Big news for Christians today: the Catholic Church has announced a special deal to entice Anglicans who are unhappy with their church's acceptance of openly gay clergy to break from their church and "enter full communion with the Catholic Church."
It's sort of like when professional athletes become "free agents" and rival teams try to entice them away from their current team with lucrative contract offers. And just as in sports, the Pope's offer is geared primarily to wooing the "franchise players" -- bishops who could bring entire parishes or even whole dioceses onto the Catholic roster. The hope is that these guys will bring a lot more than their souls, like, for example, their church buildings and the land the buildings sit on.
Assets like these would come in handy for the Catholics, who have been paying out hundreds of millions of dollars settling lawsuits brought by Catholics who were sexually molested by Catholic priests when they were children. Just yesterday the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, Del. announced it had filed for bankruptcy to limit its liability in a flood of sexual abuse lawsuits.
So now all those disgruntled Episcopalians have a choice to make: stay on the team that accepts openly gay priests, or bolt for another team run by closeted homosexual pedophiles. It's a tough call. The Catholics offer some real advantages. Since Catholic priests are technically in the closet, their parishioners can still pretend that their church isn't run by a bunch of queers. And there have been just enough lawsuits concerning sexual abuse of females by Catholic clergy to sustain the hope that not all Catholic clergy are homosexual. And then there is always the chance that one's own kid will get hit on by a priest. Those sexual molestation lawsuits are being settled at about one million dollars per child. That is serious money, and these are hard times. A guy can pay off his mortgage and put his kids through college with money like that.
The Anglicans can't match any of that. The mountains of media coverage of out gay clergy have made it impossible for Anglicans to feign ignorance of the sexual proclivities of the people teaching their kids Sunday school. And now that all those queer Anglican clergy can act on their sexual desires with consenting adults, don't expect many of those kids at Sunday school to cash in on sexual abuse litigation.
So, just how many Anglicans are there who are appalled at the thought of openly gay clergy but not particularly bothered by priests who are closeted pedophiles? Only time will tell...