The customary definition of patrimony is “something inherited from one’s ancestors.” As we think about our own Anglican patrimony, quite rightly we consider such things as liturgy and language, music, aspects of architecture, things done “decently and in order.” Many things are defined and much is undefined, but it’s all unmistakably Anglican. However, we know also that “patrimony” isn’t static. For instance, we have parochial patrimonies which are reflected in particular churchmanship, treasured vestments, an honored tradition of music, pastoral practices with which we identify. But unless a parish is dead, its patrimony continues to grow and develop. It stands on what came before, certainly, but that which we hand on to subsequent generations isn’t exactly the same as what we received from our ancestors.

The Ordinariates will be moving into almost-uncharted waters. I say “almost-uncharted” because a few of us have had the opportunity to scout on ahead, and are already experiencing the Anglican patrimony as a living part of the Latin Rite. We’re finding there’s a richness which has developed as we’ve unpacked precious Anglican treasures in our new home. It’s rather like when my wife uses my great-grandmother’s recipe for plum pudding, and I discover it tastes even better.

This realization of a “developing patrimony” struck me the other day when I was offering one of the early weekday Masses. Of the forty-five or fifty people present, I don’t think any of them had ever attended an Episcopal or Anglican church. Almost all of them have belonged only to this parish – either for their whole lives, or from the time they were children. For them, the Collect for Purity is simply a Catholic prayer said at the beginning of the Mass; the Comfortable Words are part of a Catholic penitential rite; the Prayer of Humble Access is what Catholics say before receiving Holy Communion. They don't think of our liturgy as coming from “someplace else.” It’s just a Catholic liturgy. Of course, they've attended other Catholic parishes. They know our liturgy is different, and that our parish has a particular “feel.” But they have embraced and experienced our Anglican patrimony exclusively as Catholics, and in that way these second-generation Anglican Use Catholics probably have a clearer understanding of the patrimony being a living and developing patrimony, than do we who are first-generation converts. They haven’t had to attempt to live as Catholics outside the communion of the Catholic Church, and they’ve never gone through the mental gymnastics we had to endure, trying to put a Catholic spin on things, when much of the evidence around us was contrary to what we believed about ourselves.

The little experiment that is the Anglican Use, local though it is, gives a glimpse of the future, because the Ordinariates will be doing all this on a grand scale – oh, probably not grand at the beginning, but when second-generation Ordinariate Catholics become the majority of our members, there will be a much deeper understanding of our Anglican patrimony, because it will have been experienced in the context of full communion with the Holy See.

Most of those heading toward an Ordinariate think in terms of what they'll be able to bring with them, and that's important. Our Lord said, “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost,” and that applies to the various elements of our patrimony which come from our past. But the Lord also said, “Behold, I make all things new,” and that, too, applies to our patrimony. Within the Ordinariates, all the familiar things we love will be made new, for a new generation of Catholics. Our past is building the future.

Bishop Robert Mercer

The now retired Bishop of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC) Robert Mercer, well-beloved in Canada, received a standing ovation after this presentation at the ACCC Synod.  I have put it below the break, as it is rather long.   Enjoy!

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“I am a Jew.”  So says St. Paul.  A lynch mob is about to do him in.  A Roman centurion to the rescue.  Paul says to him, “I am a Jew.”  A moment or two later, the centurion allows St. Paul to speak to the mob.  He repeats, “I am a Jew.”  This well-known text is in Acts chapters 21 and 22.

Life is full of opposites.  Tall, short.  Fat, thin.  Day, night.  It was self-evident to Paul’s contemporaries that there was another pair of opposites: Jew, Christian.  Either you were one, or you were the other.  But Paul does not accept this.  He does not say, “I used to be a Jew until I became a Christian.”  Paul does not say, “Because I was baptized into Jesus, because I believe in Jesus, I am therefore no longer a Jew.”  For Paul, it’s not a case of either/or.  It’s a case of both/and.  Paul writes to Rome, “I am (not I was) an Israelite of the seed of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin." (Romans 11:1)  “What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision?" (Romans 3:1)  Much in every way.  Jews were entrusted with the message of God.

To us and to our contemporaries, to Anglicans and to Roman Catholics, above all to journalists and newspapermen, it is self-evident that there is another pair of opposites: Anglican, Roman Catholic.  Either you are one, or you are the other.  In the fall of 2007, all the bishops and vicars general of the Traditional Anglican Communion unanimously approached the current Bishop of Rome.  In effect we asked him, "Must it be either/or? Can it be both/and?"  To our amazement, bewilderment and confusion, the Bishop of Rome answered, "Yes, you can be both Anglican and Catholic."  The Bishop of Fulham in the Church of England, Chairman of Forward in Faith International, those in England, America and Australia who remained on in the Canterbury Communion to fight from within, explained to his own constituents, “The Pope is offering us not to become Roman Catholics but to become Anglicans in communion with Rome.”

A headline in The Catholic Herald, a weekly Roman Catholic paper in England, read like this: “Pope calls Anglican bluff.”  It seemed to me that the paper was alluding to the prayer of St. Augustine, “Lord, make me chaste but not yet.”  Anglicans have long been praying for Christian unity.  Anglican monks and nuns have been twinned, so to speak, with Roman Catholic monks and nuns in Europe.  My own Community of the Resurrection, for example, is twinned with Benedictine men at Trier in Germany.  Since the 1960s, Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops and theologians have been in careful and protracted dialogue about unity.  They have published several agreed statements about doctrine.  Earlier, in the 1920s, two scholars in my Community, Bishops Frere and Gore, were in such talks in Belgium.  There is only one thing worse than not getting what you want, and that is getting what you want.  We have wanted unity; so we claimed.  But will our prayer turn out to have meant, “Lord give us unity, but not yet?”  Has the Pope called our Anglican bluff?

Improbable as it will seem to you, I have, since my teens, been praying for this very thing, even though I’d never heard the word Ordinariate, and was hazy about the word Uniate.  It seems a hopeless prayer to offer up.  I loved the Anglican Church.  I never wanted to cease being Anglican.  But then I loved the Roman Catholic Church also.  Such exemplars, saints and teachers in the past, such holy men and women, such contemporaneous and godly missionaries and martyrs in my own day in Zimbabwe.  It seemed so silly in our circumstances for us to be opponents and competitors.  Might it be possible to belong to both simultaneously?  What an absurd dream it seemed at the time.  How could God possibly grant my request?  O ye of little faith!  But when in London, for example, I’d go to Westminster Cathedral, kneel by the tomb of a Roman Catholic priest hanged, drawn and quartered by Anglicans in the reign of Elizabeth the First and ask that somehow we might be one, as once we were.  In all sorts of places, I’d repeat my request, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, by St. Peter’s tomb in Rome, by St. Paul’s tomb in Rome, in Canterbury Cathedral, in the Anglican Shrine of Walsingham, in my former cathedral in Bulawayo while Pope John Paul II was preaching at Prayer Book Evensong, or during unity talks which Anglicans and Roman Catholics were holding in Zimbabwe in the 1980s after John Paul II had been to pray with Archbishop Runcie in Canterbury Cathedral.

