“I had hoped the Traditional Anglican Church and the Roman Catholic Church would come together as sister churches, not finding a way for us to become Roman Catholics,” said Rev. James Chantler, rector of Windsor’s Church of the Resurrection and part of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada . “I don’t think there are any deficiencies in traditional Anglicanism.”

Chantler’s church is part of the Traditional Anglican Communion, a group of about 400,000 Anglicans around the world who broke away from mainstream Anglicanism in the 1970s when some Anglican dioceses began ordaining women. The TAC, which includes the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, petitioned Rome to enter communion with the Catholic Church in 2007.

The Vatican’s dramatic Oct. 20 announcement that Anglicans would soon have a way to join the Catholic Church without abandoning their prayer books or liturgical traditions wasn’t good enough for Chantler.

“There’s a very serious problem inside the Roman Catholic Church now as to whether it is one church and two religions,” he said. “We have to be very careful, us old believers, that we don’t jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

In Parry Sound, Ont., Rev. Robert Mansfield, pastor at St. John’s Anglican Catholic Church, said his parish greeted the offer from the Vatican with “restrained enthusiasm.”

It all depends on what’s in the forthcoming apostolic constitution which will lay out ground rules for Mansfield’s congregation should they wish to become part of a personal ordinariate of Anglican Catholics.

That structure of dioceses held together more by common interest than by geography troubles Saint Paul University theologian Cathy Clifford, a leading Catholic expert in the form and structure of the church.

“I can’t imagine that a lot of bishops would be happy with having a parish in their diocese over which they have no jurisdiction,” said Clifford from Ottawa.

The Anglicans tried for years to deal with dissident Anglicans by giving them their own “flying bishops.” It hasn’t worked well and may confuse things for Catholics if personal ordinariates end up creating a group of Catholic flying bishops for disaffected Anglicans, said Clifford.

She also worries about the possibility that groups of people may join the Catholic Church because they’re angry over the actions of some bishops rather than because they love the Catholic Church.

“The Catholic Church is not a haven for disgruntled members of other churches. It really means entering into full communion, and a communion of faith in a church with all its doctrines,” she said.

The offer is simply irrelevant to most Anglicans, said Bishop John Baycroft, retired Anglican bishop of Ottawa and for many years a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission.

“It’s really not possible to make an intelligent comment about it until we see what the (apostolic) constitution says,” he said.

But the veteran ecumenist didn’t see the move as advancing communion between the two churches.

“There’s no perfect solution so long as the church remains divided,” he said. “Anything that happens within a divided church is less than the fullness of communion which, theologically, in terms of faith, we believe in.”

“It’s not actually ecumenism. It’s basically an interim measure to do something until the ecumenical dialogue achieves its goals,” said Margaret O’Gara, professor of theology at Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College.

There can be no such thing as real communion without repentance and reform on the part of both churches, said O’Gara.

“Where’s the reform involved here on the Roman Catholic side? The only reform is a welcome, hospitable attitude to the Anglican liturgical tradition — and that’s a real step,” she said.

The welcome to Anglican liturgy and tradition would not be possible without the work of four decades of official ecumenical dialogue between Anglicans and Catholics, said Franciscan Father Damian MacPherson, who runs the ecumenical and interfaith affairs office of the archdiocese of Toronto.

“It’s almost as close as you can come to having their own rite,” he said. “All of their liturgical prayers and books will be taken with them.”

But Anglican theologian Ephraim Radner, professor of historical theology at Toronto’s Wycliffe College , doesn’t think a nod to the Book of Common Prayer and temporary allowance for married clergy constitutes anything like an Anglican rite. He points out that the Catholics are going to have a lot of trouble endorsing the Book of Common Prayer since it’s on the basis of the 1662 book that Rome declared Anglican orders null and void.