Cloud Cuckoo land

Recent article in The Daily Telegraph covering the proposed merger between the Anglicans and Catholics (also covered in detail in The Times).

The Australian Anglican position on this is far from united. Here's what one evangelical Sydney Anglican had to say (quote from the Daily Telegraph):

But the Anglican Bishop of North Sydney, Glenn Davies, a senior assistant bishop to Anglican Archbishop of Sydney Peter Jensen, last night dismissed proponents of the plan as living in "cloud cuckoo land".

"The very thought that we could agree across the world to give up our autonomy is fanciful," he said.

And perhaps no-one in Anglican head office has yet read the September issue of The Briefing - called "No, thanks, I'm Catholic", and includes articles on how to evangelise Catholics and major differences between Anglicanism-as-she-is-spoke in Sydney, and the Church of Rome.

Doctrinal differences between Anglicans and Catholics have attempted to have been smoothed over by the Anglo-Catholics but a few of the more formal differences need a bit more ironing out. And no, the issues aren't women's ordination and gay priests - the evangelical wing of Anglicanism in Sydney at least would on the whole agree with their catholic cousins.

Here's a pundit's list (in no particular order):
1. Submission to the authority of the Bishop of Rome. Athe the report states (quoted in the Times:

"The Roman Catholic Church teaches that the ministry of the Bishop of Rome [the Pope] as universal primate is in accordance with Christ’s will for the Church and an essential element of maintaining it in unity and truth.” Anglicans rejected the Bishop of Rome as universal primate in the 16th century.

2. Different understanding of the Mass / Eucharist / Lord's Supper

" For example, evangelical Anglicans regard a communion service as a memorial of the Last Supper, a symbolic community meal. Catholics believe the mass is a propitiatory sacrifice, where the transubstantiated body and blood of Christ are offered up on the altar in a re-enactment of Calvary. It is hardly possible to overstate the difference between the two approaches or the understandings of the role of the church and the kinds of spirituality to which they give rise."
(From The Australian's take on Kevin Rudd as a Cafeteria Christian)

3. Different approaches to the Bible - the "Wesleyan Quadrilateral" emerges again, and the Catholic magisterium + Scriptures vs the Anglicans "sola Scriptura" (at least in principle, such as Article 6 of the 39 Articles).

...and many more sundry, weighty reasons. Perhaps the elite ecclesiastical types with their refined sense of liturgical order should rather jump ship and join their catholic brethren rather than compromise the last 400 years.

It goes a little bit deeper than "Henry VIII couldn't get a divorce".

Joke:
Q: Why did Henry VIII have so many wives?
A: Because he liked to chop and change!