And now towards the end of my life and ministry, now during the reign of Elizabeth the Second, after a break of some 450 years, it will be possible to be both Anglican and in communion with Rome.  No wonder I have difficulty in getting my head around this fact!  No wonder I have difficulty in finding the exact words to describe this totally new prospect.  Can this really be happening?  Shall I live to see it?  Shall I participate in it?

During the 450 years we have been alienated from Rome, the Holy Spirit has showered blessings upon us.  I lay claim and shall continue to lay claim to them all.  These godly people and their talents make me who I am.  I do not, I shall never, repudiate them.  Time would fail me to tell of my Church of Ireland godfather, the principal at my theological college in South Africa, the bishop who ordained me in Zimbabwe.  Brethren in the Community of the Resurrection like Gerard Beaumont, Gabriel Sanford, Matthew Trelawney-Ross.  Nuns like Sister Benedicta, Sister Eva, Mother Cecile.  Apologists like C.S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, Charles Williams.  Poets like John Donne, George Herbert, T.S. Eliot.  Hymn writers like John Mason Neale, Charles Wesley, Bishop Ken.  Missionaries like Monica Boatwright, Dorothy Maund, Arthur Shearly Cripps.  Martyrs like Bernard Mizeki, Manche Masemola, the martyrs of Papua New Guinea.  Pioneers like Robert and Sophie Gray, Wyndham Knight Bruce, Billy Gaul.  Confessors like Fr. Benson, Fr. Palmer, Bishop de Catanzaro.  Preachers like Austin Farrer, Jonathan Graham, John Wesley.  Parish priests like Father Dolling, Father Lowder, Dr. Wirgman.  Scholars like Dr. Pusey, Dr. Mascall, the brothers Henry and Owen Chadwick.  The Book of Common Prayer, the King James Bible, the English Hymnal, Hymns Ancient & Modern.  Composers and choirmasters Henry Purcell, Orlando Gibbons, Charles Villiers Stanford.  Artists, architects and designers, Bodley, Pearson, Sir Ninian Comper, Martin Travers.  Eccentric and lovable characters like Fr. Hope Patten, Fr. Wason, Sir John Betjeman.  The writers Alan Paton, Thomas Traherne, Kenneth Kirk.  Heroes and heroines of the Caroline Divines, of the Evangelical Revival, of the Oxford Movement, of missionary expansion round the world, of the restoration of the religious life, of works of mercy and of social reform, Florence Nightingale, Priscilla Lydia Sellon, Lord Shaftesbury, William Wilberforce, Prime Minister Gladstone.  I note with pleasure that in some cases where Rome has accepted former Anglicans as full and uncompromising submissions, the submitters received their formation in Bible, doctrine, liturgy and faith from the Anglican Church: John Henry Newman, G.K. Chesterton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ronald Knox, John Bradburne.

To the end of his life St. Paul said, “I am a Jew.”  He meant of course a completed Jew, a fulfilled Jew, a Jew as he is meant to be, that’s to say, a Jew in Christ, but a Jew all the same.  I hope to be able to say, “I am an Anglican, a completed Anglican, a fulfilled Anglican, an Anglican in full and visible communion with the universal primate of the universal church, but an Anglican all the same.”

Fr. Aidan Nichols, an ex-Anglican now a Dominican theologian, has written: “Anglo-Catholics are beyond a doubt as to doctrine, worship and devotion a displaced part of Catholic Christendom.  And it is as such a part that I shall be now quoting from some of their lay spokesmen.”  The time has come for us to stop being displaced persons.

The Archbishop of Canterbury’s coat of arms features a vestment called a pallium.  It is white, Y-shaped, marked with little black crosses.  It hangs over other vestments.  It looks rather like a yoke.  It is given by the Pope to the archbishops of ancient and important dioceses, as a mark of the close link between him and them.  In 597, Pope Gregory sent St. Augustine to be Archbishop of Canterbury.  Augustine’s successors wore the pallium until the breach with Rome.  It is time for the pallium to come off the coat of arms and to be worn over the Archbishop’s shoulders once more.  But if this can not yet be because of Canterbury’s embrace of a liberal agenda, let us at least return to the rock from which Canterbury is hewn.  As the ancient Celtic Church of Britain at the Synod of Whitby in 664 entered into full and visible unity with Rome, let us do the same.

The Pope’s Apostolic Constitution is not addressed exclusively to us in the Traditional Anglican Communion.  Some who are still in the Canterbury Communion and who belong to groups like the Prayer Book Society, Forward in Faith, the Church Union, the Federation of Catholic Priests, the Society of the Sacred Cross, the Society for the Maintenance of the Faith, the Guild of All Souls, the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Society of Mary, and religious of the Orthodox tradition, as well as those who belong to no organizations or guilds in a particular way, may want to respond to the Pope.  In Canada and in England, once hears rumours or declarations of a parish here, of a clergyman there.  Rumours may be unfounded.  Those who belong to other Continuing Anglican jurisdictions, such as those which multiply in the USA, may want to respond to the Pope.  If so, we shall be together with all these in the future Ordinariates.  Initially, until growing numbers alter things, there will be one Ordinariate in each country.  Those who gave up being Anglican in order to submit to Rome, may be interested in returning to their Anglican roots by joining us in the Ordinariate.

In the States, there has already been a pilot scheme, so to speak, called the Anglican Use.  Episcopalians who went over with their rector, perhaps with their property and monies, were permitted to retain their Prayer Book tradition and hymnody, their way of worshipping and of organizing their parish life.  One or two of these parishes grew with astonishing speed.  One hears of one which began with twelve members, which now has twelve hundred members, which makes a handsome contribution to the Roman Catholic diocese, which has founded a school for children, from beginners to school leavers, complete with football team.  It is not just disgruntled Episcopalians whom these parishes attracted.  Parishes of the Anglican Use have won people from unbelief.  Each year the Anglican Use hold a conference.  This year, they invited Archbishops Hepworth and Falk, Bishops Moyer and Reid, to observe.  Our TAC observers got a standing ovation.  It may be that the seven or so parishes of the Anglican Use will join us in the Ordinariate.  This Anglican Use has succeeded by showing stability and growth, by not blogging frenziedly in the manner of so many other Anglicans, and has won the trust of the Roman Catholic authorities.

