The head of the Anglican community of Fulham has been the first Anglican bishop to announce that he will resign in order to enter an Anglo-Catholic Ordinariate.
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John Broadhurst, Bishop of Fulham, has not only been the first bishop of the Church of England to announce publicly that at the end of the year he will resign in order to enter an Anglo-Catholic Ordinariate, accepting the doctrine of the Catholic Catechism and the authority of the Pope. He has also been the first to explain his decision in detail on the radio, specifically on the programme “Sunday” on BBC Radio 4.
“The Anglican Church has been drifting away from the Catholic Church with its decisions, and we have the whole issue of gay marriage in the Anglican Communion, and women priests in England, and women bishops, and recently came the Pope’s very generous offer in ‘Anglicanorum Coetibus’, which says to Anglicans like me: ‘There is a home for you, if you want it.’”
Broadhurst is giving up a great deal. As a Catholic, being married, he will not be able to be a bishop. In fact, he has no assurance that the Catholic Church will take him on as a priest, although he would like that and, with Rome’s permission, it is possible. “I hope and wish to resign at the end of the year, and I hope to enter the Ordinariate. I hope to be a priest, but, in the end, if I have to be a simple layman, I accept it; that is fine. As we said in the debate on women bishops: ministry is not a career but a vocation. It is what the Church requires of you, not what you ask of the Church.”
After 25 years in the Synod of the Anglican Church, he is convinced that there is no longer any room for conservatives in it. According to the 2002 report “Cost of Conscience”, which interviewed 2,000 Anglican clergy, only one in three Anglican women priests believes in the virginal motherhood of Mary, almost half deny that Jesus rose from the dead, 30% deny the Trinity, and one in four believes neither in “God the Father Almighty” nor in “God the Holy Spirit”. And those who are women priests today will soon be women bishops. “I already said in 1994 that you cannot have women priests without having women bishops,” Broadhurst explains.
The still-Anglican bishop believes that the Catholic Ordinariate will be born small at first, “because for many priests, with a wife and family, it is very hard to move into an insecure situation, but I have received many e-mails from lay people asking ‘How does one join?’. You cannot join something that does not yet exist”. He, in any case, is convinced of his decision.
In Baltimore, 85% in Favor
The Episcopalian parish of Mount Calvary, in Baltimore, United States, voted this weekend in favour of entering the Catholic Church as a body through an Anglo-Catholic Ordinariate. 85% of the parishioners voted that way. The Episcopal Church (the liberal Anglicans of the US) may end up facing off against the Catholic Church, the parishioners or the Ordinariate (once it is created) over the ownership of the building, and its decision may influence other groups, but the faithful prefer union with Rome, with or without the premises.
Author: Pablo J. Ginés/La Razón
Source: REL
