St. George Anglican Church in Rogers is one of 100 traditionalist Anglican parishes in the United States seeking to join the Catholic Church as a group.
According to Father Bob Hall, pastor of St. George Anglican Church, the small parish of 17 members was established in 2004 when the ordination of women and the ordination of an openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church came into the public spotlight.
The Traditional Anglican Communion, which St. George Church belongs, is a group of churches that separated from the worldwide Anglican Communion in 1991. It claims 400,000 members worldwide, including Australia, Canada, Puerto Rico and England.
17 members eh? I highly doubt St. George’s will have any Anglican identity for long. I don’t understand how some of these folks honestly think Rome will let them continue to gather on Sunday mornings with 17 people for Anglican worship. In no time they will be celebrating the Novus Ordo liturgy with a Roman Rite priest (perhaps he may very well be formally Anglican).
I have come to the conclusion that the best way forward for those of the ordinariate is to become Roman Catholics.
padreegan –
Those of the Ordinariates have already become Roman Catholic, Latin Rite, in fact. As to small parishes, my Anglican Use parish ran about 30-40 souls. It might have grown, but our space was limited and our priest (formerly Episcopalian, but ordained for and incardinated into our RC diocese) also served as assistant at a regular parish.
Eventually, our parish was suppressed when the diocese (not Rome) needed our pastor full-time in a regular Latin Rite parish. Rome, in fact, required the parish be erected as part of the rescript that authorized Fr. Hart’s ordination. To my knowledge, 2 or 3 very small AU parishes continue in Corpus Christi and Boston, along with 3 parishes of substantial size and 3 or 4 small groups forming. It is reasonable to suppose this will be the pattern for the Ordinariate parishes. It will never be large, and will not be subordinate to local bishops, but to an “ordinary”, himself subordinate directly to the CDF in the Vatican. Had this arrangement obtained a decade ago, I suspect our little parish would today be extant, though not so little.
As to the liturgy, The Book of Divine Worship, approved by Rome for the Anglican Use, will almost certainly be the pattern for the Ordinariate liturgies. My current Latin Rite parish, pastored by a former Episcopalian, prays the Novus Ordo with great dignity and beauty.
“As to the liturgy, The Book of Divine Worship, approved by Rome for the Anglican Use, will almost certainly be the pattern for the Ordinariate liturgies.”
It is virtually certain that this will not be the case. As indicated by three long postings on the “Ordinariay Portal” blog and “The Anglo-Catholic” blog in recent months of three lectures on the subject by the English Dominican scholar Fr. Aidan Nichols (himself a former Anglican), two different liturgies — one for England only, the other for (forthcoming) Anglican Ordinariates worldwide — have either (in one case) been submitted to Rome for approval or (in the other) are in the process of being readied for submission. As they have been described by Fr. Nichols (and by the former Bishop of Ebbsfleet, the now Msgr Andrew Burnham) neither one of these proposed liturgies bears much resemblance to the Anglican Use’s current “Book of Divine Worship.”
Thank you for that, Dr. Tighe. I posted my last then remembered I’d heard something about another liturgy but couldn’t come up with details, so assumed I was confusing it with the new translation of the regular Roman Missal. Old age, bad memories, and all of that.
Two important points remain valid: there will be a liturgy for the Ordinariates which will, presumably reflect an Anglican ethos. Second, the much-abused Novus Ordo can be celebrated with great dignity and devotion, depending on the hearts of the priest and people.