UK Anglicans have taken formal steps to take up Benedict XVI’s offer of inclusion.
By Anthony Barich
National Reporter
THE Traditional Anglican Communion’s (TAC) Province in Great Britain has become the first to accept Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Constitution for Anglicans.
All its members voted unanimously to come into communion with Rome under the terms of the new provision, which allows them to retain their Anglican patrimony. The vote included postal votes from those who could not be present.
The resolution was passed at their October 29 Synod at
St Catherine’s Priory, a restored Monastic House destroyed by Henry VIII that will be the TAC’s headquarters in England. The TAC has spent over four million pounds restoring the Priory as a national cathedral, and the world-heritage rated monastic ruins are visible through plate glass sections of the floor in the restored church.
Other buildings on the site that have been restored include the monastic refectory that serves as a hall and a youth training facility. Archbishop John Hepworth ordained a deacon there recently – the first ordination on the site since the Reformation.
The resolution, passed in the presence of the Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, Archbishop Hepworth of Australia, read: “That this Assembly, representing the Traditional Anglican Communion in Great Britain, offers its joyful thanks to Pope Benedict XVI for his forthcoming Apostolic Constitution allowing the corporate reunion of Anglicans with the Holy See, and requests the Primate and College of Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion to take the steps necessary to implement this Constitution.”
TAC Bishop David Moyer – a former President of Forward in Faith North America, a worldwide association of Anglicans who are unable in conscience to accept the ordination of women as priests or as Bishops – said that the Bishops, priests, ordinands and lay representatives at the Synod were brought to a place of “being in full accord and of one mind, as St Paul prayed for the Church in Philippi”.
“The questions and concerns that were expressed in regard to what had been read and heard about the forthcoming Apostolic Constitution were addressed by (Adelaide-based) Archbishop John Hepworth, Bishop Robert Mercer from Canada) and myself,” Bishop Moyer said.
“The Resolutions unanimously passed by the Assembly were carefully written and clearly reflect the British TAC’s corporate desire and intention.
“All present realised that the requirement for the days ahead is patience, charity, and openness to the Holy Spirit.”
The vote took place in the birthplace of the Anglican Communion, and its members voted in favour despite the Apostolic Constitution clarifying the terms of the structure by which Anglicans would be accepted having not yet been published at that time.
Papal document safeguards Anglicans from ‘absorption’ by Roman Church
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY – Former Anglicans entering the Catholic Church can preserve their liturgical traditions, stay married priests in some circumstances and even keep a shade of their consultative decision-making processes, according to Pope Benedict XVI’s document on new structures for welcoming the former Anglicans.
The Pope’s apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus (“Groups of Anglicans”) was published on November 9 at the Vatican along with specific norms governing the establishment and governance of “personal ordinariates,” structures similar to dioceses, for former Anglicans who become Catholic.
As previously announced by the Vatican, the constitution said there could be exemptions to the Church’s celibacy rule to allow married former Anglican priests to be ordained as Catholic priests. However, it emphasised that this would be done on a “case-by-case basis.”
An accompanying Vatican statement said the possibility of having some married clergy under this special arrangement “does not signify any change in the Church’s discipline of clerical celibacy.”
The ordinariates will be established by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in consultation with the National Bishops’ Conference where the ordinariate is to be based, the text said.
The Pope will appoint the head of each ordinariate, although he will choose from a list of three candidates nominated by the jurisdiction’s governing council, the norms said. The council will be made up of at least six priests belonging to the ordinariate.
A commentary published by the Vatican with the constitution and norms said the role of the governing council in choosing an Ordinary, giving consent for a candidate to be ordained to the priesthood and establishing parishes and seminaries is a sign of “respect for the synodal tradition of Anglicanism.”
Within the Anglican Communion, synods are made up of clergy and laypeople and they directly elect Bishops and set policy. The Ordinary, even if he is not a Bishop, is automatically a member of the National Bishops’ Conference and is required to make an ad limina visit to the Vatican every five years to report on the status of the ordinariate, the constitution said.
The Pope’s apostolic constitution and the norms for implementing it repeatedly state a preference for celibacy for priests in the Latin rite of the Catholic Church.
“The Ordinary, in full observance of the discipline of celibate clergy in the Latin Church, as a rule will admit only celibate men to the order of presbyter” or priest, the constitution said. The Ordinary may petition the Pope for an exemption to allow married men to be ordained Catholic priests, it said.
The norms explicitly exclude the possibility of ordaining married Anglican priests who previously were ordained as Catholic priests as well as excluding Anglican priests who are in “irregular marriage situations,” such as those who have been divorced and remarried.
Only celibate former Anglican Bishops may be ordained Catholic Bishops in keeping with the tradition of both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches, the new norms said.
Unmarried men who want to be ordained “must submit to the norm of clerical celibacy,” the constitution said.
According to the norms, new seminarians must be part of the personal ordinariate or be former Anglicans who have established full communion with the Catholic Church. They may not be originally baptised Catholics who later became Anglicans or joined the personal ordinariate.
In fact, the norms said, “Those baptised previously as Catholics outside the ordinariate are not ordinarily eligible for membership” in the ordinariate itself “unless they are members of a family belonging to the ordinariate.”
The norms called for the new personal ordinariates to provide an adequate salary, pension and insurance for their priests, but the rules also recognise that may be a challenge with priests who are married and have children. The norms allow for priests, with the permission of their Ordinary, to “engage in a secular profession compatible with the exercise of priestly ministry.”
In the apostolic constitution, dated November 4, Pope Benedict reaffirmed his commitment to promoting Christian unity and said that as the one chosen “to preside over and safeguard the universal communion of all the Churches,” he had to find a way to accept the request of Anglican individuals and groups who wanted “to be received into full Catholic communion.”
While the former Anglicans will be able to celebrate the Latin-rite Mass like any other Catholic, he said, members of the ordinariate also will be able “to celebrate the holy Eucharist and the other sacraments, the Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical celebrations according to the liturgical books proper to the Anglican tradition, which have been approved by the Holy See.”
In order to join the personal ordinariate, he said, former Anglican laypeople and religious “must manifest this desire in writing,” while former Anglican priests are admitted by the Ordinary according to the rules in canon law for being incardinated into a diocese or other church jurisdiction.
The Vatican commentary, written by Jesuit Fr Gianfranco Ghirlanda, a canon lawyer and rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University, said the constitution and norms respond to two needs: maintaining the spiritual and liturgical traditions of the former Anglicans while integrating them fully into the Latin rite of the Catholic Church.
Fr Ghirlanda said: “These personal ordinariates cannot be considered as particular ritual churches” – like the Ukrainian, Maronite or Coptic Catholic churches – “since the Anglican liturgical, spiritual and pastoral tradition is a particular reality within the Latin Church” while the Eastern churches developed separately. Establishing the ordinariates and allowing former Anglicans to maintain some of their traditions, he said, ensures that they “are not simply assimilated into the local dioceses in a way which would lead to the loss of the richness of their Anglican tradition, which would be an impoverishment of the entire Church.”