I myself claim no expertise in holy matrimony, but I suspect that however much he and she may have been in love, that when it comes to settling down to live happily ever after, they discover there is no such thing as the perfect man or woman.  He will leave his screw drivers and saws all over the living room; she will hang up her undies to dry in the bathroom.  There is no reason to suppose that Roman Catholics will find us to be perfect, and vice versa.  Adjustments may be as necessary in this union as in any other.  We are not expected to approve or enjoy everything we find in Roman Catholicism.  The Pope himself does not approve or enjoy everything in his own Church.  He has likened some Roman Catholic celebrations of the Eucharist as more akin to a tea party than to a solemn proclamation of the Lord’s death until the Lord comes again. (1 Cor. 11:26)

Some of the problems are likely to be with cultural practices rather than with official Roman Catholic doctrine.  Cardinal Levada has said, “People imagine our Church to be monolithic but in fact it’s a broad tent.”  A Roman Catholic priest recently said to me, “Until I went to seminary in Rome, I was a Little Englander.  In Rome I discovered how many different cultures jostle together in one Church.”  A black man in Africa enquiring into Christianity and attending the funeral of a white man is likely to be repelled.  “I am scandalized by Christians.  Why, the whole service lasted no more than twenty minutes.  Coffin in, coffin out.  Nobody cried.  No speeches.  No party afterwards.”  A white man in Africa, enquiring into Christianity and attending the funeral of a black man is likely to be repelled.  “I am scandalized by Christians.  Five long hours.  Fifty hymns.  Twenty speeches.  Everybody pretending to grieve, howling away.  A party which lasted six hours.”  Each man is repelled, not by the Christian faith, but by the respective white and black cultures.  An Eskimo with a fear of elephants enquiring into Christianity, and attending a parish communion in India, might be repelled.  “I am scandalized by Christians.  Two altar boys carrying lighted candles, followed by a decorated elephant, followed by Archbishop Hepworth in an ox cart drawn by clergymen in white.”  The Eskimo is repelled, not by the Christian faith, but by Indian culture.  As in the Canterbury Communion, so too in the Roman.  If you can’t get to one of our Prayer Book Services in one of our Ordinariate Parishes, and therefore seek out the hospitality and charity of a Roman parish, you may have to shop around.  You may not care for a nun in jeans and blue hair singing “Michael Row the Boat Ashore.”  You may need to look for a Westminster Cathedral or Brompton Oratory for Palestrina or a Benedictine Abbey for plainsong.

Cardinal Levada has written, “Insofar as Anglican traditions express in a distinctive way the faith which we hold in common, the Anglican traditions are a gift to be shared in the wider Church.  The unity of the Church does not require a uniformity that ignores cultural diversity.  Our communion is strengthened by legitimate diversity, and so we are happy that these Anglicans bring with them their particular contributions.”  Many people have commented on or interpreted the Apostolic Constitution.  One or two have been authorized to do so officially and with authority.  One is Cardinal Levada himself whose address at Queen’s University, Kingston, has been widely distributed.  The other is the head of a university in Rome.  This Father Ghirlanda concludes his comments by writing: “A flexible structures has been instituted.  The Constitution and the Norms may be adapted in Decrees for each individual ordinariate in the light of particular local situations.  As the Holy Spirit has guided the preparation of the Constitution, so may He assist in its application.”  In other words, there is a hint here about cultures, and there is a hint here that we may perhaps learn from possible mistakes and remedy them.  Delicate negotiations are not free-for-alls.  It was not possible for all of you to meet in Rome members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.  Those who have met them, know them to be our courteous, helpful and trustworthy friends, as you can see when you read the Cardinal’s address in Kingston.

Those of us in established parishes may be satisfied with what we have.  I’m all right, Jack.  But we have to think of the ones and twos in distant places who seldom can get to Communion.  We have to think about when we travel.  There are very few traditional Anglican communities round the world.  The Apostolic Constitution brings us into communion with millions and millions in many countries.  Roman Catholic worship may not be our first preference, but Holy Communion is Holy Communion, Unction is Unction, Absolution is Absolution.  Priests and people in all sorts of places may come to our aid in all sorts of practical ways.  We must be realistic about the increasing hostility to Christians from secular authority.  We must be realistic about the mounting onslaught from Islam.  United we stand, divided we fall.  “If a man prevail against him that is alone, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” (Ecclesiastes 4:12)

But the pressure towards unity is motivated by more than such practical and realistic considerations.  The Pope has written, “Many elements of sanctification and truth are found outside the visible confines of the Roman Catholic Church.  Since these gifts of sanctification and truth belong to the Church of Christ, they are forces impelling towards catholic unity.”

Our Lord prayed and prays for unity.  We pray for unity.  The Pope claims, “The Holy Spirit has moved groups of Anglicans to petition repeatedly and insistently to be received into full communion with the Catholic Church.”  I, for one, say Amen to the Pope’s claim.

I am Anglican and Anglican I remain.  But gloriously, surprisingly, unexpectedly in answer to prayer, I shall become an Anglican in full and visible communion with the universal primate of the universal church, and will the millions and millions who are also in communion with them.

To God be thanks!

+Robert Mercer, CR

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How would you define an Anglo-Catholic?

The Church of England contains many varieties of Christians. Those who are nearer to the Catholic understanding of Scripture, Tradition and the Church, and who express this in their language (speaking, for instance, of the Altar, rather than the Holy Table) and their practice (celebrating the Eucharist regularly and frequently, in many churches not simply every week, but every day) would be called ‘Anglo-Catholic’.

You have been an Anglican bishop for the past fifteen years. What has been your role as a ‘flying bishop’?

In 1992 the central Council of our Church, the General Synod, decided that women might be ordained to the priesthood. In doing so it also said that those who did not accept this innovation must have provision made for them to enable them to continue as faithful Anglicans. For this purpose each Archbishop (there are two in England) consecrated one or two bishops, themselves opposed to women’s ordination, to minister to individuals and congregations who voted to ask for such extra provision. They were suffragans of the Archbishops, and so known as Provincial Episcopal Visitors (PEV’s) or, colloquially, ‘flying bishops’. My remit, for six years from 1995-2001, was to travel the length and breadth of the Eastern half of the Canterbury Province. I was consecrated to the See of Richborough – a title taken from the site where St Augustine set foot in England on his mission from Pope Gregory. On my retirement I became simply a super-numerary and honorary bishop in the diocese where I live, Winchester. My successor as Bishop of Richborough is Bishop Keith Newton.

Did the creation by Pope Benedict XVI of new Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans who wish to enter full communion with the Catholic Church come as a surprise for you?

The Holy Father’s initiative, directed at Groups of Anglicans, came as a great and very welcome surprise.

Many people ask “why now?” If Anglo-Catholics wish to seek communion with the See of Rome, why have they waited until now? Is it just a matter of women bishops or something deeper?

Many of us have believed that the Church of England was moving, for the past century at least, in an ever more catholic direction. With the international conversations between the Anglican Communion and Rome (the ARCIC Conversations) we believed and hoped there would be corporate reunion for us in our lifetime. Since the ordination of women to the priesthood, and now the likelihood of their consecration as bishops, that has faded as an impossible dream.

What are the main elements of the Anglican Patrimony you would like the Ordinariates to preserve?

Our fathers in the faith spoke of “reserve” in matters of faith. That is, a sort of quiet and simple spirit in the best of Anglican use. It has seemed to me a religious voice, a tone, in keeping with our national character. The language of our Prayer Book which introduced the vernacular into our worship five centuries ago seems to catch something of this plain, undemonstrative but deeply felt religious sensibility. But in truth, I think we cannot discover our Patrimony until we see it in a completely Catholic context.

Do you expect the Anglican Ordinariates to attract many people in England and Wales? Will whole parishes take the plunge?

It is difficult at present to see how it will be possible for entire parishes to join the Ordinariate, simply because the Church of England is very territorial, and will not readily part with, for instance, its buildings. For all that, there are several priests I know who are preparing their congregations, and who will take the first opportunity of belonging whether they can retain their parish churches or not.

Do you believe some Anglican Bishops will enter the Ordinariates? Are you personally planning to avail yourself of this opportunity?

