The Angro-Catholics

THE ANGRO-CATHOLICS

Pope Benedict’s recent shopping expedition into the Anglican Communion has attracted considerable comment, and I am content to leave all that lie. I simply can’t help but note that anyone--bishop, priest, lay person, or congregation--who would avail themselves of the offer will not, by category, be among the happier-disposed members of our unhappy Communion. They will be allowed to keep “some elements” of their spiritual and liturgical traditions. Ah, but which ones? The matter will not be negotiable. The Holy See will determine which ones. And so, the cycle of disappointment, frustration, powerlessness (ai Chihuahua, they don’t know what powerless is—yet!) continues.

I had a United Methodist pastor friend who decided he was really an Episcopalian. He was fed up. He went to the Episcopal bishop (not mine), who was pretty well acquainted with him already, and he asked to be “translated” into the Episcopal priesthood. The bishop listened to his argument, and then he said, “Bob, if I accept you, all I do is change you from being an angry Methodist minister to an angry Episcopal priest. Now, why would I do that to either one of us?”

Bob was not too pleased with that response, but I thought the bishop was pretty sharp, and absolutely right. Bob’s issue was not his church, it was his anger (with the depression that underlay it). When we are depressed and angry, we believe that the cure is getting someone else to change their ways to assuage our anger and thereby cheer us up. That belief is not true, but is a symptom of what ails us.

So the Pope has just opened his doors wider to a bunch of depressed, unhappy, and angry people who are going to stop being angry Episcopalians and start being angry Catholics instead. Now, why would he want to do that to them or to himself? Not to mention that he will be creating legions of other angry Catholics among his existing clergy, to whom he has not made such a generous marriage contract.

Make way for the Angro-Catholics.