The welcoming of Anglican clergy into the Catholic Church highlights the differences, and difficulties, of approach Attack is the best form of defence. On the eve of another damning report on clerical abuse and cover-up in Ireland, that seems to be Pope Benedict’s tactic. His sudden invitation to Anglican defectors will certainly take the spotlight off a continuing child abuse scandal fed, for decades, by the masculine and intimidating structures of authority in the Catholic hierarchy. Words like “poaching” may seem harsh, but there is more than a whiff of power politics in this move. A “rush to Rome” would resolve Catholicism’s shortage of priests, win back some ancient church buildings annexed at the Reformation, and reduce Anglicanism to an anxious, liberal rump. Result! It is not, after all, so long since Catholics prayed weekly for “the conversion of England”.

But wavering clergy should beware. Apart from anything else, onlookers might accuse them of two opposing faults: an illiberal lack of elasticity over human beings — notably women and gays — yet a woefully pliable attitude to belief. Growing up as a Catholic in Protestant Britain, we were taught the differences between us. “We” believed in Papal infallibility; “they” didn’t, but reckoned the Queen was head of the Church. We were taught the weird doctrine of transubstantiation — the miraculous change of bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood. They regarded Communion as symbolic. However, they could believe in transubstantiation if they wanted, just as they could opt to join us in crediting Mary’s sinless Immaculate Conception and Assumption. To the beady schoolgirl eye, Anglicanism seemed free and easy after the corset of Catholic dogma; they could even choose high or low church, be evangelically dour or all a-tinkle with bells. Catholicism came in just one flavour. And their priests could have family lives, ours couldn’t; Anglican couples could use contraception.

We marched to different drums. So when the General Synod accepted women priests and many Anglicans crossed the floor, we cradle Catholics (however renegade) were baffled: did Papal authority, transubstantiation, tough teachings on divorce and the contraceptive ban not bother them? Their priests breezed across the divide, complete with wives and children — a concession insulting to Catholic clergy who had, with difficulty, accepted celibacy and who were told that this would not change for them. Under the new dispensation, the only proviso is that married priests can’t be Catholic bishops. Promotion, I suppose, must wait for widowerhood.

But convert clergy may not find life as good as they had hoped, despite being freed from the terror of meeting woman priests and having to bless civil partners rather than excoriate them, Vatican-style, as “intrinsically disordered”. Despite the modified prayer book they will find their style and even pastoral advice gravely restricted; they may flinch at the uncompromising voice of the Vatican after the gentle bleating of Cantuars.

Anglicanism was founded on uneasy compromise, and this has, over centuries, made it kindly and even humble: a mixed salad of a faith. Catholicism is older, darker, strong raw meat. It may choke them.

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