Anglicanorum Coetibus: A Glorious New Era of Christian Unity

by Mary Ann Mueller

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS----If the 1974 ordination of women caused the first fissure in The Episcopal Church and the subsequent consecration of V. Gene Robinson to the bishopric rent the very fabric of Anglicanism worldwide, then more than four hundred years before, the Reformation, including the English Reformation, helped to fracture the entire Body of Christ and herald in Protestantism: a brokenness to the entire Body of Christ which still hasn't been healed.

Christ, Himself, prayed in His Priestly prayer: "The glory that You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are One, I in them and You in Me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me." (St. John 17: 22-23 -- ESV). That prayer was uttered in the Garden following Christ's institution of the Eucharist and before He was arrested and led to the Cross at Golgotha.

As we are about to enter into the second decade of the 21st Century, so far Christ's prayer for Christian unity has not been fulfilled. For nearly a millennium, since the Great Schism of 1054, which split Apostolic Christendom, the Church -- the Body of Christ -- has become more and more dismembered as Biblical truth and apostolic authority are jettisoned for the pabulum of social justice and spiritual rebellion.

Now there is a sense of urgency for that fulfillment for Christ's priestly prayer. For years, Anglo-Catholic members of The Episcopal Church (TEC) and the wider Continuing Anglican Movement have been throwing pebbles at the Pope's window in the Vatican seeking reunification with the See of Rome and to be brought into the fullness of their Catholicity, hopefully keeping some of their unique Anglican liturgy, patrimony and ethos.

The Vatican heard the fervent plea and the window cracked in 1980 when Pope John Paul II allowed for the Pastoral Provision which gave American Anglicans the opportunity to "Swim the Tiber" and still retain some of their cherished Anglican heritage... Read the whole article.