A former Anglican bishop has been ordained a deacon for the ordinariate.
Robert Mercer, who was received into the Catholic Church in January, was ordained by Auxiliary Bishop Alan Hopes of Westminster at Allen Hall seminary in London. He will be ordained a priest on Monday.
Mr Mercer, 77, was Bishop of Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, in the Anglican Province of Central Africa. He was bishop for 11 years before leaving the Anglican Communion to join the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, part of the worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion. He served as metropolitan bishop from 1988 to 2005, when he retired to England.
[blockquote]A former Anglican bishop has been ordained a deacon[/blockquote]
How ridiculous.
He was also for most of his life a member of the Community of the Resurrection, an Anglican religious order.
Indeed ridiculous, #1. He’s been a deacon for many, many years.
I hope he finds peace in his journey to Rome.
Pageantmaster,
The significance, if there is any, to this event, is that Robert Mercer is an Englishman and has personal connections to high ranking members of the English Ordinariate who basically got him in. In the South we would say that he is a “good old boy”. He will be the only former TAC bishop to gain ordination in the RC Church. He formerly consecrated both Tony Clavier (currently TEC) and Walter Grundorf (APA) and also a “mission partner” of ACNA as bishops, among the several episcopal consecrations which both of these men have had each. I suspect that the fact that he was formerly a bishop in the Anglican Province of Central Africa is what made him a viable candidate, certainly not his age.
Correction, #4: he’s a native South African.
These ordinations of Anglican bishops as Roman deacons underscores the fact about which so many clergy in the continuum (at least in Canada) had been in denial, i.e. that they would only be “conditionally re-ordained in order to complete what was lacking in their Anglican orders”, as one of the TAC bishops so emphatically stated at one point. But not so with Rome: if you weren’t originally ordained by a RC bishop, then you were never ordained at all.
Ian,
Thanks for the clarification on his nationality. The fact that he will have been ordained at such an advanced age sends an incentive to others considering the ordinariate.
“if you weren’t originally ordained by a RC bishop, then you were never ordained at all”
This is simply inaccurate. A man ordained by an Orthodox bishop, an Oriental Orthodox bishop, an Assyrian (aka “Nestorian”) bishop, or a bishop of the Polish National Catholic Church (and related bodies) is “accepted in his Orders” if he becomes a Catholic. Since the Catholic Church considers Anglican churches to be Protestant “ecclesial communities,” it is not the case with Anglican clerical converts, any more than it is with Baptist or Lutheran ones.
#7 Talking of Anglican clerical converts, Prof Tighe, how is dear Fr Hunwicke getting on in his travails to be ordained into the holierthanthou church do you know?