Certainly I know of several Bishops who are exploring the possibility, as I am myself. I can see no other future for catholics in the Church of England than this.

Would you be willing to seek ordination in the Roman Catholic Church? Would you consider ordination or whatever your role is in the Ordinariate a denial of your pastoral work in the Anglican Communion or rather a culmination of that work?

Because the Holy Father’s appeal is to Groups of Anglicans, I believe my personal future is unimportant compared with what is offered to us all. If it is decided that my ministry can continue, and that I may be ordained a Priest in the Catholic Church, then I should be delighted – but I should join the Ordinariate unconditionally, and let others decide whether there might still be something for me to undertake. I am sure that the simple fact of joining the Ordinariate will be the crown and completion of my ministry up to this point.

What are the main difficulties you envisage in this adventure, both for yourself and for most Anglo-Catholics? Will the need to accept the faith of the Roman Catholic Church as proclaimed by the Catechism be an obstacle for many Anglo-Catholics?

I think for some Anglicans there are stumbling blocks within the Catechism. We have been separated from the Catholic mainstream for five hundred years, and there have been developments in doctrine with which we are unfamiliar. As a frequent visitor to Fatima, I have no difficulty with the Marian dogmas. There was a time when I found it hard to accept the Immaculate Conception (for I did not properly understand it) and Papal Infallibility. Others may still find these to be difficulties for them – I do not. And I hope and believe the Church will be very understanding and patient in explaining these matters. Far more important for me is the readiness of the Holy Father to accept and ordain men who have been married Anglican clergy. My wife has been a great help and adornment to my ministry, and I am glad there is the possibility that, should I be ordained a Catholic priest, this would continue.

Some members of the Ordinariates will come from the Anglican Communion, while others will come from different groups, such as the Traditional Anglican Communion, or even from Anglican Use parishes? Do you think that diversity will be a problem?

I believe that Anglicans in North America and elsewhere have been in such difficult situations that for them actual schism from the Anglican Communion has been necessary. I know several such priests and parishes, and have no doubt that we shall learn from one another and come to value one another. One of my greatest friends is a Priest of the Anglican Use in Texas, and I think he and I have more in common than I do with most of those in England who call themselves members of our church.

Do the Anglican Ordinariates have a future in the Catholic Church? How do you envisage them in, say, one hundred years?

I believe the Catholic Church is very patient; and I am sure she will want to learn from this experiment. I hope, personally, that the experience of a married priesthood might at some future date enable the Church to recognise that it is possible to have a double vocation, to the priesthood and to holy matrimony. I am greatly impressed by the way the Holy Father has introduced Anglicanorum Coetibus, making it clear that this is not a short-term solution to present-day problems, but a generous open offer for many years, perhaps centuries, to come. So who knows, it may be that eventually the Church of England will indeed return to her roots and become part of the One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church which she has always claimed to be.

How will the leaving (maybe we might say expelling) of Anglo-Catholics affect the Anglican Communion? Would it mean the end of its claim to be a branch of the Catholic Church? Do you expect the Anglican Communion to change much in the following years or decades?

It seems to me we are witnessing the break-up of the Anglican Communion – which was always a rather anomalous fruit of Empire. Gradually individual national churches will, I think, either join the Catholic Church, or dwindle into some amorphous protestant body, incapable of making any real witness to society.

What will the Roman Catholic Church gain by the ‘coming home’ of the Anglo-Catholics?

I hope we shall all gain enormously from this home-coming; it will be a reunion of friends, to replace the Parting of Friends of which Newman spoke.

How is Card. Newman regarded by Anglo-Catholics? Will you attend his beatification in September? Would you like to see him as one of the patron saints of the Ordinariates?

I believe John Henry Cardinal Newman has had a hand in what is happening in England today. Many of us are very glad to have him as a fellow-countryman. If I were permitted to be at his beatification I can think of no greater honour; and whether or not he is named as a patron of the Ordinariates, I am sure we should all be seeking his prayers at this wonderful time.

Of the four ACA diocesan bishops in the USA, only one, Bishop Louis Campese (DEUS), has taken a public stand for the Apostolic Constitution (as opposed to a nominal and vague adherence to the "TAC policy" as some theoretical goal).  But dedicated as he has been to collegial action with his brother bishops (who have yet to commit to the goal of full communion with the Holy See or to pursue substantive policies to that end), Bishop Campese has effectively been undermined in his efforts to guide the Diocese of the Eastern United States in fidelity to the express commitments of the Traditional Anglican Communion.  Thus, there are beacons of hope in DEUS — truly committed parishes, clergy, and groups of laity — but the first wave of ordinariate-bound communities will not constitute — in any way, shape, or form — an ecclesial solution representative of the ACA or the TAC.  Indeed, the reality will be precisely the opposite.

During the Thursday afternoon informational meeting for laity, at the behest of Bishop Campese, the Diocesan Chancellor read to the assembly a statement approved by (and reportedly drafted in conjunction with) Archbishop Louis Falk, President of the ACA House of Bishops.  While endeavoring to justify the present engagement with the Holy See by reference to the historic ecumenical trajectory of the Anglican Communion (and the TAC as its self-appointed successor), the statement clearly presumed that the greater part of its audience had already chosen to reject the Apostolic Constitution.  Written to assure opponents of Anglicanorum Coetibus that the ACA would perdure in its integrity (and without any commitment to the goal of reunion with the Holy See or the doctrine of the Catholic Church), it was made plain that those availing themselves of the Holy Father's offer would essentially be defecting from the jurisdiction (a far cry from the fanciful — but oft-repeated — notion that the province as a whole would be "coming into the full communion of the [Roman] Catholic Church").

Congregations will be ultimately be subject to their respective by-laws, and the rules governing "reaffiliation" with another church body.  The provisions vary, but this reaffiliation would generally require a supermajority (two-thirds or three-quarters) of the eligible voting communicants assembled in a parish meeting.  This same standard would be necessary to control/alienate the parish property.

I certainly do not mean to criticize the publication of these facts; it has been understood from the very beginning that congregational ownership of property and the existing by-laws necessitated broad support within a parish in order for it to realign with a personal ordinariate.  And it is perfectly reasonable — and the right thing to do — to reassure opponents of the Apostolic Constitution that their parishes will not be stolen from them (in the same way that the Episcopal Church once robbed many of their former church homes).  I mean only to highlight the enormous disconnect between the narrative of "the ACA coming into communion with Rome" and the harsh reality of the present circumstances.

For me at least, the Synod Eucharist on Thursday evening was surreal and deeply heartbreaking.  On an occasion intended to be expressive of the unity of the diocese gathered around its bishop, the deep divisions between members of the congregation seemed almost palpable.  Despite the glorious setting of St. George's Anglican Church, the Synod's host parish, and the majesty and beauty of the liturgical action, it seemed quite apparent that our communion was, at best, impaired.

