Ecclesiastical defections

[Deleted]

[greenchristian]

A flying bishop and the second from that particular see to cross the Tiber.

[Merseymike]

It surprises me that they haven't all decamped by now. The CofE is clearly not going back on its decision to ordain women and running a church within a church which doesn't have any meaningful contact with anyone outside that sub-section is not really possible to maintain forever.
About time that structure was retired and those remaining in it made their choice.

[greatkingrat]

Sept 3, 2021 17:13:11 GMT greenchristian said:

A flying bishop and the second from that particular see to cross the Tiber.

I guess it makes sense that flying bishops are more likely to cross the Tiber!

[greenchristian]

Sept 3, 2021 17:25:42 GMT Merseymike said:

It surprises me that they haven't all decamped by now. The CofE is clearly not going back on its decision to ordain women and running a church within a church which doesn't have any meaningful contact with anyone outside that sub-section is not really possible to maintain forever.
About time that structure was retired and those remaining in it made their choice.

Not all of those parishes are Anglo-Catholic. Some of them are Evangelical, and there isn't really anywhere for those ones to go.

[peterl]

There was a lot of this when the ordinariates* were formed in 2011, including Keith Newton who runs the Ordinariate in this country and Edwin Barnes (RIP), who assisted at my old parish in Bournemouth for a while. However, this must be the first for some years, since the CofE seems to be in a more stable place now than it was back then.

*Special groups set up in the RC for Anglican defectors, generally using an adapted version of the BCP.

[Merseymike]

Sept 3, 2021 17:35:40 GMT greenchristian said:

Sept 3, 2021 17:25:42 GMT Merseymike said:

It surprises me that they haven't all decamped by now. The CofE is clearly not going back on its decision to ordain women and running a church within a church which doesn't have any meaningful contact with anyone outside that sub-section is not really possible to maintain forever.
About time that structure was retired and those remaining in it made their choice.

Not all of those parishes are Anglo-Catholic. Some of them are Evangelical, and there isn't really anywhere for those ones to go.

Very, very few now. They tended to be those whose links with anything Anglican were quite light anyway and many have already left entirely, gone independent or linked themselves with the Americans who left the Episcopal church.
Church affiliation isn't important to evangelical Christians in the same way as Catholics ( I don't need to tell you this!) and they really don't relate to the gin and lace brigade who run the structure set up for opponents.

[J.G.Harston]

Sept 3, 2021 17:36:35 GMT peterl said:

There was a lot of this when the ordinariates* were formed in 2011, including Keith Newton who runs the Ordinariate in this country and Edwin Barnes (RIP), who assisted at my old parish in Bournemouth for a while. However, this must be the first for some years, since the CofE seems to be in a more stable place now than it was back then.

*Special groups set up in the RC for Anglican defectors, generally using an adapted version of the BCP.

Do the Catholics still take defectors at the same rank, so a defecting bishop becomes an RC bishop? Something to do with the descent of hands from St. Peter.

[CatholicLeft]

Sept 3, 2021 19:23:22 GMT J.G.Harston said:

Sept 3, 2021 17:36:35 GMT peterl said:

There was a lot of this when the ordinariates* were formed in 2011, including Keith Newton who runs the Ordinariate in this country and Edwin Barnes (RIP), who assisted at my old parish in Bournemouth for a while. However, this must be the first for some years, since the CofE seems to be in a more stable place now than it was back then.

*Special groups set up in the RC for Anglican defectors, generally using an adapted version of the BCP.

Do the Catholics still take defectors at the same rank, so a defecting bishop becomes an RC bishop? Something to do with the descent of hands from St. Peter.

No, as there was a Bull called Apostolicae Curiae issued in 1896 that declared Anglican Orders "absolutely null and utterly void" , this was due to the Elizabethan liturgical reforms. Reordination is required but, since there are many bishops and priests of the Anglican Church who have been consecrated by members of the Church of Utrecht, whose orders are recognised, the church will sometimes "conditionally" ordain (see the example of Graham Leonard, former Bishop of London, who became a Catholic Priest in 1994).
All married former C of E bishops cannot serve as bishops in the RC Church due to the tradition of the Eastern and Western Churches that Bishops should always be celibate.
This is a very brief précis.

