This week Pope Benedict XVI announced that the Vatican laws would be amended to make it easier for Anglicans to become Roman Catholics. With this bold move the pope is looking to take advantage of the deep schism in the Anglican Communion over the ordination of women and gay men. I blogged about this on Daily Kos and there was a strong response by people with many different religious perspectives (including atheists).
One of the better commentaries on Benedict's power-grab is this piece by Matthias Dobrinski in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Dobrinski points out that this program simply reinforces what the Vatican means by "ecumenical dialogue": all Christians are welcome "home" as long as they submit to the primacy of Rome, as then Cardinal Ratzinger made clear in his 2000 document Dominus Iesus:
In Absprache mit der anglikanischen Kirche kommt nun der Vatikan jenen entgegen, die in ihrer Kirche keine Heimat mehr haben, aber auch nicht einfach katholisch werden wollen. Aus römischer Perspektive ist das Angebot großherzig. Die Großherzigkeit geht auch in Richtung der Piusbrüder: Seht her, wer zu uns zurückkehrt, muss nicht unbedingt die eigenen Traditionen aufgeben. (In agreement with the Anglican Church the Vatican now welcomes those who no longer feel they have a home in their church, but don't just want to become Catholic. From the perspective of Rome this is a generous offer. This generosity was also extended to the Pius Brothers: See here, whoever wants to come back to us does not necessarily need to abandon his own traditions.)
What Benedict evidently envisions is a confederation of Holocaust deniers and misogynistic traditionalists, united under the leadership of the papacy. A global, multi-faceted church of intolerance and reaction.
Many of us were disappointed by the weak reaction to the announcement by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who obviously was taken completely by surprise by Benedicts move. The leader of Anglican Communion missed an opportunity to restate the commitment to inclusion and the practice of Christian faith in the real world of the 21st century. Clayboy speaks for many in this blog post on "what Rowan should have said" (thanks to Wounded Bird blog for the link):
In the meantime I say only this: to all of you who are seeking reform in the search for a papacy exercised in charity and collegiality, to all of you who are seeking a faith that continues to update and renew itself from its ancient springs in the light of reason and the contemporary experience of God’s Spirit, to all of you wish to pray in your own language without being forced to conform to the past glories of a dead tongue, to all of you who seek to exercise ministry in service rather than power, to all of you who prefer the vesture of humility to arcane Renaissance pomp as re-envisioned by Prada, to all of you I say a warm welcome always awaits you around our altar tables. For however you treat us, we will still try to treat you as our brothers and sisters.