The official business of the Synod was largely unremarkable.  The regular election of members to the Standing Committee, diocesan officers, delegates to the General Synod, &c. took place as usual.  Unlike the "mind of the diocese" votes planned for other synods (the anticipated "No" vote on the Apostolic Constitution apparently a convenient excuse for a bishop eager to weasel out of his solemn oath to uphold the doctrine the of the Catholic Church and seek full communion with the Holy See), there was no official action taken relative to the acceptance of Anglicanorum Coetibus.  On the unanimous advice of the Standing Committee, the Synod again declined to accept the resignation of Bishop Campese (which he is required by canon to tender annually upon reaching the age of 72 years).  The exceedingly optimistic time frame for the erection of a personal ordinariate in the USA given by the Chancellor (most often quoted as "five to seven months") contributed to the peace of the Synod, the opponents of the bishop and those faithful to the commitments of the TAC evidently content simply "to run out the clock," anticipating that they will soon be in control of the diocesan apparatus.

As he had done in the Thursday informational meeting for lay delegates, during the plenary session of the Synod on Friday, Bishop Campese spoke boldly and unambiguously in support of the Apostolic Constitution.  Noting that Our Lord's so-called "High Priestly Prayer" (St. John xvii.) "that they might all be one" was linked to the mission and purpose of the Church ("that the world may believe that thou hast sent me"), the bishop argued that the grievous divisions in the Body of Christ have impaired the ability of the Church to evangelize and have confounded God's will for His people.

Suggesting that the ecclesial status quo seemed attractive to some because of them, the bishop asked the delegates to lay aside their "faithless fears and worldly anxieties" and to reject the notion that a fragmented Christian Church is either normal or reasonable.

Sharing his belief that the Apostolic Constitution was a movement of the Holy Spirit, and informing the Synod that he was personally determined to enter the anticipated personal ordinariate at the earliest possible moment, the bishop concluded his address emphatically:

I am, as your bishop, committed to the goal of unity, and I am unreservedly supportive of the doctrinal and ecumenical obligations of the Traditional Anglican Communion.  I would consider it nothing less than a violation of my vows were I to elect to do otherwise.

With great skill and consideration for the sensitivities of all involved, Fr. Michael Kerouac, the President of the Standing Committee, moderated a discussion of the Apostolic Constitution.  The majority of the delegates who rose to address the assembly, mostly clergy, spoke in favor of unity under its terms.

Being concerned that the developing "common knowledge" suggested that a decisive, once and for all vote on whether congregations were to enter the personal ordinariate must necessarily take place in as little six months, that this practically constituted a sort of deadline, and that such decisions would inevitably be "all or nothing" propositions (all of which notions perfectly suit the opponents of unity who have done their best to propagate them), as a member of the Standing Committee, Senior Warden of the Cathedral, and an elected delegate, I addressed the Synod to argue that the Apostolic Constitution represented an open-ended invitation that was certainly not intended to prematurely or unnecessarily divide communities.  I made it clear (I hope!) that there was, in fact, no deadline being imposed, and that, were two groups within a parish ultimately to discern separate paths on the question of communion with the Holy See, this need not entail an utter separation, that it might be possible for creative solutions to be developed as local circumstances may warrant, solutions which might allow the two groups to continue to share parish property and enjoy a genuine fellowship and communion, being divided only insofar as issues of conscience required.

While I hesitate to provide too many particulars (after all, nothing is set in stone and we continue to pray for the success of the ordinariate scheme), it is clear that only a few parishes of the diocese are presently able to commit to the Apostolic Constitution.  But those that are ready to make the transition are strong (the largest parishes in the diocese) and resolute in their faithfulness.  Together with the several committed parishes from other ACA dioceses and the pioneering parishes and congregations of the Anglican Use, they will help to constitute a solid foundation for the anticipated personal ordinariate.  While we will be saddened by the absence of our brethren who have decided to stay behind, we will go ahead to prepare a place for them.

I found myself in agreement with most of what Fr. Rutler said, but I was a bit discomfited by his pessimistic assessment of contemporary Anglican liturgy.

As far as aesthetic patrimony goes, the typical Anglican forms of worship are no more elevated than the ordinary Catholic liturgy of our day, now happily under revision.

Setting aside the fact that he paints a rose-colored picture of the Roman Catholic liturgical landscape (which, admittedly, is slowly but assuredly being renewed), if Fr. Rutler's point of reference for Anglican liturgical forms is the current state of PECUSA, then this observation might well be reasonable, but it certainly does not take into account the generally quite dignified liturgical praxis of those Anglicans actually planning to avail themselves of the Holy Father's offer.  As Fr. Rutler's name has intriguingly — and quite unexpectedly — surfaced in conjunction with the anticipated personal ordinariate in the USA, I, for one, am eager to hear more from Fr. Rutler about his affinity with those of us who will soon be filling the ranks of the new jurisdiction.

* * *

The Present Importance of Newman's View of Anglicanism
Fr. George William Rutler

On my 60^th birthday, friends gave me a spiritual bouquet and, as there are a variety of spirits, they included a bottle of 1945 Armagnac.   When I open that bottle I shall be able to smell the liberation of Paris, but the question is: when should I open such a valuable thing?  James Anthony Froude recalled that “though (Newman) rarely drank wine, he was trusted to choose the vintages for the college cellar.”  While good souls have been sipping the wine of Newman all these years like sommeliers arguing over the taste, it is now time to drink it full.  For when Pope Benedict beatifies the great man, Deo volente, this year,  he will be telling the world that the vintage pressed long ago is full ready for general consumption.  Newman has been remaindered too often to the pantheon of beloved intellects whose poetic charm overcame the distractions of their religion, the same way temperamentally fragile revisionists played down Francis of Assisi as a mystical stigmatist, and turned him into an ecological birdbath ornament.

Newman was born in his day for today.  The Established Church of his youth, which seemed like a flagship of empire is now breaking on the shoals of reality, and what Newman proposed as a challenge to something mighty is now a call to rescue survivors.  Yet in any such calamity there are both flotsam and jetsam.  Pope Benedict’s decision on November 4 of 2009 to receive Anglicans in a canonical personal ordinariate, was a response to an appeal.  He is not rummaging for flotsam, those floating logs who will drift to any safe shore. The Pope welcomes a full profession of faith in the Catholic creeds and a rejection of all that the sectaries have said in their contradiction.  The jetsam are those who have been propelled by circumstance into a positive recognition that their old craft was not the Barque of Peter.  In the opening paragraph of the apostolic constitution “Anglicanorum coetibus,” the Holy Father says,  “The Apostolic See has responded favorably to such petitions.  Indeed, the successor of Peter, mandated by the Lord Jesus to guarantee the unity of the episcopate and to preside over and safeguard the universal communion of all the Churches, could not fail to make available the means necessary to bring this holy desire to realization.”

I may stand accused of mixing metaphors of wines and ships but sailors have never thought the two incompatible.  If it is time to break open the wine of Newman, it is not like drinking the last dregs on a sinking ship, for it is very like uncorking a noble vintage that has been waiting for a special celebration.  What Newman preached in his “Parting of Friends” at the time of his conversion, and what he wrote heart to heart in his “Apologia” and what he summed up in his “Biglietto Address” have all found their moment now.

