To be honest, with regard to the first comments, I do not understand…[Professor Tina Beattie’s] perplexity. It seems quite simple: it means that a goodly number of Anglicans and their clergy will be entering into full communion with the Catholic Church. Moreover, surely their arrival will only enrich the diversity of the Catholic Church, as they bring their own traditions, or “patrimony”, of liturgical worthiness, pastoral sensitivity and biblical engagement. They will speak an idiom clearly understood by Anglicans, who may then, we pray, feel moved to explore further the path to full communion by means of this familiar idiom.

Here, one suspects, is her problem. The Ordinariate reveals clearly that for the Catholic Church ecumenism is not about ongoing “dialogue” for its own sake. It is about encouraging and convincing Christians to enter into full communion with the Church, from which they are estranged due to actions centuries ago. If it means anything regarding the relations between the Anglican Communion and the Catholic Church it is that the Church has only one goal, ultimately, for ecumenical dialogue with Anglicans: that they return to the Church. This may disturb many Anglicans, for sure, but that is no reason to stop the progress of ecumenism.

Her second comments raised the eyebrows as she describes the actions of Ordinariate Catholics as “Protestant”. How it can be Protestant to enter into Communion with the Catholic Church is beyond me!

Read it all.

In July 2010 the General Synod of the Church of England took yet another decisive step in the direction of enacting legislation that would make it possible for women to be admitted to the episcopate. At the same time General Synod declined to make any appropriate provision that would satisfy the consciences of those of us who cannot accept that such ordinations would be a legitimate development in the life of the Church. Some have already decided that they can no longer remain within the Church of England. We genuinely wish them Godspeed as, heeding the call of conscience, they embark on a new episode in their Christian discipleship. We, too, in similar obedience to conscience, seek, if at all possible, to remain faithful members of the Church of England and undertake to support all who seek to do likewise.

Even at this late hour we are seeking a way forward that would enable us with integrity to retain such membership. We are passionate in our commitment to the mission of the Church of England and urgently seek a settlement through which we would be free to play our part to the fullest measure. We believe this could be done by the formation of a society within the Church of England, overseen by bishops committed to our viewpoint. Such bishops would need, of course, the necessary ordinary jurisdiction that would enable them to be the true pastors of their people and to be guarantors of the sacramental assurance on which we all depend for our authentic sharing within the Body of Christ. Given that our parishes are also constituent parts of local dioceses we also understand that some way would have to be identified for sharing jurisdiction with the diocesan bishop. We understand it to be something of this nature that our archbishops were trying to achieve in their ill-fated amendment at the July meeting of the General Synod. That amendment, though narrowly defeated in the House of Clergy, was widely supported elsewhere in the Synod and, indeed, a majority of members supported it. It might well be that a revisiting of the archbishops’ proposals, with some further development of them, could still help our Church to find a way forward that enabled us all to remain faithful members of it.

Read it all.

The ordinariate continues to move forward, in a way which is surprising many (but not me). I wrote recently that the three leading former flying bishops were rather talking down expectations, as one of them said to me, to “avoid frightening the horses”: in other words so as not to alarm the Catholic bishops by the number of priests and people likely to come. The idea was, I think, that while the whole operation is still in its early stages, it needs not to arouse the opposition of Catholic bishops suspicious about the whole thing (since it was certain Catholic bishops who shot down any such idea in the early 1990s).

But I wonder if such caution over episcopal hostility isn’t, today, turning out to be unnecessary. Two interviews over the weekend, one with Fr Keith Newton, the first ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham (couldn’t some more euphonious title be invented?), and the other with Bishop Thomas McMahon of Brentwood, show first that from the ex-Anglican side caution is being maintained, whereas in the mainstream, one Catholic bishop at least is if anything rather pleased by an unexpectedly large bag of ex-Anglican clergy in his diocese: after all, as he put it, “they [will be] very happy to help out doing locums for us in some of our parishes”.

Read it all.

“Some manner must be found for Anglicans to confess the faith together.”

