Transitional Deacon Warren Tanghe’s path to the Catholic priesthood may have been long and winding, but the former Anglican priest will be open to all the gifts of the holy spirit as he is ordained June 24 at 6 p.m. in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore.
“I prayed before my diaconate that the Lord would give me anything that was lacking in diaconal character,” said Deacon Tanghe, who was a member of the Anglican Church for 37 years. “I prayed that the Lord would renew and refresh those gifts he had already given me for diaconal ministry and that he would pour out upon me in their fullness anything that might be lacking. And that is my prayer going into the priesthood as well.”
My wife and I have had the great priviledge of knowing (Soon to be again) Fr. Tanghe. We wish him all the best.
Why would they demote him to deacon before re-ordaining him (or whatever they call it)? That doesn’t make sense. Why not just fix whatever they think is wrong with him and admit him directly into their priesthood instead of the diaconate first?
Sorry, but that’s rather insulting to one’s former priestly service. (No offense intended to deacons. I just don’t get why one would have to return to the diaconate when one was already a priest.)
The short answer is that Rome has been hoist by its own historical errors and is not capable of admitting any validity at all in non-Roman orders. So Fr. Tanghe is ordained de novo. Eastern Orthodox may move into Uniate jurisdictions, but the Ordinariate is not one of these. Had Rome recognized the problems of Apostolicae Curae and organized a real Uniate church which accepted Anglican ordinations a serious division might have developed. While I can understand the decision to review each applicants education and other qualifications the result will be as small and insignificant body as some of the St. Louis Affirmation continuing churches. I expect the Ordinariate to survive no more than 50 years. An additional problem is the refusal to accept former RC priests and divorced and remarried priests without reference to the marriage tribunals. The more barriers the fewer applicants.
Teatome needs to understand that the diaconate is NOT some inferior version of orders which Fr. Tanghe had surpassed. One always remains a deacon even when a bishop- holy orders are added to and not taken away! Furthermore the diaconate is a very holy and special thingwhich they would not want to rob dear Fr Tanghe of. And neither could they, even if they wanted to, change the rules which explicitly state the need for the one before the other
TomRightmyer — thanks for your sensible and actual answer to the question!
“The short answer is that Rome has been hoist by its own historical errors and is not capable of admitting any validity at all in non-Roman orders.”
This is simply not the case. Rome recognizes the validity of the orders of clergy of the Orthodox, the Oriental Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East and the Polish National Catholic Church; Polish National Catholic clergy who become Roman (Latin) Catholics are “received in their Orders:” Rome even received the married bishop Salomao Barbosa Ferraz from the “Catholic Apostolic Church of Brazil” — a body founded in 1945 by an excommunicated Catholic bishop — and allowed him to exercise an episcopal ministry and to participate in the deliberations of the Second Vatican Council until his death at age 89 in 1968. It considers Anglican churches, quite rightly, to be a variant of Protestant denominations and so it doesn’t recognize Anglican Orders in the same way that it does not recognize Baptist, Methodist or Presbyterian Orders.
Where a definite “infusion” of Old Catholic Orders can be proved — and that includes using some rite, or bits from some rite, other than the Anglican Ordinal (as with the participation of the European Old Catholic bishops in English episcopal consecrations between 1932 and 1974) — Rome has been willing to reordain convert Anglican clergymen conditionally, but this has, to my knowledge, happened only twice, in the cases of John Jay Hughes in 1968 and the late Graham Leonard in 1994.
That’s an interesting point TomRightmyer. JPII’s pastoral provision appears to have fizzled out – less than a dozen parishes/missions, 30 years later. It will be interesting to see whether the Ordinariate can do any better.