Bishop Silk to Enter Catholic Communion

Well, this is a bit of a surprise. In the latest news that five Church of England Bishops have announced that they will enter the Anglican Ordinariates in full communion with the Catholic Church, there is one surprise: Bishop David Silk is among them. I know Bishop Silk personally from the days when he was Bishop of Ballarat. At that time, he was also the President of the Victorian Council of Churches, when I was the Lutheran member of the executive. We attended a lot of meetings together, and always found we had much in common. I well remember the day when he ordained my friend Tony (who sits at this table sharing the port bottle on occasion) as an Anglican Deacon. I attended the event vested as a Lutheran Pastor. Well, we have all moved on since then, and now it seems that +David is moving on too. (Tony, it's not too late for you, you know!).

Just one observation from the statement from the five resigning bishops: they see Anglicanorum Coetibus as an "ecumenical instrument". Bishop Silk was always ecumenically motivated - that is why he was president of the VCC. The thing is that now they confess that the unity of Christians is only possible "in eucharistic communion with the successor of St Peter":

This is both a generous response to various approaches to the Holy See for help and a bold, new ecumenical instrument in the search for the unity of Christians, the unity for which Christ himself prayed before his Passion and Death. It is a unity, we believe, which is possible only in eucharistic communion with the successor of St Peter.