–Bishop Michale Nazir-Ali, speaking at Mere Anglicanism a moment ago

A BBC Today audio report on this is described as follows:

A Church of England bishop has called on Anglican clergy to take the Church’s message to young people by trying to address the fundamental questions of life and death. Dr Graham Kings, the Bishop of Sherborne, in Dorset, says a lack of religious knowledge is one of the causes of religious doubt. Robert Pigott reports.

Listen to it all (about 3 1/2 minutes).

You may also find much more about this ministry here.

Being a radical atheist to the left of Richard Dawkins, I don’t take sides in religious matters, but I was depressed by the news that three Anglican bishops, appalled by the possibility of women becoming bishops, have switched to being Catholic priests.

Firstly I find it baffling that, among all the wrongs of the world, the issue of bishops’ genders should assume such importance ”“ mind you, that’s probably just me. I realise that if I were a narrow-minded sectarian bigot with no sense of perspective, I might see things differently.

But the worst thing is that this issue threatens to destroy the Church of England, or at least to diminish it until it becomes an irrelevance ”“ well, OK, even more of an irrelevance.

Read it all.

When the wives of three former Church of England bishops pre­sented them with chasubles after they were ordained priests in the Roman Catholic Church in West­minster Cathedral on Saturday, it was clear that this was no ordinary service.

It heralded the beginning of the Ordinariate and the appointment of its first Ordinary, Fr Keith Newton. The Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Revd Vincent Nichols, des­cribed it during his homily as “a unique occasion marking a new step in the life and history of the Catho­lic Church”.

Fr John Broadhurst, former Bishop of Fulham; Fr Keith Newton, former Bishop of Richborough; and Fr Andrew Burnham, former Bishop of Ebbsfleet, became the first clerics to be received into the Ordinariate, which was set up for former Anglicans. They expect to be followed by more clergy and lay people.

Read it all.

You may find the agenda here; we appreciate your prayers.

Please note the William Mckeachie piece on the Conference here also. It begins as follows:

Mere Anglicanism is all about witnessing to the God who, amidst all the ups and downs of church history, has called us — whether as laity or clergy, whether as Episcopalians or members of some other Anglican entity, whether locally or globally — to renew our witness to the One who gave us the Gospel and who across the centuries has providentially provided for the Anglican Way of faithfulness to that Gospel….

Almost immediately after he was ordained a Catholic priest along with two other former Anglican bishops, Father Keith Newton was named head of the new ordinariate for former Anglicans in England and Wales.

The Vatican announced Jan. 15 that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had erected the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham “for those groups of Anglican clergy and faithful who have expressed their desire to enter into full visible communion with the Catholic Church.”

Read it all.

Fr Keith Newton, a bishop in the Church of England until just a few weeks ago who is now an ordained Catholic priest and the head of the Personal Ordinariate of England and Wales, said he hoped churches could be shared between the different congregations.

But he insisted he did not want any “rancour or bad feeling” between Anglicans and those who go over to Rome under the unprecedented scheme.

The Ordinariate was proposed late in 2009 by the Vatican as a refuge for disaffected Anglicans worldwide who oppose developments such as women’s ordination.

Read it all.

…when Jesus compared the rich man with a camel he wasn’t putting him down. On the contrary he was smiling on him. The comparison’s a compliment, not an insult.

Of course the question still packed a punch for the rich man. But what it showed was a prosecutor free of envy. And in the current crisis it’s the skills of the wealth creators that are vital to the nation’s recovery. According to Jesus the way to get heaven down to earth is for the wealthy to make their money work in the service of others. Which in our current crisis could be through investment or taxation. You see, just like the camel carried other people’s burdens, nourished others with its milk and gave warmth through the fuel of its dung so God looks to the wealthy to protect the weak. Failure to do so makes heaven on earth an impossibility, not just for the rich but for us all.

Read it all.

In its 100-plus years Westminster Cathedral, the mother church of English Catholicism, will have seen few stranger sights than Saturday’s procession of three Anglican bishops’ wives, in matching beige coats, one with an outsized brown hat, going up on to the high altar to embrace their husbands, all newly ordained as Catholic priests. Catholicism isn’t that keen on women on the altar ”“ to the pain of the demonstrators from the Catholic Women’s Ordination movement protesting outside the cathedral’s doors ”“ and it doesn’t usually countenance priests having wives.

