If you’ve been watching the blogosphere in the last week, you’ll have seen a lot of excitement.  If you haven’t noticed it, I’ll detail it for you before I make my own comments.

First off, it seems, an article appeared in The Record, a respected Australian Catholic newspaper, on Wednesday, January 28th.  This article, titled “Healing the Reformation’s Fault Lines,” gave a brief background summary of the ecumenical conversation between the Traditional Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church, a conversation that has been going on for nearly three decades.

It seems that the thirty years of conversation are about to bear fruit.

(Actually, it’s been more than thirty years.  Forty-two years ago the discussion began between representatives of the Anglican Communion and the Secretariat  for Christian Unity.  In the years since then, the Anglican Communion chose to abandon its Catholic faith and order by ordaining women, dumbing down theology, and dropping biblical morality.  The legitimate heir to the Anglican side of that conversation is the Traditional Anglican Communion, the ecclesial remnant of a once great branch of Catholic Christianity.  The TAC, called “Anglican Catholic” in most of the countries in which it exists, remains true to the Catholic order and faith of historic orthodox Christianity.  What may seem sudden to some commentators is the result of years of long, hard work.)

So what did that article in The Record have to say?  You can read it here, but simply, it announced that

It is understood that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has decided to recommend the Traditional Anglican Communion be accorded a personal prelature akin to Opus Dei, if talks between the TAC and the Vatican aimed at unity succeed.

Next we saw on the 29th that Damian Thompson of the Telegraph put out a post on his widely read blog Holy Smoke, titled “Traditional Anglicans ‘to be offered personal prelature by Pope.’  Thompson brings more information to the fore, from both the Record article and other sources.  Then a correspondent for the National Catholic Register stated that according to an unnamed CDF source “nothing’s been decided.”

And yet, and yet….

What do I think?  We’ve heard rumors before.  This is just too close to the action, I think, to be just a rumor.  It looks to this simple parson like a trial balloon.   If it is, look at some of the reactions.  There are catholics who will not be happy to see an influx of Anglican Catholics who take seriously theology and who celebrate liturgy with the intentionality and reverence the sacred mysteries deserve.  But there are many more Catholics who love the Church and will rejoice to see the restoration of Anglican Catholicism to the western Church. If, as we have heard the Holy Father say, the Church needs to breathe with both lungs, then extending that metaphor might suggest that the Body of Christ needs to have an arm restored to it…the arm of English Catholicism.

So what if it happens?  What might things look like with a personal prelature for Anglican Catholics?  What would it be like to have an influx of parishes and priests where Mass is offered in reverence and devotion?  (We’ve all seen Catholic parishes where one had doubts about validity, let alone worrying about reverence!) What would it be like if, instead of having to close a parish because of manpower shortage, a bishop could assign priest of the Anglican Catholic personal prelature to pastor it? What would it be like to begin to heal the terrible wound in the Body of Christ that has hampered the conversion of the world since the sixteenth century?

Pray for the unity of the Church.

Venerable John Henry Newman, pray for us!