[greatkingrat]

Do the traditionalist parishes attract any significant new blood, or will they just naturally "die off" in due course?

[Merseymike]

Sept 3, 2021 20:40:36 GMT greatkingrat said:

Do the traditionalist parishes attract any significant new blood, or will they just naturally "die off" in due course?

I would say the latter. I'm aware of two in this diocese which have closed in recent years - though this diocese is firmly Lancashire low.

[Deleted]

Sept 3, 2021 20:08:57 GMT CatholicLeft said:

Sept 3, 2021 19:23:22 GMT J.G.Harston said:

Do the Catholics still take defectors at the same rank, so a defecting bishop becomes an RC bishop? Something to do with the descent of hands from St. Peter.

No, as there was a Bull called Apostolicae Curiae issued in 1896 that declared Anglican Orders "absolutely null and utterly void" , this was due to the Elizabethan liturgical reforms. Reordination is required but, since there are many bishops and priests of the Anglican Church who have been consecrated by members of the Church of Utrecht, whose orders are recognised, the church sometimes "conditionally" ordained (see the exam of Graham Leonard, former Bishop of London, who became a Catholic Priest in 1994).
All married former C of E bishops cannot serve as bishops in the RC Church due to the tradition of the Eastern and Western Churches that Bishops should always be celibate.
This is a very brief précis.

& he is married with 2 daughters. So discussions similar to Ronaldo keeping the no:7 shirt will have come to nothing ....

[greenhert]

How many more ecclesiastical defections of this type are we likely to see this decade? The Church of England is falling apart at the seams; whilst the Roman Catholic Church is not that prominent in Britain at least its worshipper base is more stable than the CofE's, which has been in freefall the past 3 decades.

[Merseymike]

Sept 4, 2021 10:44:02 GMT greenhert said:

How many more ecclesiastical defections of this type are we likely to see this decade? The Church of England is falling apart at the seams; whilst the Roman Catholic Church is not that prominent in Britain at least its worshipper base is more stable than the CofE's, which has been in freefall the past 3 decades.

It is literally dying off and not being replaced. I do not see that many more of this particular type of defection, though. There is evidence that religion and church plays a decreasing part in the lives of most people. Evangelical churches are better attended but even they have reached something of a plateau. The CofE has far too many churches, many of which stagger on for years with congregations of 20-30 people.

The RC's have a lot of what my priest friend calls "cultural Catholics" who only go to mass very occasionally but I think more young Catholics start going to get their kids into a preferred school and carry on attending. And the base attendance is a bit higher. The Polish immigrants added a few, too.

[CatholicLeft]

Sept 4, 2021 7:43:52 GMT bert said:

Sept 3, 2021 20:08:57 GMT CatholicLeft said:

No, as there was a Bull called Apostolicae Curiae issued in 1896 that declared Anglican Orders "absolutely null and utterly void" , this was due to the Elizabethan liturgical reforms. Reordination is required but, since there are many bishops and priests of the Anglican Church who have been consecrated by members of the Church of Utrecht, whose orders are recognised, the church sometimes "conditionally" ordained (see the exam of Graham Leonard, former Bishop of London, who became a Catholic Priest in 1994).
All married former C of E bishops cannot serve as bishops in the RC Church due to the tradition of the Eastern and Western Churches that Bishops should always be celibate.
This is a very brief précis.

& he is married with 2 daughters. So discussions similar to Ronaldo keeping the no:7 shirt will have come to nothing .

