It was quite fitting that the successor of the usurpers of the extinguished see of Canterbury was present today as the news of the Apostolic Constitution which will establish a full-fledged canonical structure for Anglicans within the Catholic Church was made public in simultaneous conferences in Rome and London. He was there to witness the burial of his own Communion.
The stream of Anglicans back to the Catholic Church has been continuous since the events of the 16th century, and particularly intense after the triumph of liberalism in the Church of England and related entities in the 19th century. Confusion set in, as it happened with everything else in Catholicism, in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council: the Holy See pursued a path away from the only ecumenical path which had worked in the past (that of conversion), as it tried to engage in "dialogue" (ARCIC) with a community whose members cannot even agree on the basic tenets of the Christian faith.
For several decades following the Council, conservative Anglicans were left in a very dire situation: their only choices were a crumbling Communion, a Continuum splitting, in regular Protestant fashion, in thousands of pieces, or trying to face the tough reality of joining a Catholic Church in liturgical upheaval, with chaotic dissent and bishops tolerant of heresy yet intolerant of true Catholic diversity.
The time is up. Despite what the Archbishop of Westminster and the Anglican leader of Canterbury said in their diplomatic joint statement, it is obvious dialogue is dead - and has been dead since the unilateral and anti-Apostolic move of the Anglican Communion in favor of priestesses.
The details of the new Anglican structure will soon be made public, and serious Anglicans will be able to come to the Church without losing anything that is good and true and beautiful in their heritage. The Protestants (Liberals or Evangelicals) will remain in their dying or spiritually handicapped communities; those, still in the Communion or in the myriad of little communities in the Continuum, who wish to take their Catholic views seriously will have only one choice, as the time for role-playing is over:
Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved. (Lumen Gentium, 14)
Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us.
Saint Thomas of Canterbury, pray for us.
Holy Martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us.
