Pope Benedict XVI and Archbishop Rowan Williams, head of the Anglican Communion. Photo courtesy ACNS Rosenthal.
The big news on the religion beat yesterday was a stunning announcement by the Roman Catholic Church, welcoming disenchanted Episcopalians back into the Catholic fold with few stipulations.
“Under the new structure, groups of Anglicans can move into a local Catholic Church that will be headed by former Anglican clergy, who can ease them into Catholicism without their having to kiss goodbye their own pastor or the rites they were raised on,” according to Time magazine.
The move is thought to be less an olive branch to the granddaddy of European Protestantism (the Anglican Church, and subsequent Anglican Communion, was founded in the 1500s by England’s Henry VIII) and more a response to recent decisions by the United States’ Episcopal Church, and giving its more conservative adherents another place to go, spiritually speaking.
The American Episcopal denomination, thought to now represent 2.2 million folks, has opened its doors to openly and active gay clergy, which has infuriated much of the wider Anglican communion and alienated more conservative Episcopalians within its own churches. Many parishes — indeed, entire Episcopalian dioceses — have since aligned themselves with other Anglican authorities worldwide.
It’s telling that, when I was covering religion for a secular paper in 2006, the Episcopal Church in the United States represented 2.7 million believers, meaning that the denomination has lost about 500,000 members in the span of three years.
But the Catholic Church is also reportedly shrinking. And really, it feels as though Christianity as a whole in the midst of a critical discussion related to human sexuality. Decisions made over the last 10 years, and decisions coming down the pipe for the next 20 or 30 more, will have a massive impact on how Christians worship, interpret the Bible and deal with worldly changes for centuries to come — a frustrating but fascinating crossroads.