But this was no ordinary ceremony. Almost everyone who spoke during it used the word “historic” to describe the ordination as Catholic priests of John Broadhurst, Andrew Burnham and Keith Newton, all formerly Anglican bishops.

Read it all.

The Vatican on Saturday welcomed the first group of traditionalist Anglicans who plan to convert to Roman Catholicism through a new structure the Vatican created to facilitate such group conversions.

The Vatican angered many Anglicans, including the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, when it announced the new structure in October 2009, because it appeared to upend decades of interfaith dialogue by implying that the Roman Catholic Church sought to encourage the conversion of Anglicans, especially those uncomfortable with the Church of England’s ordination of women and openly gay priests.

But tensions were somewhat eased with Pope Benedict XVI’s state visit to Britain in September, which was widely seen as a success.

Read it all.

Herewith the blurb from Vatican Radio:

This Saturday sees the ordination into the Catholic priesthood of three former Anglican bishops who will become the first priests of the Personal Ordinariate which is being established under the provision of Pope Benedict’s Apostolic Constitution issued in 2009. The Ordinariate is a special structure for groups of former Anglicans and their clergy who seek full communion in the Catholic Church whilst retaining some elements of their Anglican liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions. But what exactly is an Ordinariate? How will it be funded and how big is it likely to become? To find out more, Susy Hodges spoke to Father Marcos Stock, General Secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales. He describes the setting up of the Ordinariate as an event “of singular significance in the life of the Catholic Church” and goes on to explain that the move is “essentially a way of allowing a group of faithful from the Anglican Communion to retain some of their own patrimony” …. within the life of the Catholic Church… and is intended “to be a mutual exchange of gifts” between the two.

Asked how many Anglican faithful are waiting to join the Ordinariate, Father Stock says they are expecting about 50 clergy to be received into full communion and approx 35 (lay) groups, many of which are attached to those clergy and who have “indicated a firm desire to enter into the Ordinariate.”

Father Stock also says he doesn’t believe the Ordinariate “is perceived as an anti-ecumenical move… and adds “it’s quite the contrary in some ways….. “

Listen to it all (just under 11 minutes).

As bishops charged with responsibility to uphold the unity of God’s church on earth we are painfully aware of the divisions that still impair the unity that Christ longs for and for which he shed his blood. This is not just a unity within the church ”“ though we long for this to be revealed ”“ but a unity for all God’s people and between the families of the nations.

Read it all.

You said before you were basically setting up the See of Ebbsfleet. What does that mean?

My predecessor, Michael Houghton, who died after a year (which is of course why they were nervous about me), had taken to calling it the See of Ebbsfleet as if it were a proper diocese. And I took the view that what we were aiming to be was a diocese, an orthodox diocese: bishop, priests, deacons, and laypeople. And therefore that, even though we weren’t an actual diocese, we should organise ourselves as if we were. So I wrote a pastoral letter to the people every month, more or less every month for 10 years. I had a council of priests. This was before anyone else was doing this sort of thing. I had a lay council and a lay congress. I had deaneries, with clergy organised in deaneries for pastoral care.

We did all this as if we were setting out to be a diocese, which irritated people no end. It was done in consultation with the Archbishop of Canterbury because it was all about how best to care for people. And the apologia I gave was that of the Apostolic District, which was the term in canon law to describe a group that is not yet a diocese but might become so and has an apostolic administrator. Of course an administration, a jurisdiction, was the one thing we weren’t. We didn’t have the legal authority to do any of it. But that was what we were in search of becoming. And it fitted in with the Forward in Faith Free Province rhetoric and fitted what we needed to survive in the Church of England. It was a good way to organise people and get them to move forward together.

Read it all.

The jurisdiction of the Ordinariate applies only to England and Wales, so if Scottish Anglicans wanted to enter the Ordinariate they would need to apply to the Scottish bishops’ conference, would they?

