We should embrace other languages and cultures, particularly those of our European neighbours, says the Bishop of Bradford the Rt Revd Nick Baines in a Church of England podcast, published today, to celebrate 20 years of Anglo-German ecumenical links. Both in business and in the classroom we need to broaden our horizons, he adds, or we are in danger of missing out.

The Meissen Agreement was published in 1988, before Germany was re-united, between the Church of England and the Federation of Evangelical Churches in the German Democratic Republic (DDR) and the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). A signing service followed in 1991 in Westminster Abbey.

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Bishop Thomas McMahon from the Catholic Diocese of Brentwood and Bishop Stephen Cottrell of the Anglican Diocese of Chelmsford paid a pastoral visit to the Dale Farm site last Tuesday. They talked and prayed with some of the Travellers who face imminent eviction from the site by Basildon Council. Both Bishops also talked to the significant numbers of journalists on the site about their concerns.

The Bishops subsequently issued the following statement: ‘The Travellers’ community at Dale Farm, near Basildon, invited us to visit them today. An eviction notice is due to take effect at 12 midnight tomorrow. We prayed with Christian and non-Christian families and children who are under extreme stress, and expressed our solidarity with them.

‘This is a desperate situation. It is important that people should know that it is a humanitarian crisis, whatever they make of the legality and politics of the situation. The travellers are frightened and anxious people. If elderly and infirm people were shown on TV being forced out of their homes, we wouldn’t think we were watching something happening in England, but that is what will happen here….

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The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington is donating $25,000 to help repair the Washington National Cathedral, which sustained millions of dollars in damage in the earthquake that rocked the East Coast on Aug. 23.
“The National Cathedral holds a special place in the hearts of all of us in Washington,” said Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington.

“So many recognize it as a national house of prayer, and indeed its magnificent Gothic spires are a reminder of our constant need to raise our hearts in prayer to God in the midst of all our daily preoccupations.”

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Comprised of people who were part of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, the Fellowship of Blessed John Henry Newman, under the leadership of Bishop David Moyer, is an Ordinariate-bound community of Anglicans, and they will celebrate their inaugural Mass this Sunday, September 4th, at 10 a.m.

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Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 decision to revive the Latin Mass is arguably one such case, as is a 2005 Vatican document barring homosexuals from seminaries. Both became an instant cause célèbre, yet, at least so far, most people would say that neither liturgical practice nor seminary formation has been truly turned on its head.

In the U.K., some observers believe a similar point might be made about the recent creation of a new structure, called an ordinariate, to welcome groups of former Anglicans into the Catholic fold.

When it was unveiled two years ago, supporters hailed the ordinariate as a way to end the ecumenical logjam between Rome and Canterbury. Critics predicted it would corrode relations with Anglicans, and that it would drive Catholicism to the right by embracing Anglicanism’s most determined opponents of women clergy and homosexuality.

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According to the Vatican official on ecumenism, the Church and the World Lutheran Federation are preparing a Joint Declaration on the Reformation, in view of the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses.

Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, announced this in an interview with the German Catholic agency KNA.

In this context, Vatican Radio reported Monday that Benedict XVI wants his Sept. 22-25 trip to Germany to have an ecumenical focus.

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“I am quite speechless,” remarked the Presiding Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Arthur Lichtenberger of New York.

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It was only in July 2006, almost three years after the Episcopal Church’s consecration of a pseudogamously partnered man as Bishop of New Hampshire that Walter, Cardinal Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU), the Vatican’s “ecumenical office,” delivered an urgent address to the House of Bishops of the Church of England imploring them to proceed no further with measures allowing for the appointment of woman bishops, as such a measure would render impossible the realization of previous Anglican and Catholic ecumenical aspirations. (I shall return to this episode further on in this presentation.) Cardinal Kasper had a reputation, perhaps not undeserved, for being interested primarily in cultivating ecumenical relations with representatives of the historic Protestant churches, such as those that made up the Lutheran World Federation or the Anglican Communion, to give two examples, and rather less with conservative or dissident groups stemming from those traditions, and reacting to their perceived liberalism, such as the Lutheran Church ”“ Missouri Synod, or the various “jurisdictions” that make up “Continuing Anglicanism,” and this address to the Church of England’s bishops was almost the “last hurrah” of this type of Catholic ecumenism. Almost ”” for there was to be a last farewell to it at the 2008 Lambeth Conference.

