Charles Hough already had quite a career, including 18 years in the prestigious post of canon to the ordinary in the Episcopal Church’s Fort Worth Diocese. Now he wants to become a Catholic priest.
Hough hopes to lead a group of former Episcopalians in Cleburne, Texas, who have asked to belong to the new Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, created by Rome for former Episcopalians. Every Saturday, from 9 to 4, he participates in a newly developed program of training for former Episcopal clergy.
He and approximately 60 other former Episcopal priests around the United States, many of whom are married, are studying for the priesthood using a teleconferencing system to hear lectures and discuss their intense course of readings.
[blockquote] ““The goal is that every ordinariate priest should be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with our Latin-rite counterparts,†said Msgr. Steenson. “I am going to tell ordinariate priests that it is smart to learn to celebrate the Novus Ordo very well because that will make them more useful.— [/blockquote]
Indeed. The Pastoral Provision of JPII brought far more priests into the RC Church than the very small number of Anglican Use congregations could ever use. The Ordinariate is likely to do the same, and an RC Church that is desperately short of priests will be grateful to get them. Learning to celebrate the novus ordo is a good idea – they will likely get plenty of opportunity to use it.
Thought this was interesting:
[blockquote] The [Catholic] Church does not want uniformity and she recognizes the different traditions, mentality, spirituality, as well as, recently, the authenticity of certain elements of the Anglican Communion.[/blockquote]
Cardinal Franc Rodé, retired prefect of the Congregation for Consecrated Life in [url=http://www.zenit.org/article-34311?l=english]Today’s Zenit[/url].
That is very interesting, indeed. A little hard to know fully his meaning, perhaps….