Why does a rabbi care about whether or not the Catholic Church decides to welcome disaffected Anglicans, as they announced yesterday? In this case, it’s because I welcome all moves which increase diversity within religious community. But whether or not this new move will accomplish that remains to be seen.
What appears to be a move toward greater inclusiveness may actually facilitate the homogenization of both churches directly affected by this process. People may opt to leave a community rather than work within it to maintain the vitality of their way of being members of a particulate church. They may, because of moves like this one by the Vatican, opt, in a version of the words of the old Pall Mall cigarette commercial, switch rather than fight.

That “fight” may be an important one to keep having, as long as it can be done with civility. It’s reason I think it’s very important that all kinds of Jews who choose to do so, call themselves “religious” and not cede membership in that group to any particular group or denomination. But I also realize that sometimes, people come to a parting of the ways with the church with which they were originally affiliated – when it is no longer meaningful or productive to struggle from within the institution and doing so drains the spiritual life from all involved. In that case, it’s time to move on, and it’s beautiful when other groups are there to welcome those who do so.
I have not the slightest concern about what some have called a move by the Vatican to “poach” disaffected Anglicans. Just as I have no real concern about Jews being poached from one Jewish denomination to another.

In each case, it should be admitted that it is only those who are unhappy who can be “poached”. If they are unhappy where they are, it is either their home denomination’s job to make them happier by giving the disaffected what they want, or admit that they have no intention of so doing, and wish them well as they settle into new and more spiritually satisfying homes.

The really interesting story here is whether or not the Vatican will get more than they bargained for with this new approach. By welcoming into the Church, individuals who describe themselves as wishing to be both “Anglican and Catholic”, as some stories report, the Catholic Church may be opening the door to precisely the kind of mixing and matching to which many of its current leaders have so strenuously objected.
We’ll have to wait and see, but it would be highly ironic if Anglicans leave their current church because it is insufficiently conservative, only to become a force for increased diversity of theological and liturgical expression within their newly adopted Catholic church. You have to love our increasingly open spiritual marketplace. I know I do.