The Anglo-Catholic movement is dead, Catholic bishop claims: The Church of England Newspaper, Mar 4, 2011 p 6

Anglo-Catholic bishops in happier days. The Archbishop of Canterbury with episcopal members of the SSC in 2005.

First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.

The Anglo-Catholic movement within the Anglican Communion is dead, the Roman Catholic bishop overseeing the Australian Ordinariate has claimed.

In an interview published on February 26 in The Record, the newspaper of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Perth, Bishop Peter Elliott of Melbourne cautioned those “who still claim to be Anglo-Catholics and yet are holding back.”

“When are you going to face realities? … there’s no place for a classical Anglo-Catholic in the Anglican Communion anymore,” Bishop Elliott said.

The Bishop chided Anglo-Catholics where were “tempted to make a desperate last stand by just staying where they are,” Bishop Elliott told a meeting of prospective converts in Perth last week.

“Permit me to suggest that it is a waste of time and spiritual energy to cling to such a dangerous illusion,” said the Bishop, a former Anglican.

“Let me quietly invite you to lay down weapons of controversies that are now pointless, to set aside endless intrigues which lead nowhere, to walk away from futile conflicts which cannot build up the body of Christ in charity. Accept the invitation of the vicar of Christ on earth.”

Pope Benedict XVI was a “gentle man” who had offered the Ordinariate with “no ulterior motives.”

“His apostolic offer is clear. There is no deception here. He calls you to peace.”

Created in November 2009 in response to pleas from the leaders of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), the Ordinariate is a structure within the Roman Catholic Church for former Anglicans who wish to enter into full communion with Rome whilst preserving liturgical and other elements of their Anglican heritage.

However, the former Bishop of Quincy, the Rt Rev Keith Ackerman, in an interview published last month, noted that defining an Anglo-Catholic was not an entirely straightforward procedure. Broadly speaking, the principal Anglo-Catholic groups could be broken down into five parties: Anglo-Papalists who looked to Rome; the Anglo-Orthodox who looked to the Ecumenical patriarch and the churches of the East; the traditional High Church party; those in the Catholic breakaway groups generally called the Continuum; and the Affirming Catholic group whose members include Archbishop Rowan Williams and former US Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold.

Bishop Ackerman, who was deposed by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori for allegedly abandoning the communion of the Episcopal Church, currently serves the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

“The point is,” Bishop Ackerman told Virtueonline, “it is rather difficult to characterise an Anglo-Catholic. The vast majority may well agree that an Anglo-Catholic is one who believes in the reality of the continuation of a pre-1540s Church in England and as with a number of the principles of the Oxford Movement.”

However, among American Anglo-Catholics, the “vast majority” have “have always believed and taught that they are Catholics but not Roman Catholics.”