Vatican Report. John Thavis: The Anglican Church of England voted this month to ordain women as bishops. That decision was watched carefully here at the Vatican, because it may strongly impact ecumenical …More
Vatican Report.
John Thavis: The Anglican Church of England voted this month to ordain women as bishops. That decision was watched carefully here at the Vatican, because it may strongly impact ecumenical dialogue. We’ll look at the issue today on the Vatican Report. I’m John Thavis, Catholic News Service Rome bureau chief.
CG: And I’m Carol Glatz, CNS Rome correspondent. Ten days ago the General Synod of the Church of England voted to approve the creation of women bishops by 2014. Now, this is not a final decision; there’s another vote in two years. But to many people, it seems that the Church of England, the mother church of the Anglican communion, is moving inevitably toward ordaining women as bishops -- something that already happens in several other Anglican provinces. The Vatican considers this a major new obstacle to ecumenical dialogue.
JT: Right. Vatican officials see this as a break with the shared Christian tradition going back many centuries. They point out that all the Churches of the first millennium, Catholic, Eastern and Orthodox, state that only men may be ordained as priests and bishops. Ordaining bishops poses a particular problem for future communion between Catholics and Anglicans, because you can’t have communion without recognition of the episcopal office. So the dialogue will continue, but under a cloud.
CG: Coincidentally, the Vatican just last week underlined its teaching on women’s ordination. It said the attempted ordination of women was now among the most serious crimes against church law, and was punishable by automatic excommunication. So Anglican and Catholic leaders are definitely moving in opposite directions on this.
JT: This is also a very sensitive internal issue inside the Anglican church. There are many Anglican traditionalists and evangelicals opposed to women’s ordination. Those opponents in the Church of England had proposed creation of separate dioceses with only male bishops, and when this was voted down many of them predicted there could be hundreds or thousands of Anglicans leaving to join the Catholic Church -- or as the popular phrase has it, “swim the Tiber.”
CG: All of this makes it easier to understand the Vatican’s announcement last fall of a new formula that would welcome groups of disaffected Anglicans into the Catholic Church, and allow them to keep some of their spiritual and liturgical practices. Already some of the traditionalist leaders have met with Catholic officials for preliminary talks on how this could be done in England and Wales. It’s not clear yet whether this will be an exodus or just a trickle.
JT: That will probably depend on what happens over the next three or four years within the Anglican communion. In the meantime, a lot of people will be interested in what Pope Benedict has to say about this issue when he visits England in September. I’m John Thavis
CG: And I’m Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service.
John Thavis: The Anglican Church of England voted this month to ordain women as bishops. That decision was watched carefully here at the Vatican, because it may strongly impact ecumenical dialogue. We’ll look at the issue today on the Vatican Report. I’m John Thavis, Catholic News Service Rome bureau chief.
CG: And I’m Carol Glatz, CNS Rome correspondent. Ten days ago the General Synod of the Church of England voted to approve the creation of women bishops by 2014. Now, this is not a final decision; there’s another vote in two years. But to many people, it seems that the Church of England, the mother church of the Anglican communion, is moving inevitably toward ordaining women as bishops -- something that already happens in several other Anglican provinces. The Vatican considers this a major new obstacle to ecumenical dialogue.
JT: Right. Vatican officials see this as a break with the shared Christian tradition going back many centuries. They point out that all the Churches of the first millennium, Catholic, Eastern and Orthodox, state that only men may be ordained as priests and bishops. Ordaining bishops poses a particular problem for future communion between Catholics and Anglicans, because you can’t have communion without recognition of the episcopal office. So the dialogue will continue, but under a cloud.
CG: Coincidentally, the Vatican just last week underlined its teaching on women’s ordination. It said the attempted ordination of women was now among the most serious crimes against church law, and was punishable by automatic excommunication. So Anglican and Catholic leaders are definitely moving in opposite directions on this.
JT: This is also a very sensitive internal issue inside the Anglican church. There are many Anglican traditionalists and evangelicals opposed to women’s ordination. Those opponents in the Church of England had proposed creation of separate dioceses with only male bishops, and when this was voted down many of them predicted there could be hundreds or thousands of Anglicans leaving to join the Catholic Church -- or as the popular phrase has it, “swim the Tiber.”
CG: All of this makes it easier to understand the Vatican’s announcement last fall of a new formula that would welcome groups of disaffected Anglicans into the Catholic Church, and allow them to keep some of their spiritual and liturgical practices. Already some of the traditionalist leaders have met with Catholic officials for preliminary talks on how this could be done in England and Wales. It’s not clear yet whether this will be an exodus or just a trickle.
JT: That will probably depend on what happens over the next three or four years within the Anglican communion. In the meantime, a lot of people will be interested in what Pope Benedict has to say about this issue when he visits England in September. I’m John Thavis
CG: And I’m Carol Glatz, Catholic News Service.