Did you know there is a Google Map that is tracking Anglican parishes entering the Ordinariate? You can visit it the Ordinariate Google Map [] anytime to look at the latest statistics.
According to the recent count, the United States leads with 36 groups, Canada has 30 and the United Kingdom has 18. The originator, Shane Schaetzel, is currently looking for collaborators in Australia and the United Kingdom to help him keep track of those coming in.
That map is somewhat deceptive, as quite a few of them in American are already Anglican Use Parishes, which are already in Communion with Rome.
Since the map is intended to show ‘parishes seeking full communion [i]through the Anglican Ordinariate'[/i] (read the caption), and the Anglican Use parishes are expected to make up part of the Ordinariate, #1, your statement is at best misleading.
The map is not intended to show only parishes that currently have no relationship with the Catholic Church and are seeking to enter full communion.
Sorry, but I’m not interested in taking a swim.
No 2., Anglican Use parishes already have full Communion, regardless of whether they are offered and join an ordinariate or not. That’s my point.
No. 1, the [i]map is intended to show[/i] parishes that will make up the Ordinariate in total, and did not limit itself to those that are not yet in full Communion with the Catholic Church.
For you to suggest that the map is [b]somewhat deceptive[/b] because it did not show something you were looking for, but rather shows what its preparer intended it to show, was as I said at best misleading. ‘Deceptive’ is a rather loaded word, isn’t it, as it may suggest there was an intent to deceive. But in this case you seem to have simply mis-interpreted the map caption, which is I believe more inclusive than you may have understood.
Well, I am sorry you felt offended by that, but the article did state “a Google Map that is tracking Anglican parishes entering the Ordinariate.” I took that to mean parishes that were in fact Anglican and not parishes that have already entered into Communion with Rome and are therefore already Catholic. Perhaps that is the fault of the article and not the map itself. I meant no offense.
Right-o, No. 2/4/6! It is possible that I had no trouble seeing ‘Anglican Use’ as well (and not thinking ‘Catholic really’) though the writer, as you said, has only ‘Anglican’, and I do agree with you that has lent itself to [b]confusion[/b].
Sorry, of course I meant ‘No. 1/4/6; should’ve checked.
As far as I know there are only 8 Anglican Use parishes in the US, so the rest of the 36 are from somewhere in the Anglican spectrum, mostly ACA (TAC) parishes, and some Anglo-Catholic parishes from within TEC. Would that be correct, TACit?
This is a matter for rejoicing for those who are Catholics from an Anglican background, both because we are so happy to welcome these people, and because we hope that they will be a leaven for Catholic orthodoxy and solemn, beautiful liturgy, in the Catholic Church in the US.
Please don’t take it as gloating or triumphalism. This is a relatively small group of people whose beliefs are already Catholic who are finding their true home.
Susan Peterson
Is Randy Sly an ex-prelate of the Charismatic Episcopal Church who left to join the Catholic Church? Statmann
eulogos, if you click on the map and then (as I just did) use the listing of the groups represented on the map which comes up at the map’s left on-screen, it is possible to count 16 Anglican Use groups of one sort or another. It may that just 8 of these are parishes, which I leave to you to count as I closed the link without doing so. One of the 16 that’s not a parish for example was the All Saints Sisters convent in MD. Most of the rest in the US are ACA/TAC but not entirely. Have a look. And thank you for your kind anticipatory words.
Sorry – actually click on the link to the map that is in the article – something else came up when I clicked on the map itself.
According to the Google Map referenced in the article, 14 of the 36 groups in USA are “Anglican Use of the Roman Rite”.
Almost all of the others in USA and Canada are Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC). That is where it gets tricky – there has been a great deal of controversy within the TAC about the ordinariate. It is apparent that significant parts of the TAC don’t want to go to Rome, although they would have been interested in an inter-communion arrangement.
The TAC has nine US bishops, however four of these are retired. Three of the five serving bishops have stated publicly that they will not be joining the Ordinariate. The primate of the TAC (++Hepworth based in Australia) claims that the remaining six (including the four retired bishops) have applied to join the Ordinariate.
As for parishes, that is hard to work out also. ++Hepworth claimed to David Virtue that 29 American parishes have voted to go over to the Ordinariate. There aren’t 29 TAC parishes on the google map for USA; on the other hand, the combined total for USA and Canada on the google map is more than 29.
++Hepworth has also claimed that 61 TAC priests have applied to join the Ordinariate, so there will be plenty of clergy to go around the 29 congregations, no doubt with some to spare for the regular RCC. Given the priest shortage in the RCC in the west, these priests alone probably made this a strategic acquisition for the Curia.
As for Australia, Mr Sly shouldn’t get too excited: ++Hepworth has a grand total of 10 congregations listed down under. There is one in Sydney and I have seen a blog where the priest of that church states that his ASA is 15.
Also, in the past the TAC has included many thousands of adherents in Africa and India, however I believe those groups have indicated that they will not be joining the Ordinariate.
