By Steve Weatherbe

March 2009

The metropolitan of the TAC’s Canadian province, Victoria-based Bishop Peter Wilkinson of Victoria, also dismissed the rumours, while expressing hope there would soon be significant progress towards communion between the TAC and the Roman Catholic church. “I’m hoping it will happen this year,” Wilkinson told BCCN.

Bishop Peter Wilkinson of Victoria

While both the TAC and Catholic churches are organized into geographically-based dioceses, each headed by a bishop, a prelature such as Opus Dei spans international borders. It too is headed by a bishop, and includes both clergy and laity.

The prelature story is just a story says Bishop Wilkinson. “Rome has not said anything.” And an anonymous spokesman for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith told the American National Catholic Register the same thing, stating: “It’s something that has appeared on the blogosphere and then been reiterated. The truth is, nothing has been decided.”

Another Vatican official, Monsignor Marc Langham, went further. “Conversion is a personal process, and a group of so many people could hardly be accepted.”

Anglican Catholic Church of Canada - coat of arms

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), which does have jurisdiction, has been pondering the matter since the TAC, in 2007, expressed desire for a union with the Catholic church – one which would see the preservation of its Anglican traditions.

Last summer, the cardinal in charge of the CDF told the TAC it was giving “corporate union” with the TAC “serious attention,” while noting that “the situation in the Anglican Communion in general has become more complex.”  This has been generally taken to be a reference to the worldwide Anglican church’s recent doctrinal debates over same-sex marriage.

It was such departures from Catholic and Christian teachings over the past 70 years – on ethical matters, remarriage after divorce, women priests and bishops, ordination of practicing homosexuals – that have, in Wilkinson’s view, eliminated any chance for reunion of the Catholic with the mainline Anglican Communion, or at least its more liberal provinces in England, Canada, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.

It was the “priesting” of women, by the Canadian Anglican church in 1976, that led to the formation of the Anglican Catholic Church (as the TAC is called in Canada) the following year – after two Popes and the Orthodox churches pleaded with Anglicans not to make this move.

Wilkinson became the Canadian group’s first parish priest at what later became St. John the Evangelist Church in Victoria.

Those who became Anglican Catholics (there are now 70 parishes across Canada, including two on Vancouver Island and a third on Mayne Island) did so not just because such moves as the ordination of women broke with Anglican tradition, but because it made the possibility of reunion with Rome much less likely.

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The bishop added that the TAC did not presume, in 2007, to tell Rome how its own reunion with Rome might be accomplished, but has only asked that its legitimate traditions be respected.

There are many precedents for large groups of Christians coming into union with Rome, though none is a precise fit.

Moreover, the Catholic Church did not question the validity of their bishops or priests.

Late in the 19th century, the Catholic Church did declare Anglican orders invalid – for in Rome’s view, the Church of England lost the apostolic succession in the 16th century.  

Wilkinson agrees that the validity of the orders of mainline Anglicans have certainly been put into question by the ordination of women.

The validity of orders for TAC priests and bishops would also be a serious discussion point.

There are also forces within the Catholic Church who might see the admission of TAC and other traditional Anglican bodies as an impediment to ongoing relations and even to reunification talks with the Anglican Communion – however liberal its theology, and however bleak the prospect for such talks.

Bishop Wilkinson, for his part, sees few doctrinal problems ahead. The TAC College of Bishops already accepts the Catechism of the Catholic Church; it is heir to the Catholic tradition maintained through the centuries within the Anglican Church, which includes a strong devotion to the Virgin Mary.

As for the TAC’s married clergy, the Catholic Church has admitted married Anglican priests in recent years (and reordained them), and always accepted the married clergy of Eastern Rite Catholics.

But there are no married bishops among the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholics – and Wilkinson sees this as a factor that will be worked out, since most TAC bishops are married.

Whole Anglican parishes have been admitted to the Catholic Church in the U.S. and allowed to continue using much of their liturgy based on the Book of Common Prayer; the TAC would wish to be allowed to follow suit.

This raises another possible problem in some quarters of the Catholic Church: would the aesthetic superiority of the Anglican liturgy and music lure away ‘cradle’ Catholics to the new Anglican rite?”

Commented one Anglican-to-Catholic convert: “The music written since Vatican II is dreadful; but most Catholics are inured to it, and aren’t even aware how bad it is. Probably just the ex-Anglicans like me would be tempted to switch.”

March 2009