An historical footnote, some years ago a fellow HMP RC Chaplain and I had to stop an Anglo-Catholic colleague from quitting as he said he had heard of a done deal where the vast majority of Forward in Faith priests and bishops were to be accepted, en-bloc, into communion with Rome. We pointed out the unlikeliness of this - there was a lot of wishful thinking by a number of Anglican bishops that they could be "grandfathered" into the Church as married bishops, but this was never going to happen, not least due to the much more important ecumenical dialogue with the Orthodox and Oriental churches, with whom it would never wash. When the Personal Ordinariate came along, only a handful of bishops crossed the Tiber as the loss of ecclesiastical authority and status (not my words, but those of former C of E bishops disappointed in their former colleagues) seemed to be too much for them.

[greenhert]

Sept 4, 2021 10:55:28 GMT Merseymike said:

Sept 4, 2021 10:44:02 GMT greenhert said:

How many more ecclesiastical defections of this type are we likely to see this decade? The Church of England is falling apart at the seams; whilst the Roman Catholic Church is not that prominent in Britain at least its worshipper base is more stable than the CofE's, which has been in freefall the past 3 decades.

It is literally dying off and not being replaced. I do not see that many more of this particular type of defection, though. There is evidence that religion and church plays a decreasing part in the lives of most people. Evangelical churches are better attended but even they have reached something of a plateau. The CofE has far too many churches, many of which stagger on for years with congregations of 20-30 people.

The RC's have a lot of what my priest friend calls "cultural Catholics" who only go to mass very occasionally but I think more young Catholics start going to get their kids into a preferred school and carry on attending. And the base attendance is a bit higher. The Polish immigrants added a few, too.

Other European countries still have strong Catholic traditions as well e.g. Hungary and Lithuania. 

[peterl]

I did read a few years ago in a Catholic newspaper that although immigrants from eastern europe provided some extra folk in the pews for a while, many of these newcomers drift away from the church after a while. However, the overall trend is a small but fairly stable congregation in the RC and a larger congregation that is declining at a faster rate in the CofE. Also for obvious reasons, the amount of Catholics that turn up to church each week tends to be higher than for Anglicans.

A couple of examples, British Social Attitudes Survey 2018 on religious identity - RC 1983 10%, 2008 9%, 2018 7%; CofE 1983 40%, 2008 22%, 2018 12%

British Religion in Numbers estimates of church attendance - RC 1980 2,064,000, 1990 1,571,300, 2000 1,090,400, 2010 736,600, 2015 608,000; CofE 1980 1,370,400, 1990 1,259,800, 2000 963,300, 2010 780,000, 2015 660,000

[neilm]

Sept 4, 2021 11:09:54 GMT CatholicLeft said:

Sept 4, 2021 7:43:52 GMT bert said:

& he is married with 2 daughters. So discussions similar to Ronaldo keeping the no:7 shirt will have come to nothing .

An historical footnote, some years ago a fellow HMP RC Chaplain and I had to stop an Anglo-Catholic colleague from quitting as he said he had heard of a done deal where the vast majority of Forward in Faith priests and bishops were to be accepted, en-bloc, into communion with Rome. We pointed out the unlikeliness of this - there was a lot of wishful thinking by a number of Anglican bishops that they could be "grandfathered" into the Church as married bishops, but this was never going to happen, not least due to the much more important ecumenical dialogue with the Orthodox and Oriental churches, with whom it would never wash. When the Personal Ordinariate came along, only a handful of bishops crossed the Tiber as the loss of ecclesiastical authority and status (not my words, but those of former C of E bishops disappointed in their former colleagues) seemed to be too much for them.

The drop in salary from the CofE to the Roman Church probably didn't help either.

[andrea]

Sept 4, 2021 10:55:28 GMT Merseymike said:

The CofE has far too many churches, many of which stagger on for years with congregations of 20-30 people.

How is the system organised? Territory divided in parish and nothing more? How large are parishes on average? Does it vary significantly between areas? Have there been attempts to put together parishes? Can more churches depend from a single parish?

[John Chanin]

Ebbsfleet is a very strange place to have a bishop