Bishops off to Rome
There has been a certain amount of propoganda among the players in Church politics (that other form of politics so closely woven into the history of our democracy in these islands) that the good old Cof E is actually a Catholic church. In the sense that the word catholic means open to everyone it is. It very much is not, if those who want to join, support another interpretation of the Christian faith, beleive in an outmoded theological basis of Chritianity and prefer to recognise the authority of Rome.
The Church of England is about our freedom and indepdence and our wish to be in charge of our own destiny and not subject to the ultimate sanction of the sucessor to the Roman empire, the Roman Catholic Church. It is above all a Protestant Church which abhors a good deal of the ritual and quite a few of the beliefs of the original, from which it broke away in the Reformation. It is a democratic institution, bound Constitutionally into the State. It has a fluid doctrine based upon Christian teaching, but adapted as times change, knowledge accumulates and enlightenment spreads. This includes acceptance of condoms, the pill, abortion, divorce, gay rights and women priests and bishops. It is debating and will eventually accept gay bishops.
Not all these issues are without challenge, but they are not, in the proper context sins and certainly not sins beyond redemption. The Church of England sees itself as enlightened and capable of evolution, just as mankind continues to evolve. Rome, by contrast holds to a fixed position set down long ago, to which it sticks, no matter what the suffering or consequence. Thus the Catholic empire of Spain was allowed to pillage and plunder and engage in genocide, so long as it built churches with allegiance to Rome along the way. It proclaims condoms sinful, blissfully ignoring the suffering of aids across Africa, especially among children.
In the early centuries after the Reformation it was illegal to be a Roman Catholic in England, but to compensate and provide a haven, some lattitude was allowed to an Anglo Catholic wing, often known as High Church.From the middle of the nineteenth century it has been perfectly legal to be a practicing Roman Catholic and therefore there is no reason whatever for those of that faith to remain in a Church which in their view falls short and has abandoned ancient verities for new and questionable inventions. Fine. Let them go. They should go. They should go now. They do no good by hanging on. The should go in Peace and with our Blessing.
Above all they cannot stay, arguing and bickering and, in one unhinged case, alleging persecution on a Nazi scale. For that kind of gratutious insult those responsible deserve to be kicked out.