From here:
They have worshipped together for decades on the pews of their parish church. Generations of their loved ones have been baptised, married and buried there.
But now a Church of England congregation is being torn apart by the Pope’s offer to welcome disaffected Anglican traditionalists into the Catholic Church.
In a vote which has split the local community and left long-standing friends on opposite sides of a growing divide, 54 parishioners at St Barnabas Tunbridge Wells have indicated that they intended to become Catholics while 18 said they would remain in the established Church….
At St Barnabas the move towards Rome is being led by the vicar, Fr Ed Tomlinson. He believes that traditionalists who oppose the ordination of women have been badly let down by Church leaders.
But he has been told by the diocese of Rochester that if he and his followers leave the Church of England they will no longer be allowed to hold services, even on a shared basis, at St Barnabas – a nineteenth-century red-brick church where Siegfried Sassoon, the First World War poet, was baptised.
The firm stance has infuriated Fr Tomlinson, the vicar since 2006. “The whole thing stinks to high heaven,” he said.
“The Archdeacon made it abundantly clear that he does not want to entertain the notion of shared worship space and that he would resist my remaining here in any capacity.
“How lamentable that a solution based on unity exists but those with authority seem more intent on division.”
I have an eerie feeling of déjà vu. The Church of England’s hierarchy has demonstrated that, for all its prattle about ecumenism, what counts is kow-towing to the earthly power of the rapidly disintegrating ecclesiastical old boys’ – and women’s’ now – club of petty pointy-hatted eco-justice obsessed autocrats that pass for prelates in England’s green and pleasant land.