When his daughter, Lucy, goes to Charleston Catholic School next year, she will be the only student whose father comes not only for parent conferences and class parties, but also to celebrate Mass.
Ordained a Catholic priest July 7, Allen joins a small but growing group of former Episcopalians embarking on a new journey, one they hope marks a critical step down the long path to Christian unity.
They have embraced a new option in Catholicism that allows Anglicans to become fully Roman Catholic yet retain elements of their liturgical and theological traditions.
Read it all from the local paper.
[blockquote]“Pope Benedict XVI created the ordinariate, a non-geographic diocese within the Catholic Church, for groups of American Anglicans who wanted to enter full communion with the Vatican.â€[/blockquote]
Does this mean that Anglican priests and their wives can only go to the Anglican Ordinariate if they bring a group of converts to the Roman Catholic Church?
I don’t believe the Ordinariate was established to be the “only” path for entering the Roman Catholic Church. Rather it was designed to facilitate corporate conversions on the part of large numbers of people who wished to preserve aspects of their Anglican heritage that were not inconsistent with the doctrine and discipline of the Roman Church.
bettcee, that’s a great question. My understanding through the grapevine is that there *has* been a rules change. Anglican priests who want to enter must bring a congregation with them. Anglican priests without congregations may still enter the RC church, but must go through the routine pastoral route, rather than the ordinariate. They will then be under the leadership of the local bishop, rather than the ordinariate. Under the local bishop, the bishop can then place them wherever the bishop wishes.
Interesting. If it’s true, it makes sense logistically. One would want congregations, and not simply additional priests for the Ordinariate, particularly when there’s a clergy shortage in the RC church overall.
Maybe someone else has better/more precise information.