News on the USA Ordinariate

Joan Lewis of EWTN recently spoke to Cardinal Wuerl of Washington, DC. He is the Episcopal Delegate to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops for the implementation of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus in the USA.

An excerpt:

JL: I’d love right now to turn to another subject that actually is dear to both of us – the Ordinariate. That’s the new structure in the Church for welcoming numbers of Anglicans – faithful bishops, priests – into the Catholic Church. We’re not talking a single layperson who wanted to become Catholic – they would go through the normal procedure. But so many people have been asking for years – certainly in the UK – to be welcomed into the Church because they felt that the Anglican Communion was moving pretty far away from its’ Christian and, really, Catholic origins: we won’t go through the history of Henry VIII or everything, but… {for that, of course, you may turn to Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation!}

So, now, you’ve been put in charge of a committee in the US to look at this. Is it just the US? Is it Canada? What’s the structure you’re working with?

+DW: When the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded to the Holy Father’s request that somehow the Church be able to respond to those Anglicans who were asking to come into the Church corporately – as a body – and, if you remember, the initial ecumenical conversations between Archbishop Ramsey and Paul VI were about corporate reunion – how does the Anglican Communion, as a communion, how does it reunite with the Catholic Church? Well the idea of Pope Benedict was – let us provide some mechanism for those who would like to do this because on the wider level the conversations are going on but the ecumenical conversation has slowed down. That led to the idea of this Ordinariate.

I was asked to be the delegate for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for the United States – there will be and are other delegates for different parts of the English-speaking world where the Anglican Communion is represented. In the United States we have found, in response to the announcement that there is a possibility of an Ordinariate, we received a great number of enquiries from Anglican congregations and their clergy asking is there some way they can come into the Catholic Church through this vehicle.

So, where we are right now. We have gathered up as much information as we can from all of these groups that have asked about the possibility of being part of an Ordinariate, and we’ve put it together so that we have some data to pass onto the Congregation and we’ve been asked now to prepare dossiers on each of those members of the Anglican clergy who would like to be ordained and be part of this Ordinariate, and profiles of the communities. Once that’s all in the hands of the Congregation, they’ve indicated they intend to announce – down the road – the formation of an Ordinariate. And one of those – just as happened in England – one of those will be chosen to be the Ordinary and and to head it. Basically, the structure will be – this Ordinariate will be a diocese for the whole country.