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By Diogenes ( articles ) | Dec 11, 2007

What price Christian unity?

Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, told The Catholic Herald: "It's not our policy to bring that many Anglicans to Rome."

How many Anglicans would be too many? Would it be OK if they entered the Catholic Church single-file?

Cardinal Kasper, the Herald reports, looks askance at a bid by a large group of Anglicans, including 60 bishops, for "full, corporate, and sacramental union" with the Catholic Church.

Of course, as a Catholic I am happy if one person joins our Catholic Church....

[Single-file is OK, then. Good to know.]

...but I doubt such a big group is coming-- I think there are still many questions to solve first.

Questions? What sort of questions? Questions about the group's sincerity? Fine; ask away. Questions about their motives, or their understanding of what it is they're doing? Very wise. But those don't seem to be the questions that Cardinal Kasper is asking, if the Herald story is accurate.

We are on good terms with the Archbishop of Canterbury and as much as we can we are helping him to keep the Anglican community together.

In the notorious Operation Keelhaul, at the close of World War II, Allied forces delivered tens of thousands of Russians back into the hands of the Soviet Union-- knowing full well that many of them would soon be living in the gulag archipelago, if they were living at all. It was a shameful episode in our history. These poor souls had made their bid for freedom, relying on the free nations of the West to help them-- thinking, perhaps, of the Statue of Liberty, and its promise to welcome the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free"-- and the West betrayed them back into the hands of tyrants.

Now the Traditional Anglican Communion looks desperately for help from Rome, as a means of escaping ecclesiastical chaos. And perhaps more than that, as a means of saving their souls. And the answer is... not yet clear.