Yes, but to establish an ordinariate there has to be capacity within the groups applying for an ordinariate to be self-sustaining, and the indications we received from the Scottish bishops was that there aren’t sufficient groups for there to be an ordinariate there.

Was an ordinariate that included Scotland ever considered, or does an ordinariate always have to correspond to the jurisdiction of a bishops’ conference?

It always has to be within a bishops’ conference. But that doesn’t preclude groups outside that being included in that.

Read it all.

Will members of the Ordinariate still be Anglicans?

No. Members of the Ordinariate will be Catholics. Their decision is to leave the Anglican Communion and come into the Catholic Church, in full communion with the Pope.

The central purpose of Anglicanorum coetibus is “to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church, as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared”. Members of the Ordinariate will bring with them, into full communion with the Catholic Church in all its diversity and richness of liturgical rites and traditions, some aspects their own Anglican patrimony and culture.
It is recognised that the term Anglican patrimony is difficult to define but it would include many of the spiritual writings, prayers, hymnody, and pastoral practices distinctive to the Anglican tradition which have sustained the faith and longing of many Anglican faithful for that very unity for which Christ prayed.

The Ordinariate will then bring a mutual enrichment and exchange of gifts, in an authentic and visible form of full communion, between those baptised and nurtured in Anglicanism and the Catholic Church.

Do all Anglicans who wish to become Catholics now have to be members of the Ordinariate?

No. Any individual former Anglican who wishes to be received into full communion with the Catholic Church, may do so without becoming a registered member of the Ordinariate.

Read it all.

John Broadhurst, Andrew Burnham and Keith Newton will be ordained into the priesthood at Westminster Cathedral on Saturday, it was announced yesterday.

The Ordinariate, the group for disaffected Anglican priests and their congregations who seek full communion in the Catholic Church, will also take in its first members.

Read it all.

As traditionalist clergy threatened to leave over their opposition to women bishops, Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said the Church of England would seek a system of sharing buildings so that defecting worshippers could continue meeting in familiar surroundings.

Yet the decision over whether to permit Catholic congregations to share Anglican church buildings was ultimately left to individual bishops, with the policy varying from diocese to diocese. The ruling that any defectors would have to leave St Barnabas was conveyed to its vicar by the Ven Clive Mansell, Archdeacon of Tonbridge and a senior clergyman in the diocese of Rochester.

“How sad that the Ordinariate seekers, good people who have contributed so much to this parish and its fabric over so many years, were plainly told they should leave with nothing,” added Fr Tomlinson.

Read it all.

The Right Reverend Peter Walker, who died on December 28 aged 91, was Bishop of Ely from 1977 to 1989, having previously been Suffragan Bishop of Dorchester and before that Principal of Westcott House, Cambridge.

Walker was a model Church of England bishop ”“ devout, scholarly and pastoral ”“ and had a multitude of friends and admirers. Among these was WH Auden, who once observed: “Friendship with Peter Walker was one of the best things about coming to England.”

Walker was of liberal outlook, and his thinking was much influenced by the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran theologian who was executed in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945 and who, during the years of his imprisonment, asked some radical questions about traditional doctrine. But Walker was no extremist, and the title of his only book, The Anglican Church Today: rediscovering the middle way, written in retirement, faithfully reflected his lifelong outlook.

Read it all.

Mr Broadhurst’s wife, Judi, and Mr Newton’s wife, Gill, were also among the lay people and former Anglican clergy being received into the RC Church. Three nuns who left the Priory of our Lady of Walsingham last month, after announcing plans to join the Ordinariate, were also re­ceived. No details were released about the total numbers received at the service.

A few days earlier, Mr Broadhurst told The Times: “I know people will join the Ordinariate. . . There are lots of laity on their own and priests on their own; the question is how do we relate them both to the Ordinariate and to the English Catholic Church, because it is part of the Catholic Church in this country; it’s not a separate thing.”

Two retired bishops, the Rt Revd Edwin Barnes and the Rt Revd David Silk, also announced their intention to leave the Church of England to join the Ordinariate. The RC Bishops’ statement said that they would “be received into full communion with the Catholic Church and pro­ceed to Ordination as Catholic Priests in due course”.

