The Anglican ordinariates have been given permission by Pope Francis to evangelize lapsed Catholics. On 31 May 2013 the pope amended Article 5 of the ordinariates governing Norms, widening its base for evangelization from ex-Anglicans to include those Catholics who had fallen away from the church before being confirmed.

The new Article 5 §2 of the ordinariate’s Norms states:

A person who has been baptised in the Catholic Church but who has not completed the Sacraments of Initiation, and subsequently returns to the faith and practice of the Church as a result of the evangelising mission of the Ordinariate, may be admitted to membership in the Ordinariate and receive the Sacrament of Confirmation or the Sacrament of the Eucharist or both.

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The Church of England has announced today that the Revd Canon Jeremy Worthen is to be the new Secretary for Ecumenical Relations and Theology at the Council for Christian Unity.

Based in Church House Westminster, this is a newly-configured role which combines the functions of the Secretary of the Council for Christian Unity and theological adviser to the House of Bishops and the Faith and Order Commission. Dr Worthen will work closely with the Chairs of the Council of Christian Unity and the Faith and Order Commission and will report to Jacqui Philips, the Director of Central Secretariat and Clerk to the Synod.

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The ecumenical movement of the past 100 years has been wildly successful in eliminating old tensions and rivalries, but such pervasive success been can foster complacency, even in a time when a skeptical world needs to see more signs of God-given unity in action.

That combination of joy and concern is a central motivator for the Rev. Callan Slipper, a Church of England priest and author of Five Steps to Living Christian Unity, due in September from New City Press.

“We are currently the victims of our past success,” Slipper tells TLC. “The new vision I would advocate is one where we see one another as truly belonging to one another.”

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….LCMS’ relationships with other churches have also been growing over the past few years as well. In particular, the LCMS, along with its sister church, Lutheran Church”“Canada (LCC), has developed good relations with the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), publishing last year a joint statement rejoicing that they can “jointly affirm core teachings (articles) of the Christian faith shared by our church bodies.” Similarly good relations have been developed with the North American Lutheran Church (NALC), with whom the LCMS and LCC are in continuing talks. Representatives of these four church bodies (ACNA, NALC, LCC, and LCMS) recently met together for an ecumenical summit on marriage and sexuality, publishing a joint affirmation on marriage (signed by the heads of all four churches) shortly thereafter.

The LCMS’ growing interchurch relations are not restricted to North America either. While the LCMS has long been part of the International Lutheran Council, the church is more and more developing relationships with biblical Lutherans outside this group.

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Archbishop Fred Hiltz described the recently concluded Joint Assembly as a “spirit-filled, spirit-led” gathering that can only strengthen the full communion relationship of the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC).

“The very fact that these two churches, who have all kinds of challenges in front of them, were prepared to make this step to meet is really quite incredible,” said Hiltz, primate of the Anglican church. “What I saw through the Joint Assembly was a very positive, upbeat spirit.” The assembly was held July 3 to 7, at the Ottawa Convention Centre.

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Baptized Catholics can now join Anglican ordinariates, according to a modification to the norms made by Pope Francis.

“This confirms the place of the personal ordinariates within the mission of the wider Catholic Church, not simply as a jurisdiction for those from the Anglican tradition, but as a contributor to the urgent work of the New Evangelization,” the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham announced July 9.

A term coined by Blessed Pope John Paul II, the New Evangelization is the common term for bringing the Gospel to formerly Christian nations, and it can be seen in the new outreach to people who were baptized as Catholics but who never completed the process of Christian initiation.

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-modifies-norms-for-catholics-seeking-to-join-an-anglican-ordinariate/#ixzz2YzTVcgvK

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The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is in talks with Pope Francis about a new initiative that would link the Anglican Communion with the Vatican in the fight against poverty.

It is understood that the plan, which emerged from meetings between Archbishop Welby and the Pope in June, will focus on how both Churches can work together to help those in poverty around the world.

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Pope Francis hinted today in his first meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury that he realised the establishment of the Anglican Ordinariate had not always been easy to comprehend.

But he told Archbishop Justin Welby he was “grateful” for “the sincere efforts the Church of England has made to understand the reasons that led my predecessor, Benedict XVI, to provide a canonical structure able to respond to the wishes of those groups of Anglicans who have asked to be received collectively into the Catholic Church”.

