Thursday, July 17, 2008

Benedict is encouraging Anglican converts (Contribution)

More evidence this morning that Catholic liberals are panicking at the prospect of an influx of conservative Anglicans.

They want us to believe that Pope Benedict is "shunning defectors" in an attempt to shore up the position of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Not true.

On his way to Australia, the Pope was asked about the Lambeth Conference.

He replied that the Catholic Church should not intervene in its deliberations and that he was praying that there would be no more schisms and fractures.

Lambeth Palace and its liberal Catholic allies have now spun this into a papal message of support for Rowan Williams in his attempts to persuade Anglicans not to convert to Rome.

Liberals claim that Pope Benedict has "let it be known that he does not support the defection of conservative Anglicans to the Roman Catholic Church". He has done no such thing.

The Pope is supporting moves by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to construct a model whereby a group of rebel conservative Anglicans, the Traditional Anglican Communion, can be received en masse and occupy their own structures inside the Roman Catholic Church.

This model – which is being constructed in secret – could serve as a blueprint for mainstream Anglicans wanting to convert as a group.

To understand what is going on, it is important to grasp that Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican's head of ecumenism who is attending Lambeth, is not a close adviser to the Pope. He and the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger have even clashed publicly in the past.

Likewise, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, who is also attending Lambeth, is not close to the Holy Father.

Always remember: it was Cardinal Ratzinger who sent a personal message of support to conservative Anglicans meeting in Dallas in 2003, thereby horrifying Kasper – who, as a professional ecumenist, probably is unsympathetic to Anglo-Catholics rocking the boat. But he, thank God, is soon to retire.

I'm intrigued by the role played by the liberal Catholic magazine the Tablet in spinning this Pope-spurns-defectors story. Benedict is an old adversary of the Tablet, which spent many years blackening his name.

Recently, Rome asked the English bishops to explain why they never distance themselves from the publication, which this year carried an article advocating lay celebration of the Eucharist.

The Tablet adores Rowan Williams and despises Anglo-Catholic opponents of women priests. Small wonder, then, that it is attempting to shore up Cantuar's position by misrepresenting Benedict, with (I fear) the tacit support of some members of the English hierarchy.

I just hope that Anglo-Catholics will not be taken in. Let's put this bluntly. Far from wanting to preserve the Anglican Communion, Pope Benedict wishes all its members to become Catholics.

He realises, however, that corporate reunion is now impossible, and so he and his key advisers in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith are considering ways in which groups of Anglicans can be received into full communion with the Holy See.
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