Anglicans in Groups

Pope Benedict has put together an offer for groups of Anglicans who wish to become Catholics and maintain an Anglican liturgy, spirituality and communal structure. The document is called Anglicanorum Coetibus, Groups of Anglicans. It's an interesting set-up and creates something like an Anglican Rite.

It maintains the strong position of Rome that sacramental priesthood was lost at the English Reformation and so will require that all clergy wishing to transfer into Catholicism be ordained again. Currently married Anglican priests will largely be accepted for ordination, but those who wish to ordained bishops must be celibate, as must, in general, future candidates for priesthood.

The basic structure for these Anglicans in Groups is called an ordinariate. In Catholicism, an ordinary is a person with juridical and pastoral authority over a diocesan or diocesan-like group.
Bishops are ordinaries if they are in charge of a diocese, but you can be a bishop without being an ordinary: an auxiliary bishop, or a bishop who works for the Roman curia. And you can be an ordinary without being a bishop: abbots and provincial superiors of religious orders have juridical and pastoral authority over certain groups, but are not ordained bishops.

To allow a former Anglican bishop to stay in his marriage AND to be the ordinary of a group of Anglicans, the document would allow him to be ordained as a priest but to wear episcopal insignia and participate in larger Bishops' Conferences with retired status. Abbots are examples of this: they are only priests, but are ordinaries and wear the mitre and carry the crosier.

As far as doctrine is concerned, unsurprisingly, there is no concession at all. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the norm. And although there is talk of maintaining Anglican liturgical forms, what that would look like is not clear. JPII created a smaller version of this with his Pastoral Provision.

Significantly, other Catholics may not join these Anglican groups unless married to an Anglican who is making the move, and former Catholic priests who became Anglican cannot return to Rome and still exercise their ministry.

Rome, it seems, has made an offer but has stood very firm on principles. Seems to be Benedict's style. Kinda what you'd expect from a...pope.

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