Here is an interesting and talented blogger from within the Traditional Anglican Communion. Deborah Gyapong is a Canadian Traditional Anglican, journalist and author. I found her blog while trying to find out if Bishop Robert Mercer, proposed by the UK division of the TAC as their Ordinary under the forthcoming Apostolic Constitution, was celibate.
Google threw up an entry on her blog that appears to have been removed (but is still available in the cache!), in which she wrote:
Bishop Robert Mercer!!!!!! Our beloved retired TAC bishop for Canada. And he is celibate and had been a bishop in the Canterbury Communion (of Matubeleland in his native Zimbabwe) so there should be no problem with Rome’s accepting him as Ordinary.
And my oh my. Bishop Robert is one huge reason why I stuck to the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada when I first visited about ten years ago. I have rarely heard any priest pray the mass like he does. He is so recollected that he would make all my earthbound distractions fall away so I could stand or kneel as the case may be in heaven in the once and for all sacrifice of Christ.
And his homilies and the way he would read an Epistle or Gospel. It would nearly singe your hair–not because he shouted or added any histrionics—but because he would proclaim with such meaning. I remember thinking to myself, it is as if Paul himself is standing there.
I lot of people who are experiencing doubts or misgivings will follow Bishop Robert, simply because they trust him.
That sounds very positive. He would be about 74 now, so he is just on the cupse of the age when retirement is generally required of Catholic bishops, but perhaps Rome will make an exception. They had better get a move on, though.
I know Bishop Robert Mercer very well. He is a religious who was a member of the Mirfield Fathers. He is celibate as Deborah remarks and has given outstanding leadership in the TAC under that most excellent Primate Archbishop John Hepworth. It is interesting to not how much unfair, ignorant, and even defamatory comment is published about Archbishop Hepworth on blogs. Well, when you have a man who is the first in human history to lead a Communion of Anglicans back to the Catholic Church, I suppose he was also going to be a target of the malicious. Bishop Mercer is a great man, and an excellent choice to be Ordinary of the Ordinariate in England when the whole thing is set up and depending of copurse upon the approval of the Holy See.