Read it all.

The English ordinariate, it seems, will be well on its way by the middle of this month. Three former Anglican bishops were received into full communion with the Catholic Church during a Mass at Westminster
Cathedral on January 1. One of the comments following the Herald online report, noting that they were received in secular clothing, opines that “For Bishops to wear ties is simply saintly and to lose all that prestige they once held is stunning to the mind of a Catholic Bishop”.

Well, indeed. But I think that their former prestige is the least important aspect of what they are giving up: they are abandoning certainty and recognition within an established institution, for uncertainty within an institution ”“ the ordinariate ”“ that doesn’t even exist yet. What this shows is an absolute faith in the Catholic Church of which it will be a part, especially as it is embodied by the present Holy Father.

I last saw the most senior of the three, John Broadhurst, formerly Bishop of Fulham, splendidly caparisoned in full episcopal fig (I have known him, on and off, for over 30 years, and have never seen him except in clericals: I can hardly imagine him in a secular collar and tie) at the 150th anniversary of that great Anglo-Catholic institution, Pusey House, Oxford, just after the publication of Anglicanorum coetibus. I asked him for his reaction to the document (it was pretty clear that most of those present were elated by it): his reply had to do, not with the visionary excitements of the proposed ordinariate, but with its practicability: “it’s doable”, he simply replied.

Read it all.

The Bishop of Lincoln has opposed Government plans to scrap the office of Chief Coroner.

Bishop John Saxbee spoke out against the move and voted against it alongside the Bishops of Bristol, Chichester, Exeter and Manchester as the Government was defeated in the House of Lords.

Peers voted by 277 to 165 to remove the Chief Coroner and his assistants from the list of offices and quangos the Government plans to scrap. The post of chief coroner was set up by the last Government but not yet come into existence.

Read it all (subscription required).

Ruth, you’ve spoken to one of those who took part. What are their reasons?

They are responding to an offer made by the Pope which they believe is very generous. But their reason is that they believe that the Church of England, despite claiming to be part of the one holy, apostolic and catholic church in the Creed, has in fact departed from apostolic teaching, particularly over the issue of women’s ordination.

Will they be followed by many others?

Well there were many priests in the congregation at Westminster Cathedral today who are likely to join the Ordinariate. I think it will be a small stream at first; the question that nobody knows the answer to, is whether that will turn into a river or a flood….

Read it all.

Read it all.

Herewith the BBC (World Service) blurb:

2011 marks the 400th anniversary of a book once declared, by American President Teddy Roosevelt as “a Magna Carta for the poor and oppressed: the most democratic book in the world.” It is a book that helped found the idea of Britain, and some argue that it encapsulates Britain’s national identity and values, yet it is read across the world. The King James Bible, translated by a committee of scholars into the accidental poetry which has resonated throughout the English speaking world for centuries is celebrated in this special edition of Politics UK presented by Dennis Sewell.

Listen to it all (28 minutes). Those interviewed include Professor Gordon Campbell, Frank Dobson MP, Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, Professor Peter Hennessy and Tristram Hunt MP.

A senior Church of England bishop has warned that faith groups will not step in to fill the gap left by state spending cuts, saying it would be “completely irresponsible” to leave the care of the vulnerable in the hands of “amateurs”.

The bishop of Leicester, Tim Stevens, who has spoken forcefully about David Cameron’s proposals for a “big society”, said that although faith groups were ready and willing to play a greater part in community life, their enthusiasm and engagement should not mean the government rolled back on its responsibilities to the needy.

The warning follows fears expressed by a leading charity figure this week, David Robinson of Community Links, who said massive public spending cuts threatened to undermine the big society project.

Read it all

Not long ago I came across a Christmas meditation by Michael Stancliffe, a fine preacher whose ministry encompassed time as Speaker’s Chaplain in the House of Commons, and later as Dean of Winchester. In this meditation he points out that the Christmas story is concerned with small things.

”˜At the heart of it is a human being at its smallest, and that newborn child is surrounded by no greatness ”“ no palace, no pomp, no grand people. Nor had the first to join that little group anything impressive about them ”“ shepherds on night duty don’t look princely ”“ and it was only later that more imposing personages put in an appearance. Christians believe that what happened in that small setting was of cosmic significance.’

