Religious recruitment

Religious recruitment

The Vatican may well describe Saturday’s talks between Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, and Pope Benedict as “cordial”, but for many Anglicans, relations between the two churches are anything but.

The initiative launched by the Vatican a few weeks ago, which makes it easier for entire congregations of disaffected Anglicans to convert to Catholicism, has been seen by some as a calculated ploy to recruit followers at a time of crisis within the Anglican communion.
 
It’s an accusation which the Vatican denies. The pope’s spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, told me they were responding to the pleas by many Anglicans, unhappy with the liberal direction taken by their church on issues such as women bishops and same-sex unions, for a more traditional spiritual home. In simple terms, the Vatican says it is giving an alternative but did not create the problem.
 
Indeed, the real threat to the Anglican Church is not some “hostile takeover bid” from Rome, but rather the split within its own ranks.

 While the Catholic Church has remained unchanged in its doctrine relating to social issues like divorce, abortion, homosexuality and the ordination of women or gay clergy, the Anglican church has often tried to adapt to the changing moral codes of society.

 It sprang, after all, from Henry VIII’s wish to divorce his wife back in 1534. But as the 77 million-strong Anglican Church spreads across the world, and now has more followers in Nigeria than the UK, it is becoming ever more difficult to provide moral parameters all can agree on.

 hile no one would raise an eyebrow at a gay woman vicar in England, the same cannot be said for other parts of the world. It is difficult for the Church of England to adapt to changing moral codes when they are changing at different rates across the global communion.
 
The Catholic Church avoids the problems faced by Anglicanism by providing a one-size-fits-all morality for its billion followers, but it has worries of its own. Strict moral guidelines may still be what followers in many parts of the world expect from their church, but in Europe Catholic churches across the continent as emptying just as fast as their Anglican counterparts.