I Told You So: Our Lady of Walsingham

I said that the title Our Lady of Walsingham would be coming up often this year! When I posted the story about Blessed John Storey/Story, a reader posted a comment including a link to Our Lady of Walsingham & St John the Evangelist Ordinariate Group-Calgary, mentored by Father Michael Storey!

The Ordinariate Group of Our Lady and St John is made up of those who are currently Anglicans, as well as Catholics who were formerly Anglican, and a number of Catholics who are married to Anglicans. With the loving care of our appointed Priest Mentor, the Catholic parish priest of Brooks, Alberta, Fr Michael Storey, we are together praying for, and looking forward to, the establishment of a Personal Ordinariate in Canada.

The majority of us belong to the Parish of St John the Evangelist, Calgary, a parish founded in 1905 as part of what was then the Church of England in Canada (since 1955, the Anglican Church of Canada). Our Group meets at different locations on a monthly basis for fellowship, prayer and study, but we also gather on Sundays and throughout the week as part of the regular worshipping life of St John’s, under the pastoral care and leadership of its Priest-in-Charge, Fr Lee Kenyon, who was a priest of the Church of England until he came to St John’s in April 2009.

Also, here is the news about the dedication of a shrine to Our Lady of Walshingham in Houston Texas--"It was hot, it was humid, and it was wonderful." Our Lady of Walshingham is an Anglican Use parish there.

Ordinariate Opportunities Closer to Home?

I have been asked several times if I know of opportunities for the Anglican Ordinariate in my home town of Wichita, Kansas. Looking at the Episcopalian communities here, I don't see any. The mainline Episcopalian churches have accepted women as priests, evidently, because they have female vicars, curates, and deacons. There was a breakaway group from St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in 2004, which formed St. Michael the Archangel Antiochian Orthodox Church (Western Rite) . We do have a traditional Anglican parish, St. Joseph of Glastonbury. It is part of the Holy Catholic Church Anglican Rite in the Diocese of Holy Trinity and the Great Plains, which is not affiliated with the Archbishop of Canterbury. That Diocese proclaims:

We welcome you in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen. The Diocese of Holy Trinity and Great Plains is in the province of the Holy Catholic Church Anglican Rite. We are an American family of traditional Anglican Churches, within the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. We continue in the historic catholic faith, apostolic order and liturgical worship, as the Lord taught, the apostles preached and Church Fathers preserved.

Our worship is based on Holy Scriptures, Apostolic Tradition, and the use of the 1928Book of Common Prayer and the Anglican/American Missal.

The Mission of the diocese is to perpetuate historic catholic faith, Apostolic order and Sacramental worship through the unbroken apostolic succession of the Anglican Tradition until His second coming!

They believe they have sacramental ordination (male only) and believe in the seven Sacraments as outward signs of inward grace. The Holy Catholic Anglican Rite community believes it is the via media between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism--the English Catholic Church. Its website does not include a statement about the role of the Pope, the Bishop of Rome.

St. Joseph of Glastonbury proclaims its mission:

St. Joseph's Church is a parish of the Holy Catholic Church (Anglican Rite), which stands in the unbroken continuity of Apostolic Faith (teaching) and Order (organization) given by our Lord Jesus Christ to His Church. Our faith is based on the Word of God found in Holy Scripture, and on the first seven Ecumenical Councils held by the undivided Christian Church. We are dedicated solely to the Glory of God and the uncompromised living-out of His teachings. Our core beliefs are in the Holy Scriptures as the revealed Word of God; salvation is found only through Jesus Christ: the sanctity of life beginning at conception, and marriage as a lifelong commitment between one man and one woman. Our Services continue the Liturgy of the Anglican Missal and the Book of Common Prayer (English, 1549, American, 1928, and Canadian, 1962.)

Therefore, they have already separated themselves from the Anglican Communion to develop their own branch of the branch under the branch theory of the via media. I don't see them as a group wanting to join a Catholic ordinariate, based on a surface investigation at least.

St. Therese the Little Flower in the Blue Hills neighborhood of Kansas City is the closest opportunity I know of. Earlier this year the parish hosted a conference for those interested in the Ordinariate and people from Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas attended. Note: Kansas not mentioned.

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.