In a public address, following private talks that last just over 30 minutes, Francis said he was “sure” the Anglican Ordinariate, erected in 2009, would “enable the spiritual, liturgical and pastoral traditions that form the Anglican patrimony to be better known and appreciated in the Catholic world”.

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Overcoming divisions between Anglicans and Roman Catholics will require a “self-giving love” characterised by “hospitality and love for the poor”, the Archbishop of Canterbury said on Friday, at his first meeting with Pope Francis.

Archbishop Welby, accompanied by his wife, Caroline, met Pope Francis at the Apostolic Palace on Friday morning, after meeting the President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal Kurt Koch. The Archbishop and the Pope had a private conversation, after which they gave public addresses and attended a service of midday prayer together.

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The Archbishop and the Pope affirmed the bonds of “friendship” and “love” between Roman Catholics and Anglicans when they met for the first time in Rome this morning

In their first meeting, Archbishop Justin and Pope Francis both spoke this morning of the bonds of “friendship” and “love” between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion.

The two leaders agreed that the fruits of this dialogue and relationship have the potential to empower Christians around the world to demonstrate the love of Christ.

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Pope Francis met on Friday with the new Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, stressing the need to work and worship together in the search for reconciliation and unity between the Catholic and Anglican communities. Philippa Hitchen was on hand in the library of the Apostolic Palace to hear what the Pope and the Archbishop had to say….

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At the end of his first visit to the Vatican, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he and Pope Francis shared ideas on economic justice, on the plight of Christians in the Middle East, but also on their deeply personal experiences of God’s calling in their daily lives.

Following their morning audience and joint prayer service, the leader of the Anglican Communion described the Pope as a man of “extraordinary humanity, on fire with the Spirit of Christ”. While admitting there are obstacles on the road to reconciliation between Anglicans and Catholics, he said he sensed a new vigour and common commitment “to prove the radicality” of the Christian Gospel.

Speaking to Philippa Hitchen in the garden of the Venerable English College at the end of the brief visit, the archbishop said he and the Pope also joked about the way they had inaugurated their ministries within two days of each other earlier this year”¦”¦

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The Most Rev. Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, will pay a brief, informal visit to Pope Francis I in Rome on June 14. According to a Lambeth Palace statement, it will be a “personal and fraternal” visit.

It will be the first meeting between the two prelates since their inaugurations in March. The two church leaders share a commitment to global justice, ethical regulation of financial markets and conflict resolution.

“This visit is an opportunity for the Archbishop and Pope Francis to review the present state of relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion,” said a statement issued by the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

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The newly-installed Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby will visit Pope Francis on 14 June, the Vatican has confirmed.

It will mark the first meeting between Pope Francis and the new head of the Church of England and spiritual head of the global Anglican Church.

The brief courtesy visit is expected to be “informal” but “important” according to a representative of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, whose president Cardinal Kurt Koch will meet and pray with Welby. The Archbishop of Canterbury is also expected to visit the tomb of Blessed John Paul II.

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Good relations between different Christian traditions are the “oxygen” that allows the Church to fulfil its mission and proclaim the Gospel, the Archbishop of Canterbury said today.

Speaking in Leicester to members of the Meissen Commission, an ecumenical programme between English and German churches, the Archbishop said: “Ecumenism is not an extra that one can fit in because it’s an interesting occupation. It is the oxygen of mission and evangelism.”

The Meissen Commission oversees relations between the Church of England and the Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD), who in 1991 signed an agreement to work towards “full, visible unity”.

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As we prepare for the first Joint Assembly of the Anglican Church of Canada and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, we know that there are some who, like our ancestors in the faith, may be just a little dispirited as we face the challenges of our times. But just as surely as God’s Spirit inspired the fi rst generation of believers, that same Spirit is working in us to give us the words to speak to one another and to those who are seeking something-dare we say, “Someone”-to believe in.

Our coming “Together for the Love of the World” will be a visible sign of the Spirit working in and among us. It will be time to take counsel together for the common good of both our churches and for the common good of our world. It will be a time to set our fears aside and arise with “bold new decisions.”

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The head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, His Holiness Pope Tawadros II, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark met with Pope Francis today in a historical meeting held in the Apostolic Palace today.

This is the first time in 40 years that a Coptic Pope has met with the Pope of Rome. On May 1973. Pope Shenouda III met with Pope Paul VI and signed an an important Christological Declaration in common and initiated bilateral ecumenical dialogue between the two Churches.

