Following the 2003 consecration of a bishop living in a committed same-sex partnership and other significant doctrinal changes, well over 100,000 Anglicans left the Episcopal Church. Individuals, parishes and four major Dioceses, including the nearby Diocese of Ft. Worth, left and ultimately formed the Anglican Church - North America (AC-NA) as a separate province for orthodox Anglicans in the United States and Canada.

The beauty of the English liturgy has long been admired outside the Church of England, and the new text made it possible for it to be used within the Roman Catholic Church, by means of a number of amendments that make it conform more closely with the Roman Missal.

One wonders, therefore, why he consented to appear in a joint press conference with the new Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, to greet the news.

Archbishop Williams subsequently met briefly with Pope Benedict XVI in November–a meeting that had been scheduled prior to the announcement of the initiative–at which meeting the subject of the initiative reportedly did arise.

However, this new Constitution does not seem congruent with that declaration of eight years ago, which was absolutely in line with the great decrees of Vatican II, Lumen gentium and Unitatis redintegratio. This new document quotes them, but seems to have forgotten their spirit. Instead of the measured, humble cadences of those great documents, a triumphalistic accent colors Anglicanorum coetibus.