The birth of Jesus at Bethlehem which we celebrate at Christmas is the burning glass which concentrates in the vulnerable fragility of a new-born child the immensity of the Divine Love by which all things were made and which holds the vastness of the universe in being. What is God like? God is like ”“ indeed God is ”“ this totally dependent, tiny bundle of life….

Read it all.

St Luke tells us at the end of his story of the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem that his mother Mary ‘kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.’ (Luke 2.19) This is what as Christians we do year by year, as, in the familiar words of Bishop Phillips Brooks’ much loved Christmas hymn, ‘the dark night wakes, the Glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.’ The Greek word which St Luke uses to speak of Mary’s deep and reflective meditation is sumballo, from which we get our word ‘symbol’. Mary both keeps and holds on to the amazing and overwhelming reality of God’s action and presence in and through her motherhood, and imaginatively reflects upon it, going deeper and deeper into the meaning of what this birth and this child, of which she is so intimately a part, is about. She ‘ponders in her heart’, and the heart in the Bible is not primarily the place of feeling, but of willing and of choosing. Her deep reflection is to shape her life, and brings her to the foot of the cross, and to be part of the worshipping and expectant community, as Luke tells us in Acts, awaiting the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost.

The angel had said to Mary in the moment of annunciation that ‘the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you’ and therefore the child she was to bear would be called ‘the Son of God.’ And so Mary became, in the words of another ancient Christian hymn, ‘the gate of Heaven’s High Lord, the door through which the Light has poured.’ When Jacob in the ancient story in Genesis lay down in a desert place and dreamed of a ladder set between heaven and earth with the angels of God ascending and descending upon it, he woke up exclaiming, ‘this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven!’ if this was true of the place of Jacob’s dream, even more is it true of the Mother of the Lord and Christian devotion has not hesitated to speak of Mary as the temple of God, the ark of the covenant, and the gate of heaven.

Mary, the ‘Christ-bearer’ reflected deeply and imaginatively on what Jesus meant, and she has been seen as an image, a picture of the church, which likewise reflects on and lives out the meaning of the God who so comes among us. The great movements of renewal in Christian history have come about through a return to what the Scriptures tell us. We have to realise over and over again how great and how overwhelming is the reality of God’s love which always comes down to the lowest part of our need, as it came in Mary’s child at Bethlehem.

Many years ago J.B. Phillips, one of the first translators of the Bible into contemporary English, wrote a book with the title, Your God is too small. He was right then, and is right now. Our human tendency is to domesticate God, to make God in our own image, to shape him by the culture and expectations of our own day, But the Gospel message of Christmas ”“ and of Good Friday and Easter from which that Christmas message is inseparable ”“ is of a love that goes to the uttermost and will never let us down and will never let us go. This is the ‘amazing grace’ of Evangelical conversion; this is the same grace which we receive and adore in the holy and blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. As John Betjeman put it simply, ‘God was man in Palestine, and lives today in Bread and Wine’ ”“ and so in our hearts, in our willing and our choosing, in our transformed lives as we like Mary live out our vocation as ‘Christ-bearers’. St John said of the Word of God who became flesh, that the light shone in the darkness and the darkness was not able to overwhelm it, to snuff it out. The light of Christ in us is to shine in the darkness ”“ the darkness of human fear, and violence, and the sinful distortions of deception and betrayal. At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, God with us, God in the muck and the mess (and the stench) of a stable at Bethlehem; God as a fragile, new-born child laid in the pricking straw of a rough feeding-trough; God in the mess of our world, a world both beautiful and distorted. At Christmas also we celebrate our own new birth, the Christ born in us. And so we rightly sing and pray:

O holy child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in,
Be born in us today.
May the God who came to us at Bethlehem to take us by the hand, surround you and renew you with his love, and light, and grace, that you, like blessed Mary, may know his peace and joy this Christmas and in the year ahead.

With every blessing,

–(The Rt. Rev.) Geoffrey Rowell