A quote tasting from the firehose of reactions to Rome’s announcement:
“The two questions I would want to ask are ‘why this and why now ,,,, Why the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has decided to embrace that particular method remains unclear to me. … If it’s for former Anglicans, then it’s not about our present difficulties, then it’s people who have already left. … [If it’s current Anglicans] there is in my mind an uncertainty for whom it is intended.” – The Very Rev. David Richardson, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s representative to the Holy See
“After the news that the Vatican is effectively carving out a special church-within-a-church to shelter traditionalist Anglicans upset at gay priests and women bishops in their own church, one has to wonder if the cafeteria line isn’t forming to the right. While both Pope John Paul II and his successor Benedict XVI have been known as staunch conservatives, they have in fact shown a remarkably liberal willingness to bend the rules when it comes to certain groups.” – David Gibson, author of “The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World”
“The auspices for the present Pope’s visit are now less good, and suddenly so owing to yesterday’s announcement. Pope Benedict may preside at the beatification service in Birmingham for Cardinal John Henry Newman, the Victorian divine, who is an important figure in the intellectual and cultural life of the nation as well as of the Church. As the most prominent of all converts to Rome, Newman advised Anglicans that their Church had “left the centre of unity in the 16th century”. Newman’s name is one that could be attached to the new ordinariate for Anglicans. Such disputation was the temper of his times. It should not be the tenor of ours. The Church of England’s witness to the life of the nation is a valued and historic civic resource. Its position has been dangerously weakened.” – Editorial in The Times
“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, and we await the text of the Apostolic Constitution itself and its code of practice in the coming weeks. … It remains to be seen what use will be made of this provision, since it is now up to those who have made requests to the Holy See to respond to the Apostolic Constitution; but, in the light of recent discussions with senior officials in the Vatican, I can say that this new possibility is in no sense at all intended to undermine existing relations between our two communions or to be an act of proselytism or aggression.” – Rowan Williams in a letter to the Bishops of the Church of England, and the members of the Primates Meeting of the Anglican Communion
“Vatican 2.0? In IT terms, that would be equivalent to Microsoft inviting Linux users to run the Windows kernel while retaining .debs & .rpms” – twitter by Asteris Masouras
“I don’t want to be a Roman Catholic. There was a Reformation, you remember.” – Martyn Minns
“Not all Anglo-Catholics can accept certain teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, nor do they believe that they must first convert to Rome in order to be truly catholic Christians.” – Jack Iker
“Anglican orders are not accepted by the Vatican. Anglican “priests” joining Anglican Personal Ordinariates in order to function as priests will have to be ordained twice (or at least conditionally ordained twice). … Married priests in Anglican Personal Ordinariates will have to marry prior to ordination to the diaconate. They will not be able to marry after ordination. Should his wife die, or he gets divorced (sorry – his marriage is annulled) he will not be able to marry. Roman Catholic deacons can be married, but in order to do so, must be married prior to ordination.” – The Rev. Bosco Peters
“Both Catholic and Anglican churches prefer that disaffected Anglican groups belong to the Catholic Church than float freely. Dr Williams, remember, has a fundamentally Catholic ecclesiology. … Rome has not “given up” on the Anglican Communion — even though it knows that unity is impossible at present. Rome has been closely involved, and remains so, with the “covenant” process initiated by Dr Williams in 2004, which aims at tightening the bonds within the 80m-strong worldwide Communion.” – Austen Ivereigh, former press secretary to the (Catholic) Archbishop of Westminster
“I worry, too, that some of these newcomers will also be nostalgists, anti-feminists, and anti-gay bigots.” – Michael Sean Winters, author of “Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats.”