Conservative Donnybrook

The Anglican church has a problem: Dr. Rowan.  Yet he is not the underlying problem, just its very visible face.  For years the church has been split between well intentioned and so-called “conservatives” and the Christian-lite “liberals” led by Dr. Rowan and brought into scrutinizing light by the elevation of bishop Gene Robinson.

Some parishes around the world have responded to the dismantling of orthodox ideals by calling for a conservative Anglican council.  The newly created council will teach seminarians, interpret biblical texts and issue proclamations on dogmatic issues.  Not a break from the Anglicans, but a “church within a church.”  While the desire to resist Dr. Rowan and his company’s brand of liberal theology is understandable, the decision to remain a church within a church fails to correct the root of the Anglican problem. 

When the prodigal son had enough of the world’s wicked ways did he forge a new way, keeping vestiges of a failed philosophy?  No, he returned to that which he first, erroneously, separated himself from: his roots, symbolized by his father.  So too should the prodigal church return to her roots: The Roman Catholic Church.  Much time has passed since the wicked and heretical King Henry VIII seized control of God’s Church on Earth.  The political and theological hegemony once emanating from Rome is no more.  No longer does the Roman Catholic Church rule the land with a shepherd’s crook and a crown and She has no desire to return to those days.  Her focus is now solely on souls.  Created by God for God’s people, it is time the rightly angered Anglicans came home.