The Vatican has just made it easier for Anglican churches to join the Roman Catholic Church:

The Vatican said it will make it far easier for disgruntled Anglicans to convert to Catholicism, in one of Rome’s most sweeping gestures to a Protestant church since the Reformation.
A newly created set of canon laws, known as an “Apostolic Constitution,” will clear the way for entire congregations of Anglican faithful to join the Catholic Church. That represents a potentially serious threat to the already fragile world-wide communion of national Anglican churches, which has about 77 million members globally.
[….]
The Apostolic Constitution calls for the creation of new church structures, called Personal Ordinariates, that will operate under local Catholic dioceses and be administered by former Anglican clergy.

Does it sound like a two-tiered system to you? It does to me.
I guess this could give conservative Anglican congregations leverage in their fight over gay bishops and ordaining women, they could threaten to join the Catholic church if their demands aren’t met. But there are some pretty substantial differences in doctrine that they’ll have to overcome first (the doctrine of justification comes to mind 🙂 and the problem of a celibate priesthood (dispensations to married non-Catholic priests are currently granted but not on such a wide scale).

Still, the Rev. Jack Leo Iker, who leads the group that broke from the Episcopal Church of Fort Worth, said the Catholic proposal is likely to get a mixed reception.
“Not all Anglo-Catholics can accept certain teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, nor do they believe that they must first convert to Rome in order to be truly catholic Christians,” the Rev. Iker said.

It will be interesting to see what the new laws look like when they are finally made public.