In his address to Pope Francis, Pope Tawadros II regarded the meeting as “an unforgettable occasion”, since it marks the anniversary of their respective predecessor’s meeting.

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The annual Mass and meeting of the Society of Mary/American Region welcomed Bishop Lindsay Urwin as guest speaker and marked a transition in the society’s leadership. The society met May 3 and 4 at St. Stephen’s Church in Providence, Rhode Island, attracting visitors from across the East Coast and as far away as Wisconsin.

The Rt. Rev. Lindsay Urwin, OGS, administrator of the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in England, spoke on “One Faith, Two Shrines: The Challenges and Joy of Life in Walsingham.” Bishop Urwin described the existence of two separate shrines at Walsingham ”” one for Anglicans and one for Roman Catholics ”” as a sign of the scandal of divisions within Christianity.

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A wide range of papers was prepared for the meeting and discussed, taking the Commission further towards its goal of producing an agreed statement. The mandate for this third phase of ARCIC is to explore: the Church as Communion, local and universal, and how in communion the local and universal Church come to discern right ethical teaching. In exploring this mandate, the members of the Commission engaged in theological analysis and shared reflection on the nature of the Church and those structures which contribute to discernment and decision-making. Time was spent considering some case studies of ethical issues which members had prepared, and analysing the ways in which the two Communions have come to their present teaching on these matters.

Over the forty years of its work, ARCIC has produced a number of Agreed Statements. The work of ARCIC I received official responses from the two Communions. The Commission continued its task of preparing the documents of ARCIC II for presentation to the respective Communions to assist with their reception. Members reviewed responses already given to each of the five Agreed Statements and will prepare introductions for them that place each of these documents within the current ecumenical situation.

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Anglican-Catholic dialogue is back on the agenda this week as a team of ecumenical experts from both sides meet in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro from April 30th to May 6th.
This 3rd meeting of the current Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission will continue its work on the relationship between local and universal Church, as well as the way in which both communities respond to the most pressing ethical issues of our time.

To find out more about the meeting, Philippa Hitchen talked to Mgr Mark Langham from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity who serves as Catholic co-secretary of ARCIC III”¦..
She also spoke, during the recent enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, to an Anglican member of ARCIC III, Bishop Christopher Hill who chairs the Church of England’s Council for Christian Unity. He told her that Pope Francis’ emphasis on his role as the Bishop of Rome is extremely encouraging for the whole ecumenical endeavor”¦

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Melrose resident Jurgen Liias’s spiritual journey has led him down an unusual path: Last weekend he became one of the first Episcopal priests in the country to be ordained as a Catholic priest.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the archbishop of Boston, ordained Liias as a Catholic priest on Saturday, April 20, at St. Mary Star of the Sea Church in Beverly.

Citizens have likely seen Liias around the city, gardening at his Melrose Street home or on MMTV’s “Wellsprings of Faith” ”” a religious show that focuses on various people’s journeys in faith.

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Since the very first days of the Syrian conflict in March 2011, we have prayed as we watched in horror and sorrow the escalating violence that has rent this country apart. We have grieved with all Syrians – with the families of each and every human life lost and with all communities whose neighbourhoods and livelihoods have suffered from escalating and pervasive violence.

And today, our prayers also go with the ancient communities of our Christian brothers and sisters in Syria. The kidnapping this week of two Metropolitan bishops of Aleppo, Mar Gregorios Ibrahim of the Syriac Orthodox Church and Paul Yazigi of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, and the killing of their driver while they were carrying out a humanitarian mission, is another telling sign of the terrible circumstances that continue to engulf all Syrians.

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The future of Anglican-Roman Catholic relations is, in part, down to who will succeed Pope Benedict, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s representative to the Holy See.

Responding to today’s surprise resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, the Very Revd David Richardson said the implications for Anglican-Roman Catholic relations in the long term “will depend on who is elected to succeed him.”

However, Dean Richardson, who is also Director of the Anglican Centre in Rome, said that other relationships continue despite the change in leadership.

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It was with a heavy heart but complete understanding that we learned this morning of Pope Benedict’s declaration of his decision to lay down the burden of ministry as Bishop of Rome, an office which he has held with great dignity, insight and courage. As I prepare to take up office I speak not only for myself, and my predecessors as Archbishop, but for Anglicans around the world, in giving thanks to God for a priestly life utterly dedicated, in word and deed, in prayer and in costly service, to following Christ. He has laid before us something of the meaning of the Petrine ministry of building up the people of God to full maturity….

