Anglican archbishop sees accord with Rome on 80% of doctrinal issues [CC]

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The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) has produced general agreement on 80% of the doctrinal issues under discussion, an Anglican prelate told Vatican …

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The problem is there are really 3 parties here: Anglicans, Catholics, and the ecumenists. This agreement really only refers to the ecumenists, who are increasingly apart from the main thinking in their own denominations. The reality is that Anglicanism is steadily moving farther away, not only from the current Catholic Church, but from their own historic roots.

It is ridiculous to quantify doctrine, so the 80% is meaningless. The problem is that there are moves to eliminate ARCIC as an unneeded drain on staff. So ARCIC keeps putting out press releases to show progress, to maintain funding and staff time in the next year. What was the percentage in 1970, when Anglicans and Catholics were much closer together? 99%? Do you think if their stats showed their percentage was falling, they would put the falling stats in a press release.

Follow the money.
 
The problem is there are really 3 parties here: Anglicans, Catholics, and the ecumenists. This agreement really only refers to the ecumenists, who are increasingly apart from the main thinking in their own denominations. The reality is that Anglicanism is steadily moving farther away, not only from the current Catholic Church, but from their own historic roots.

It is ridiculous to quantify doctrine, so the 80% is meaningless. The problem is that there are moves to eliminate ARCIC as an unneeded drain on staff. So ARCIC keeps putting out press releases to show progress, to maintain funding and staff time in the next year. What was the percentage in 1970, when Anglicans and Catholics were much closer together? 99%? Do you think if their stats showed their percentage was falling, they would put the falling stats in a press release.

Follow the money.
One recalls Flannery O’Connor’s statement that “…Southern Fundamentalists would be surprised to know that they share more with Catholicism than they do with classic Protestantism.”

So, as between churches like the Anglican church and the various southern fundamentalists who live in my part of the country, I would bet on the latter coming into the Church more than the former. Indeed, we have a pretty good convert rate here, and they’re almost all southern fundamentalists or evanglicals of one kind or another. Once in a blue moon a LCMS Lutheran, but not other “mainliners”.

The difference, I think, is that fundamentalists are (not surprisingly since their very name says it) interested in core basics. Mainliners tend to focus on small and often arcane things. 20% to them is the Great Rift Valley of theology.
 
I wish every government or church program would have a 10 year Sunset provision. Is this program, and this purpose, what we want to be doing right now, 10 years later? If not, it expires. In 1969, ARCIC had a good purpose. Some patience was justified. Not now. Most, if not all, of ARCIC’s energy and budget goes to perpetuate ARCIC and defend it from those who want to end it.

Some would say, OK, ARCIC is still living in 1969, but it’s not wasting that much money, and it’s harmless. But note that it’s the Anglican Archbishop who is applauding it. For liberal mainstream Anglicanism, ARCIC provides a certain credibility: it is them, the mostly prochoice Anglican establishment, that the RCC is giving recognition to. Even though mainstream Anglicans are moving farther away from the RCC, the RCC is still respected by much of the world.

In 1969, the RCC would never have initiated ongoing discussions with a religious communion that (in 2015) mostly supports the right to kill unborn children. In 1969 there wasn’t any Continuing Anglican Churches, or ACNA, or Ordinariate, because there wasn’t a need for one. Thank God Pope Benedict ignored ARCIC when he set up the Ordinariates.

Ecumenism should be reconfigured to reflect 2015. End ARCIC. Initiate discussions with the Continuuing Anglican churches and ACNA.
 
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