Tony Blair's conversion to Catholicism has pointed up the fact that there are now more Catholics than Anglicans regularly attending church in Britain, even though The Church of England is the established state religion. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/23/nchurch123.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox
It is not hard to understand why the Anglicans are in trouble. The United Kingdom enjoys the trappings of its religious legacy without taking the content or practice very seriously. Recently, the Archbishop of Canterbury reportedly cast doubt on the Virgin Birth, which is a little like the Chancellor of the Exchequer announcing that the pound sterling is not necessarily sound. Churches, like political parties, that have "wet" leaders, to use Margaret Thatcher's term, lose self-confidence and then they lose support. There are more enjoyable diversions on a Sunday morning than going to church services if you don't really subscribe to the traditional doctrines of the church. And why should you if the leadership doesn't?
Meanwhile, a mere 500 years after the Reformation, some religious scholars are starting to regard reunion as an achievable goal. With little or no fanfare, official committees of Catholic and Anglican theologians in the past decade have reached sweeping agreements, including on such dicey doctrines as salvation by faith, the nature of the Eucharist, the teaching authority of the pope and the place of the Virgin Mary. In the 16th century brave men were burned at the stake over these very matters that are now apparently being composed. Unfortunately, the next steps are not altogether clear. The parties to the old dispute may be reconciling their quarrels over substance, but it seems to be harder to change old sectarian behaviors, especially where property, titles and pensions are involved. Theology, meet ecclesiology.
Is Catholicism the immediate future in England? Well, it might be, except that Catholic church attendance among people born in the U.K.--as opposed to fresh immigrants from Poland and other EU countries--has been going down as fast as Anglican attendance. The old "dissenting" churches, such as the Methodists, who split from the Anglicans in the 18th century, also are not faring well. There is something of a Pentecostal surge of activity underway, but it can hardly be called deep or broad.
The problem is that Europe has had a crisis of faith. The region of the world that was once the heart of Christendom is more secularized and relativistic than it ever has been. Pope Benedict has identified the problem. But much of the difficulty has to do with failure of the Church herself to address adequately the root causes that are found in modern/post-modern philosophy and the philosophy of science. Christian authorities have not drawn deeply enough on their own and other, outside intellectual resources to mount an opposition to the agnostic spirit of the times.
As the traditional Christmas season begins for the liturgical churches, Christians may be coming together in merry old England, and in Europe-- but slowly. And the question is not only whether this new development is too late, but whether it also is too light-weight.