In the UK’s best Catholic weekly, The Catholic Herald, we pick up on comments by Card. Wuerl of Washington DC that soon in the USA some form of the Ordinariate foreseen in Anglicanorum coetibus will be established.
Here is a bit of the article with my emphases.
An ordinariate is close to being established in America, Cardinal Donald Wuerl said during his visit to Scotland last week.
As Vatican delegate for the US ordinariate Cardinal Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, said he had been watching developments in Britain with great interest and was confident that the establishment of the US ordinariate was imminent this autumn.
The cardinal also said that discussions with the Episcopal Church had included plans for the transfer of property.
He was speaking before he received a US Episcopalian parish into the Catholic Church yesterday in anticipation of the ordinariate being established there.
The cardinal was visiting Stirling to address the National Conference of Priests and Permanent Deacons of Scotland.
He told the Scottish Catholic Observer:?“I am hoping that it will happen in this calendar year that an ordinariate will be announced.”
“There will be a time lag between the Holy See announcing that it intends to establish an ordinariate and the actual date of its implementation but I am still hopeful that before this year is out an US ordinariate will be established,” he said.
“We are moving forward with the examination of the cases of at least 100 clergy and several thousand Anglicans who want to come into the Catholic Church as groups. In two weeks’ time I will be receiving an entire parish into the Church and confirming around 120 people. This is being done in anticipation of the ordinariate.”
[…]
He went on to talk about some other issues, which you can read about over there.
Benedict XVI is the Pope of Christian Unity.
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That “transfer of property” is surely a big deal, nonne?
What else are they going to do with it? Give it to the birds?
I was an Episcopal priest up until a month ago when my wife and I swam the Tiber so that we could await the announcement of the Ordinariate from this side. As we speak, Anglican clergy are getting their “nulla osta” letters in the mail. The Ordinariate is imminent!
God bless and keep all the folks going into the Ordinariate! It’s not often that you can be a pioneer of the future, and go back to the beginning, and come back home, all at the same time. :)
Joyful news!
Will the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) in the US also be received? Have they been received in the UK?
I like this quote from a article about this church in MD that converted:
The parish’s conversion made international headlines when it was announced in June. After all, St. Luke’s had been an Episcopal church for more than a century. But it wasn’t too much of a leap for the parish, which for years had been part of Anglo-Catholicism, a movement that embraces various Catholic practices and theology but still treasures aspects of Anglican ritual, such as kneeling to receive Communion.
The property issue might not be so easy, if this article in Fr1day’s Wall Street Journal is accurate: “Twenty-First Century Excommunication” by Mollie Ziegler Hemingway http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203476804576614932308302042.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet
The Episcopal Diocese of Washington agreed on a lease to buy agreement of the property with St. Luke’s. The Episcopal Church does not mind those of us who swim the Tiber; it is those who stay floating in the Thames that raise their ire. What TEC can’t stand to see is someone else call themselves Anglican in the same town. They don’t begrudge Catholics, even Anglican Use Catholics. I thank my former church for their acceptance of those of us becoming Catholic.
Mt. Calvary Episcopal Church in Baltimore will shortly be received into the Church along with their property.
Matthew the Publican is pretty much right in terms of the National Church aka Dr. Schori. Before Dr. Schori became Presiding Bishop, the National Church did not file lawsuits against parishes joining Anglican bodies outside of the Episcopal Church, but rather left that up to the discretion of the local diocese. This allowed local dioceses and breakaway congregations to (sometimes) reach settlements. However, Schori has now decided that the Episcopal Church has to defend the “Anglican” brand in the United States, and will sue any parish that joins a continuing Anglican Church or an Anglican Church in communion with a non-U.S. Anglican body. For whatever reason, she does not see the Ordinariate as a threat to the “Anglican” brand, so the National Church appears to be not interfering much in cases like St. Luke’s (among others), but leaving the matter to the local diocese.
I believe that Dr. Schori’s position works an injustice to the Anglicans who wish to remain a part of the Anglican Communion, but outside of ECUSA. Still, nevertheless, this may be a case of God writing straight with crooked lines.
What is truly tragic, however, are all of the once-solidly Anglo-Catholic parishes that have surrendered to theological revisionism in Anglicanism. St. Mary the Virgin, NYC and St. Clement’s, Philly come immediately to mind. Indeed, St. Mary the Virgin was once a center of prayers and intrigue in favor of corporate reunion between Anglicans and Rome, and even structured their property so as to be completely independent of the Episcopal Diocese so they could join something like a future Ordinariate! Alas, those property arrangements are now gone, and St. Mary the Virgin is little more than a theological modernist shack (with exquisite worship) whose clergy would sooner castrate themselves than seek union with Peter.
The Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) is the worldwide Anglican body of which the Anglican Church in America (ACA) is a part. Neither is in communion with any Church of England/Anglican Communion affiliated denomination. A number of TAC and ACA bishops were part of the initial discussions with the Holy See concerning formation of the Ordinariate. The TAC Archbishop, John Hepworth, continues to be in favor of the TAC entering the Ordinariate, but at this point it will definitely not be in a body. While a number of ACA bishops initially indicated an interest in the Ordinariate, they changed their minds later, in the opinion of some when it became clear that, being married, they would be eligible to be received as priests under the Ordinariate, but not bishops. As a result, only one ACA bishop, David Moyer, has submitted a dossier to become a priest under the Ordinariate. Both Moyer and Hepworth are highly controversial, and no one is currently sure how their petitions will fare. As of now, although Hepworth at one time envisioned the TAC going into the Ordinariate as a body and in effect disappearing as such, this will not happen, as probably a majority of the TAC, and certainly the ACA, expect to continue independently. An optimistic estimate of ACA membership is 20,000. Perhaps 1-2000 of these are members of ACA parishes bound for the Ordinariate.
Fr. Andrew Bartus of St. Mary of the Angels Church in Los Angeles, currently an ACA parish but Ordinariate bound, has a blog at http://anglicanpatrimony.blogspot.com/ where he maintains a cycle of prayer list for all parishes and groups bound for the Ordinariate. He estimates about 60 Episcopal, Lutheran, Anglican Use, and ACA parishes total are on this list, though the list also includes societies in formation that are not currently Anglican-affiliated but do intend to become parishes under the Ordinariate. Somewhere around 15-20 ACA parishes will go into the Ordinariate according to his current estimate. His blog also has a great deal of specific information on the history of Anglican Use and the Ordinariate. Fr.Bartus also coordinates interest among groups and individuals seeking to join.
Fr. Bartus has told me that one qualification for parishes wishing to enter the Ordinariate is that there be no outstanding legal action against them, so this would rule out any parish seeking to leave the Episcopal Church under a legal cloud.
Thanks, JohnB, for the information about the TAC. Very sad. Weren’t these the very people who petitioned Rome in the first place?
The actual history of who talked to whom when isn’t completely clear, and for that matter it’s bound up in John Paul II’s Auglican Use pastoral provision, but yes, the TAC was certainly a part of initiating discussions.