FIRST READ; Antichrist in the UK 2010
http://www.biblebasedministries.co.uk/2010/09/30/antichrist-in-the-uk-2010/
http://watchmanafrica.blogspot.com/2010/10/antichrist-in-uk-2010.html
ROME STILL CLAIMS TO BE THE ONLY TRUE CHURCH
http://www.biblebasedministries.co.uk/2007/12/30/rome-still-claims-to-be-the-one-true-church
Five 'Church of England' Bishops Defect To Rome
http://catholicknight.blogspot.com/2010/11/five-church-of-england-bishops-defect.html
Monday, November 8, 2010
THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: In what is sure to be the first wave of several, five Anglican bishops have left the Protestant Church of England to join the pope's emerging Anglican Ordinariate within the Catholic Church...
(Reuters) - Five Church of England bishops opposed to the ordination of women bishops will take up an offer by Pope Benedict and convert to Roman Catholicism, heralding a possible exodus of traditionalist Anglicans.
The bishops will enter full communion with Rome through an ordinariate, a body proposed by the pope last October to let traditionalists convert while keeping some Anglican traditions, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales announced.
The ordinariate will let married clerics become Catholic priests, in an exception to the Vatican's celibacy rule, but not bishops. Married Anglican bishops who convert may be granted a special status almost equivalent to their former rank.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, head of the Church of England and the worldwide Anglican Communion, accepted the resignations of two bishops directly under his authority, Andrew Burnham and Keith Newton, "with regret." He wished them well "in this next stage of their service" to the Christian faith...
So begins the slow death of the Church of England, and the rebirth of Anglican Catholicism in full communion with the worldwide Catholic Church.
In related news, the pope has called for a consistory on November 19th to discuss many issues including...
(AFP) – This month’s meeting will also deal with the thorny issue of how Anglicans disgruntled with the Church of England’s policies on gay marriage and women priests can be integrated into the Catholic Church.
The Vatican in 2009 announced that such converts would be welcome.
The consistory call coincided with an announcement by the Catholic Church on Monday that five Anglican bishops are to convert under Benedict’s offer.
The Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales said it welcomed the decision by the bishops “to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church”.
In a statement, the five bishops said they had been “dismayed, over the last 30 years, to see Anglicans and Catholics move further apart on some of the issues of the day.”
They said the Vatican offer was a “generous response to various approaches to the Holy See for help and a bold, new ecumenical instrument in the search for the unity of Christians.”
100 US Anglican parishes convert to Roman Catholic Church
About 100 traditionalist Anglican parishes across the United States have decided to convert en masse to the Roman Catholic Church, it emerged yesterday.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7375163/100-US-Anglican-parishes-convert-to-Roman-Catholic-Church.html
By Simon Caldwell
Published: 6:53PM GMT 05 Mar 2010
They have voted to take up the offer made by Pope Benedict XVI in November that permits vicars and their entire congregations to defect to Rome while keeping many of their Anglican traditions, including married priests.
By issuing the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus (on groups of Anglicans) the Pope was accused of attempting to poach Anglicans unhappy about decisions taken in their Church to ordain women and sexually-active homosexuals as priests and bishops.
But the Vatican insisted that the move to create self-governing "personal ordinariates", which resemble dioceses in structure, came as a result of requests from at least 30 disaffected Anglican bishops around the world for "corporate reunion" with the Catholic Church.
The Anglican Church in America (ACA) will now enter the Catholic Church as a block, bringing in thousands of converts along with their own bishops, buildings and even a cathedral.
They will worship according to Anglican rubrics, and use the Book of Common Prayer, but they will be in communion with the Pope, recognising him as their leader.
The decision was taken by the House of Bishops of the ACA during a meeting in Orlando, Florida, earlier this week.
The bishops said in a brief statement afterwards that they had agreed to formally "request the implementation of the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus in the United States of America by the (Vatican's) Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith".
The ACA belongs to the Traditional Anglican Communion, which broke from the Anglican Communion nearly 20 years ago because of its drift from orthodox Christian doctrines.
Unlike 77 million Anglicans worldwide, it is not in communion with the much larger US episcopal church nor does it recognise Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the head of the church but still considers itself Anglican in its origins.
Its decision to rejoin the Catholic Church represents the second group of Anglican churches to take up the Pope's offer.
The first was the Australian branch of Forward in Faith, a traditionalist group in communion with the Church of England and other mainstream Anglican churches, which last month directed its governing council to take the first steps needed for the mass conversion of 16 parishes to Catholicism.
The UK branch of Forward in Faith is also considering mass conversion but has delayed a decision until July at the earliest – though its leaders are known to be holding secretive meeting with high-ranking Vatican officials.
In the meantime Forward in Faith UK has set up a "Friends of the Ordinariate" group to help to gauge the level of support for conversion among rank-and-file worshippers.
If they decide to take the path to Rome, Britain will see unprecedented numbers of conversions, possibly involving in the region of 200 Anglican congregations, which would amount to thousands of converts.
