Pope Benedict XVI’s offer of an enclave for disaffected Anglican traditionalists has been taken up by Forward in Faith-Australia (FiFA), which has voted to begin work on creating a “Personal Ordinariate” for Australia.
On Feb 13, a special general meeting for the members of the Anglo-Catholic group held at All Saints Kooyong in Melbourne unanimously adopted four resolutions backing the move to Rome.
It empowered its National Council “to foster by every means the establishing of an Ordinariate in Australia”; welcomed the appoint of the Roman Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne Peter Elliott as the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference’s envoy, endorsed the formation of a working group to “set in train the processes necessary” to establish the Ordinariate; and invited Catholic minded Anglicans to join them in their quest for corporate reunion with Rome.
How long until the rest of FiF follows suit?
My heart leaps with joy for them! I know idividuals who are not waiting for the Anglican Catholics to pull together here in Central California and are just converting to get away from the Episcopalian scourge.
Intercessor
I do predict that if AngloDio San Joaquin moves to ordain women after Bp. John-David Schofield retires next year that all bets are off and hopefully B16’s offer will remain on the table.
Intercessor
Does anyone else suspect that as AC/NA becomes more open about its Convergence proclivities that Anglo-Catholics will be more inclined towards Rome?
I suppose that I am not surprised that Australian moved first. It seems like a terribly hostile place for Anglo-Catholics.
#3
The Ordinariate offer is completely open ended. It’s not dependent on Benedict. Anglicans/Episcopalians can avail of it anytime they wish whether it be in 3 years, 30 years or (to push the example to the extreme) 300 years.
“In some ways, the Ordinariate will even be similar to a Rite†like the Eastern Catholic Churches, he said, as the Ordinariate will have its own liturgical “useâ€. (Bishop Peter Elliot) I beg to differ, but having read the description of how the Ordinariate will be organized; it is decidedly different than the Uniate Churches and Rome insists this is not going to be a Uniate Church. They will not have their own bishops. It will function as a transition to becoming fully Roman Catholic. In the 1920’s Bishop Michel D’Herbigny SJ, formed, with the support of the Pope, the “Russicum” in Rome to train clergy to enter the Soviet Union and convert Orthodox in Western Russia and the Ukraine. The plug was pulled on the program and D’Herbigny died and was buried simply as a priest, with no further reference to his having been a bishop. A friend of mine Prof. Leon Tretjakewitsch, in Toronto, wrote the definitive book on this entitled Michel D’Herbigny and the Separated Brethren. Anyone seriously interested in the ordinariate had best do their homework and look at the organization of the Uniate Churches and see how different this scheme is for this. There may be some who think that should a vast number of Anglo-Catholics go, that the void will be filled by Evangelicals. I do not believe this will necessarily be the case; rather, I believe that those committed to principle taken from the Convergence Church movement will exercise more and more influence, taking the Anglican Church further from its roots in the English Reformation. People would do well to read The Protestantism of the Prayer Book by Dyson Hague. They can find it on-line at http://www.archive.org/details/cihm_05141 .
This is the proper link: http://www.archive.org/stream/cihm_05141
#7,8
I think you are missing the point. Bishop Elliot and other have made allusion to the Eastern Churches in communion with Rome as a point of comparision. No one is giving a “nudge, nudge, wink, wink”. The Ordinariates are clearly not going to be sui iuris. Everyone accepts that they couldn’t be as there is no historical precedent for it. What is clear is that they will enjoy a broad autonomy, much broader than has been previously present in the Latin Church, answerable only to the Pope, by way of the CDF.