Thursday, November 19, 2009

Archbishop of Canterbury claims differences between Anglicans and Roman Catholics are not that great


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/6607984/Archbishop-of-Canterbury-claims-differences-between-Anglicans-and-Roman-Catholics-are-not-that-great.html

[Telegraph] 19Nov 2009--Dr Rowan Williams challenged Catholic doctrine by claiming that even the dispute over whether women can be priests should not be a serious dividing issue between the two major Christian denominations.

He held up the Anglican Communion, which has been driven to the brink of collapse over homosexuality in recent years, as an example of how a family of churches can remain connected despite the differences between them.

The archbishop made his provocative comments at the Gregorian University in Rome, at a meeting to celebrate the centenary of Cardinal Willebrands, a former president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

It is Dr Williams’s first trip to Rome since the Vatican’s surprise announcement of a new way for groups of Anglicans disaffected by the liberal direction of the church to convert to Catholicism.

He will meet Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday to discuss the implications of the creation of Personal Ordinariates, which could see hundreds of thousands worldwide enter into full communion with Rome while retaining parts of their former Anglican heritage.

Dr Williams, who had no part in the development in the scheme and was only given two weeks’ notice of its announcement, described it as “the elephant in the room” during his address on Thursday afternoon.

He admitted it represented an “imaginative pastoral response to the needs of some” but insisted it did not “break any fresh ecclesiological ground”.

3 comments:

Joe Mahler said...

Yeah, I guess there is no real difference. It's all heresy, just a different brand name . But Mr. Williams surely must have been talking about a-c's and not the Christians within "Anblicanism". Sola dissimulation to you too Rowan.

DomWalk said...

There are elephants in the room, but not the one that Rowan sees through his eyebrows. They are pederasty in the Western Roman church and apostasy in the Western Anglican church.

DomWalk said...

Actually, Rowan's right, in terms of the American Church. The Roman church is just as liberal as TEC, and just as depraved. They just have two advantages that TEC doesn't: a conservative pope, and a steady stream of immigration to fill the otherwise emptying pews.