All this said, the remainder of my presentation shall tell “three stories:” the story of the Traditional Anglican Communion’s approaches to Rome; the story of England’s Forward-in-Faith organization and its dealings, or the dealings of some of its member bishops and clergy, with Rome; and, finally, and perhaps most significantly, the almost completely unpublicized story of the secret discussions between the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in Rome and some English Anglican bishops in 2008 and 2009.

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THE President of the Church Union (CU), Fr Edwin Barnes, is to stand down because the majority of its Council opposes “assisting those who join the Ordinariate”. Last month, the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament (CBS) provoked anger among some of its members when it donated £1 million to the Roman Catholic Ordin­ariate…

Fr Barnes, who joined the Ordin­ariate earlier this year, wrote in a statement posted on the website of the CU, which says that it seeks “to promote and renew Catholic Faith and life within the Church of England”, that the group received a legal opinion from a QC suggesting that, although the organisation’s Constitution had been altered to include those outside the Church of England, “the foundation docu­ments had not, and they trumped whatever the Constitution might intend.” The legal opinion “seemed to say this was a Society for Church of England members only”.

Fr Barnes said that he sought another legal opinion, which “arrived at a different conclusion”, and suggested that the CU “might indeed function ecumenically”.

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With 60 newly ordained clergy ready to start their Catholic ministry, morale is high in the Personal Ordinariate of our Lady of Walsingham. The launch of the Pope’s new ecclesial structure for ex-Anglicans has been less traumatic than anticipated ”“ though there is an urgent need for money: visit the website of the Friends of the Ordinariate to find out how to support this prophetic venture.

I say “prophetic”, but we can’t take it for granted that the prophecy will be fulfilled. Every day brings fresh inquiries from Anglicans wanting to join the second wave of Ordinariate converts ”“ but some of them are worried that the independent structure envisaged by Benedict XVI is coming together rather slowly.

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This is the video mentioned in the prior audio piece from Vatican Radio. Watch it all–KSH.

Herewith the accompanying blurb:

The Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams and the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols are to host an international conference on the Holy Land next week, aimed at raising awareness of the plight of Christians there.

The conference, to be held on Monday and Tuesday at Lambeth Palce in London, includes Anglican and Catholic bishops from many different countries, together with Jewish and Muslim delegates who will stress the vital role that Christians continue to play in the land where Christ was born.

The head of Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran will be representing the Holy See at the conference, while the delegation of Christian leaders from Jerusalem will be headed by Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal and Anglican bishop Suheil Dawani.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury’s ban on American participation in the Anglican Communion’s international ecumenical dialogues remains in place, a spokesman for the Anglican Consultative Council reports.

However, the addition of an American Episcopalian to the delegation to the third Anglican”“Lutheran International Commission (ALIC) meeting in Jerusalem last week was not a violation of the ban on participation in ecumenical dialogue of those who propagate views contrary to the church’s teachings on human sexuality, the ACC says.

A spokesman for the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) tells The Church of England Newspaper that the communiqué misstated the status of the American member of the Anglican team. The Very Rev. William Petersen, Provost and Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Bexley Hall Seminary in the United States, was a “consultant not a member of ALIC. The reference to him in the communiqué as a member was incorrect,” ACC spokesman Jan Butters said.

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The 2011 National Conference of the Anglican Use Society begins Thursday evening in Arlington, Texas at Church of St. Mary the Virgin. The general theme for the conference, which runs through noon on Saturday, July 9th, is “Our Patrimony.”

This year, the Society welcomes the Ordinary for the newly formed Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in England & Wales, Msgr. Keith Newton, and John Hunwicke, formerly parish priest of St. Thomas the Martyr Church in Oxford and now a member of the Ordinariate in England, as presenters.

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After a day filled with Masses celebrating the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, there was one more group of worshipers eager to fill the pews at Holy Spirit Church in Annandale, Va. on June 26.

Bringing with them their own hymns dating back to the 18th century and prayers devised from the Book of Common Prayer and adapted to Catholic teaching, more than 50 members of Anglican churches from around Northern Virginia gathered together for the first time at Holy Spirit to praise God with the liturgical and musical traditions they’ve held for years and the Catholic theology they have just adopted.

As members of the St. Thomas of Canterbury Anglican Use Society of Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia, these local Anglicans hope to enter full communion with the Catholic Church as a community.

