Vatican reaches out

In an extraordinary bid to lure traditional Anglicans en masse, the Vatican announced Tuesday it would make it easier for them to join the Roman Catholic Church while retaining many of their traditions.

Anglicans uncomfortable with their church’s acceptance of women priests and openly gay bishops would be able “to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony,” Cardinal William J. Levada, the prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said at a news conference.

It was unclear why the Vatican made the announcement. But it seemed a rare opportunity, audaciously executed, to capitalize on deep divisions within the Anglican Church to attract new members at a time when the Catholic Church has been trying to reinvigorate itself in Europe. The issue has long been close to the heart of Pope Benedict XVI, who has long worked to build ties to those Anglicans who, like conservative Catholics, spurn the idea of female and gay priests. The pope has said that he will travel to England in 2010.

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 only in recent weeks 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.

The move could have the deepest impact in England, where large numbers of traditional Anglicans have protested the Church of England’s embrace of liberal theological reforms such as the consecration of female bishops. Experts say these Anglicans and others in places such as Australia might be attracted to the Catholic fold because they have had nowhere else to go.

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

---

The Vatican’s announcement marks a significant moment in relations between two churches that first parted in the Reformation of the 16th century over theological issues and the primacy of the pope.

In recent decades, the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church have sought to heal the centuries of division. Some feared that the Vatican’s move might jeopardize decades of dialogue between Catholics and Anglicans by implying that the aim was conversion.

The Very Rev. David Richardson, the archbishop of Canterbury’s representative to the Vatican, said he was taken aback.

“I don’t see it as an affront to the Anglican Church but I’m puzzled by what it means and by the timing of it,” Richardson said. “I think some Anglicans will feel affronted.”

The decision creates a formal universal structure to streamline conversions that had previously been evaluated case by case. The Vatican said it would release details in the coming weeks, but that generally, former Anglican prelates chosen by the Catholic Church would oversee Anglicans, including entire parishes or even dioceses, seeking to convert.

Under the new arrangement, the Catholic practice that has allowed married Anglican priests to convert and become Catholic priests would continue. (There have been very few such priests.) But only unmarried Anglican bishops or priests could become Catholic bishops.

Levada acknowledged that accepting large numbers of married Anglican priests while forbidding Catholic priests to marry could pose problems for some Catholics. But he argued that the circumstances differed.

Under the new structure, former Anglicans who become Catholic could preserve some elements of Anglican worship, including hymns and other “intangible” elements, Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, the Vatican’s deputy chief liturgical officer, said at the news conference.

---

Levada said that the Vatican had acted in response to many requests from Anglicans since the Church of England ordained women in the 1990s, and, more recently, when it faced what he called “a very difficult question” — the ordination of openly gay clergy and the celebration of homosexual unions.