Pope's Offer to Anglicans Frought With Danger: Goofy Goes Fishing Again

I am often saddened to see posts as the one below after the Holy Father in his graciousness opens wide the door for Anglicans. What is even more silly is these 'priests' calling themselves Anglican Catholics. Here is a priest "Fr John" in America giving his two pence worth on the Pope's offer.

This morning I opened my email to find a comment to a posting I made here in May of 2006. The post titled "St. Wilfrid of York" May 12, 2006, was a brief description of how Catholics in England came into communion with the papacy. The comment was a spill over from the "Continuum" web log (see list of websites in the right hand column to navigate there)commentaries on the recent Apostolic Constitution, or AC for short, offered to Anglicans by the Pope.

The AC is a document that is fraught with danger for Anglicans trusting in its provisions to put them into a positive communion with the Roman Catholic Church. Without rehashing all the debate that has transpired over at the "Continuum" on this topic, I will only add that the language of the AC needs to be read carefully and repeatedly. It is the governing legal document, and will ultimately dictate the nature of the relationship, even if only after the death or incapacitation of the current pope.

The document contains many loop holes that allows Roman Catholic diocesan bishops to have tremendous power over both the former Anglican ordinaries and parishes coming into the Roman Church under the provisions of the AC.

Anglicans choosing this option may ultimately find themselves in a worse situation than the one they had while in the Episcopal Church.