What is Benedict up to????

To say I was stunned by the announcement from the Vatican this week was an understatement. As the Church of England tries to navigate our way through the complex issues we face, we suddenly get landed with the news that Pope Benedict has provided for an Apostolic Constitution to allow disaffected Anglicans to move to the Roman Catholic Church but keep distinctive anglican identity within what are interestingly called "Personal Ordinariates". This means I assume they could have married priests and anglican prayer books within Roman Catholicism. Yet Rome doesn't even recognise our sacraments or ordinations as valid. So I assume any clergy taking up this offer will need to be re-ordained.

From from I can see, this was landed on Lambeth Palace with little or no heads up, and/or consultation. One wonders what our so called ecumenical instruments have actually delivered when it seems the Vatican will do what it likes when it likes. From all I have read Rowan Williams looked distinctively uncomfortable in the joint press conference with the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Vincent Nicholls.

I am a little confused why the Archbishop of Canterbury did a joint press conference which would seem to the world to show that he was in agreement with this move, when clearly he was only told of the move shortly before the announcement. I am not sure if I were the Archbishop of Canterbury that I would have held that press conference, and certainly not at the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church in London.

In fact on the Lambeth Palace website his letter to anglican bishops says “I am sorry that there has been no opportunity to alert you earlier to this. I was informed of the planned announcement at a very late stage"

This move by the Vatican is a bold and shocking move. It is an attempt by Rome to poach disaffected anglicans in England, who will now hold a gun to the head of the General Synod that unless they get their way on women's ordination as bishops they will leave en masse to Rome. It is a vehicle for blackmail, and as one commentator put it, it seems the Pope has put his tanks on the lawn of Lambeth Palace.

I do accept a huge swathe of common ground between Roman Catholicsm and Anglicanism, but there are huge differences in our understanding of our faith. I am an evangelical, and I believe in the salvation of people by faith alone. The cross has said it all. And in addition I cannot accept the role of the Bishop of Rome as infallable and all powerful. Anglicanism is as the Archbishop of York often says both "catholic and reformed". We are reformed, and we need to hold to our distinctive uniqueness. But this move by Pope Benedict looks like a predatory move.