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Reading Ordinariate leader Father David Elliott was anointed by the Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth the Right Rev Crispian Hollis at St John’s Cathedral, Portsmouth, on Saturday.

Father David is among the first wave of clerics joining a global break away to Catholicism, spurred on by Pope Benedict XVI’s offer to accommodate Anglicans within the Roman Catholic Church through the English Ordinariate – a group for Church of England traditionalists wishing to switch allegiance while retaining some of their Anglican traditions.

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Bishop Suheil Dawani, the Anglican bishop, hosted an ecumenical reception for local church leaders, and the Commission was addressed by His Beatitude Theophilos III, the Greek Patriarch of Jerusalem. The Commission spent one of its sessions with Bishop Dawani and Bishop Younan. At both this session and at the reception, members of the Commission heard of the struggles of Christians in Jerusalem and Palestine: of the strain of living a restricted life, of the lack of jobs and opportunities particularly for young people, and of lacking peace with justice for all in society, all of which lead many Christians to leave the holy land and diminish the witness of Christianity in the very places of its birth. At the same time, they heard of the dedication of the local churches to be the hands and feet of Christ: to advocate for a just peace among all, to seek good relations among all the faith communities, and to offer high quality education and health care to the whole society.

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At a news conference following his report, Cardinal Wuerl said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if the Vatican were to establish the U.S. ordinariate by the end of the year. “I think it will be sooner rather than later,” he said.

Two Anglican congregations in Maryland — St. Luke’s in Bladensburg and Mount Calvary in Baltimore — have announced their intention to join the new ordinariate once it is established.

Addressing the bishops at the close of the first day of their spring general assembly near Seattle, the cardinal said St. Mary’s Seminary in Houston has developed and the Vatican has approved an intensive nine-month program of priestly formation for Anglican clergy who wish to become Catholic priests.

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All Anglican and Episcopal priests who apply for Catholic ordination must undergo the same criminal background checks and psychological evaluations required of all other candidates for Catholic priesthood, Cardinal Wuerl said. He asked the bishops of dioceses where these priests are located to supply those checks and tests as they do for their own seminarians.

Ultimately the inquirers will be sorted into three categories: Those who can he ordained as Catholic priests after a specially-developed nine-month intensive seminary course; those who require more intensive seminary education and “those whose formation histories would not recommend them for either of these options.”

Among those who will not be accepted as Catholic priests are those who were originally Catholic priests and left the Catholic priesthood for the Episcopal or Anglican churches, Cardinal Wuerl said.

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St. Luke’s Church will make a pilgrimage from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism without leaving its historic location at 53rd Street and Annapolis Road in Bladensburg, Md.

The Rev. Mark Lewis, rector of St. Luke’s since 2006, praises the Rt. Rev. John B. Chane, Bishop of Washington, for the arrangement, in which St. Luke’s will lease the facilities from the Diocese of Washington and has an option to buy the property.

“We have a relationship that is mutually respectful,” Lewis said in an interview with The Living Church. He appreciates where I am theologically, and I know he appreciates the parish.”

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Melbourne Auxiliary Bishop Peter Elliott, who addressed a Festival introducing the Ordinariate in Melbourne on 11 June, told The Record that there is momentum leading to the establishment of an Anglican Ordinariate in Australia with recent events in England and, closer to home, the Torres Strait.

“We have been advised that the Ordinariate will take shape here next year,” Bishop Elliott told an Anglican Ordinariate Festival in Melbourne on 11 June.

“I know that many, including myself, had hoped it would be sooner, but it seems best to take the necessary and somewhat complex steps slowly and surely, inspired and encouraged as we are by recent events in England and the interesting prospects for growth that that are already being revealed.”

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There can’t be many Catholic priests who have a wife and nine children present at their ordination. But that’s exactly what awaits Deacon Ian Hellyer next week.

“I’m currently experiencing a funny combination of peace and excitement ”“ with just an occasional moment of fear,” says the 44-year-old from Devon in England who, until a few months ago, was the Anglican vicar of five rural parishes.

“Over the past 10 years, though, I’d increasingly felt uncomfortable in the Church of England and found myself questioning more and more of its decisions and the direction it’s going in,” he told CNA June 9.

