Ecclesiastical Pick up Stix

How will the Vatican deal with the disparate Anglican groups that may now wish to join the Church of Rome?
October 21, 2009
Fr Dwight Longenecker

You may remember a game from childhood called 'Pick Up Stix'? A collection of colourful sticks that looked like big toothpicks would be dropped on the table and each player had to remove them one by one and place them back in the can. You had to pick up the stick in such a careful and delicate manner that you would not disturb any of the other sticks. This is not a bad analogy for the Vatican's attempt to pick up the increasingly disordered chaos that is the Anglican Communion.

It is common to think of the Worldwide Anglican Communion as a Protestant form of the Catholic Church. Catholics have their HQ in Rome. Anglicans have theirs in Canterbury. Catholics have the Pope. Anglicans have the Archbishop of Canterbury... and so forth. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Anglican Communion is more like a confederation of contradictions than a communion of the saints. At one point Anglicans worldwide were united in their shared understanding of the historic Christian faith and their shared ancestry in English language and culture. As time has progressed like an ever rolling stream the Anglican Communion has become more and more disparate. Now there are Charismatic Anglicans, Traditionalist Anglicans, Catholic Anglicans and Protestant Anglicans and New Age Anglicans and Liberal Anglicans.

In the developing world native cultures and separate political development has meant that the African, American and Asian Anglican Churches are now more African, American and Asian than Anglican.The structure of the Anglican Communion is that each national church is an independent province. They look to Canterbury for a figurehead of unity, but the Archbishop of Canterbury has no more than symbolic power. the rest