By Bridget Spinks
TWO Perth Catholics explained the personal significance of the new Anglican Ordinariate in Australia to an audience at Holy Family parish in Como last Saturday, 26 February.
Many of those gathered were Traditional Anglicans who will soon be members of the Catholic Church’s Anglican Ordinariate.
The festival launching the Anglican Ordinariate (a non-geographical
diocese) in Perth was hosted by Perth Traditional Anglican Communion
Bishop Harry Entwistle as a measure to explain the details of the new
structure.
Robert Andrews, a PhD student at The University of Notre Dame Australia
in Fremantle who wrestled with becoming a Catholic for ten years, said
the Apostolic Constitution is one of a number of Pope Benedict XVI’s
moves to attempt to unify the Body of Christ.
“I’ve often emphasised to people who have some criticism of the Anglican Ordinariates that this ‘Anglican spirituality’ is something the Pope desires as a gift to be brought in,” Robert Andrews said at the festival.
Robert’s religious experience is rooted in what he calls ‘low-church’
‘Protestant-Anglicanism’ where he was encouraged to read any of the
literature on the shelves at the church.
Perusing the library of old hymnals, Robert discovered the Book of
Common Prayer, written by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury, a
leader of the Reformation; and here learned the essentials of the
Catholic faith.
This is the same way that Fr Keith Newton – a former Anglican Bishop who
was ordained a Catholic priest and the first Ordinary of the Personal
Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham on 15 January – learnt the faith
as well.
“I discovered that the Book of Common Prayer spoke of a Catholicism; it
became evident that there was an apostolic succession and every page had
an element of Catholic ethos coming off it,” he said.
By writing an Honours thesis on an influential leader of the Oxford
Movement and a convert to Catholicism, the now Blessed John Henry
Newman, who co-founded the Oxford Movement which attempted to restore
Catholicity to their Anglican Church, Robert concluded that he ‘didn’t
disagree with anything’.
When Robert found he had no doctrinal objections to the Catholic faith, he converted to Catholicism in 2008.
“I felt I had a need to settle this,” he said.
“There were intellectual and spiritual objections I had to overcome; I realised that this is what I believe.”
But even now as a Catholic, he still slips into the back pews of
Anglican churches to take in the beauty of the service of Evensong; rich
in its use of Bible readings, the wonderful English and excellent
choirs. To grasp the depth of Anglican spirituality, it needs to be
experienced, he said.
“That combination of wonderful liturgy and Englishness is what attracts
me; it’s been the spirituality that I most like and it has a reality,”
he said.
Robert said that there are many gems of sacred English within the
Anglican liturgy but he prefaced this with a caveat that ‘liturgy and
buildings’ are not the most important thing about Anglicanorum Coetibus
(“Groups of Anglicans”): ‘that’s important and it’s the means with which
we go to God’ but after all, he chose to become Catholic because he
agreed with the tenets of the Faith.
Meanwhile, Peter Hannan, who was born into a Roman Catholic family in
1968, only discovered in his adulthood the Anglican Use of the Roman
Rite.
Peter’s dad converted from Anglicanism to Catholicism while courting his
mother and, as a family, they attended Mass at Sacred Heart Church in
the parish known as Kenwick/Thornlie. During his upbringing in the 70s
and 80s, Peter was hopeful of a reunion of the two traditions as he
often heard his parish priest, the late Fr Eivers, refer to the local
Anglican congregation as “Our Separated Brethren across the road”.
The two parishes would join forces for the Christmas Carol Services held at the Catholic primary school.
“We should all hope and pray that the Anglican Ordinariate in Australia
will, once it is up and running and as time goes by, attract more
Anglicans and members of other denominations, such as Lutherans,” Peter
said at the festival.
Like Robert, Peter hopes that Anglicanorum Coetibus will enrich the
Catholic liturgy in its Novus Ordo (“New Order”) form.
“My hope is that the Rite of Holy Mass used in the Ordinariate in
Western Australia will show that a Roman Liturgy in the vernacular can
and should have as much of a vertical dimension as the Old Tridentine
Mass,” he said.
While living in Melbourne from 1999 to 2002, Peter had a
‘liturgical revelation’ when he learned by reading Eamon Duffy’s The
Stripping of the Altars that, prior to the Reformation, the English –
who were effectively Catholic, such as St Thomas More, who was martyred
by King Henry VIII – would have assisted at Mass according to the Sarum
Rite.
When writing the Book of Common Prayer, Archbishop Cranmer drew on this Latin Sarum Liturgy.
The 2009 Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus, follows Vatican
moves in 1980 that welcomed episcopal priests and laity who sought full
communion with the Catholic Church.
Under John Paul II’s 1980 Pastoral Provision, married Anglican clergymen could be ordained as Catholic priests.
“The Pastoral Provision envisaged the establishment of parishes
comprising former Episcopalians with a former Episcopalian minister as
their priest, and preserving aspects of their former Anglo-Catholic
modes of parish life and worship,” Peter said.
This Pastoral Provision of the late Pope’s and the Anglican Use of the
Roman Rite – Mass celebrated according to the Book of Divine Worship –
has acted as ‘an unintended trial run’ for the Anglican Ordinariate, he
said.
When Peter discovered the existence of the Anglican Use of the Roman
Rite, which was practised within the Catholic Church at seven parishes
in the US, mostly in Texas, he felt he was missing out.
“How I wished I was one of those lucky ‘Cradle Catholic Texans’ who,
living nearby, and wanting to embrace something totally in tune with
their Catholic heritage, could assist at an Anglican Use Mass in
fulfilment of their Sunday obligation, sing with gusto Scriptural based
hymns, receive Jesus kneeling at an altar rail and generally engage in
an authentic version of the full and actual participation of which the
Vatican II Fathers spoke in (the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy)
Sacrosanctum Consilium,” Peter said.
In broad terms, Peter’s two main reasons for his enthusiasm for the
Anglican Ordinariate are that the implementation of the Constitution
marks a significant step towards the goal of Christian unity with and
under the successor of Peter.
Secondly, that the Constitution will provide impetus towards the
achievement of Pope Benedict’s objective of improving the way Holy Mass
is offered in the Roman Catholic Church.
Like Peter, Robert too anticipates the liturgical gift that Anglicans will bring to Catholicism.
“Anglicans will be bringing a rich tradition and I very much welcome
that and think it will enrich the Catholic Church in a number of ways,”
Robert said.
As a convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism, Robert said he hoped that
the Apostolic Constitution would make the ‘journey’ easier.