The last-ditch plan to keep Anglo-Catholics happy will separate the Anglicans from the Catholics

By Damian Thompson
June 21st, 2010

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York are planning to force the General Synod to offer safeguards to traditionalists unhappy with women bishops. And I do mean force, since the Synod had already decided not to offer those safeguards.

Whatever. Although it’s none of my business, and if I was a supporter of women bishops I’d be outraged, I sort of hope that Dr Williams and Dr Sentamu get their way. As Fr Ed Tomlinson SSC notes on his blog, the Primates’ plan would separate worshippers who are serious about belonging to a Catholic Church as it was understood by the founders of Anglo-Catholicism – none of whom would countenance any degree of communion, however remote, with women bishops – from those prepared to turn a blind eye to the DIY ecclesiology of “alternative oversight”.

Fr Tomlinson, a supporter of the Ordinariate, makes a neat (if mischievous) distinction between those who want to be part of the “Catholic faith” and those who want to be part of “Catholic tradition”. The former can become Roman Catholics in the conventional way, or join the Ordinariate, or become Orthodox, or find a “continuing Church” in the apostolic succession. (I used to think such outfits were complete jokes, but one of them, the TAC, managed to kick-start the Ordinariate process, no mean achievement.) the rest

Ratzinger's Ordinariate
What I think most starkly distinguishes the Holy Father's offer from the Archishops' (apart, of course, from obvious things like bringing us into communion with most of the world's Christians, and making available to us the full benefits of the Magisterium) is the trust which the papal scheme demonstrates. Ratzinger's Anglicanorum coetibus gives us an autonomy unknown since the centralisation of church life under the papacy in the nineteenth century - most strikingly in this: that the Ordinariates themselves, not the papal nuncio in consultation with the local hierarchy, will submit the terna of names to Rome when a new Ordinary is to be appointed. And witness the powers given to the Council of an Ordinariate.