The Australian leader of a disaffected group of former Anglicans is hoping to be part of healing the 400-year-old rift between the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches.
The Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, Archbishop John Hepworth, has been meeting with New Zealand Church leaders from both traditions in the hope of seeing a “full organic unity” between the two groups.
The Traditional Anglican Communion sees their role as providing pastoral care to conservative Anglicans who feel alienated by the liberalism of the mainline church.
Archbishop Hepworth has previously ministered as a Roman Catholic priest and then as an Anglican minister before joining the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia in 1992.
In 1996 he was consecrated as an assistant bishop and in 1998 he became the diocesan bishop. In 2002 he was elected primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion in succession to Louis Falk.
Archbishop Hepworth believes that union is possible because Catholic and Anglican theology and practice are very similar.
“There have always been Anglicans who have not differed from Catholics in terms of doctrine,” he suggested.
“We said if we could believe in the catechism of the Catholic Church — which the present pope drafted when he was Cardinal Ratzinger — then that is the best statement of Christian faith that we’ve got in the world at the moment.”
Pope Benedict recently approved the setting up of a worldwide institution to receive Anglican groups.
It will be the first time since the Reformation in the 16th century that entire Protestant communities have reunited with Rome.
Among the first to take up the offer will be the Tradi-tional Anglican Communion which came into being nearly 30 years ago in the United States and Canada, and Australia. It currently boasts a worldwide membership of 500,000 communicants on any given Sunday, although the Archbishop concedes that there are not many adherents in this country.
“At the moment we’ve got a parish in Auckland, and a number of supporters spread around New Zealand. This is a very new concept for New Zealand; very few people will even know the pope has issued this document.”
The new process will enable groups of Anglicans to become Catholic and recognise the pope as their leader, yet have parishes that retain Anglican rites.
The move comes some 450 years after King Henry VIII broke from Rome and created the Church of England, forerunner of the Anglican Communion.
