“Personal Ordinariates” does not roll off the tongue, but on Tuesday it became a crucial new phrase in the ecumenical vocabulary between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion.
Vatican officials announced that Pope Benedict XVI has agreed to create Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans, both clergy and laity, who wish to become Roman Catholics.
The Vatican's decision clearly accommodates four points of Anglican identity:
Spiritual life and liturgy. "In this Apostolic Constitution the Holy Father has introduced a canonical structure that provides for such corporate reunion by establishing Personal Ordinariates, which will allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony," said a statement from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Pastoral oversight. "Under the terms of the Apostolic Constitution, pastoral oversight and guidance will be provided for groups of former Anglicans through a Personal Ordinariate, whose Ordinary will usually be appointed from among former Anglican clergy."
Married clergy. “Historical and ecumenical reasons preclude the ordination of married men as bishops in both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The Constitution therefore stipulates that the Ordinary can be either a priest or an unmarried bishop.”
Anglican studies for seminarians. "The seminarians in the Ordinariate are to be prepared alongside other Catholic seminarians, though the Ordinariate may establish a house of formation to address the particular needs of formation in the Anglican patrimony."
The statement said Pope Benedict has agreed to create Personal Ordinariates in response to “many requests that have been submitted to the Holy See from groups of Anglican clergy and faithful in different parts of the world who wish to enter into full visible communion.”
Both the Vatican and the Archbishop of Canterbury emphasized that this development emerges from years of ecumenical dialogue, and that the dialogue between the Vatican and the Anglican Communion will continue.
“Since the [Second Vatican] Council, Anglican-Roman Catholic relations have created a much improved climate of mutual understanding and cooperation,” the Vatican statement said. “The Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) produced a series of doctrinal statements over the years in the hope of creating the basis for full and visible unity. For many in both communions, the ARCIC statements provided a vehicle in which a common expression of faith could be recognized. It is in this framework that this new provision should be seen.”
The Vatican statement added: “In the years since the Council, some Anglicans have abandoned the tradition of conferring Holy Orders only on men by calling women to the priesthood and the episcopacy. More recently, some segments of the Anglican Communion have departed from the common biblical teaching on human sexuality — already clearly stated in the ARCIC document “Life in Christ” — by the ordination of openly homosexual clergy and the blessing of homosexual partnerships. At the same time, as the Anglican Communion faces these new and difficult challenges, the Catholic Church remains fully committed to continuing ecumenical engagement with the Anglican Communion, particularly through the efforts of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity.”
“The Apostolic Constitution is further recognition of the substantial overlap in faith, doctrine and spirituality between the Catholic Church and the Anglican tradition. Without the dialogues of the past forty years, this recognition would not have been possible, nor would hopes for full visible unity have been nurtured. In this sense, this Apostolic Constitution is one consequence of ecumenical dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion,” said a joint statement by Archbishop Rowan Williams and Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster.
“The ongoing official dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion provides the basis for our continuing cooperation. The Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) and International Anglican Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM) agreements make clear the path we will follow together.”
Archbishop Williams built further on this statement in a letter to all bishops of the Anglican Communion.
“The common heritage of the achievement of the ARCIC agreed statements, and the IARCCUM principles for shared work and witness (in Growing Together in Unity and Mission, 2007), remain the solid ground both for our future co-operation as global communions, and our regional and local growth in common faith and witness,” he wrote. “For those who wish to enter into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church in the near future, this announcement will clarify possible options, and we wish them God’s strength and guidance in their discernment. Meanwhile our ecumenical relationships continue on their current cordial basis, regionally and internationally.”
Video of the Archbishop of Canterbury, speaking in London on Oct. 20, provided by Ruth Gledhill of The Times.
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3 Comments
The Vatican view that women must be subordinate, and either mindless breeders or virgins, is abhorrent. It also flies in the face of the radical acceptance that Jesus had for women. When it comes to gays, I can't imagine Jesus being anything like the pope. The only people I have ever read about Jesus getting really angry at are the ones who turned the temple into a shopping mall and were ripping off the poor! In fact, "whenever two or three are gathered together there am I in the midst of you." He didn't say what gender they had to be.
At the least there is something unseemly and at the worst unethical about powerful people who try to profit from the miseries of suffering others. What the Vatican did today, and the way they did, it is an arrogant and gleeful slap in the face to most Anglicans around the world. Once again, and for the umpteenth time, they have asserted that one must submit to the Roman church. The implication is that Anglican churches are not valid churches because they do not recognize the authority of the pope. The Vatican is willing to offer almost anything to get Anglicans back into the Catholic Church.
Papal attempts to draw Anglicans to Rome started in earnest thirty years ago during the controversy over the ordination of women and has been building up ever since, no doubt to reach a crescendo for next year's expected canonization of John Henry Newman, the most famous of all converts from Anglicanism to Catholicism. Catholic efforts has been working to some degree and no doubt will accelerate given all the turmoil in Anglicanism at the moment.
It is difficult to see how one Christian community proselytizing another helps any of us. Christianity faces its greatest challenges ever in today's world. To meet these, Christian brothers and sisters should strengthen and support each other and face the common foes shoulder to shoulder. That is what Anglicans have tried to do with Catholics. It is sad that it doesn't work the other way around.
Rome is always caught between its monarchial form of government and the democratic. Its "hidden agenda" in all relationships with others is to win their submission to Rome forgetting it seems the lessons of the Reformation. Expecting to gain some submissive converts who will overlook that issue (No taxation without representation!) for the sake of escaping the challenges of this century will be a disapointment. The time is not yet for the the Vatican to become the Mother Church which we might enjoy. Repression does not bring peace and happiness and pilgrims should not expect anything other than challenges along the way. The hand that offers this gift cannot be seen as benign in the long run.