US Anglicans to convert to Rome en masse
By Simon Caldwell

12 March 2010

The ordination of women as priests and bishops has led many traditionalist Anglicans to seek communion with the Catholic Church PA Photo

About 100 traditionalist Anglican parishes across the United States have decided to convert en masse to the Catholic Church.

They have voted to take up the offer made by Pope Benedict XVI in November that permits vicars and their entire congregations to defect to Rome while keeping many of their Anglican traditions, including married priests.

By issuing the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus (on groups of Anglicans) the Pope was accused of attempting to poach Anglicans unhappy about decisions taken in their Church to ordain women and sexually active gay people as priests and bishops.

But the Vatican insisted that the move to create self-governing Personal Ordinariates”, which resemble dioceses in structure, came as a result of requests from at least 30 disaffected Anglican bishops around the world for “corporate reunion” with the Catholic Church.

The Anglican Church in America (ACA) – a member of the Traditional Anglican Communion – will now enter the Catholic Church as a block, bringing in an estimated 5,200 converts along with their own bishops, clergy, buildings and even a cathedral.

They will worship according to Anglican rubrics but they will be in communion with the Pope.

The decision was taken by the House of Bishops of the ACA during a meeting in Orlando, Florida, last week, which was attended by the primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, Archbishop John Hepworth.

The bishops said in a brief statement on their website afterwards that they had agreed to formally “request the implementation of the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus in the United States of America by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith”.

The ACA belongs to the Traditional Anglican Communion, which broke from the Anglican Communion in 1991 because of its drift from orthodox Christian doctrines. It has about 400,000 members around the world. Unlike 77 million Anglicans worldwide, it is not in communion with the much larger US Episcopal church nor does it recognise Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as its leader.

Its decision to rejoin the Catholic Church some 450 years after Queen Elizabeth I created the Church of England in the 1570s represents the third group of Anglican churches to take up the Pope’s offer.

The first was the British branch of the TAC, which constitutes about 20 small parishes and which last October, about two weeks before the apostolic constitution was published, resolved to “take the steps necessary to implement this constitution”.

The second was the Australian branch of Forward in Faith, a traditionalist group which is in communion with mainstream Anglican churches, which last month directed its governing council also to take the steps needed for the conversion of 16 parishes to Catholicism.

It has formed a working group with Catholic Auxiliary Bishop Peter Elliott of Melbourne along with the Anglican Church of Australia, a member of the Traditional Anglican Communion, to “set in train the processes necessary for establishing an Australian Ordinariate”.

The British branch of Forward in Faith is also considering requesting an ordinariate but has delayed a decision until July at the earliest so that it can consider the response by the General Synod to requests for provisions such as “flying bishops” that would allow traditionalist Anglicans opposed to such innovations as women priests to remain in the Church of England.

Its leaders are known to be holding secretive meeting with high-ranking Vatican officials.

Forward in Faith in Britain has set up a “Friends of the Ordinariate” group to help to gauge the level of support for conversion among rank-and-file worshippers.

If they decide to take the path to Rome Britain may see unprecedented numbers of conversions, possibly involving in the region of 200 Anglican congregations, which would amount to thousands of converts.

Anglican Bishop John Broadhurst of Fulham, chairman of Forward in Faith, said mass conversion was a real prospect.

“We have a thousand priest members in my organisation and there are many others who agree with us,” he said last year.

“The main issue for many Anglican priests is now the ownership of parish churches.”

In preparation for an influx of converts the Catholic bishops of England and Wales have established a commission which is expected to look at such issues as the possibility of church-sharing and also the chances of taking out 100-year leases of some Anglican parishes.

It emerged last month that former assistant Anglican Bishop Paul Robinson of Newcastle converted just weeks after stepping down from his post.

He is now a worshipper at St George’s Cathedral in Southwark, London.

Pope Benedict will in September attend the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, an esteemed Anglican cleric who shocked Victorian society by converting to the Catholic faith.