The Vatican just cut the price for Anglicans to join the Catholic Church. Converts can keep some Anglican traditions and still become Catholics. For instance, married Anglican priests can convert and become Catholic priests!
As the Anglican Church loses market share to the Catholic Church, what will they do? Traditional economics would imply some sort of price cut by the firm under attack. If Catholics can allow married priests, surely Protestants can allow some confessions and indulgences (i.e. payments for absolution from sins) for Catholics wanting to move the other way. Over-indulgences led to the Protestant Reformation but the Catholics Church’s aggressive move to get market share is going to lead to a price war and a reduction of product differentiation. Of course, if there is very little switching as Protestants are very loyal to their faith, the Catholic Church will end up cannibalizing its own market – for instance, Catholic priests may demand the same marriage rights granted to their converted brethren.
Looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen.
Update: Thanks to all the commenters who helped to reveal my lack of knowledge on religious matters. It seems that the potential for cannibalizing the Catholic market has been recognized. Here is today’s Times story Pope’s Offer Raises Idea of Marriage for Catholic Priests:
“The invitation also extends to married Anglican clergy. And so some have begun to wonder, even if the 82-year-old Benedict himself would never allow it, would more people in the Catholic Church begin to entertain the possibility of married Catholic priests?
“If you get used to the idea of your priests being married, then that changes the perception of the Catholic priesthood necessarily,” said Austen Ivereigh, a Catholic commentator in London and a former adviser to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster.
“We face the prospect in the future of going to a Catholic church in London and it being normal to find a married Catholic priest celebrating at the altar, with his wife sitting in the third pew and his children running up and down the aisle,” he said.”
There is also an arbitrage opportunity dismissed by the Catholic Church:
“Could a Catholic man convert to Anglicanism, be ordained as an Anglican priest, then rejoin the Catholic Church under the new Anglican rite? (The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, dismissed that idea as “a trick.”)”
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October 20, 2009 at 10:59 pm
peter
this is from the article:
“Under the new arrangement, the Catholic practice that has allowed married Anglican priests to convert and become Catholic priests would continue. (There have been very few such priests.)”
i don’t understand your conclusion that protestants will allow confessions, since they aren’t the ‘firm’ in a price war.
i don’t think what’s preventing catholics from converting to protestantism is confession. the main difference between the two churches is the nature of the eucharist, whether it is the actual body of christ or if it is a symbolic, holy gesture.
also, indulgences aren’t purchased nowadays. plenary indulgences are granted by the pope. the protestant church wouldn’t allow plenary indulgences granted by the pope, since it would undermine their own authority. partial indulgences are granted based upon the person’s own actions, none of which involve monetary payments. also, indulgences nowadays do not grant absolution. they only remove part of the temporal punishment due for sin ON earth, not in purgatory.
for all the reasons above, i don’t think a price war will evolve. the anglican church might try to make it easier anyone to join the church, but i don’t see why they’d try to take their market share from solely catholics. the market for religious followers aren’t just catholics vs. anglicans
October 21, 2009 at 2:59 am
Manuel
Price war? Nah! Catolicism and Anglicanism are incumbents rapidly losing market share to new(er) entrants, not much interested in competing against each other. This move is much more like Microsoft offering you non-Microsoft apps in your Windows desktop.
October 21, 2009 at 8:21 am
Will
In 50 years the demand for their products, except for funerals, will be mostly dried up. It’s a fight for survival in the face of rapidly declining demand in a market without a future.
October 21, 2009 at 12:03 pm
oops
Catholic Church has allowed married Episcopal priests to convert and keep their wives without much demand for marriage by current Catholic priests.
October 21, 2009 at 6:35 pm
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October 21, 2009 at 9:29 pm
John
Sandeep doesn’t seem to know much about either church, as addressed in previous comments. Also, many rites within the Catholic church allow priests to marry, with the exception being the Roman Catholic rite.
If we are looking at this as a competition between churches, then “price” isn’t the right way to look at it. Rather, it seems that the acceptance of women clergy in the Anglican church has deeply upset many of its members. If the church starts to give up on the tradition and teachings that it has held since the time of Christ, then the Anglicans might as well be one of the 30000 other protestant churches. Members who value tradition may be willing to switch to the steadfast Catholic church.
This story is one of product differentiation, and it looks like the Anglican church made a strategic misstep in abandoning one of its relative advantages- a long tradition.