{"id":55546,"date":"2022-02-04T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldcatholicnews.com\/retired-anglican-bishop-peter-forster-becomes-catholic-news-report-confirms\/"},"modified":"2022-02-04T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-02-05T00:00:00","slug":"retired-anglican-bishop-peter-forster-becomes-catholic-news-report-confirms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldcatholicnews.com\/retired-anglican-bishop-peter-forster-becomes-catholic-news-report-confirms\/","title":{"rendered":"Retired Anglican bishop Peter Forster becomes Catholic, news report confirms"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Forster had served as a member of the English Anglican-Roman Catholic Committee. He has been critical of a \u201cdrift\u201d in ecumenical relations \u201cfrom a vision of full visible unity to an essentially debased vision of reconciled diversity,\u201d the Church Times said.<\/p>\n

The retired Anglican bishop had supported the ordination of women to the Anglican priesthood and the Chester diocese was the first to have a woman bishop. At the same time, he was critical of the Church of England\u2019s approach to women bishops and how this affected relations with other Christian bodies. He thought it was \u201castonishing\u201d that the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission had not published anything on the ordination of women.<\/p>\n

The Church of England broke from the Catholic Church in the 16th century, adopting a different theology and sacramental practices. Its head is the English monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth II. The Catholic Church generally does not recognize Anglican holy orders as sacramentally valid.<\/p>\n

Forster has been involved in some debates of the day. As an Anglican bishop seated in the House of Lords, he opposed 2013 legislation to recognize same-sex unions as marriages in England and Wales, though Parliament successfully passed the bill.<\/p>\n

In 2015, in response to Pope Francis\u2019 encyclical on God\u2019s creation Laudato si\u2019<\/em>, he co-authored a critical commentary with Bernard Donoughue, a Labour Party member of the House of Lords and a lay Catholic.<\/p>\n

Forster and Donoughue said the encyclical struck them as \u201cwell-meaning but somewhat na\u00efve.\u201d While the Pope\u2019s \u201cecological spirituality\u201d recommends much that is \u201cvaluable and commendable,\u201d they said \u201cto regard economic growth as somehow evil, and fossil fuels as pollutants, will only serve to increase the very poverty that he seeks to reduce.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n