know:

1. Will the Roman Catholic Church require Anglican priests who choose this option to be re-ordained?

2. Will people who accept this invitation have to subscribe to Roman Catholic dogmas to which the Anglican Formularies are diametrically opposed – such as “Papal Infallibility”, the “Immaculate Conception” and Transubstantiation?

3. “Will Anglican priests – especially married ones – choosing to accept the Roman Catholic Church’s invitation have equal status with existing Roman Catholic clergy and will their ministry be interchangeable and welcomed in Roman Catholic parishes?

Then he adds:

As for me and my house, we will remain ever faithful to the authority and primacy of the Holy Scriptures and the Faith and Order of the undivided Catholic Church. I need not become a Roman Catholic to be a Catholic Christian. As an Anglican, I am a Catholic Christian.

Source: Stand Firm

Good article: 

The Catholic church has sent shock waves throughout the Anglican communion by creating a way to ease Anglican conversion to Catholicism. Those horrified by homosexual priests and bishops, same-sex blessings and women priests are hungry for a spiritual home that ratifies their prejudices.

Not me.

The Anglican faith is premised on what’s called the three stools; faith, tradition and reason. Reason. I can’t attend any church or listen to any preacher who doesn’t explicitly, as this church does, welcome my questions, my intelligence, my doubts and challenges. . . .

Read on: Caitlin Kelly – Broadside – No Novenas, Thanks — I’m Staying Anglican – True/Slant

Comprehensive wrap up of several view points:

If you are going to pick a fight with anyone, it’s not a bad move to choose an opponent who is already weakened. And, for good measure, make him an Anglican whose sense of Christian charity and British manners will make him reluctant to counterpunch, at least in public.

From that point of view, then, Pope Benedict XVI and the Roman Curia did well by choosing Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the 77 million-strong Anglican Communion, as the man to tweak with a provocative initiative to lure away a good chunk of Williams’ flock.

The plan, unveiled Tuesday at the Vatican, would allow Anglicans to join the Catholic Church without renouncing their Anglican traditions and beliefs. It would offer a tempting sanctuary to traditionalist Anglicans who have been upset with the acceptance of women bishops by the Church of England and openly gay clergy by the Episcopal Church, which is the U.S. branch of the Anglican Communion.

The plan represents an extraordinary concession by Rome. Even married clergy could bring their wives along and remain priests (though married bishops could not be Catholic bishops, just ordinary clerics). Those are perks Rome has never made for other groups, and does not seem inclined to provide for members of its own flock who would like to adopt traditions like a married clergy.
In common parlance many would call such a move "sheep-stealing." The Times of London was even more direct:

Read on: The Pope’s Anglican Plan: Welcome Mat or Hostile Takeover? — Politics Daily

Precise, first paragraph:

At first glance, the surprising news on Tuesday that Pope Benedict XVI has created a new structure to welcome some disenchanted Anglicans into the Roman Catholic fold — it was accompanied by a joint statement from his counterpart, the Archbishop of Canterbury — might look like a happy reunion. But the Vatican’s establishment of new "Personal Ordinariates," in which Anglicans, including married priests, can practice Catholicism while maintaining much of their own identity and liturgy, reveals more about the growing internal rifts within each of the two churches than any sign of real hope for reuniting the fractured Christian communion.

The rest of the article: Pope Benedict XVI to Welcome Anglicans to Catholicism – TIME

Good posting over at O God, come to my assistance. Read the full posting:

Believe it or not, there are some of us Anglo-Catholics who are Anglican on purpose – even Episcopalian.  I am an Anglican because of the historic appeal to Scripture, reason, and canon law.*  I am an Anglican because of our venerable liturgical tradition.  I am an Anglican because of the via media.**  I’m an Anglican because I hold Anglicanism to be one part of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church but cannot stomach any claim by any ecclesial body to be the only part of it.  I am an Anglican because I believe that all the baptized are welcome to receive communion.  I am an Anglican because though I have a strong Marian devotion, pray for the dead daily as part of the Guild of All Souls, and find benediction of the blessed sacrament a powerful devotional experience I do not demand everyone do so.  I am Anglican because I place much value in living a life of common prayer, but do not equate common with sameness.

Well put!