Pope allows Married Men to become priests in the Anglican Ordinariate

Roman Catholics are to allow married men to become priests in a radical concession to attract recruits from the troubled Anglican church.

Church of England defectors to Rome will be able to ordain married men to become their priests, according to details released by the Vatican.

The decision to allow Anglican converts to keep their tradition of married priests is a break with rules that have applied in western Catholic churches for nearly 900 years.

The Vatican was at pains today to insist that it does not mean a break with the celibacy for clergy nor the first step towards a married priesthood.

But leading Anglo-Catholics confirmed that CofE (Church of England) bishops who switch loyalty to Rome will have the power to ordain their own priests and that - with permission from the Pope - some of the newly-ordained priests may be married.

The gesture goes alongside a welcome package for Anglicans that will mean that converts will be able to worship according to services from the Church of England's Book of Common Prayer. Services will be re-written to remove references to the Queen as head of the church and to pledge loyalty to the Pope.

One Church of England bishop called yesterday for negotiations with CofE leaders to allow whole congregations to switch to Rome while keeping the right to continue to use their CofE parish churches.

Bishop of Fulham the Right Reverend John Broadhurst said the offer from Rome was 'extremely impressive' and added that those who choose to accept 'have a valid claim on our own heritage in history.'

Details of the proposals for Anglicans were published today by Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a body which centuries ago ran the inquisition into heretics.

They follow the announcement last month of an 'Apostolic Constitution' designed to allow tens of thousands of disaffected Anglicans to return to Rome and yet keep their own priests, parishes and traditions.

The invitation is designed to attract high church Anglicans angry at the advance of gay rights in Anglican churches around the world and now further provoked by the prospect of women bishops in the Church of England.

Those who go over will be led by 'ordinaries' - effectively their own bishops, who will profess allegiance to Rome and work closely with Catholic bishops.

They will, however, have full authority over their own congregations of former Anglicans.

An ordinary may 'petition the Roman pontiff for the admission of married men' to the priesthood 'on a case by case basis.' Unmarried men who are ordained under the new system must however remain celibate.

Catholic leaders denied that the Anglican converts will form a church within a church.

A statement added: 'The possibility envisioned by the Apostolic Constitution for some married clergy with the ordinariates does not signify any change in the Church's discipline of priestly celibacy.'

Celibacy for priests became the rule in 1139 when the Second Lateran Council laid down in writing for the first time that priests should not marry nor have sex.

The rule survived the Reformation in the 1500s, when breakaway protestant groups including the Church of England said ministers should marry.

In the 1950s the Vatican allowed Anglican priests who convert to join the Catholic priesthood while remaining married. Many among the 500 Church of England clergy who went over to Rome when the CofE first ordained women in 1993 were married.

However the proposal that newly-ordained priests may be married is new in Western Europe. It has been operated in Eastern Europe where some Orthodox churches have switched loyalty to Rome but have kept their traditions of married priests.

Catholic priests who left their church to marry will not be allowed to return as members of the Anglican convert congregations.

Bishop Broadhurst, who is the CofE's Suffragan Bishop of London and leader of the Anglo-Catholic pressure group Forward in Faith, said: 'I have been horrified that the Church of England while trying to accommodate us has consistently said we cannot have the jurisdiction and independentt life that most of us feel we need.

'What Rome has done is offer exactly what the Church of England has refused.'

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has said the Catholic offer does not amount to an attempt to poach Anglicans.

Yesterday the CofE Bishop of Guildford, the Right Reverend Christopher Hill, said: 'It will now be for those who have requested and at this point feel impelled to seek full communion with the Roman Catholic Church to study the Apostolic Constitution carefully in the near future and to consider their options.'

(Published in MailOnline, November 9)