Anglicans in Essex clash over Pope Benedict's offer

Traditionalist Anglicans in Essex say they are being shunned by neighbouring parishes after it emerged that they were considering taking up the Pope's offer of joining a "personal ordinariate".

In a letter addressed to the area dean of Waltham Forest and copied to the parish priest of the Anglo-Catholic St Margaret's Leytonstone Fr Robert Page, the clergy of the three adjoining parishes said that they did not want members of the ordinariate to worship in the parish.

The letter to Fr Stephen Saxby, written by Fr Raymond Draper of St John the Baptist, Leytonstone, on behalf of the three parishes said: "If Fr Rob and a group from St Margaret's choose to explore the new Anglican ordinariate within the Roman Catholic Church, we wish them well in this experiment.

"But we do not think it would be realistic to allow a new and rival group under the former parish priest to worship at St Margaret's or to worship in St Margaret's parish. To do this would be to put an impossible burden on the loyalty of Anglicans in St Margaret's church and to place any new incumbent in an intolerable situation."

According to the letter, the priests from the adjoining parishes discussed the future of the area as if Fr Page was no longer the parish priest of St Margaret's Leytonstone. They proposed to cluster the four parishes of St Margaret's Leytonstone, St Andrew's Leytonstone, Holy Trinity Harrow Green and St John's Leytonstone into a group of affirming Anglican churches. Read more
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