The three newest bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion are having second thoughts about union with the Holy See and are instead engaged in merger talks with the Anglican Province of America-- a separate body of disaffected Anglicans-- according to a letter released by Archbishop John Hepworth, primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion. “The College of Bishops [of the Traditional Anglican Communion] has been committed to seeking unity with the Holy See since the inception of the Traditional Anglican Communion,” said Archbishop Hepworth.
Recalling that the bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion formally assented to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and that Pope Benedict’s apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus-- which provides for the establishment of Anglican ordinariates-- was a response to that petition, Archbishop Hepworth added:
There is no urgent pressure on individuals to join an Ordinariate. Individual discernment and a response in conscience undergird the corporate reunion that is at the heart of Anglicanorum Coetibus.
There is no such luxury permitted to bishops, who have the sacred obligation by virtue of their office itself to teach in such a way that clergy and people form a true conscience.
A bishop who cannot teach what the College has defined (and what is the universal teaching of the East and the West) has only one option, and that is to stand aside until he can teach in accord with the Church.
SIC: CC/AUS
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