Church in the World

Vatican issues constitution for Anglicans

Pope Benedict XVI has issued new legislation that will allow Anglicans to establish structures within the Catholic Church, keep some of their current liturgical traditions and continue with a married priesthood under certain conditions.

But the provisions, which were published in English and Italian on Monday in the form of an apostolic constitution, do not uphold the Anglican custom of allowing lay people a deliberative voice in church governance. Nor do they allow the direct election of bishops by clergy and laity, which is standard practice in most parts of the Anglican Communion except the Church of England.

The new apostolic constitution – Anglicanorum Coetibus (Groups of Anglicans) – was accompanied by complementary norms issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). The documents were pre-announced by CDF prefect Cardinal William Levada on 20 October when he briefed journalists on the Pope’s decision to establish personal ordinariates (similar to dioceses) for Anglicans who wish to join the Catholic Church en masse.

In what appears to be a novelty, the personal ordinariates are to be “erected by” and “subject to” the CDF. According to the complementary norms, the ordinary is to be “a bishop or presbyter appointed by the Roman Pontiff ad nutum Sanctae Sedis [at the disposition of the Holy See] based on a terna presented by the governing council”. This council is to be made up exclusively of priests. Each ordinariate is also to have a pastoral council through which the laity can offer advice.
“This is a clericalised version of Anglicanism,” said the Revd Dr William Franklin, Academic Fellow at the Anglican Centre in Rome. He rejected the Vatican’s claim that this “opens new avenues” for ecumenism. “The offer seems to be a return to the philosophy of the 1928 encyclical Mortalium Animos [which] argued that the only road to Christian unity is for all to admit their errors and return to Rome,” he said.

Under the new provisions married former Anglican ministers can apply to be ordained Catholic priests. But anyone who has been “previously ordained in the Catholic Church” or is “in an irregular marriage” cannot be ordained. Clerical celibacy is considered the norm for all future priesthood candidates, but the norms say the ordinary may petition the Pope for admission of married men on a case-by-case basis.

Canon law experts contacted by The Tablet said that the exact meaning of the new texts was hard to decipher because the language was “not in harmony with the usual legal tradition” of the Church. The Vatican has not yet released the official Latin texts, which alone are authoritative in church legislation.

Former Anglican married bishops who want to exercise ministry in the ordinariate will have to be ordained Catholic priests, since married bishops are not part of the Catholic or Orthodox tradition. They can, however, request permission to wear episcopal attire and they can be appointed ordinary. They may also be invited to participate in meetings of the bishops’ conference with the equivalent status of a retired bishop.

The ordinariates are designed for people “originally of the Anglican tradition”. “Those baptised previously as Catholics outside the ordinariate are not ordinarily eligible for membership, unless they are members of a family belonging to the ordinariate,” the norms say. The provisions foresee some possibility of clergy exchange between the ordinariates and the dioceses where they are located and the joint training of seminarians, but the details are not clear. One of the canon lawyers contacted by The Tablet predicted “potential confusion and misunderstandings”.

n The Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, Adelaide-based Archbishop John Hepworth, a former Catholic priest who is divorced and remarried, said the apostolic constitution was even more generous in its full text than traditional Anglicans had been led to believe.