The Bavarian German Shepherd, Joe Ratzinger, has struck with an invasion of England. It's Papal Aggression and is characteristic. Or should we say, Joe's following the invitation of comrades, Anglo-Romanists as well as SSC-men in the ACNA. Go ahead, pet Joe. He doesn't bite; he conquers and rules. Anglicans are getting exactly what they deserve, divine judgment.

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=83626

ANGLICANS and former Anglicans who want to become Roman Catholics while retaining much of their Anglican heritage may do so, Pope Benedict XVI announced this week.

A “Note of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith about Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans entering the Catholic Church”, pub­lished in Rome on Tuesday, said that the Pope had introduced a canonical structure that would allow former Ang­­licans to enter into full com­munion with the Roman Catholic Church “while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony”.

Under the term of the Apostolic Con­stitution, married former An­glican clergy (and seminarians) could have their vocation as priests in the Roman Catholic Church “discerned” within the new Personal Ordinariates, led by a former Anglican priest or former Anglican unmarried bishop.

They would be prepared in seminaries run by the bishops’ con­ferences alongside other RC semin­arians. The Personal Ordinariate, like those provided for military per­son-nel, and their families and chaplains, would include clergy, religious, and lay people. It would provide a “house of formation” to “address the parti­c-ular needs of formation in the Anglican patrimony”.

In issuing the statement on Tues­day, Cardinal William Levada said that the new structure would “facili­tate a kind of corporate reunion of Anglican groups” with the Catholic Church. He said that the move was “consistent with the commitment to ecu­menical dialogue”, which re­mained a priority.

The Archbishop of Canterbury denied that the move would lead to a mass exodus of clergy from the Church of England. In a joint press conference with the RC Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Revd Vincent Nichols, Dr Williams said he had heard of the move only in the pre­vious two weeks. He did not expect that large numbers of the clergy would take up the offer. Neither did he think that congrega­tions would take their buildings with them, as there were “formidable legal obstacles to an alienation of a church”.

The Archbishops, who both ap­peared ill at ease, said that it would not affect the longer-term ecumenical goal of full visible communion. In their joint statement, they said that the announcement “brings to an end a period of uncertainty for . . . groups who have nurtured hopes of new ways of embracing unity with the [Roman] Catholic Church. It will now be up to those who have made requests to the Holy See to respond to the Apostolic Constitution.”

The provision was the first time that a juridical arrangement had been made to accommodate groups of Anglicans who wanted to become Catholics, Archbishop Nichols said. The authority of the proposed Per­sonal Ordinariate, which would prob­ably be named after a saint and could appear “overnight”, would be “cumula­tive”, built on top of his own authority as the Ordinary.

Ex-Anglican clergy who chose to be under the authority of the new Personel Ordinariate, if and when it was set up, would come under his authority when they were working in “a major action of the diocese”.
The details would be worked out in close collaboration with the Bishops’ Conference. Any Anglican liturgical forms or books would have first to be approved by the Vatican.

The Archbishop said that the new structure was for groups, not indivi­duals. Individuals were free to “knock on a door” and become Catholics in the traditional way.

Both Archbishops said that they expected Anglo-Catholics to remain part of the Church of England. The work of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) and the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission had established “a solid common heritage”, Dr Williams said.
He said that for 150 years “more or less significant numbers of Anglicans have entered into the Roman Catholic Communion”; so this move was neither an act of aggression nor a vote of no confidence. The “main stream” of ecumenical contacts continued.

Dr Williams was flanked by the Bishop of Guildford, the Rt Revd Christopher Hill, who suggested that the new provision was more likely to be taken up by Anglican clergy than lay people. But he welcomed its pastoral outreach, because it was better than people setting up their own little churches.

Mgr Andrew Faley, the Roman Catholic Church’s ecumenical repres­entative on the General Synod, who was also present at the press con­ference, said afterwards that the move resembled one made by the Pope in January when he lifted the excom­munication on the bishops of the Society of St Pius X in the interests of unity. Former Anglicans who were already Catholics would be free to choose whether to join the new Per­sonal Ordinariate or not.

The details of the new arrange­ment will be clearer once the Apos­tolic Constitution and code of prac­tice are published in the next two weeks.