Friday 6 June 2008

Typing Speeds Must Increase

According to George Congar, the National Catholic Register of June 1st reported that discussions to allow the Traditional Anglican Communion to come as a bloc under the Pope as an Anglican rite are coming to completion, and further:

during their May 5 meeting, Archbishop Rowan Williams asked Benedict that "any potential announcement be delayed until after the Lambeth Conference."

The Congar report goes on that this is denied by Lambeth Palace as ever having been part of the Pope-Archbishop conversation. Indeed it seems that the story could be a lot of hot air: hearsay in Rome contacting the Church of England newspaper that seems to lack substance.

The basis of the story is the demand from adrift Anglo-Catholic people to go to a more reliable Church to carry on as Anglican types, if indeed they can go anywhere else, and this continuing notion that a group rather than individuals can cross over to Rome. At the moment, strong traditionalist Anglo-Catholics will be hobnobbing with GAFCON extreme evangelicals this month, and one can hardly see those two staying together if both sides are literalist about Church statements. They are so different regarding eucharistic practices and their meaning: they can hardly agree when Cardinal Kasper asks Anglicans to decide whether they are Protestant or Catholic.

The image suggested by this hot air reporting is that GAFCON will issue its demands, and start its own version of reorganising; then the Lambeth 2008 indaba marshmallow will decide nothing; and the Church of England General Synod may just manage to agree to consecrate female bishops; and finally the Roman Church comes in ready to pick off the pieces. But it is hot air until substance happens. August will be the most interesting month, rather than June.

Mind, bloggers will be having to improve their typing speeds from this month until August.

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