On the feast day, congratulations to the Anglican, Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Peter!

In these USA there has been established – due to the provisions in Anglicanorum coetibus approved by the Pope of Christian Unity (presently reigning) – a Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Peter!

Fr. Z kudos to all those who made it possible for this Ordinariate to be established and all those who have joined it.

It would be great if some of its members chimed in to say how things are going.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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16 Comments

  1. JackintheVox says:

    Here is an address from the Ordinary, Msgr. Steenson, describing the state of the Ordinariate in November:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLDKfl6dtIg

    He shows lots of pictures of the newly ordained, gives the stats on communities, and takes questions from the US bishops.

    He also sets the tone at the very end: we in the Ordinariate are so grateful and happy to be Catholic!

  2. TheMother says:

    Slow but steady gains. New communities joining [one in Catonsville, MD this week] and individuals trickling in from the cold to join the communities already in formation.
    Today, our titular feast, is a Solemnity for us so white vestments AND the Gloria.
    Our ordinary, Msgr. Steenson, has commended Ordinariate communities in North America “to express their gratitude to Pope Benedict with the singing of a Solemn Te Deum of Thanksgiving (at the conclusion of Mass or Evensong, or as a separate service)” today, February 22, the Solemnity of The Chair of St. Peter, the Apostle. Thus, the St. John Fisher Community will celebrate Mass at 5:00pm at the St. Mary of Sorrows Historic Church, Ox Road & Fairfax Station Road, Fairfax Station, VA.
    We are so grateful to our dear Holy Father, who reminds us there the Church is truly catholic.

  3. FrNathan says:

    I am the chaplain for a small group here in Minnesota, the Society of St. Bede the Venerable. We are sponsored by St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, but the members come from the northern Minnesota, the Twin Cities and as far as Wisconsin to pray Saturday Evensong and Sunday Mass every other month. We organized just before the Ordinariate was announced and are happy to have had a visit from Msgr. Steenson and to have been accepted as a part of the Ordinariate. Who knows, perhaps there will be a Benedictine Ordinariate priory in the future?
    Lenten blessings,
    Fr. Nathanael, O.S.B.

  4. It is indeed the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous.
    How beautiful to see the Cathedra Petri all done up in a fiaccolata! Thanks for the picture, Father.

  5. MAJ Tony says:

    Not actually a member myself, but I have been assisting (choir and schola) at Holy Rosary here in Indianapolis. Now we have the OF, EF, and AU in one house in Indy. We’ve been hosting the AU since the first Sun of Dec. It’s small, but powerful. Our choir director/schola master is a former Anglican priest (Luke Reese) with a tremendous voice, and a sizable, and very musical family. We have quite a repertoire for such a new group. Mr. Reese should be making his entry into St. Meinrad seminary at some point soon. Just working out the details. Please pray for all involved.

  6. scarda says:

    We attended the AU Mass in Denver recently, and it was lovely. I wept for joy at hearing again, and being able to say, the prayers I had said for years as an Anglican. Being reunited to our other limbs is absolute bliss, and I am grateful from my marrow to Benedict XVI for having mended the body which was so brutally torn apart by Henry VIII. Now we can all begin to heal. This was a very great gift.

  7. Sid Cundiff in NC says:

    Anglicanorum coetibus may be seen someday as the most significant achievement of Pope Benedict XVI, perhaps even more significant than Summorum pontificum. Anglicans no longer have to swim the Tiber; The Greatest Bridge Builder has built for them a bridge. I’m told that there are Lutheran groups in Germany who are eager for something similar. Are there others? I think so. The New Perspective(s) on Paul in Scripture studies — E.P. Sanders, James Dunn, N. T. Wright — has by and large demolished the classic Protestant case. St. Paul simply doesn’t teach the Five Solas, the Calvinist TULIP, Double Imputation, etc. So there remains for classic Protestants either Liberalism or Catholicism. Maybe an Arminian Evangelical Protestantism, given the interest of some Evangelicals in N. T. Wright, will last a while until Penal Substitutional Atonement will be acknowledged, correctly, as not New Testamental.

    As Anglicans enter The Church, they are bringing with them a rich liturgical tradition, one that will benefit the whole Church by its own “gravitational pull”. I’d rather have the music of Herbert Howells any day than the St. Louis Jesuits, and Cranmer’s cadences from the 1st Prayer Book than the 1970 ICEL.

  8. Tito Edwards says:

    Tonight, at the Principal Church of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, ie, Our Lady of Walsingham Church in Houston, Texas, we will have the Stations of the Cross and then a High Mass in celebration of this great feast day!

