For One Episcopal Parish, a Path to Catholicism

When the Vatican announced last week that it would welcome groups of traditionalist Anglicans into the Roman Catholic Church, leaders of one Episcopal parish celebrated as if a ship had arrived to rescue them from a drifting ice floe.

Bishop David Moyer of the Church of the Good Shepherd welcomes a Vatican decision to embrace traditionalist Anglicans.

“We’d been praying for this daily for two years,” said Bishop David L. Moyer, who leads the Church of the Good Shepherd, a parish in the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia that is battling to keep its historic property. “When I heard the news I was speechless, then the joy came and the tears.”

This parish could be one of the first in the United States to convert en masse after the Vatican completes plans for a new structure to allow Anglicans to become Catholic while retaining many of their spiritual traditions, like the Book of Common Prayer and married priests.

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Vatican Creates New Church Structure For Non-Catholics

Pope Benedict has approved a new church provision that will allow non-Catholics and in particular, the Anglicans, to convert to Catholicism while at the same time, maintaining many of their distinctive spiritual and liturgical traditions.

The Vatican made this decision in response to the disillusionment of some Anglicans over the election of openly gay bishops and the blessing of same sex marriage which has caused a major uproar in the Anglican church not only in England, but across the world.

This never-before provision for Protestants to become a part of the Catholic Church has many Protestant leaders concerned about the breakdown in doctrinal differences between the Catholics and Protestants that came out of the Reformation 500 years ago.

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Peres Wants To Yield Sacred Sites To Vatican

President Shimon Peres is willing to hand over Israeli sovereignty of key Christian holy sites to the Vatican, a proposition that is reportedly opposed by Interior Minister Eli Yishai and that has ruffled feathers among other senior government officials, Army Radio reported on Monday.

Local Catholic community prepares for Papal visit

Beit Hanassi could not be reached for comment on Monday, as it does not issue statements to the press while the president is abroad.

According to the radio report, the president is exerting pressure on the government to give up sovereignty over six sites, including the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, the Coenaculum on Mount Zion, Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, and the Church of the Multiplication on the Kinneret.

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Vatican Blocked Caroline Kennedy Appointment

Vatican sources told Il Giornale that their support for abortion disqualified Ms Kennedy and other Roman Catholics President Barack Obama had been seeking to appoint.

Mr Obama was reportedly seeking to reward John F Kennedy’s daughter, who publicly gave her support to his election bid. She had been poised to replace Hillary Clinton as New York senator, but dropped out amid criticism that she lacked enough experience for the job.

The Italian paper said that the Vatican strongly disapproved of Mr Obama’s support for abortion and stem cell research. The impasse over the ambassadorial appointment threatens to cloud his meeting with the Pope during a G8 summit in Itay in July.

Ms Kennedy, 53, has said that she supports abortion. Raymond Flynn, a former US ambassador to the Vatican, said earlier this week that Ms Kennedy would be a poor choice.

“It’s imperative, it’s essential that the person who represents us to the Holy See be a person who has pro-life values. I hope the President doesn’t make that mistake,” he told the Boston Herald. “She said she was pro-choice. I don’t assume she’s going to change that, which is problematic.”

The White House refused to comment.

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Pope To Visit Israel – Hopes To Build Catholic-Jewish Ties

A papal trip to the Holy Land would be a decisive step in overcoming the problems that still dog Catholic-Jewish relations, a senior Vatican official said.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, the Vatican official in charge of relations with Jews, made his remarks in an interview Wednesday in the official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

The Vatican has said that a papal trip to Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian territories may still take place in 2009 despite the current violence in Gaza.

Kasper said progress had been made in Jewish-Catholic relations over the past year but “there is no lack of problems.” He underscored two issues in particular: the reintroduction of a “prayer for the Jews” into the Good Friday liturgy and the continuing controversy over the role of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust.

“I’m convinced then that the pope’s hoped-for trip to the Holy Land would be decisive to overcome prejudice and incomprehension that mark our relations with Judaism,” he said.

via ‘Papal visit to Israel could help Catholic-Jewish ties’ | Jewish News | Jerusalem Post.

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• Pope ‘to visit Holy Land in May’

Plans Underway For Pope To Visit Israel

Plans are being finalised for Pope Benedict XVI to visit Israel in May next year, the Vatican has confirmed.

The Pope had intended to make the announcement himself at Christmas, Vatican sources said. However the news was leaked this week by the Israeli daily Haaretz. Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said diplomatic contacts were under way to prepare a trip, and the Israeli Ambassador to the Holy See, Mordechay Lewy, said the visit was ”very probable”.

Mr Lewy added that ”a visit by the pope to the Holy Land would have incomparable historic value and he himself has already announced his desire to go there”.

Israel and the Vatican have only had full diplomatic relations since 1993. There remain a number of unresolved issues, including the Vatican’s request for custody of Christian sites in Israel such as the room of the Last Supper on Mount Zion and a church in Caesaria linked to St Peter. The Vatican is also seeking tax exemptions for Church property in Israel.

The most recent cause of tension however is the controversy surrounding the Vatican’s plans to beatify Pius XII, the wartime pontiff whom many Jews criticise for his alleged failure to speak out against the Nazi Holocaust. In October, the Israeli Social Affairs Minister, Yitzhak Herzog, said plans to beatify Pius XII – the step before sainthood – were ”unacceptable”.

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