Was reunification between the Catholic Church and Anglican Communion ever a viable prospect?

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@scousekiwi

In re my previous posts in this thread and your response to one of my points:

Yes, I can only offer valid observations of the Episcopal Church here in the USA, to which I belonged in the '90’s. Being that the Episcopal Church is mainstream Anglicanism here in the USA (by which I define as in formal communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury and thus part of the worldwide Anglican Communion). They have clearly set their course: one that certainly precludes any sort of formal reunion with the Church of Rome. Certainly not explicit ('official")…but clearly implicit (positions, teachings & practices).

There are several minority Anglican factions here: some seeking legitimacy from the Orthodox, others declaring themselves “true Anglicans” sui juris. And then there’s the Anglican prelatures/personal ordinariates of 2009.

Disenfranchised mainstream Anglicans (like me) who wished not to become part of this “continuing Anglican movement” decided to leave based upon convictions and/or theological predilections (convert to Catholic, Orthodox or join the Lutherans or Presbyterians).
 
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ACNA is motley. Not in the Continuum, not in the Communion, though it has friendly relations with a couple of Communion jurisdictions, and slightly split on female ordination, resulting in impaired communion within itself. It’s mostly friendly to Anglicans of my sort. We hope it gets its act together.

I don’t know of anything particularly wrong with Wiki on it.
 
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I do not think it was ever going to be a possibility.

Probably those Anglicans who would have been most in favour are more likely the ones who have joined the personal ordinariates.

In Anglicanism there is a much broader range of theology than in the Catholic Church. Many Anglicans simply do not agree with large parts of Catholic theology.

I firmly believe that the minute Anglicans started ordaining women any possibility died. Indeed, they cannot and do not even justify their claims for women’s ordination on theology.

Now, quite a number of Anglican churches in the ‘West’ have or are considering allowing two people of the same sex to get married.

I am not sure with the commission between our two communions to consider reunification still exists. It simply cannot happen now.
 
scousekiwi said:
s and, all the more so, bishops. However, was it ever a viable prospect? I suspect not:
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Considering the Anglican Communion is a somewhat loose confederation of national churches I don’t see it as being likely. It may have been possible in the early years when the lines between Catholic Church and Church of England were still somewhat fuzzy (after all the early COE essentially operated as if it were still the Catholic Church just reporting to the King instead of the Pope). But as the Anglican Communion developed the likelihood decreased as every national church has it’s own say in any theoretical reunification, and elements within each one that developed as the Anglicans developed their low church/reformed church wings that would be vehemently opposed to such a merger. I think the closest you’re going to come to an Anglican merger has already happened with the Personal Ordinariates.
 
BartholomewB said:
How does that organization fit into the picture? How significant is it?
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They’re generally conservative evangelicals, with smaller charismatic and Anglo-Catholic parties. I can’t imagine that reunion with the Holy See would feature at all on their theological agenda.

From what I gather, the Anglo-Catholics in the ACNA are not entirely happy, and a number of parishes were wanting to withdraw. While they’re not fighting over homosexuality (that being the reason why most left the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in Canada), there’s still quite a significant latent theological tension between all the factions: women’s ordination, the sacraments, and essentially every issue other than sexuality. The reality is that they still have to achieve reconcile camps who have opposing definitions of what constitutes ‘historic’ and ‘authentic’ Anglicanism.
 
Maximian said:
if they had been as unscrupulous as the pro-women’s ordination faction in packing the parchial church councils and thence the General Synod.
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I’m not sure if someone can shed light on this, but I heard from British friends that there is a kind of reverse tendency now – with women theology students being discouraged from seeking ordination, or sent for practicums in parishes which oppose women priests (apparently in the hope they will change their mind). I don’t know how big a movement it is, if that’s indeed the case. If it is, it does make me wonder whether a schism will be avoidable in the near future.
scousekiwi said:
The Catholic Church would have had more bargaining power in negotiations between the two churches on account of its size, global reach, history, and more clearly defined doctrinal positions.
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In ecumenical dialogue at large, size is one of the reasons the Catholic Church is not part of the World Council of Churches. There was no way there was going to be fair representation if she was – either denominations would have had a number of representatives proportional to their number of faithful and she would have wielded over half the voices on her own; or there would have been a voice per denomination, which would have given her exactly the same weight and influence as, for example, the Methodist Church of Fiji and Rotuma and its 200,000 members.
 
I neglected to mention, the Anglican Covenant was a (failed) attempt in the early 2000s to try and reconcile the warring factions of the global communion by creating a contract (of sorts) whose centralised governing board had significantly expanded legislative and administrative extra-territorial powers over provinces. The intended effect was to make each province and diocese responsible to each other on issues of teaching and practice. The CoE Synod refused to adopt it, so too did the Episcopal Church, and the Diocese of Sydney.

It was all very embarrassing. There wasn’t enough trust to mutually commit to one another in terms of letting other Anglicans in the global communion have a(n authoritative) say.
 
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The ARCIC came into existence, a long term descendant of the sort of movement that Halifax and the Abbe Portal envisioned, back in the 1890s, during the period of close relations that Paul VI and Ramsey Cantuar had. It was the last possible moment, to attempt to close the gap, and was, inevitably, too late.
 
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Thank you, @Bithynian. I could ask the same question about Gafcon (an ill-advised acronym, suggesting gaffe-prone confidence tricksters). In Africa, it seems, there are now more Gafcon Anglicans than Welby loyalists. But what about the rest of the world? And why hasn’t it been mentioned yet in this thread? Not important enough?
 
