So Pope Benedict XVI's stunning announcement this week of a new dispensation that would, in effect, give traditionally minded Anglicans their own niche within the Catholic Church seems almost too good an offer to pass up.

After years of feeling alienated and unwanted within the increasingly liberal Church of England, conservatives such as Waller hail the chance to return to the fold that many Christians in Britain left 500 years ago, when Henry VIII officially broke with Rome - and, as every schoolchild here knows, with the wife who failed to bear him a son.

"We were hoping and praying that something would come along, but this was of a magnitude we hadn't expected. It really took our breath away," said Waller. "You want to be free, where you're not constantly fighting for your right to exist but where you're actually free to be able to proclaim the Gospel."

But, Waller added, he and other like-minded Anglicans are waiting for the Vatican to spell out how the new structure would work before they make a decision. The full document is not expected for weeks, perhaps months.

Whether the pontiff's surprise move is a visionary path to Christian unity against creeping secularization or a hostile takeover bid of a denomination weakened by internal division depends on your point of view.

British commentators immediately seized on military metaphors to characterize this week's announcement, declaring that the Vatican had parked its tanks on the well-manicured lawn of Lambeth Palace, the residence of Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

"The Vatican has shaken the ground beneath him," the Guardian newspaper said in an editorial Thursday headlined "Imperial Rome," which described Benedict as having launched a boat "to ferry the disaffected back across the Tiber."

It's unclear, though, how many Anglicans will want to make the trip. The worldwide communion numbers about 77 million people, including 2.4 million members of the Episcopal Church in the United States and 13.4 million Anglicans in Britain.

Some conservative leaders have made predictions of hundreds of thousands of worshippers worldwide bolting for Rome, but others say such apocalyptic scenarios are premature at best, especially before the details of what's on offer are published.

"There's a long way to go before this runs the course," said Stephen Parkinson, the director of the traditionalist group Forward in Faith. "We must read the small print; the devil is in the detail. No one in their right mind would make a decision until they had done that."

What elements of Anglicanism would converts get to keep if they defected to Rome - the Book of Common Prayer, their own much-loved hymns? What would happen to the property, including some beautiful stone churches dating to the Middle Ages, that many congregations use?

Questions arise on the other side too, such as whether allowing married Anglican priests to become Catholics yet remain married will increase the pressure on theVatican to ease its requirement of celibacy for the priesthood. Some Catholic groups argue that the vow of lifelong chastity has made it harder to combat the shortage of priests.

But the Vatican and so-called "Anglo-Catholics," Anglicans drawn to Roman rites and practices, hold firm on one principle: Women cannot be priests. Period.

Parkinson's group was founded specifically in opposition to the ordination of women, which began in the Church of England in 1994. (The Episcopal Church started ordaining women much earlier, in 1976.)

Not that Parkinson and other members of Forward in Faith don't also have their views on hot-button topics like homosexuality, one of the most divisive issues - perhaps the most divisive - in the Anglican communion. But they are adamant about not wanting a woman presiding at the altar or sitting on the bishop's throne.

Yet what happened after the initial controversy over female priests could be instructive. Opponents at the time warned that thousands of clergy would desert, but in the end, only about 440 did, and a few dozen later returned to the Anglican fold.

The difference is that now, the Roman Catholic Church seems to many to be actively trying to recruit disaffected Anglicans, even though a senior Vatican official recently insisted that Rome had no intention of "fishing in the Anglican pond." Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, complained of being alerted by Rome of its intentions "at a very late stage" and looked discomfited at a news conference in London on Tuesday to discuss the Vatican's announcement.

"It is not an act of aggression," Williams told reporters, though some in the audience thought his body language said otherwise.

For Waller, the East London priest, the Vatican's move is an act of grace. He thinks that the great majority at St. Savior's would favor switching their allegiance from Canterbury to Rome.

As a practical matter, Sunday services would be no different: Masses at the 135-year-old church are already Catholic in all but name. But finally St. Savior's parishioners would nestle in the warm mainstream of a denomination rather than freezing on the fringes.

"It's an overwhelming pastoral gesture," Waller said. "At the end of the day, Rome is responding to the crisis that many of us have."

And potentially creating another.

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