Catholics are urged to be cautious over new Anglican schism

OXFORD, England (OSV News) — As bishops and archbishops from the worldwide Anglican Communion sever links with England’s first female archbishop of Canterbury, citing her church’s “false teaching,” Catholics are being urged to maintain friendly ties while dropping illusions about future reunification.

“Whatever the Catholic Church may say officially, restoration of sacramental communion between our churches, sought for so many years, simply isn’t going to happen now,” said Msgr. Michael Nazir-Ali, who was one of several Anglican bishops received into the Catholic Church in 2021.

“But the Catholic Church talks to people from all denominations and faiths — and links of friendship and joint action should continue,” he said.

The Pakistan-born priest spoke to OSV News as dissenting leaders of a Global Anglican Future Conference, or GAFCON, formed in 2008, announced a new international council to represent conservative Anglicans following the Jan. 28 confirmation of Archbishop Sarah Mullally as the 106th archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of England’s first female to lead the Anglicans.

At a March 3-6 meeting of 347 bishops in Abuja, Nigeria, GAFCON said it had now created a new Global Anglican Council, headed by Rwandan Archbishop Laurent Mbanda, after concluding that current “Instruments of Communion” no longer met Anglican needs.

Leaders of GAFCON, which claims to represent at least half the world’s 85 million Anglicans, spread over 165 countries, withdrew from contacts with the Church of England in October following Archbishop Mullally’s appointment, accusing her of promoting “unbiblical and revisionist teachings” by supporting same-sex blessings and other liberal reforms.

Besides heading the English Church, founded when King Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534, the archbishop of Canterbury is traditionally recognized as holding first place among primates of the world’s 42 Anglican churches.

Apart from the Global Anglican Council establishment, in a separate March 7 “Abuja Affirmation,” GAFCON said it had long urged “repentance” from Anglican leaders who maintained “the fiction of ‘walking together,'” while failing to “uphold fundamental Anglican doctrine” established during the 16th-century Reformation.

“While matters of human sexuality are one expression of this, this is merely symptomatic of doctrinal and moral departures from the teaching of Scripture,” the affirmation noted.

“Our Global Anglican Communion is not a new Communion, but the historic Anglican Communion reordered from within,” the affirmation read, adding: “We are returning the Anglican Communion to its roots.”

Msgr. Nazir-Ali said major churches in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and South India were among 27 endorsing the affirmation, which was firmly “Protestant in flavor” and made no reference to the “great progress” achieved in Anglican-Catholic dialogue over half a century.

“GAFCON is insisting the new Protestant course must be conservative rather than liberal,” said the priest, a former Anglican bishop of Rochester who was ordained in 2021 for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, a diocese established under Pope Benedict XVI to help British Anglicans enter full communion with the Catholic Church.

“But this course clearly spells an end to hopes of sacramental communion between Catholics and Anglicans. While people can learn from our past theological dialogue, the Anglican Communion can no longer be recognized by Catholics as occupying some special place.”

He said the Anglican Communion’s breakup had been hastened by the Church of England’s decision to pull back from its traditional global role and opt for a “liberal Protestant future” as a more “national church.”

Meanwhile, a prominent Anglican also called on Catholics to maintain dialogue but told OSV News the Anglican Communion no longer existed as a coherent organization.

“Unlike the Catholic Church, this is at best a very loose federation,” said Tom Middleton, director of Forward in Faith, a group representing English Anglicans upholding Catholic traditions.

“Since it’s unclear who Canterbury actually leads nowadays, it’s also unclear what it will mean in practice if parts of the Anglican Communion come under new direction,” he added.

In their Abuja Affirmation, GAFCON leaders called on conservative Anglican churches to “remove any reference to being in communion with the See of Canterbury,” and to uphold a 14-point 2008 Jerusalem Declaration which expressed “authentic Anglican doctrine.”

“Resetting the Communion is an urgent matter,” the document added.

“The goal is that orthodox Anglicans worldwide will have a clear identity, a global ‘spiritual home’ of which they can be proud, and a strong leadership structure that gives them stability and direction.”

In his OSV News interview, Middleton said conservative Anglicans had opposed the appointment of Archbishop Mullally not because of her gender, but because they believed she had “departed from biblical principles.”

“The Catholic Church, in its generosity and wisdom, is maintaining contacts with us — and since GAFCON represents a large part of the Anglican Communion, I think Rome should continue conversations with them as well,” the Forward in Faith director told OSV News.

“But everything is so fragmented and hard to comprehend now, with so many schismatic tendencies. Perhaps we shouldn’t have had a Reformation after all.”

Meanwhile, Msgr. Nazir-Ali said the strong “Protestant trajectory” among contemporary Anglicans had made life harder for those feeling an affinity with Catholic tradition, and predicted conversions to the Catholic Church would continue.

“Catholics and Anglicans had a long shared history before the Reformation — this is a common patrimony which nothing can touch,” said the Catholic priest, who served on two international Catholic-Anglican commissions.

“We have to be careful now, however, to measure Anglican doctrines and practices by what the Catholic Church teaches'” he said. “The fact that Anglicans are so divided is a call to Catholics to be clear about what they stand for.”

Archbishop Mullally, a former nursing officer, will be installed March 25 as head of the officially established Church of England, which claimed weekly attendance of 702,000, or 1.2 percent of the national population, in its latest annual data report.

The Catholic Church has not rescinded Pope Leo XIII’s ruling in an 1896 apostolic letter, “Apostolicae Curae,” that Anglican holy orders are “absolutely null and utterly void.”

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