‘Pope’s decision beyond our wildest dreams,’ Perth TAC Bishop tells The Record.
By Anthony Barich and Robert Hiini
Perth Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) Bishop Harry Entwistle would be happy to serve as a priest under the new provisions set out on October 20 by the Vatican.
The prelate, who is married with two children aged 34 and 37, said the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s establishment of a structure for Anglicans who wish to be in full corporate communion with the Holy See was “beyond the wildest dreams” of the TAC, believed to number approximately 400,000 worldwide.
The structure to be created by Pope Benedict is an Ordinariate, something like a diocese without geographical boundaries which exists wherever its members and clergy are.
One Ordinariate already exists in Australia. The Roman Catholic Military Ordinariate is led by Bishop Max Davis in Canberra and its clergy minister to Catholics in all branches of the armed forces.
The Anglican Ordinariate in the Catholic Church would be headed by ‘Ordinaries,’ almost certainly Bishops. Bishops of the Ordinariate will not be married under Pope Benedict’s structure.
Bishop Entwistle speculated that there could be a possibility for priests such as himself to be local ordinaries, as one Bishop leading the whole country may be impractical.
Details are to be specified in the forthcoming Apostolic Constitution. Existing Catholic prelates like Melbourne Auxiliary Bishop Peter Elliott and Lismore Bishop Geoffrey Jarrett, both Anglican converts, might be ideal candidates as Bishop of this new “Ordinariate” for the understanding and knowledge of the Anglican faith they would bring to such positions.
Bishop Entwistle was one of the TAC bishops who signed a copy of The Catechism of the Catholic Church together with an accompanying letter in October 2007 which they presented to Vatican officials as a gesture of unconditional submission.
In the letter, the Bishops stated they would do whatever the Holy Father required to be received into the Church.
The new provisions announced by the CDF enable the TAC to maintain its Anglican traditions and spirituality, including liturgy, while being in communion with the Holy See.
“It’s groundbreaking,” Bishop Entwistle told The Record. “(The changes) are (the Vatican) trying to heal the breaches of the Reform with those Anglicans who have tried and wish to continue to live the Catholic life and disciplines.”
Currently in charge of about 10 priests and 120 TAC faithful in WA in Lesmurdie, Albany and Brentwood, he is based at the Church of St Ninian and St Chad in Maylands, purchased from the Catholic Archdiocese of Perth when it was the East Maylands mission of the Catholic Maylands parish, called St Pius XII Church.
In Australia, the TAC’s regions are the West (WA), Central (South Australia, Northern Territory), South (Victoria, Tasmania) and North (Queensland, NSW and New Zealand).
Bishop Entwistle arrived in Perth in 1988 as an Anglican chaplain for Fremantle Prison, coming from similar duties at Wandsworth Prison, south London – “a tough prison”. He was later Rector at St Patrick’s Anglican Church in Mt Lawley.
In 2006 he joined the TAC after concluding the Anglican Communion had “abandoned the Catholic Faith”.
Bishop Entwistle made the decision to move to the TAC when those he describes as the “ultra-liberal” movement within the Anglican Communion, once on its fringe, began leading it. With women and openly practicing homosexual priests and later bishops being ordained, Bishop Entwistle had enough.
These changes, however, were merely the more public signs, he said, of a wider theological and philosophical malaise in the Anglican Communion which saw challenges to basic tenets of the Catholic Faith such as the Incarnation and radical reinterpretations of Scripture.
“Once you entertain the idea that Christ isn’t the Incarnate God, you deny the classic understanding of the Trinity,” he told The Record. Now, the promise of Popes dating back to Paul VI in the 1960s for Anglicans to be welcomed into the Catholic Church through “unity without absorption” has been honoured in CDF Prefect Cardinal William Levada’s October 20 announcement, Bishop Entwistle said.
Adelaide-based Archbishop John Hepworth, himself a former Catholic priest, heads the global TAC movement. He is currently in London beginning a visit to each of the general Synods of the TAC provinces. If, as expected, all accept the provisions of the new Ordinariate structure, a formal application on behalf of the global TAC movement will be made for corporate communion into the Church.
Individual members will then decide whether they wish to enter the new Anglican Ordinariate.
While The Record had previously speculated that groups like the TAC would be welcomed into the Church as a Personal Prelature similar to Opus Dei, a semi-autonomous group with its own clergy and laity, “What we seem to have been offered is a Rite in all but name,” Bishop Entwistle said.