  9. Pingback: Let’s let Father Z know how we’re doing | Foolishness to the world

  10. Jim Dorchak says:

    How do they light those candles way up on the top?

  11. dhgyapong says:

    In Ottawa this morning, our Ordinariate parish The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary marked the Solemnity of the Chair of St. Peter as our Ordinary Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson requested with a solemn sung Te Deum chanted in Latin by our newly-ordained Catholic priest (and former Anglican Catholic Church of Canada bishop) Carl Reid.

    I have a picture posted here: http://foolishnesstotheworld.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/the-solemn-te-deum-at-the-annunciation/

    What a joy to be Catholic yet to come in as a family with our treasures of liturgy and hymnody. The Anglican Use liturgy we do now is beautiful and we expect the final version will be even better.

    We have experienced a marvelous graciousness from Archbishop Terrence Prendergast here and the wider Catholic community, especially the Companions of the Cross priests who celebrated our Anglican Use Mass for us while we waited for our former clergy to be ordained.

    It is a dream come true unfolding before our eyes. I am so, so thankful to dear Pope Benedict XVI because he made this possible.

    Deborah Gyapong

  12. Jim of Bowie says:

    DEO GRATIAS Deborah. I have been following you writings for a long time and am so happy for you and your congregation.

  13. GKH says:

    Here in The OC, Blessed John’s is perking right along. We have had a small, but steady stream of confirmations since our founding on July 3, 2012 at the Basilica San Juan Capistrano. Sunday liturgy is beautiful, with chanting from our beloved Fr Andrew Bartus, and organ-plus-chant by our cherished choirmistress Dr Sandra Fryling and the choir she leads. We have begun several ministries (please see them all, here – http://www.jhnewman.org/ministries.html), been very welcomed by our host church, St Joseph in Santa Ana, and find ourselves enjoying post-mass fellowship more than we should! :)

    Our challenges are certainly geography, as we draw folks from quite a distance, and of course, we would love to have more people at mass each week. But those challenges have not dampened our joy, gratitude and enthusiasm, for the Ordinariate or what the Holy Father has accomplished on behalf of the whole Church. We are committed, together with him and our Lord, to unity!

    Personally, this has meant that my (formerly) Anglican wife and I are now in full communion with each other, as well as the universal Church. Joy added to joy.

    If you are in the Orange County area, do feel very welcome to join us for mass, and introduce yourself to us! Blessed John Henry Newman Catholic Church: http://www.jhnewman.org/

  14. tjmurphy says:

    In the Diocese of Orlando, Mass was celebrated by Bishop John Noonan at the Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe. The Mass was said in English accompanied by The Shrine choir singing Palenstrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli along with the Gregorian chant propers.

  15. Athelstan says:

    TheMother is right: St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church out here in Catonsville, MD, just voted overwhelmingly to leave the Episcopal Church, and most voted to join the Ordinariate as Catholics.

    Following several months of prayerful discernment, the majority of members of St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Catonsville, Maryland, have decided to enter the Catholic Church as part of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.

    Two other churches in the Baltimore area, Christ the King Anglican in Towson, and Mount Calvary Episcopal in Baltimore, became Catholic through the Ordinariate in 2012.

    Members voted on Feb. 10 whether to leave The Episcopal Church and whether to enter the Ordinariate. Eighty of 100 parishioners were present; 55 were voting members. Of the voting members, six people abstained; 83 percent elected to leave The Episcopal Church and 76 percent to enter the Ordinariate. The vote was held in the presence of the Rev. Scott Slater, canon to the ordinary for the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, and Rev. Scott Hurd, vicar general for the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.

    The canon for the Episcopal bishop made the decision easy for them: he informed them up front that if they decided to stay in the ECUSA, they would need to accept women bishops and priests, and be willing to perform same-sex marriages.

    Not even the prospect of having to find a new church building deterred them from joining the barque of Peter. Extend, if you will, your prayers for their journey home to Rome. They will need them. We at Mount Calvary are pleased to see their long journey finally reaching its end.

  16. Daniel says:

    As I recall, at the USCCB Meeting in 2011 prior to the establishment of the Personal Ordinariate one of the bishops suggested a vote be taken on the subject and Cardinal Dolan was quick to point out that Pope Benedict had already decided the issue. Time and again I’ve heard it referred to as a very personal project of his, and if concerns were raised as to whether it would receive the support of the bishops the response was usually that they would have to because it is what the pope wanted. Some English journalists were suggesting that over there the Bishops Conference was dragging its feet while waiting for a new pope.

    Fr. Lombardi in this past week announced that it was now a permanent feature of the Church. I would expect that to be the case, but I believe the next pope will need to show his own support.

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