John Broadhurst, the Anglican Bishop of Fulham and chairman of Forward in Faith, said mass conversion was a real prospect. "We have a thousand priest members in my organisation and there are many others who agree with us," he said last year.
"The main issue for many Anglican priests is now the ownership of parish churches."
In preparation for an influx of converts the Catholic bishops of England and Wales have established a commission which is expected to look at the possibility of church-sharing and also the chances of taking out 100-year leases of some Anglican parishes.
An early conversion came last month, however, when it emerged that Paul Robinson, the former assistant Anglican Bishop of Newcastle, converted just weeks after stepping down from his post.
The 63-year-old was received into the Catholic Church in January and is now a regular worshipper at St George's Roman Catholic Cathedral in Southwark, following a move to London.
'It's really a journey I've been on for some time,' he said. 'It's just like coming home.'
Last summer, Mr Robinson claimed that the dramatic fall in church marriages and baptisms was an indication that Britain was no longer a Christian nation.
He has predicted the demise of the Church of England as the established religion within a generation.
Pope Benedict will visit Britain in September to attend the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, a high-profile Anglican cleric who shocked Victorian England by converting to the Catholic faith.
Pope allows married Anglicans to become Catholic priests in bid to tempt them to defect
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1226449/Pope-allows-married-men-priests-bid-attract-Anglican-recruits.html#ixzz14sAEDn3V
By Steve Doughty
Last updated at 6:18 PM on 10th November 2009
You have my blessing: Pope Benedict XVI will allow Anglicans into the Roman Catholic Church
The Roman Catholic Church is to allow married Anglican converts to become priests in a radical concession to tempt them to defect.
Church of England bishops who switch allegiance to Rome will be able to ordain them, the Vatican said yesterday.
Married Anglican vicars have been able to convert and join the Rome priesthood since the 1950s, but this is the first time that married non-vicars have been allowed to become priests.
The decision to allow Anglican converts to keep their tradition of married priests is a break with rules that have applied in western Catholic churches for nearly 900 years.
The Vatican was at pains to insist that it does not mean a break with the celibacy for clergy nor the first step towards a married priesthood.
But leading Anglo-Catholics confirmed that CofE bishops who switch loyalty to Rome will have the power to ordain their own priests and that - with permission from the Pope - some of the newly-ordained priests may be married.
The gesture goes alongside a welcome package for Anglicans that will mean that converts will be able to worship according to services from the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer. Services will be re-written to remove references to the Queen as head of the church and to pledge loyalty to the Pope.
One Church of England bishop called for negotiations with CofE leaders to allow whole congregations to switch to Rome while keeping the right to continue to use their CofE parish churches.
Bishop of Fulham the Right Reverend John Broadhurst said the offer from Rome was 'extremely impressive' and added that those who choose to accept 'have a valid claim on our own heritage in history.'
Details of the proposals for Anglicans were published by Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a body which centuries ago ran the inquisition into heretics.
They follow the announcement last month of an 'Apostolic Constitution' designed to allow tens of thousands of disaffected Anglicans to return to Rome and yet keep their own priests, parishes and traditions.
The invitation is designed to attract high church Anglicans angry at the advance of gay rights in Anglican churches around the world and now further provoked by the prospect of women bishops in the Church of England.
Those who go over will be led by 'ordinaries' - effectively their own bishops, who will profess allegiance to Rome and work closely with Catholic bishops.
They will, however, have full authority over their own congregations of former Anglicans.
An ordinary may 'petition the Roman pontiff for the admission of married men' to the priesthood 'on a case by case basis.' Unmarried men who are ordained under the new system must however remain celibate.
Catholic leaders denied that the Anglican converts will form a church within a church.
A statement added: 'The possibility envisioned by the Apostolic Constitution for some married clergy with the ordinariates does not signify any change in the Church's discipline of priestly celibacy.'
Celibacy for priests became the rule in 1139 when the Second Lateran Council laid down in writing for the first time that priests should not marry nor have sex.
The rule survived the Reformation in the 1500s, when breakaway protestant groups including the Church of England said ministers should marry.
Many among the 500 Church of England clergy who went over to Rome when the CofE first ordained women in 1993 were married.
However the proposal that newly-ordained priests may be married is new in Western Europe. It has been operated in Eastern Europe where some Orthodox churches have switched loyalty to Rome but have kept their traditions of married priests.
Catholic priests who left their church to marry will not be allowed to return as members of the Anglican convert congregations.
Bishop Broadhurst, who is the CofE's Suffragan Bishop of London and leader of the Anglo-Catholic pressure group Forward in Faith, said: 'I have been horrified that the Church of England while trying to accommodate us has consistently said we cannot have the jurisdiction and independent life that most of us feel we need.
'What Rome has done is offer exactly what the Church of England has refused.'
Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has said the Catholic offer does not amount to an attempt to poach Anglicans.
The CofE Bishop of Guildford, the Right Reverend Christopher Hill, said: 'It will now be for those who have requested and at this point feel impelled to seek full communion with the Roman Catholic Church to study the Apostolic Constitution carefully in the near future and to consider their options.'