The TAC’s ideal was to be received as a Rite similar to the Eastern Rites, but were open to whatever the Holy See recommended, he said.
The TAC’s Mass is based on the 1928 Prayer Book with the English Missal, though he speculated that his flock may be given a liturgy based on the Sarum Rite which was used in England prior to the English Reformation.
Anglicans path to Catholicism may yet be rocky
By Anthony Barich
The Traditional Anglican Communion is growing too fast and its Corporate Communion with the Holy See will not be an easy path, Perth TAC Bishop Harry Entwistle said.
Archbishop John Hepworth, Primate of the global TAC movement and Ordinary to the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia, told a meeting of its Queensland Synod Australia at St Stephen’s Anglican Catholic College in Coomera in July that “we have grown too fast. What we have done was planned by God”.
TAC communities have been using public halls and, in some cases, sympathetic Catholic dioceses and parishes have given them churches and halls to conduct their Masses in around the world. Archbishop Hepworth told the Queensland Synod that TAC’s major problem has been that it has not had the infrastructure and the financial resources to cope and service the demands of new churches and missions worldwide.
“We are experiencing the growth of God amongst his faithful people in an Anglican Catholic way,” he said.
“Had we designed it, our endeavours would have been much easier to manage, but what we have done was planned by God.”
Bishop Entwistle, who like Archbishop Hepworth will need to be demoted to a priest in the new provisions set out by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on October 20, said the TAC’s largest growth is in South America, Africa and India. After Bishop Entwistle and the TAC’s world Bishops signed and submitted a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to the Vatican in a sign of total submission asking for Corporate and Sacramental Communion with the Holy See, Vatican officials told them not to ordain any more Bishops until a decision was made.
Since then, they have been “managing” without more Bishops while their flock, initially estimated to number around 400,000, has exploded.
Archbishop Hepworth said at the Queensland Synod that the intensity of persecution by mainstream Anglicanism and wrongful use of Canon law continues in the Anglican communion.
“Much of what we do in Australia has changed with the introduction of women Bishops, and Catholics cannot relate to bishopesses,” he said.
Seizing the day: audacious move: Pope Benedict initiates a window of opportunity for unity
It was hard to over-emphasise the historic nature of Pope Benedict’s decision to establish a new structure for Anglicans seeking unity
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
Pope Benedict XVI has established a special structure for Anglicans who want to be in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church while preserving aspects of their Anglican spiritual and liturgical heritage, said US Cardinal William Levada.
The Cardinal, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said a new apostolic constitution would establish "personal ordinariates" – similar to dioceses – to oversee the pastoral care of those who want to bring elements of their Anglican identity into the Catholic Church with them.
Anglican priests who are married may be ordained Catholic priests, but married Anglican bishops will not be able to function as Catholic bishops in keeping with the long-standing Catholic and Orthodox tradition of ordaining only unmarried clergy as Bishops, Cardinal Levada said.
The Cardinal announced the new arrangement at a press conference on October 20 at the Vatican. He said the Pope’s apostolic constitution and norms for implementing it were undergoing final revisions and would be published in a couple of weeks. In establishing the new jurisdictions, Pope Benedict is responding to "many requests" submitted by individual Anglicans and by Anglican groups – including "20 to 30 Bishops" – asking to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church, the Cardinal said.
At the same time, Cardinal Levada said the new provision does not weaken the commitment of the Vatican to promoting Christian unity, but is a recognition that many Anglicans share the Catholic faith and that Anglicans have a spiritual and liturgical life worth preserving.
“It has always been the principal aim – the principal aim – to achieve the full, visible unity” of the Catholic Church and Anglican Communion, the Cardinal said.
But given recent changes within many Anglican provinces with the ordination of women priests and Bishops and the acceptance of practising homosexuality in some areas, the prospect of full unity “seemed to recede,” he said.
The Church recognises and welcomes those Anglicans who fully share the Catholic Faith, agree with the Catholic view that only men can be ordained priests and recognise the role of the Bishop of Rome – the Pope – as the sign and guarantor of Church unity, he said.
At a press conference in London on October 20, Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, head of the Anglican Communion, and Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, issued a joint statement saying the new provisions are a recognition of “the substantial overlap in faith, doctrine and spirituality between the Catholic Church and the Anglican tradition.
“Without the dialogues of the past 40 years, this recognition would not have been possible, nor would hopes for full visible unity have been nurtured,” the two leaders said.
