On the Anglican Use Yahoo Group AnglicanUse@yahoogroups.com there has been a lot of discussion about the possibility of a large number of disaffected Anglicans seeking to be in full communion with the Holy See. The disintegration of the Anglican Communion is well advanced at this point, with a major rift between the Global South and the North American, European, and British parts of the communion. People are already talking of a "Lambeth Communion", a "Traditional Anglican Communion", and a "Global South Anglican Communion". There can be no clearer evidence of this rift than the symbolic action of Peter Akinola, Archbishop of Nigeria, excising all reference to Canterbury from the Constitution and Canons of his church.

In the United States, the disintegration is particularly pronounced and chaotic. Even before the fateful decision of the Episcopal Church to ordain women in 1976, groups of dissidents had left the Episcopal Church and formed so-called "continuing" bodies". But the big split over the ordination of women and changes to the Prayer Book took place at the Congress in Saint Louis, MO, with the release of the Affirmation of Saint Louis. http://www.acahome.org/tac/library/docs/affirm.htm . More recently, the ordination of an avowed and practicing homosexual man as Bishop of New Hampshire has resulted in another crisis, if not an outright split. The Windsor Report http://www.anglicancommunion.org/windsor2004/index.cfm in its attempt to hold things together seems to be too little too late, and groups are already mobilizing to adjust to the inevitable realignment in the Anglican Communion. The principal groups are the Network http://www.anglicancommunionnetwork.org and the Forward In Faith http://www.forwardinfaith.com/ . The "Continuum" stemming from Saint Louis is a veritable alphabet soup of jurisdictions. These are groups that are clearly out of communion with Canterbury. Some are not in communion with each other, and some are now in full communion with one or another historic apostolic See. Most say that they would like to be in full communion with Rome or Orthodoxy, but as of this point only the Pastoral Provision for Anglicans in the Roman Catholic Church and the Western Rite Vicariate of the Antiochian Jurisdiction of the Eastern Orthodox Church have been able to achieve this treasured status, and they are both small.

The Network seems to be primarily concerned with the issue of homosexuality and they don't see the ordination of women as an issue. They still cling to the Anglican Communion seing some hope in the Windsor Report. They hope for some kind of renewed evangelical Anglican Communion with all of the bad guys out. The Forward in Faith movement, although still ostensibly still in the Anglican Communion, is allied with the Traditional Anglican Communion, and they reject the ordination of women and favor reunion with Rome.

The different responses to the crisis of Anglo-Catholics in the Episcopal Church goes back to a rift in the Anglo-Catholic leadership in the Episcopal Church over the General Convention Special Program 1967. The American Church Union under Canon DuBois and some of the conservative constituencies of the Southwest were not in favor of allocating church money to empower grassroots organizations dealing with social problems in the country. Liberal Anglo-Catholics, particularly in the Northeast were in favor of this initiative, and so the result was the formation of some Anglo-Catholic organizations that were separate from the American Church Union. At the General Convention of 1976 the American Church Union saw there was a schism in the making and called for the strongest response possible. But the liberal Anglo-Catholics of the Northeast said we don't threaten to leave; we threaten to stay. While the Congress in St. Louis was in the planning, the Evengelical and Catholic Mission did everything it could to prevent a clean split of Anglo-Catholics from the Episcopal Church. Now to over-simplfy things, the continuing churches and the Roman and Orthodox groups are the product of the American Church Union and Saint Louis, and the Network and Forward in Faith are the product of the Evangelical and Catholic Mission, many of whom are now saying to the Saint Louis croud, "You were right! We should have listened to you."

I recently returned from the Synod of the Anglican Catholic Church, held in Grand Rapids October 24-28 as an official observer representing the Anglican Use Society. I am a former priest of the ACC, and I am now a layman in an Anglican Use Congregation of the Pastoral Provision for Anglicans in the Roman Catholic Church. There was considerable interest in my presence at the Synod, and part of my reason for being there was because the Metropolitan of that church, Brother John Charles, had sent a letter to Cardinal Kasper requesting formal discussions leading to full communion. It is well known that Archbishop Hepworth of the Traditional Anglican Communion, another continuing church body, had made a similar request and had even had some discussion at the Vatican. I have heard that Archbishop Akinola has said to Archbishop Hepworth, "Well, if you are going to do it, don't do it without us." Archbishop Hepworth, recently criticized for perhaps making too much of his contacts at the Vatican, has said that he will not be speaking with media about this until he can do so together with his ecumenical partners. http://www.themessenger.com.au/news.html .

Of course this has led to speculation that a large portion of those disaffected from the "Lambeth Communion" will seek to come into full communion with the Holy See together. Whether they know about this in the Vatican or not is anyone's guess, but I think this is something to pray about.

David Burt