Traditional Anglican Communion Still Seeking Full Communion with Rome

'We do not seek unity with the Holy See because the local church is beautiful, not by our own experiences, but because it is right.'

COOMERA, Australia (Catholic Online) - The Most Reverend John Hepworth, Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion and Ordinary to the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia, recently spoke to a gathering of the faithful at in the Queensland Synod (Australia).

We have followed the historic efforts of members of the Traditional Anglican Communion to seek full sacramental communion with the Roman Catholic Church. That is because we believe that to be Catholic is to be authentically ecumenical and to hunger for the full communion of the One Church of Jesus Christ, with legitimate diversity, in full communion with the Chair of Peter.

We present the following report from the Primate, Archbishop John Hepworth, which appeared on the website of the Traditional Anglican Communion. Clearly, the request continues and, given the horrid turn of events in the broader Anglican/Episcopal community, we invite prayers from all of our readers for a work of the Holy Spirit to open the proper doors:

"We [TAC] have grown too fast. What we have done was planned by God."

Archbishop Hepworth said, "Our major problem has been that we have grown too fast. We have not had the infrastructure and the financial resources to cope and service the demands of new churches and missions worldwide. We are experiencing the growth of God amongst his faithful people in an Anglican Catholic way. Had we designed it, our endeavours would have been much easier to manage, but what we have done was planned by God.

"This is a time for deeper prayer. There are serious conversations. We do not seek unity with the Holy See because the local church is beautiful, not by our own experiences, but because it is right.

"We are a church which has sought unity of the wider church and in the process we have been transformed. This is a time for deeper prayer, discernment and transformation. Of learning what it is to be catholic

"Of course there are the distortions and the disobedience yet a need to be listening intently along the roadway, asking what the Church teaches.

"We have done something specific and that has changed us."

Archbishop Hepworth said, "The intensity of persecution, wrongful use of Canon law continues in the Anglican Communion.

"Much of what we do in Australia has changed with the introduction of women bishops, and Catholics cannot relate to bishopesses."

We ask the global readers of Catholic online to pray for our brothers and sisters in the traditional Anglican Communion. We also ask for our readers to pray that those in the Church charged with discerning their request would be inspired by the Holy Spirit so that the prayer of Jesus "Ut Unum Sint" may move toward it's inevitable fulfillment.

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