It is important to remember that Newman was classically trained. It is difficult for us to recreate a semblance of what that means in our coarsened culture, whose leaders are so bereft of those articles of civility and wisdom which were the common language of types diverse as Cicero and Lord Chesterton and Harry Truman.  Newman’s classical acuteness enabled him to tell the real thing from a sham. The logician Richard Whately said he had never known such a clear thinker.  The Established Church of his youth was a mixture of spiritual aridity and institutional confidence, well expressed by Mr. Thwackum in Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones” who says: “When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.”  We can go back earlier.  One of the most splendid, if also most obtuse, lines ever uttered about churchmanship, was that of the seventeenth century Anglican Bishop of Ely, Simon Patrick, who praised “that virtuous mediocrity which our Church observes between the meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome and the squalid sluttery of fanatic conventicles.”  Newman, though, knew that classical mediocrity is not what fuzzy thinkers today think it to mean when they address the religious controversies of our time in the turgid diction of Delphic oracles.  Horace praised the man who loved well the Golden Mean, "Auream quisquis mediocritatem diligit."  It was golden, not because it was a compromise between truth and falsehood, but because it was like a laser beam pointing the way between every mistake.  Anglicanism, by force of political circumstance and religious confusion, had settled on a wrong idea of the Golden Mean as a “via media” of a bit of this and a bit of that, reducing the apophatic spirituality of Byzantium to polite ambiguity.  Newman gave a series of lectures between 1830 and 1841 in defense of Anglicanism’s via media as spiritually prudent and the work of divine grace, but the scandal of the Jerusalem bishopric in 1841, which laid aside religious differences between Anglicans and Lutherans for the sake of practicality, would open Newman’s eyes to the fact that the true “via media” is a declaration of precision and not vagueness.  So he says, “Take England, with many high virtues, and yet a low Catholicism.  It seems to me that John Bull is a spirit neither of heaven nor hell . . . Has not the Christian Church, in its parts, surrendered itself to one or other of these simulations of the truth? . . . How are we to avoid Scylla and Charybdis and go straight on to the very image of Christ?"

This subjective substitute for the classical Golden Mean is not modern but post-modern, since the philosophical quality of our culture has tumbled from those parapets upon which wrong but well-trained thinkers could declare that the only certitude is that nothing is certain.  Today, what Pope Benedict has tagged “the dictatorship of relativism” is seen in a blithe rejection of Christian essentials by vestigial Anglicanism, not because they are hard to believe but because they were never learned.  So let us uncork the wine of Newman, for what he preached while still an Anglican has now found its target:

“Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general Apostasy from it.  Whether this very Apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, as he has already been delayed so long, we cannot know; but at any rate this Apostasy, and all its tokens and instruments, are of the Evil One, and savour of death.  Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones who are taken in that snare which is circling around us!  Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison!  Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth?  No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform.  This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, —he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind.  He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them.  He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you.  He bids you mount aloft.  He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his.”

Pope Benedict XVI has done a stunning thing in providing such an ecclesial structure as described in the Apostolic Constitution “Anglicanorum coetibus.”  The dilemma of Anglicans maintaining  a firm if incomplete belief in the supernatural character of the apostolic Church, when contradicted by post-modern forces who would reduce the creedal formulas to impressions of reality, is a cultural icon of the spiritual combat between virtue and egoism which defines the crisis of our age.  While only the Pope knows what he is doing, I suspect that this Constitution is a shot fired over the bow of secular cynicism which is entwining its fingers with those of the men and women of our generation, to make us one with the enemy of our Creator.

Consider many Catholics have reduced sacred worship to a suburban expression of goodwill.  It is evidence of the creeping banality by which the Prince of Lies would seduce Holy Church herself, though he is bound to fail, with that same mediocrity which repulsed Newman, for he knew that banality is indeed evil, and possibly crueler than pre-Christian paganism which danced its sensuality in Arcadian groves without feeling a post-Christian need to declare perversity a sacrament.

As late as 1835,  ten years before his conversion, Newman associated the Anti-Christ with the Papacy and returned from his first visit to Rome in 1833 calling Catholicism “polytheistic, degrading and idolatrous.”  Gradual experience of alternatives to Catholicism, however, especially the skepticism of the Broad Church Anglicanism of his coterie, trimmed his judgment: “We are much disposed to question whether any tests can … prove that the Roman communion is the Synagogue of Satan.”  His friendly battles in Oxford with his mentor, Richard Whately, whom I have mentioned, professor of political economy (battles which he said continued when he was starting the Catholic University in Dublin where Whately had become Anglican Archbishop), moved him to reflect more on the Catholic claims.  Whately was a fair minded man who advocated civil rights for Catholics and Jews.  He had his own sense of humor, which inspired him to satirize the new skeptical Biblical critics by using their critical methods to prove that Napoleon Bonaparte never existed.  In this, he was a precursor of Ronald Knox who, a century later, used modern canons of literary criticism to prove that Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam” had in fact been written by Queen Victoria.  In treating virtue ethics, and the Greek ideal of happiness as “eudaimonia” it was Dr. Whately who said, “Happiness is no laughing matter.”  Newman inherited something of this subtlety, and this should  help to make sense of what Newman meant later when he said, “…as a Protestant, I felt my religion dreary but not my life – but, as a Catholic, my life dreary, not my religion.”  Understanding true happiness as the attainment of truth, he was ready to sacrifice lesser  consolations to find it, like Augustine exulting in the discovery of “beauty ever ancient, ever new.”  The recent proposal of a personal ordinariate for Anglicans, is an invitation to such “eudaimonia.”

Newman preached big words to a small scene in his day.  He was addressing a “national apostasy” which is now universal.  If “national apostasy” seemed an inflated term when Keble decried the government’s confusion of bishops with state managers, Newman did not see it so and he called it the start of the Oxford Movement.  The Oxford Movement has now become a World Movement,  sometimes called a “Reform of the Reform,” the kind of “aggiornamento” optimistically envisioned but imprecisely achieved in the years after Vatican II.  “Anglicanorum coetibus” may well be the ecumenical movement come of age, a correction of the disoriented notion that unity in the Church happens by confederation.  While the number of ecclesial communities that will join this new structure for Anglicans may be small, the initiative itself could encourage relations with the separated historic Churches.

More than thirty years ago, John Paul II approved a “Pastoral Provision” to receive Anglicans into the Catholic Church.  This followed the 1976 decision of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church to ordain women.  Some five years before that, I had written my first, and perforce juvenile, book which was a small study of this question.  In it, I maintained that to deny gender as a charism in the sacrament of orders, was a Gnostic heresy, for it dismissed the prophetic significance of sexuality.  In phrases subtle because I knew the subject would be scandalous, I contended that such ordinations would irreparably destroy chances for unity with the Catholic Church and that this a Gnostic abuse of anthropology would logically lead to what is now called same-sex marriage.  Some reviewers said that was absurd.  What I predicted in 1971 has happened.  There have been many division since then within the Anglican structure which prided itself on its unity, even in this country through the trials of the Civil War.  The original Pastoral Provision provided welcome for over one hundred clergy and several thousand laity, including one religious community of women.  These are small numbers, but they have established several flourishing parishes with an approved Anglican Use for worship which is attractive even to cradle Catholics.  While the most important aspect of this provision was the clear signal of Rome indicating that the question of women’s ordination belongs to the irreformable deposit of sacred tradition, the part of it that got most attention was permission for the ordination of married men, with the understanding that, as in the Eastern rites, there could be no marriage or re-marriage, in the instance of widowhood,  after ordination.