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When I became a Catholic 20 years ago, it all seemed to me suddenly a rather ridiculous thing to do. Evensong was profoundly Anglican and therefore Protestant: how could you Catholicise it by sticking on to the end of it a “Benediction” celebrated with a monstrance containing an invalidly consecrated host? The whole thing was an illusion, irredeemably defective (what an ecclesial snob one could suddenly become). But what has happened to Evensong now? Now, it is the ordinariate’s evening office: it has the Pope’s blessing and validation: now it is effectively a Catholic liturgy, duly recognised and authorised. What I looked down on, the Pope has now affirmed, making me feel suddenly very foolish.

What the Pope, God bless him, has actually done is to re-appropriate a liturgy whose origins were in the first place entirely Catholic. As the Anglo-Catholic liturgist and divine Percy Dearmer (a friend of G K Chesterton) pointed out, the first Anglican Prayer Book “was not created in a vacuum, but derives from several sources. First and foremost was the Sarum Rite, or the Latin liturgy developed in Salisbury in the 13th century, and widely used in England. Two other influences were a reformed Roman Breviary of the Spanish Cardinal Quiñones, and a book on doctrine and liturgy by Hermann von Wied, Archbishop of Cologne.”

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…recent ecumenical contacts by [Hilarion Alfeyev, the] high-profile representative of the Moscow Patriarchate[,] is evidence that times are changing. Time after time, during meetings with evangelical leaders and others here in America, Hilarion has stressed that it is time for Orthodox leaders to cooperate with traditional Catholics, evangelical Protestants and others who are trying to defend ancient moral truths in the public square.

“I am here in order to find friends and in order to find allies in our common combat to defend Christian values,” said the 44-year-old archbishop, who became a monk after serving in the Soviet army. He also speaks six languages, holds an Oxford University doctorate in philosophy and is an internationally known composer of classical music.

For too long, Orthodox leaders have remained silent. The goal now, he said, is to find ways to cooperate with other religious groups that want to “keep the traditional lines of Christian moral teaching, who care about the family, who care about such notions as marital fidelity, as giving birth to and bringing up children and in the value of human life from conception until natural death.”

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The Oxford Ordinariate Group is organising their first Solemn Evensong and Benediction at the Dominican Priory, Blackfriars, next Wednesday, 15 June, at 7.30pm by kind permission of the Prior and Community.

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In the fall of 2009, Pope Benedict XVI issued an apostolic constitution called “Anglicanorum coetibus” to provide a means for entire Anglican parishes or groups to become Catholic while retaining some of their Anglican heritage and liturgical practice.

That document “opened up a door that had previously been closed,” said the Rev. Mark Lewis, rector of St. Luke Episcopal Parish in Bladensburg. At that same time, he had been studying a book on Catholicism and Anglicanism.

After a long period of discernment, the Maryland congregation announced June 6 that it would seek entry into the Catholic Church.

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An Episcopal parish in the eastern state of Maryland will be the first in the United States to join the Roman Catholic Church under a new streamlined conversion process created by Pope Benedict XVI, leaders of both church groups said Monday.

St. Luke’s Episcopal parish in Bladensburg will come under the care of Washington Catholic Cardinal Donald Wuerl, who is forming a U.S. ordinariate ”” effectively a national diocese ”” for Episcopalians converting under the pope’s plan.

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Seven former Church of England clergy [yesterday were] ordained Roman Catholic priests at St George’s Cathedral Southwark in London. It marks the start of a wave of ordinations over the next two weeks in which more than 50 former Anglican clergy, many married, will become Catholic priests.

The first of the Pentecost ordinations by the Archbishop of Southwark, the Most Rev Peter Smith, …[Saturday] mark[ed] the formal establishment of the new Ordinariate as a going concern. More than 900 laity have already been received into the Catholic Church but have until now been worshipping with existing Catholic congregations while their clergy trained for the Catholic priesthood at Allen Hall seminary in Chelsea, West London.

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In a statement issued during the meeting, the Bishop of Guildford, the Rt Revd Christopher Hill, who chairs the Church of England’s Council for Christian Unity and is a member of ARCIC III, said: “The commission is looking at how the Church makes important decisions; do we make local decisions, or do we await a wider global consensus? There are varied views on all sides. We are tak­ing very seriously how the Churches receive each other and our mutual gifts.”

Archbishop Longley said that the Commission was “beginning to get a better idea about the shape of the work”. He expected ARCIC III not to take as long as ARCIC II. “The brief we have is focused and fairly precise; we hope to be able to accomplish it in a more modest time.”

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