AIBU to swap from a catholic church to a Church of England Church

[fishfacedcow]

For services and such?

Is it a big deal?

It's a matter of preference IMHO. If incense, taking in unison, formality, transubstantiation and flowy robes is your thing, go RC / high church

My 'new' c of e church is more relaxed, liberal, occasionally happy clappy, grass roots charity work based than others I have attended

There is a cultural slant too - RC is linked to Rome and the papacy, whereas C of E is the origin of your WI/ church fete/ classic brit hymns/cricket on the lawn thang.

(this is my own take - no offence intended, am just trying to describe for the op)

I felt the role of women, issues of abortion, contraception and gay marriage

I'm for women priests etc
I'm pro choice, but not as a method of contraception but see how it can be 'right' for some people
I believe and have used contraception
I believe in Gay Marriage

so I guess I'm not a traditional Catholic

I have ordered that book.....thank you

The Episcopal Church in the US has recently approved allowing same sex marriage in the church. I don't think the CofE has done this yet. The Catholic Church does not allow it anywhere.

Some Anglican priests will agree to remarrying someone who was divorced depending on circumstances, but many will not.

You cannot take communion in a RC church if you are divorced. That's the official line I think (and have seen it 'enforced') although some rc churches may turn a blind eye.

I live with my dp. We are not married, and our relationship status has no bearing on my faith or they way I am 'viewed' in my c of e church. (at least as far as I know!)

You don't talk to God through Mary for CoE. Same God, same Jesus.

Go and see if you like it.

My Mum was catholic and dad was Baptist but they always went to CoE together.

Ah, yes, the divorce thing. The great irony of the Church of England, which was created to facilitate Henry VIII getting divorced (well, technically annulled) from Katherine of Aragon, is its historical stand on divorce.

Other churches in the Anglican Communion, like the US Episcopal Church, are much more liberal on divorce.

Jay, not true about Mary. Many high church Anglicans say the Hail Mary, ask for saints to intercede etc.

There is an Anglican shrine to Mary at Walsingham, Norfolk.

Well many active RC people who worship regularly that i know, feel the same as you on those things! I guess it's the difference between what comes out of Rome and what individuals get up to in a pretty tolerant, liberal society like the UK.

For me, even if I believed in God, I would not be with the RC as I am so deeply fundamentally opposed to what comes out of Rome and what happens in some countries around the world because of that.

However many of my friends are able to disconnect their local & "cultural" if you like, religion, from what the Pope might decree.

Really it's up to you.

What are you worried about happening if you go? Is it being welcomed or is it more to do with it feels like being unfaithful to your RC background?

Some Anglican priests will agree to remarrying someone who was divorced depending on circumstances, but many will not

My CofE church married a divorced catholic woman to a Muslim man a few years ago.

Try it out op, we get many ex-catholics in the church I attend.

I think that divorced people can receive communion in the Catholic Church if they have not remarried.

Meh, I think Jesus would be more pissed off at individual disgraced vicars/priests than the existence of various churches per se.

It's a bit like a Bella Italian - you take your pic, but it's essentially serving up the same things.

I think it's a really interesting part of English history that we have so many faiths, denominations and traditions.

And old Anglican churches, dating back to the Saxons, robbed from the Catholics.

The Jews and Muslims also have the same God.

DH is a default Irish Catholic and we go to a CoE church. I've been baptised and confirmed with them as I'd been culturally Christian rather than practicing. He's welcome to take communion but chooses not to.

Our church has a monthly cycle of different services, some more traditional and some more relaxed.

Initially we went because we wanted a church wedding, but we've stayed as intermittent regulars for years because it's a lovely community and for the chance for spiritual contemplation.

You cannot take communion in a RC church if you are divorced.

Not true.

Only if you remarry.

But, ultimately, what matters is your faith and what you do with it, not what rituals you follow.

I think what Whirlpool says of the RC church is also true of the C of E abroad (but without the pope).

The Anglican Church is no longer 'local' to England and hasn't been since colonialism. Most Anglicans live elsewhere, particularly in Africa. The Anglican clergy in other countries are sometimes extremely homophobic and influential in bills supporting the death penalty for gay people.

I think you have to see your local church as part of UK values.

Is it being welcomed or is it more to do with it feels like being unfaithful to your RC background? - A bit of both tbh

Its my first marriage but my husbands second. Registry office marriage as it isnt regognised in the Catholic Church - but how can something so beautiful as me and DH be wrong? Part of the reason i stopped attending - I began to feel guilty.

Fish face , you would be very welcome in my ( Anglican ) church and there would be no bar to you taking communion. In fact there are at least 3 catholic folk in our congregation. If you went to a "high " Anglican Church you would find very little difference to what you are used to. Ours is low evangelical and you would find it very different.

That's interesting Jenny I know very little about Anglican church overseas, might do some reading!

.......and you could still have a marriage blessing if you wish.

That's a good point, I wish. Anglican priests will often qqgive a church blessing to remarried couples, which is a church service a bit like a wedding, if you wanted to do that OP.

I know people who treated their church blessing just like a wedding.