The Australian Ordinariate will reach out to “baptised pagans” in the face of scepticism, negativity and anti-Catholicism, its leader Mgr Harry Entwistle announced last Sunday, saying there was “no shortage of people to invite” to communion with Christ.
In a clarion call to its communities of former Anglicans throughout the country, Mgr Entwistle said the Ordinariate was entering a new phase of making its purpose, and therein itself, more widely known.
“We live in a culture that is desperate to connect but very reluctant to commit. This is true as much in the area of personal relationships, to work, voluntary organisations as it is to the Church. So what can we do?” Mgr Entwistle said in his homily at St Ninian and St Chad’s in Maylands on September 1.
“Congregations must ask themselves what would a visitor who is looking to connect, encounter in their parish worship?
“A religious musical concert; a social justice forum; a weekly gathering of parish activity groups sharing a ritual meal together; a group of individuals who are there because they still feel they have an obligation to fulfil, but can’t wait for it to finish?
“Or will they find a community that is excited about its faith in God; a community that studies the teachings of the Church; a community that reads and studies the Scriptures and other spiritual writings, and above all a community that worships and prays together and believes what it prays? Is it a community in which God is exper-ienced? This is the sort of community we in the Ordinariate are called to be.”
Thirteen priests and three deacons have been ordained to the Ordinariate since June 2012. One deacon will be ordained priest on Sept 8 while another candidate will be ordained deacon and priest in October with another man awaiting approval to minister in Adelaide.
Mgr Entwistle said that while former Anglican clergy have been willing to come into unity with the Catholic Church, laity have been more reluctant, saying anti-Catholicism was “very alive and well among Anglicans, even among those who no longer attend Anglican churches”.
“This means that our next phase is one in which we make ourselves more widely known and explain exactly what the Ordinariate is and why it exists… a task we need to undertake both to those who are already Catholic as well as to those who may become so through the Ordinariate,” Mgr Entwistle said. “Members of the laity must feel confident enough to invite those who show a willingness to connect with the Catholic Church to come and see for themselves.”
The Ordinariate’s mission was the same as that of its patroness, Our Lady of the Southern Cross, Mgr Entwistle said, referring to Paul Newton’s depiction of Mary and Jesus hanging in Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral.
“As in most portrayals of the Blessed Virgin, Mary has an air of serenity and humility, but unlike many of them, in this painting she is focused on the child Jesus who is not looking at her, but out to the world,” Mgr Entwistle said.
“She is not drawing attention to herself but to her son, the one through whom the reconciliation between heaven and earth, between the spiritual and the temporal, between God and his creation was achieved.”
In 2009, then-Pope Benedict XVI paved the way for groups of former Anglicans to come into communion with the Catholic Church while retaining their English spirituality by allowing the creation of personal Ordinariates.
It was a gesture to demonstrate to the world, Mgr Entwistle said, that “true Christian unity, which is based on sharing the same faith while expressing that faith in different ways, can be a reality”.
“This is being united without being absorbed by the larger body. Those who believe that unity means sharing communion together while believing very differing things want to settle for far less than real unity.”
While the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, as it is formally known, is not open to existing Catholics who do not have a strong Anglican connection, it fully intends to reach out to Anglicans and former Anglicans who are considering becoming Catholic, and Catholics and other Christians who have been baptised but have not received any of the other Catholic Sacraments of Initiation.
“There are those who have been baptised and that has been the beginning and end of their connection with the Church. These are those we might describe as baptised pagans. No shortage of people to invite,” Mgr Entwistle said.
As the first group from a church of the Reformation to re-join the Catholic Church, the nascent Ordinariate was in need of financial support, Mgr Entwistle said, but more than that, it needed “committed members who are resolute in the face of scepticism and negativity”.
“Christians are invited to travel the Way of the Cross, not to take a stroll in the park. It is costly, hard and at times disheartening, but we are not alone.
“We have each other in the Church, the sustaining prayers of Our Lady and we have the One who promised to be with us always, if like our patroness, we keep our eyes firmly fixed on him.”