The Anglican "summit"
By Fr. Rutler ( bio - articles - email ) | Oct 16, 2003
Anglicanism has had a fascination for religious romantics. Such observers can be expected to misread the Church of England and her desiccated satellites. To an amusing degree, many of these innocents in the press abroad and domestic expected that the “summit” of Anglican primates at Lambeth would be a dramatic repudiation of the degeneracy which was the grounds for the foundation of Anglicanism in the first place.
Unlike Catholicism which is a universal fact, Anglicanism is a cultural peculiarity that can only really be understood by those who grew up in its little world. Contrary to the predictions of many who need to analyze how they could have been so mistaken, the Anglican “summit” simply fudged reality as Anglicanism always has done. The ordination of women was the final repudiation of Catholic claims, and all Anglicans who stayed on after that were compromised beyond any measure of doctrinal reality. From that moment they abandoned any semblance of rational ecclesiology. When deaconesses were approved, old liners said they’d leave if priestesses were approved. When priestesses were approved they said they’d leave if women bishops were approved. They stayed and said they’d leave if homosexual bishops were approved. They just stay.
Those who can justify Henry VIII will find an excuse to muddle through. As they sink in their imitation of the Barque of Peter, the only ones surprised will be Catholics with superificial intuitions of the Anglican mind, who view the decomposition of an intrinsic fallacy through Tudor Rose-colored glasses, calling the rot compost.
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