Vatican ready to receive Anglicans into church

VATICAN CITY — In an extraordinary bid to lure disillusioned Anglicans, the Vatican announced Tuesday that it would establish a special arrangement that will allow Anglicans to join the Catholic Church while preserving their liturgy and spiritual heritage, including married priests.

The worldwide Anglican Communion, which includes the 2.3 million-member U.S. Episcopal Church, has been wracked by years of conflict over the interpretation of Scripture, which has led to clashes over female clergy and, more recently, the rights of gays to serve as clergy.

The Catholic Church plan "reflects a bold determination by Rome to seize the moment and do what it can to reach out to those who share its stance on women priests and homosexuality," said Ian Markham, dean of the Virginia Theological Seminary, an Episcopal seminary in Alexandria, Va. "It is very, very bold and very interesting."

The new system will allow the Catholic Church to capitalize on tensions within the Anglican Communion and make potentially large inroads into its worldwide network of 80 million members. The Communion broke from the Catholic Church in 1534, when England's King Henry VIII was denied a marriage annulment.

Attempts to reconcile

In more recent times, Anglicans and the Catholic Church have made attempts to reconcile, but Tuesday's move could jeopardize those efforts, according to theologians.

In establishing the new structure, Pope Benedict XVI is responding to "many requests" from individual Anglicans and Anglican groups — including "20 to 30 bishops," said Cardinal William Levada, the Vatican's chief doctrinal official.

Both Catholic and Anglican leaders sought to present the move as a joint effort to aid those seeking conversion. But it appeared that the Vatican had engineered it on its own, presenting it as a fait accompli to the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion. Some Anglican and Catholic leaders expressed surprise, even shock, at the news.

For years, the Communion has struggled to reconcile its warring factions. Racial and class tensions have grown between the Anglican Communion's wealthy but shrinking Western congregations and its rapidly growing, more conservative, membership in the developing world, particularly Africa.

Under the new system, the Catholic Church will create "personal ordinariates" — separate units headed by former Anglican priests or bishops. Although married Anglican priests would be permitted to head the ordinariates, married bishops, who are not in keeping with Catholic tradition, would not be permitted. Potentially, entire former Anglican parishes could move under the wing of the Catholic Church.

The former Anglicans would be considered theologically Catholic but with their own traditions, such as use of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

The plan is not without precedent. The Catholic Church has, in rare instances, allowed married Anglican priests to join, but only under strict conditions. For centuries, the church has included Eastern Rite Catholics, who maintain their own traditions.

Breakaway congregations

Between 100 and 200 of the 7,000 Episcopal congregations have broken away from the denomination over the 2003 ordination of Gene Robinson, a gay man, as bishop of New Hampshire. The ordination of female clergy and the church's definition of salvation also have been issues in the conflict. Many of the breakaway congregations allied themselves with conservative Anglican primates in countries such as Nigeria and Uganda.

Conservative Anglican leaders in the U.S. said the impact will be greatest in England, where large numbers of traditionalist Anglicans have protested the Church of England's embrace of liberal theological reforms like the consecration of women bishops. Experts say these Anglicans, and others in places like Australia, might be attracted to the Roman Catholic fold because they have had nowhere else to go.

If entire parishes or even dioceses leave the Church of England for the Catholic Church, experts and church officials speculated, it could set off battles over ownership of church buildings and land.

Pope Benedict has said that he will travel to England in 2010.

In the U.S., traditionalist leaders said they would be less inclined than their British counterparts to join the Catholic Church, because they have already broken away from the Episcopal Church and formed their own conservative Anglican structures (though some do allow women priests).