There has been a wide range of responses, many of them emotional, to the announcement that structures for Anglicans who wish full communion with the Roman Catholic Church are being prepared. In Britain the stakes are particularly high, since the timing of the move will affect current conversations within the Church of England about women bishops and how to accommodate dissenters.
Most of the focus has been on Anglicans, particularly the conservative Anglo-Catholics who are likely to seek such unity. These have grown into a distinct strand of Anglicanism since the 19th century Oxford Movement, which sought a revival of Catholic piety and theology drawing on medieval English and later Roman sources, and led to the appearance of a movement focusing on liturgy and spirituality of great aesthetic and theological depth.
That movement however became deeply divided over women's ordination, and now also sexuality, despite the presence of many gay men among them.
Conservatives today view the more liberal wing of Anglo-Catholicism, embodied by the current Archbishop of Canterbury, with deep suspicion. Many of these are relieved to have the prospect of recognition and stability of their liturgical practice, within the fulfilment of a long-held hope for visible unity with Rome.
Other Anglicans however are hurt and bemused, especially those who have committed themselves to ecumenical endeavour while expecting the integrity of existing Anglican structures to be respected.
And last but not least there will be an odd and brief consensus among both more liberal and more evangelical Anglicans, who will share relief at the prospect of a 'rump' moving along and leaving the main game in the current inner-Anglican struggle to them.
This is likely to be the Australian experience, where most of those lining up to embrace the new structures either joined Anglican separatist groups long ago, or now huddle in a few embattled parishes.
But Roman Catholics will have their own mixed feelings too, sooner or later. One Roman Catholic colleague apologised to me at a meeting yesterday, obviously embarrassed by a gesture seen by many in both communions as undiplomatic at best.
Many other loyal Catholics will share unease at this step away from a long and costly process towards greater mutual understanding and cooperation within the existing forms of Church we know. Christians in both Churches and others will wonder how to calculate the cost of unity-by-disunity.
Liberal Roman Catholics have particular reason to be perturbed at the influx