Well, you are certainly incorrect in your last statement, MichaelA, but it is not my task to enlighten you. Several other points you make are suggestive of inaccuracy when there are no grounds for that. But time will tell, I guess.
That’s no problem TACit, please feel free to add some more data or correct it. I’m not in the TAC so its more of an interest thing for me.
I occasionally go back to look at Virtue Online for a bit of nostalgia, and there seems to be quite a few comments from members of the TAC, some for the Ordinariate and some against. Lots of claims and counter-claims, and you are correct: they can’t all be right, and in any case time will tell.
Ah, data – like trying to capture a butterfly at this moment when the Ordinariates outside the UK have not been set up. Fr. Scott Hurd at Cardinal Wuerl’s office has said that in the US the petitioning process has been completed, so they know numbers, but we do not know if the pins in the google-map represent all the expressions of interest. I count 15 AU listings though the scroll bar made me do it several times to get a consistent number. I had got 16 by also counting Mount Calvary in Baltimore, still listed as TEC but which I understood to be seeking the Pastoral Provision (aka Anglican Use), as ASSP convent did. I may not have that correct.
There is considerably more information in the blogs concerned with Ordinariates, than there is at VOL, for those pursuing it. The uneven split in ACA is real, probably underlain by personal issues not represented by ‘data’.
Re: #10′
Yes, he is a former bishop of the CEC; I have met him.
While we’re tossing around comparatives, let’s look at Montana. Red book data from 2007 shows 41 parishes with 1887 ASA total, giving a mean ASA of 46. Median ASA is a lot lower as four of those parishes have something like a fifth of the ASA. But then let’s look at the departing dioceses: ASA in San Joaquin dropped by about 3,000; Pittsburgh, by 4,700; even Ft. Worth lost 1,300 to the split.
Having looked at the websites of the American TAC parishes listed, all I can say is that a mean ASA in the sixties seems optimistic. There are a lot of house churches and pretty small buildings. Some of them seem to be completely phantom (e.g. the “parish” in Nashville is actually an extant RC parish whose schedule gives no evidence that Anglican Rite masses are ever held there; as best I can tell the only actual Anglican activity is a once-a-month evensong). If you look at the dioceses they are comparing to, they are all places where Episcopalians are thin on the ground, and often places where people of any sort are thinly spread. Look at Maryland, which has a fair number of rural parishes: 2007 mean ASA per church was over a hundred. Even rural Easton had a mean ASA of over 80. Mount Calvary (which is still the only ECUSA parish on the list) has dropped to 40 ASA in 2009, and even when attendance was higher it was more like 70-80, and this for an urban church in a densely populated area. Meanwhile of the other potential ordinariate “parishes” in the area, one is a convent, another is a house church, and a third is a nebulous society meeting at an RC abbey. Only Christ the King Towson has a real building (and one of the largest I found) and they have one mass on Sunday. And this is one of only three parts of the country with a significant cluster of “parishes”.
While we’re at it: if you believe Wikipedia the Melkites have around 25,000 members in the USA with some 40 parishes.
Well, #18, maybe you had better write to Pope Benedict and tell him it will never work!
I would have thought that this clearly will work from the RCC perspective. The RCC has a priest shortage in western nations – if TAC contributes more priests than congregations to the Ordinariate, RCC still comes out a winner.
I am not saying that was the Curia’s primary motivation – clearly it wasn’t – but it means this is a win/win for RCC, whatever happens.
And who knows if BXVI may not be using this to do an end run around some of his own bishops and clergy in USA (some of whom seem to have a decidedly liberal bent)? The TAC priests are dedicated, well-educated and devoted to traditional theology. They don’t necessarily need to bring large congregations with them – BXVI may be quite happy if some RCs are happy to worship at Ordinariate churches.
TACit, what’s “working”? It’ll never work for me, a high central guy, so in that wise the numbers don’t matter. The point is, we’re talking numbers that are a cupful in the lake of American Anglicanism, and a droplet in the great ocean of American Catholicism– and that’s if the numbers are believed. When they’re comparing themselves favorably to Montana, OK, there are two cities in the whole state that have more than one parish, and the second parish in Helena meets in a Methodist church. Compared to the Catholics there, compared with the Lutherans, they’re still pretty small. In the American Catholic Church, they’ll be yet another tiny minority. It’s possible that they’ll be influential out of proportion to their size, but for instance if they’re going to supply priests for the rest of the church I think that’s an extremely tall order.
#21, it’s a fair question given the topic of the post – and you may want to address MichaelA who suggested the extra priest supply…..
Perhaps you should e-mail the Roman Pontiff and let him know it’s a bad business plan. Maybe he’ll tell the Holy Spirit you said so. 😉
Of course, he is the Pope who says “I have a mustard seed, and I’m not afraid to use it.” I don’t know if he says this in German, in Latin, or in his adopted Italian, but in any language it means that he isn’t concerned about starting small. Benedict XVI is the Pastor Bonus who will leave the other 99 to go searching for one, or more, lost Anglicans. ‘Working’ will, I imagine, be if he returns the one to the fold.