An English cardinal said Pope Benedict XVI's decision to receive entire groups of Anglicans into the Catholic Church did not represent a comment on the state of the Anglican Communion.Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, retired archbishop of Westminster, said a forthcoming apostolic constitution to establish "personal ordinariates" should not be seen as an attempt by the Vatican to poach Anglicans disaffected by such issues as the ordination of women and sexually active homosexuals as priests and bishops.
The former Catholic co-chairman of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission made his remarks in the Richard Stewart Memorial Lecture at Worth Abbey, near London, Oct. 29.
He said the canonical structures announced in Rome and London Oct. 20 were simply a generous response to requests over a number of years by Anglican communities that wanted to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of distinctive spiritual patrimony.
"There is much that has been written and spoken about this matter over the past week but I would just want to emphasize that this response of Pope Benedict is no reflection or comment on the Anglican Communion as a whole or of our ongoing ecumenical relationship with them," said the cardinal, 77, the former president of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales.
He explained that such a provision was first discussed in 1993 and 1994 by the English Catholic leadership with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, following a request from an Anglo-Catholic group called Forward in Faith.
"After much discussion, it was finally decided that it would not be appropriate to take this initiative," said the cardinal. He said one problem was that the question was then focused solely on clergy of the Church of England and did not refer to those of other Anglican provinces.
"It did not seem within our remit to engage in such a response," the cardinal said in the lecture titled "ARCIC: Dead in the Water or Money in the Bank?"
"The other reason, however, was even more important," he said. "If the Holy See had offered such personal ordinariates then, and in particular here in England, it might well have been seen as an unecumenical approach by the Holy See, as if wanting to put out the net as far as one could. Both Pope John Paul (II) and the then-Cardinal Ratzinger would have been against such a move.
"Matters have moved on since then and the repeated requests by many Anglicans, not only from England but from other provinces of the Anglican Communion, have necessitated a new approach, which is why I think that the personal ordinariates offered by the Holy Father can be seen not in any way unecumenical but rather as a generous response to people who have been knocking at the door for a long time," he said.
The cardinal suggested that the ordinariates did not spell the end of dialogue between Catholics and Anglicans but instead should generate "a new ecumenical enthusiasm" based on prayer and the desire for unity.
"This does not mean devising unrealistic utopias in the future, but rather a living out of the already real communion that exists between us all" and a commitment to do "what is possible today," he said.
In announcing the plan, Vatican officials made it clear that Anglican priests who are married may be ordained Catholic priests, but that married Anglican bishops would not be allowed to function as Catholic bishops. They also indicated that married Anglican seminarians would be allowed to be ordained.
The Vatican clarification confirmed that married former Anglican priests would be admitted to priestly ministry, as an exception from canon law on a case-by-case basis.
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SIC: CNS