BartholomewB said:
But what about the rest of the world? And why hasn’t it been mentioned yet in this thread? Not important enough?
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From my understanding, GAFCON was the name initially attached to a conference organised in opposition to the Lambeth Conference in 2008. From there, a number of provinces established the FCA, Fellow of Confessing Anglicans. But often GAFCON and FCA are used interchangeably.

There still aren’t that many FCA Anglicans in the Global North. Membership in the ACNA is most definitely increasing, but it’s still uncertain whether this is sustainable growth as opposed to short-term gains from receiving those disaffected with the Episcopal Church and its sister church in Canada.
 
Bithynian said:
Membership in the ACNA is most definitely increasing, but it’s still uncertain whether this is sustainable growth as opposed to short-term gains from receiving those disaffected with the Episcopal Church and its sister church in Canada.
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Do you have any data on recent growth in ACNA?
Their original plan was to plant 1000 new congregations, and I know they were planting (or flipping) a lot of them.

If there is still continued growth now, it could be:
  1. Evangelizing unchurched
  2. Natural growth (conservatives have babies)
  3. Attracting disaffected TEC or ACC
  4. Attracting disaffected (for various reasons) RCs
  5. Attracting evangelicals seeking smells and bells
  6. Having like minded groups of conservative Anglican types newly affiliate with ACNA.
  7. A Continuum parish in my city flipped over to ACNA (which has a very strong parish nearby). I can’t help wondering if they felt the need for nearby support.
The strength of any Mixture denomination is that they offer something, for different kinds of people. The challenge is holding it all together. I’ll send them a prayer.
 
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Will both churches reunite? Well who knows. Maybe someday down the line it will happen.Think there is probably in some ways a better chance between us and the Orthodox. I know i read on Yahoo News a year or two ago, maybe a little longer, that there were talks between the Vatican and the Waldesians.They were founded in the Middle Ages by Peter Waldo. He wanted to be able to witness to others Christ. To do preaching like the apostles. With help from a clergyman, he studied scriptures and this is a long story, but he never meant to split from the Church. Rome called them heretics, and they suffered much from persecution.You can search for info on this. Maybe too some day they might join back with the church.
 
I think it might be easier for Anglicans to unite with Methodists and Lutherans rather than us (unfortunately) as I think Women clergy are a big barrier. But maybe one day…
 
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Certainly reuniting with Methodists has been in the pipeline for many years now. There are not really any major disagreements between Anglicans and Methodists over any fundamental points of doctrine. The main problem, as I see it, is that Anglicans do not believe that Methodists retain the apostolic succession, and therefore their holy orders and sacraments are considered invalid. The only solution to this problem would be for Methodist ministers to be re-ordained by Anglican bishops (or for Anglican bishops to consecrate Methodist bishops, who could then ordain Methodist deacons and priests with the same validity as Anglicans). Note that in some parts of the world, the Methodists have bishops, which is confusing to British and Irish people, as the Methodists don’t have bishops here. On a local level, there are already local ecumenical partnerships between Anglicans and Methodists.

As for Lutherans, there are already Anglican and Lutheran churches which have entered into full communion, e.g. the Anglican and Lutheran churches in Great Britain, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and the Nordic and Baltic countries, which have formed the Porvoo Communion. In the US, a similar communion exists between the Episcopal Church and Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
 
scousekiwi said:
The main problem, as I see it, is that Anglicans do not believe that Methodists retain the apostolic succession, and therefore their holy orders and sacraments are considered invalid.
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As far as the Church of England and the Methodist Church of Great Britain are concerned, that isn’t quite the case. The CofE holds that succession by the laying on of hands dating back to early Christianity is a gift from God, a particularly valuable form of apostolic succession, and one necessary as a matter of church order in the CofE. It recognises that there are other forms of succession: in particular the succession of the Gospel truth taught again in each generation.

The problem with the current plan for the CofE and the Methodists to reunite is that matter of church order. The Methodists have agreed to accept ordination by bishops in the historic succession in future (after reunion), but there is the problem of the current clergy of the Methodists, presbyterially ordained. Talks continue.
 
scousekiwi said:
The main problem, as I see it, is that Anglicans do not believe that Methodists retain the apostolic succession, and therefore their holy orders and sacraments are considered invalid
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  1. We affirm one another’s churches as true churches belonging to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ and as truly participating in the apostolic mission of the whole people of God.
  2. We affirm that in both our churches the word of God is authentically preached, and the sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist are duly administered and celebrated.
  3. We affirm that both our churches confess in word and life the apostolic faith revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the ecumenical Creeds.
  4. We affirm that one another’s ordained and lay ministries are given by God as instruments of God’s grace, to build up the people of God in faith, hope and love, for the ministry of word, sacrament and pastoral care and to share in God’s mission in the world.
  5. We affirm that one another’s ordained ministries possess both the inward call of the Holy Spirit and Christ’s commission given through the Church
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Anglican-Methodist Covenant, Westminster 2003
 
Xarto said:
I think it might be easier for Anglicans to unite with Methodists and Lutherans rather than us
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Most Protestant faith Traditions are split between liberals and conservatives. When it comes to reaching out to other Traditions, I could see liberal Lutherans, liberal Methodists, liberal others, connecting with liberal Anglicans.

Conservatives are generally more cautious about ecumenism, though they might do more cooperation and coordination.
 
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