The English Catholic Church is preparing to welcome five Anglican Bishops and over 40 priests under arrangements earlier made by the Vatican. Some time earlier, too, an English congregation decided to become Catholic. Some breathless commentators speculated whether this trickle would become a flood and lead to England again being Catholic.
But for Anglicans and Catholics more generally it was an opportunity to reflect soberly on the significance of these events, and indeed on the regular movement of members of each church into the other.
The heart of the matter is that people are involved in a significant personal journey. So they must receive the respect that is due to them. When church allegiance was more tribal and the identity of a church was often defined in terms of what it was not, those who changed churches received little respect. The churches which they left often saw them as traitors, and the church that received them saw them as trophies or as foreigners.
It is heartening that now people who leave one church for another are generally farewelled and received courteously, and wished well. In this case Rowan Williams spoke with exemplary graciousness of the Bishops who were leaving the Anglican Communion.
From one perspective, too, the procedures for receiving Anglicans into the Catholic Church embody respect for the people involved. They recognise the importance of spiritual and liturgical traditions within a person's faith and make space for them in the Catholic Church.
But these events do not simply touch on the individuals concerned. They also ask what kind of respect is due between churches. This is a complex question, because many churches see these relationships as asymmetrical.
The Catholic and Orthodox churches, for example, see their church as being exceptional and see other churches as lacking important qualities. In earlier Catholic theology, this was spelled out in terms of the Catholic Church being the true church and other churches as non-churches. This radical asymmetry made any relations, let alone respectful ones, very difficult.
In more recent theology, the Catholic Church has seen itself as embodying in flawed ways the full reality of Church. Other churches share in that reality to greater and lesser degrees. This gradated view of churches explains why