(RNS) Announcement of the Vatican’s expanded policy on accepting Anglican priests and parishes fueled worldwide commentary, none more trenchant than that of Lawrence Provenzano, the incoming Episcopal bishop of Long Island, N.Y.

Provenzano wrote, “At the heart of all this is the reality that the Roman Catholic Church is willing to welcome angry, reactionary, misogynistic, homophobic people.”

Whatever happened to the niceties of ecumenical dialogue? Anglican priests and parishes have been crossing the Tiber fairly easily for 25 or 30 years, sometimes bringing their Book of Common Prayer with them. Will the 77-million strong Anglican Communion and it’s U.S. branch, the Episcopal Church, be ridding itself of its problems? Will the Anglicans heading Rome’s way be troubled individuals? We know they’ll be “conservative.” Provenzano makes them sound downright nasty.

Although Cardinal Walter Kasper, the head of the Vatican’s office for Christian unity said, “We are not fishing in the Anglican lake,” the object of Rome’s interest is the Traditional Anglican Communion. This worldwide network with more than 400,000 members rejects Anglicanism’s growing acceptance of women’s ordination and openly gay clergy. By contrast, the 100 or so Episcopal priests who have converted under the special “pastoral provision” in the U.S. (often for these same reasons) are small fry from the Anglican lake.

But come they have, often bringing with them wonderful music, polished preaching skills, a wife and children.

Therein, as they say, lies the rub.

For Catholics, it’s the marriage thing.

You see, most Anglican (Episcopal, in the U.S.) male priests are married. With children. They are often the sons and grandsons of priests; their children might like to follow them in ministry.

Will it happen? In the proposed “ordinariates” — non-territorial administrative entities — for Anglican converts, the tradition of married clergy will be preserved, up to a point. Married convert priests and deacons are OK, but married convert bishops can’t be Catholic bishops. Will Rome ordain married seminarians, or those who want to marry? Will Rome slam shut the door to marriage and family for them?

Probably.

The Anglican situation resembles that of Eastern Catholic Churches whose married clergy emigrated to the U.S. a century ago. Most Eastern Catholic Churches (there are 22) ordain married men as priests and deacons but their bishops must be celibate. About 80 years ago U.S. bishops asked the Vatican to enforce Roman celibacy rules on Eastern Catholics, causing the married priesthood of the Ukrainian, Greek, Russian, and the other Eastern Catholic Churches to die out in this country, even while it remains in others.

Now, as married Anglican clergy “emigrate” along with their flocks, their succeeding generations — especially in the U.S. — will most probably lose their traditional married priesthood as they come under Roman canon law. Eastern Catholic Churches have their own canon law, but the Western discipline is clear: only celibate males may be ordained as priests and bishops.

Of course we haven’t even considered the question of women priests.

The individuals and groups coming to Rome are not all that happy with women priests. They certainly won’t be bringing any with them. Some accept the tradition of women deacons and it will be interesting to see what Rome does with that.

But, for the most part, the new Anglo-Catholics in communion with Rome are upset about women priests and bishops, and openly homosexual clergy.

Which brings us back to Provenzano, who happens to be an ex-Catholic priest, and who, while he was a member of the Episcopal Church’s House of Deputies, consented to the consecration of V. Gene Robinson, the openly-gay bishop of New Hampshire. “I have a lot of problems with denominations who will not own the fact they have gay clergy,” he wrote.

(Phyllis Zagano is senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University and author of several books in Catholic Studies.)