More speculation on Anglo-Catholics and Rome

All of this I find most interesting, since the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) made a formal request to come into full communion with the Holy See last October. There is nothing new on this front. Except recently some Anglo-Catholic bishops from the Canterbury Anglican Communion, upset about the Church of England's recent vote to approve the consecration of female bishops, went to Rome to ask for some provision to be made for them to convert en masse with their flocks.

Now these Anglo-Catholic bishops are already using the modern post-Vatican II Novus Ordo liturgy the Roman Catholics use, so they are not really asking for an Anglican Rite per se.
The TAC, however, is because we are Anglican Catholics who use the Book of Common Prayer. There is an Anglican Rite approved for Anglican Use parishes within the Roman Catholic Church.

Anyway, the web has been rife with speculation about what might be on offer for these Church of England bishops, and the TAC application is all but forgotten.

The Times religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill says sources are telling her Angl0-Catholics should not get their hopes up:

Being in a Resolution A parish myself, I am more sympathetic to their plight, but fear that those who fantasise a Flaminian Gate-style welcome are deluding themselves. A number of leading supporters of women bishops can't wait for them to up sticks and go to Rome, but they also might be counting their blessings too soon. Rome, it seems to me, is unlikely to want them much if at all. Better to look to the Bishop of London, summoning a 'sacred synod' in October to address the crisis in his intensely evo and trad diocese.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has an extremely strong rapport with Pope Benedict XVI. He was told clearly on a recent visit to Rome that the Pope will not deal with sub-groups, and that there are no back doors nor side doors to Rome. The Church of England might have effectively abandoned any realistic prospect of full visible unity, but it is still the Church of England that Rome will deal with.

Universalisation of some kind of Anglican Use in the UK is a possibility, but English parishes are not like American ones. US parishes use the episcopalian liturgy. Many English traditionalist parishes already use the Roman rite so it would be a bit hard for Rome to authorise an Anglican rite for them. Nevertheless, there is a possibility of that happening in some form, and there are whispers of some kind of announcement from the Vatican after Lambeth.

Rome knows however that the Catholics in the pews should not be upset too much. In England at least, these Catholics are by and large pretty liberal. Many of them would like women priests, or at the very least married ones. The last thing they want is a whole group of woman-bishop-hating clergy coming over, with their wives and families, and enforcing some kind of new doctrinal orthodoxy on dioceses that are working very well without them and finding their own accommodation with Catholic orthodoxy and modern life. Given the sacrifices their own priests have made in their embrace of celibacy, poverty and obedience in the service of Christ, they are unlikely to want our more-Roman-than-the-Romans alighting their vestry doors.

Damien Thompson disagrees with Gledhill:

In fact, her friend - whom I do not doubt for a moment is part of the liberal mafia of the Bishops' Conference - has told her a series of lies. For example, that "the Pope does not deal with sub-groups". Nonsense. It was Joseph Ratzinger who, ignoring ecumenical niceties, sent a message of support to conservative American Anglicans meeting in Dallas in 1993. He knows very well that there are only sub-groups in Anglicanism these days.

Another lie: "The Archbishop of Canterbury has an extremely strong rapport with Pope Benedict XVI." On the contrary, the two men barely know each other. As someone observes on Ruth's thread, if there was such a rapport "Rowan would not have been begging and pleading for months before getting a polite but distant audience, and the Pope would have invited him to open the Pauline Year with himself and the Patriarch. John Paul II had Carey with him for opening the Jubilee Year at St Peter's."

Then there is this priceless garbage: "Rome knows however that the Catholics in the pews should not be upset too much. In England at least, these Catholics are by and large pretty liberal. Many of them would like women priests, or at the very least married ones. The last thing they want is a whole group of woman-bishop-hating clergy coming over, with their wives and families, and enforcing some kind of new doctrinal orthodoxy on dioceses that are working very well without them and finding their own accommodation with Catholic orthodoxy and modern life."

It's true that the tiny proportion of Catholics who take their line from the Bishops' Conference bureaucracy and its house journal, the Tablet, feel this way. "Rome" doesn't, and nor do young Catholics, who are more conservative than their guitar-strumming grandparents, who are still boring everyone senseless reminiscing about Vatican II. The "new doctrinal orthodoxy" that terrifies the Sandalistas is taught by Pope Benedict and resonates loudly with more and more traditionalist Anglicans. It's called Catholicism.