Anglicans in England, members of the Church of England, call themselves the Church of England. Anglicans outside England call themselves other things, usually Anglicans, or (in the US), Episcopalians. And sometimes, Anglicans refer to the CoE as the Church in England.Whats in a name?
Anglicans call themselves 'the Church OF England and Catholics call themselves the Church IN England. Not much difference is there!
Sop they are the same as us then
As a former Episcopalian, I got into an into an interesting discussion about this at a Bible study the other night. Is it accurate in an historical sense to identify the Anglican Church as Protestant? I always thought so, but a friend of mine has a different take on it. Any thoughts?
As an Anglican of the Anglo-Catholic variety, my opinion might be easy to guess. Anglicans don’t accept the logic of Apostolicae Curae, but, of course, RCs do, and should, that being what your Church has stated. Anglicans, knowing that the Apostolic succession is still found in our Church (maybe you have to look for it a little more carefully these days) know that we are Catholics, in the Anglican tradition: valid orders, valid sacraments conveying grace, and that means.
It is often said that the Anglican ‘low’ church leans towards Protestant and the ‘high’ church leans towards Rome.
Back in the 60’s and 70’s and even into the 80’s, the accepted wisdom from psyciatric professionals was that abusers were curable. So, yes, the Catholic Church and many Protestant organizations moved pedophiles around – including the Episcopal priest who molested me. He’d been moved from another state, where he had done hard jail time for his pedophilia, and took the job as youth minister in my Episcopalian parish, with good references from his old diocese. It was common practice in schools, churches, etc. to send the offenders for treatment and take them back when they were “cured”. But these guys just kept on molesting. It’s not a Catholic problem, but a problem across the board wherever these sickos can gain access to children. It has nothing whatever to do with the subject of this thread, which is Anglican/ Episcopalian relations.
This is a good point. It also helps to put things in perspective to realize that the public school system of New York City reportedly has an average of one sexual abuse allegation come to light each day, according some statistics I remember reading before we became Catholic. It is a societal problem that probably has more to do with the permissive nature of the 60’s themselves than we realize right now.
You left the Episcopal church because of the consecration of an openly gay bishop but yet you enetr into a church that has a clergy that sexually abuses young boys and they wouldn’t even admit to their sins until the pressure got so great that they were forced to. Now this fiasco has cost the Catholic church over a billion dollars in lawsuits which really is a drop in the bucket compared to the combined wealth of the church. Do you not see the evil here?
Yes, the scandal was evil, and the manner in which some in the hierarchy dealt with it is absolutely sinful and evil too. However, the Anglican Church was not free from this problem, either. An Anglican priest in Australia, I believe, even resigned his position because he was disappoitned in the way his church was handling the Anglican scandal.