Archbishop Williams told reporters that some members of the Church of England are uneasy about positions their Church is taking, yet they would not want to become Roman Catholic.
"This will not resolve their challenges, and we in the Church of England have to continue to engage with that," he said.
Cardinal Levada told reporters he met personally on October 19 with Archbishop Williams, who had been told about the new arrangement a month earlier.
In a letter to top Anglican leaders, Archbishop Williams said, "In the light of recent discussions with senior officials in the Vatican, I can say that this new possibility is in no sense at all intended to undermine existing relations between our two communions or to be an act of proselytism or aggression. It is described as simply a response to specific inquiries from certain Anglican groups and individuals wishing to find their future within the Roman Catholic Church."
"For those who wish to enter into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church in the near future, this announcement will clarify possible options, and we wish them God’s strength and guidance in their discernment," the Anglican leader said. Cardinal Levada also said Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, had been informed about the Pope’s decision.
Asked on October 15 about the possible entrance of groups of former Anglicans into the Catholic Church, Cardinal Kasper said, "We are not fishing in the Anglican lake; proselytism is not the policy of the Catholic Church. But if there are people who, obeying their consciences, want to become Catholic, we cannot shut the door."
Archbishop Augustine Di Noia, secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments and former undersecretary of the CDF, spoke at the press conference with Cardinal Levada. "We have been praying for unity for 40 years. We find now that the prayers we have had are being answered in a way that we did not anticipate. So the Holy Spirit is at work here and the Holy See cannot not respond," the Archbishop said.
In 1993, the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales asked the Vatican not to implement special structures for former Anglicans in their country, saying that the formation of Anglican-identity Catholic parishes would only further fracture the Christian community and would make the eventual unity of the Catholic Church and Anglican Communion more difficult.
Participants in the Anglican-Roman Catholic dialogue also have expressed concern in the past that the movement of Catholics to the Anglican Communion is making the Anglican Communion more liberal, while the movement of Anglicans to the Catholic Church is making the Catholic community more conservative.
Archbishop Di Noia said, "The ecumenical movement has changed. There has been a tremendous shift" in the prospects for full, complete union.
Many Anglicans already consider themselves to be Catholic, Archbishop Di Noia said, and the Pope’s new initiative will make "explicit the bond that is already implicit." In 1980, the Vatican made a special pastoral provision for members of the Episcopal Church, the US province of the Anglican Communion, who wanted to become Catholic after the Episcopalians began ordaining women priests. The provision included permission for entire parishes of former Episcopalians to use elements of their liturgy in the Catholic Mass.
Archbishop Di Noia said only a handful of parishes took advantage of that special permission, and in 2003 the Vatican approved The Book of Divine Worship for their liturgical use.
But he said many of those now seeking communion with Rome wanted a stronger affirmation of their Anglican heritage and a guarantee that it would continue to have a place in the Catholic Church, which is why the Pope ordered the establishment of personal ordinariates.
The number of ordinariates and their headquarters will be determined by the number of Anglicans seeking full communion, Cardinal Levada said. The head of each ordinariate will be a former Anglican clergyman, who will not necessarily be ordained a Catholic Bishop.
New priests for the ordinariates will study in seminaries with other Catholic seminarians, but an ordinariate can “establish a house of formation to address the particular needs of formation in the Anglican patrimony”, Cardinal Levada said.
In general, married Anglican priests and Bishops who become Catholic will be ordained Catholic priests, as will married Anglican seminarians, he said.
But an unmarried man ordained a Catholic priest will not be permitted to marry, and the Pope’s apostolic constitution will state a clear preference for a celibate clergy, Archbishop Di Noia said.
Cardinal Levada told reporters that he realises “for some people it seems to be a problem” that the Vatican is allowing married former Anglicans to be ordained Catholic priests, but will not allow Catholic priests who have left to marry to return to ministry.
“They are two different circumstances,” the Cardinal said. Respecting “the authenticity of the call to service” of Anglican clergy who were married when they came to the decision to become Catholic is different from the case of “a Catholic who knowingly commits to a celibate priesthood and then decides for different reasons to leave the priesthood for married life”.
“I do not think it is an insurmountable problem,” Cardinal Levada said, adding that the Church needs to educate Catholics that the dispensation for former Anglican clergy is an exception and that the Church continues to uphold the virtue of celibacy.