The Sober Side of Wank

Pope Palpatine using Those Horrible Gays to up his recruitment stats? How completely novel!
Apparently unsatisfied with everything ELSE the Catholic Church has to deal with, Pope Benedict XVI decides to stick his crucifix where it doesn't belong and meddle in the affairs of Anglicans -- by inviting those displeased with Episcopalian acceptance of homosexuals to ~~COME OVER TO THE DARK SIDE~~ join with Rome.

( Text for the link-phobic )

A rather good article, I feel, though its appeal may be to a relatively fairly narrow audience (consisting entirely of people who A. know jack about either CoE or Catholicism, and B. actually care) followed by surprisingly insightful comments:

Is it just me, or does the picture suggest a vampire rising from its coffin? asks riggbeck.

speaking as an excatholic he is welcome to them! although they'll probably find that there are more gay priests in the catholic church rather than in the one they are leaving! observes jamijery.

This is all very interesting and informative, but I'm sorry to say that for 90% of the population, this will have no bearing on their lives. So sayeth NapoleonKaramazov in what I think is a fairly accurate estimation, begging the question "Why, then, is Duende bothering to post this?" Because I am extremely bad at math.

...Snarking aside, some of the comments actually ARE good ones:

This is very similar to Stephen Bates' article yesterday. Again, I fail to see the problem with the Vatican's proposal. A way has been found to allow a number of people who are currently Anglicans - call them Anglo-Catholics, High Church, or whatever - to move to the Catholic Church in a fashion which will make them happier than they currently are. In their absence, people in the Church of England who wish to make more changes in terms of women bishops, gay cleargy, etc, will find it easier to make those changes. Where is the problem in this? Only if you see RC / Anglican relations as some sort of zero-sum game, where the Anglo-Catholics have to be kept locked into the Anglican communion in order to keep the numbers up. --Suleyman

The Catholic Church is seen to be modern. In one breath the Pope has spoken superstision about homosexuality, and in the next, condemned Israel for bulldozing Palistenian homes. Tell them that no-one MAKES homosexuals do what they do. Do you? The idea of fearing anything let alone God seems dubious to most of the previous commenters. Fear isn't the issue regarding the accused. The only criticism about this compromise has come from rash hackers like Lucy Mangan who have distracted from whose own questionable practices, based on personal nuerosis and egocentricities, which bare no relavance to the INCREASINGLY neccessary role of a high profile, NON VIOLENT body in today's society. --GraemeFord

The usual parade of rage-inducing ignorance and thought-inducing conspiracy theories follow. ("There is no such thing as an Anglican church there are only a bunch of jumped up hypocrites who cow-towed to the divorce demands of a fat king. If you are a Christian you either follow true Protestantism or you admit you are a catholic and follow the pope, there can be no half-way house." ...What?)

As for myself, a former member of both churches, I think that is Rome wishes to corral all the bigoted homophobes into the same pen regardless of (basically irrelevant, in this case) differences in doctrine, they have my blessing -- it only makes them that much easier to avoid.