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During the first year of its work ”” while leaders wrestled with thickets of legal and liturgical questions ”” the North American ordinariate ordained or accepted 30 new priests, all former Anglicans, and took in 1,600 members from 36 parish communities. It is now expanding into Canada, preparing for a second wave of incoming clergy and making plans for its own chancery facilities in Houston.

The Vatican’s goal has been to “build a safe haven for orthodox people who don’t mind saying that they’re loyal to the Holy Father and to the church,” said Catania, who attended the Houston meetings.

“Our goal was to show that we’re not just a bunch of Episcopalians who wanted to get out of that church. … We always thought of ourselves as Catholics, but now our Catholic identity is clear to everyone. We made it all the way home.”

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Leaders of Catholic and Reformed churches have signed an agreement to recognize each other’s sacraments of baptism, a public step toward unity among groups that are often divided by doctrine.

“Baptism establishes the bond of unity existing among all who are part of Christ’s body and is therefore the sacramental basis for our efforts to move towards visible unity,” reads the “Common Agreement on Mutual Recognition of Baptism.”

The document was signed, after seven years of discussion, at a worship service Tuesday (Jan. 29) at St. Mary Cathedral in Austin, Texas, which opened the annual meeting of Christian Churches Together in the USA, an ecumenical network created in 2001.

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“The World Council of Churches (WCC) 10th Assembly will be an opportunity for praying, listening and sharing together. The event will provide participants a chance to listen for the voice of God, leading them to justice and peace in the world.”

These were the words of Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, the WCC general secretary, who spoke with the press in Seoul, Republic of Korea on 29 January.

Along with Prof. Dr Metropolitan Gennadios of Sassima, vice-moderator of the WCC Central Committee and moderator of the assembly planning committee, Rev. Dr Henriette Hutabarat Lebang, general secretary of the Christian Conference of Asia, and WCC staff members, Tveit is in Seoul finalizing plans for the WCC assembly.

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Our bible reading in Church today is a letter from St Paul’s to the church in Corinth, in which he is trying to encourage church-members to work together for the glory of God. Everyone has different gifts and talents, Paul tells them. Each one of you is a body-part of the whole. Don’t all think you have to be the one who leads the prayers, or the one who preaches, the one who does the flowers, or the one who plays the music. He reminds them that our bodies are a marvellous piece of collaborative and co-ordinated working. We may think our eyes are our best feature. But if we decided we just wanted to be all eye, we wouldn’t be able to hear or speak. Similarly, though our football teams need to score goals to win games, if all our players were strikers, where would the defence be!

At the end of this week of prayer for Christian Unity, we need to remember that God has given us all wonderful gifts, but he’s given them to us not just for our own pleasure, and certainly not for our personal pride, but so that we can work together to do more wonderful things than we can do alone. Saint Teresa of Avila’s poem describes the miracle of how the world is changed by each one of us using our gifts and bringing them together to serve others.

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Baptists, communion and wine are words rarely used together. But they will be the next four Sundays as First Baptist Church in Dayton, Ohio, hosts an Episcopal parish for worship while the latter’s building undergoes renovations.

The joint services will include Anglican rituals of preparation for the bread and wine used in the Eucharist. Grape juice will be offered at two stations for Baptists.

Rather than eyebrows or complaints, the news instead raised questions in the American Baptist congregation about why grape juice is used in the Lord’s Supper at all, said Pastor Rodney Kennedy, a former Southern Baptist from Louisiana.

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The week of prayer for Christian Unity draws to a close on Friday as Pope Benedict prepares to celebrate Vespers in the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls with representatives of all the different local Christian communities.

Among them will be Canon David Richardson, the outgoing director of the Anglican Centre here in Rome. Set up in the wake of the Second Vatican council, the centre has an important library, runs educational courses, welcomes pilgrims to Rome and maintains close contact with the different Vatican departments.
Every Tuesday the centre welcomes locals and visitors for a Eucharist, followed by an informal lunch hosted by David and his wife Margie for people of all religious backgrounds or none. The aim, as Philippa Hitchen found out, is to foster understanding, reconciliation and better relations amongst all members of the Body of Christ”¦”¦.

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