It seems logical that this provision, while continuing as an entity, would be subsumed by the new personal ordinariates.  The chief difference between the former pastoral   provision and the new ordinariates is precisely that, while the former was part of the regular diocesan structure, the new ordinariates would have their own bishops and ecclesiastical superiors similar to military ordinariates.  This is something of which Newman, with all his prophetic gifts, could not have anticipated.  While he encouraged a scheme of Ambrose Philip de Lisle for a sort of Anglican Uniate Church for converts, he knew that it was impractical.  Yet, his comment in a letter to de Lisle in 1876 is significant: “Nothing will rejoice me more than to find that the Holy See considers it safe and promising to sanction some such plan as the Pamphlet suggests.  I give my best prayers, such as they are, that some means of drawing to us so many good people, who are now shivering at our gates, may be discovered.”  It is also the case that in his day the invalidity of Anglican orders was not a settled question as it is today.  Newman was ordained a priest in 1846 less than a year after he had been received into the Church, and Manning’s ordination in 1851 took only nine weeks, and within fourteen years he became Archbishop of Westminster.  That was during the pontificate of Pius IX who was not given to impetuosity or neglect of doctrine.

The new apostolic constitution expectedly has had its doubters .  The Holy Father made this a personal initiative to the surprise of some ecumenicists whose more relaxed instincts had not encouraged traditionalist Anglicans in their petitions.  I do not make an exact parallel with the present situation, but in a letter of 1859 to Lord Acton, Newman wrote: “There will necessarily always be round the Pope second-rate people, who are not subjects of that supernatural guidance which is his prerogative."  Newman was certain that the Catholic Church in England could not flourish if it remained under the jurisdiction of the Propaganda Fidei, but he was often stymied in getting his message through bureaucratic tangles to the Pope.  He said, “…the Rock of St. Peter on its summit enjoys a pure and serene atmosphere, but there is a great deal of Roman malaria at the foot of it.”

The uniqueness of “Anglicanorum coetibus” naturally begs questions.  Not least of these is the “patrimony” of Anglicanism which the apostolic constitution seeks to safeguard, not temporarily but as a permanent ornament of the richness of the Latin Church.  But this patrimony is not defined.  Anglicanism has gone through transformations since the Elizabethan Settlement, and the engine of its motion, which is now proving itself to be not perpetual, has been its effort to define itself in various moods, Catholic, Calvinist,   Laudian,  Erastian, Deist,  Evangelical, Tractarian, Ritualist, Liberal, and Post-Christian, all bobbing on the surface of the endemic Anglo-Saxon bias of Pelagianism.  The “patrimony,” however re-imagined from time to time, would have been more Protestant from the start, were it not for the theological conservatism of Elizabeth I.  Surely there were clerics, especially of the Laudian period, who were “stupor mundi” in their Patristic erudition, but often what claimed to be a return to sources, was a sort of theological bottom-feeding made palatable by a knowledge of Greek.  To speak in generalities of a patrimony risks becoming nostalgic, bearing in mind that nostalgia is history after a few drinks.  John Jewell and Richard Hooker in the seventeenth century had a romantic notion of the sub-apostolic church which easily accommodated what their king decreed.  Even Jewell had a functional but not sacramental concept of episcopacy and his confidence was in Sola Scriptura.  Anglicanism was not originally confessional but statist, and what is of the state dies with the neglect of the state.  As Caesar’s eye grows cold,  so does what glimmered in his glance.

As far as aesthetic patrimony goes, the typical Anglican forms of worship are no more elevated than the ordinary Catholic liturgy of our day, now happily under revision.  Newman was sensitive to signs; he remembered wearing black gloves in Trinity College Chapel when mourning the daughter of King George IV, the Princess Charlotte;  and everyone knew he had abandoned Anglican orders when he appeared one day in grey trousers.  If he who blushed at the most innocent pun had seen some of the liturgical aberrations of our generation, he would have lapsed into a coma.  There is a cottage industry of polemicists who claim that the Catholic Newman used to haunt old Anglican churches to hear the voices of distant choirs gilding the rafters.  There is no evidence for that.  His frequent discouragements were not from a loss of what he had sternly rejected.  He writes of those who claimed that the convert keep looking back over his shoulder: “This is said of every one in turn – and in every case which I am acquainted with most falsely – There is but one feeling of joy and happiness among those persons with whom I am acquainted who have become Catholics.”

Newman was actually repulsed by much of what passed for prayer in the churches of his early years and said that the thought of the Anglican service made him “shiver.”  The services in his own university church of St. Mary in Oxford were “intensely dreary.”  The Tractarians spent little time on the liturgical romanticism of the ritual movement which was to follow. But that movement was a recovery of a patrimony not unique to the English church.  Perhaps in recognition of this, it has been suggested that the new personal ordinariates should revive the Sarum Rite to be distinct.  In  my Anglican days, I knew no one who had ever seen the Sarum Rite.  That would just be a homemade historicism, which in part is why a proposed revivial of the Sarum Rite for the new Westminster Cathedral was rejected in the nineteenth century.  The personal ordinariates will fail if their concept of preserving a cultural patrimony is the creation of an Anglo-Saxon Theme Park, or an ecclesiastical Williamsburg.  It would lack the spiritual dynamic the Church needs for revitalizing a dispirited segment of our anemic culture.  Pope Benedict’s focus has always been on Newman rather than on Anglicanism, but in the foreword to a book “Turning Towards the Lord” by the Oratorian priest, Father Lang, he commended the “ad orientem” position of the celebrant at the altar and  described “the contribution made by the Church of England to this question and in giving, also, due consideration to the part played by the Oxford movement in the nineteenth century…”  Many of the present Anglican clergy were not reared in the Anglican tradition themselves, and this adds a difficulty if the “patrimony” which the Constitution seeks to  encourage is in no small part an “ethos” which comes by a long lived experience of a cultural heritage.

There follows another questions about the expectations of Anglican stalwarts so long to become Catholic, since more than thirty years ago all veneer of Catholic simulation was shattered by the ordination of women.  Catholicism is a commitment and not a last resort.  Pusey was discomfited when Newman continued to attract converts after his conversion.  After an awkward encounter in Prior Park in Oxford, Newman wrote to his friend Dalgairns saying that Pusey had expected the Catholic converts to be nothing more than vinedressers who had simply “transferred to another part of the vineyard.”  Newman became aware, and expresses this in multiple ways in his lectures on “Difficulties of Anglicans,” that High Anglicanism is a delusional ecclesiology supported by cultural affinities holding sway over logic.  Newman’s dispatches this with curt words in the “Apologia" when he says, “It is not at all easy (humanly speaking) to wind up an Englishman to a dogmatic level..”

The Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,  Cardinal Levada, said on March 9 of this year that “among the distinctive elements of Anglican heritage should be included the spiritual and intellectual gifts of the Oxford movement in the 19^th century, the then-Anglican cleric Newman together with his fellow Tractarians have left a legacy that still enriches a common Catholic patrimony.”  Thus the Anglican patrimony consists in a style of living the apostolic life.  Newman and his fellows gave it new life by opting for the fullness of Catholicism, in an action rooted in an intuition of history ignored in our own day.  Newman’s argument for the development of doctrine as an economy requiring what he called “preservation of type” and “chronic vigor” is the antecedent cousin of Pope Benedict’s “Hermeneutic of Continuity.”  The Holy Father might paraphrase with benevolent Bavarian courtesy, what Newman said rather curtly: “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”

After attending one of Newman’s twelve lectures on “Anglican Difficulties” delivered in London in 1850, which  provide a guide for wavering Anglicans today, Thackeray rose from his seat, daunted by the Newmanian logic, and cried out: “It is either Rome or Babylon, and for me it is Babylon.”  The case is the same today, to a larger audience: It is either Rome or Babylon. These lectures, treated nervously by some who would tone down Newman’s popery, are the beating heart of the exhilarated Catholic Newman.  It is noteworthy, but not inexplicable, that perhaps the leading modern Anglican interpreter of Newman, Owen Chadwick, in his book “The Spirit of the Oxford Movement” (1990) does not once refer to the lectures on “Anglican Difficulties.”  In them, Newman said, “All depends on the fact of the supremacy of Rome,” and "One vessel alone can ride those waves; it is the boat of Peter, the ark of God."

In 1988 I made the longest of all possible trips on this planet, the treacherous and usually fruitless journey from Oxford to Cambridge.  I went to hear a lecture by Cardinal Ratzinger.  To the dismay of some of the faculty who attributed the vast outpouring of undergraduates to what one professor called the current young people’s fad for mediaevalism, Ratzinger spoke of eternal verities in a way which I imagined might have been composed by Newman.  Both are musicians – Newman a violinist and Ratzinger a pianist.  And you see that I speak of Newman in the present, because he is being brought back to us by Ratzinger whose own name will never be in the past perfect.  The Pope’s overture to Anglicans is not polemical but pastoral.  Newman said “Denunciation neither effects subjection in thought nor in conduct.”  In the new apostolic constitution, the Holy Father denounces no one, but as the Father of Christian Unity, in the succession of  Peter who was commanded by Christ to confirm the brethren in the Faith, he would that none be lost.

In this conference you will hear talks more serviceable than mine, I am only here as the sommelier, to recommend the vintage wine of Newman.  He uncorked it in the finale of the “Apologia pro Vita Sua” when he listed his friends who had joined him in the fraternity of converts, and also those who were moved in mind but not enough in will to embrace the ancient beauty.  He wrote one last line: “And I earnestly beg for this whole company, with a hope against hope, that all of us, who once were so united, and so happy in our union, may even now be brought at length, by the power of the Divine Will, into one Fold and under One Shepherd.”

Mr. Johnston has been a member of OLA since 2004.  Formerly a museum director, he now serves as headmaster of The Atonement Academy, the PK-12 parish school of Our Lady of the Atonement, and, to date, the only school in the Pastoral Provision and future Ordinariate community.  Like many other cradle Catholics worshiping in Pastoral Provision congregations, he has developed an attachment to the Anglican forms of devotion.  He has attended Anglican Use Conferences in prior years and is a member of the Anglican Use Society.

In Rome with an Atonement pilgrimage group when Anglicanorum Coetibus was published, he was the first individual to file a petition with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to establish an Ordinariate for the United States under the Apostolic Constitution.  He was a contributor at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Information Day in San Antonio on December 12 of last year, and he has followed recent events closely.  Mr. Johnston holds an MPPM from Yale University and a Certificate in Catholic School Leadership from the University of Dallas.

Please join me in welcoming Mr. Johnston to The Anglo-Catholic!

The first speaker, Sister Elaine, ASSP, reflected on the experience of her religious community, All Saints Sisters of the Poor. A long-established order in the Church of England, the sisters first came to Baltimore in 1872, have been in Baltimore continuously ever since, and were received into full communion last September by Archbishop O’Brien of Baltimore.

As Sister Elaine explained, much of the sisters’ daily life remains unchanged, as Archbishop O’Brien had instructed them “keep doing what you’re doing.” For example, the form of their daily office remains unchanged, with the Sisters offering the liturgy of the hours six times daily as a community. Sister Elaine’s presentation was filled with joy, and was frequently punctuated with laughter, as when she explained that not every one understands the monastic life, as demonstrated by the advice she received to “get a job,” perhaps teaching in a Catholic school.

Sister Elaine describes her community’s journey into full communion matter-of-factly as “becoming Roman Catholic.” Sister emphasized the importance of promoting vocations to the religious life and said that she was counting on the parishes represented in the room to send her at least one postulant.

Next up on the program was Dr. William Oddie’s presentation on the important role of influential and literarily sophisticated Anglican converts in Catholic apologetics. Dr. Oddie is a well respected and widely published Church of England clergyman who was received into full communion in 1991.

What could have been a disappointing experience was transformed into a particularly edifying and entertaining experience when, on learning that for health reasons he would be unable to travel to Newark, Dr. Oddie asked Father Allan Hawkins to deliver the paper for him. Today, Fr. Hawkins is best known to us as the pastor of St. Mary the Virgin, the Pastoral Provision parish in Arlington, Texas. Earlier, Fathers Oddie and Hawkins had served together in England, and clearly know each other well. Fr. Hawkins’ annotated reading of the paper brought to life Dr. Oddie’s animated reflections on Chesterton, and the synergy of Chesterton, Oddie and Hawkins greatly exceeded the sum of the parts.

Following a thorough and thoroughly entertaining discussion of Newman and Chesterton, Oddie’s paper went to on to discuss more recent developments. Dr. Oddie made clear his view that last fall, Pope Benedict suddenly accelerated the timetable for the publication of Anglicanorum Coetibus, before its intent could be frustrated by those who oppose the new Apostolic Constitution.

Lunch was an occasion for informal discussions, with clergy and lay people from ACA, other Continuing and Episcopalian parishes dining in small groups with Pastoral Provision folks.

The afternoon conference session was the annual tradition of the Anglican Use Pastors Panel. This is always a crowd favorite, as the audience has the opportunity to define the agenda. This year’s panelists were Fr. James Ramsey of Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston, Fr. Richard Bradford of St. Athanasius in Boston, Fr. Allan Hawkins of St. Mary the Virgin in Arlington, Fr. Jean Hart, SOLT, of St Anselm of Canterbury in Corpus Christi, Fr. Eric Bergman of St. Thomas More in Scranton, Fr. Ernest Davis of St. Therese Little Flower in Kansas City, and Deacon Oliver Vietor of St. Paul’s in Phoenix. In keeping with the issues of the day, questions and comments from the audience leaned heavily toward issues of priestly ordination and the future of the ordinariates.

Going into the pastors’ panel, most conference attendees probably had the sense that the mood of the room was a watchful and somewhat impatient eagerness for the Church “to get on with” the ordinariates. After hearing the tone and content of the questions, this mood was unmistakable.

Bishop Juan Ignacio Arrieta, a distinguished canon lawyer who serves as Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, and who is the keynote speaker for the conference, was present for the Pastors' Panel and followed the discussion with animated interest.

Your humble scribe is a cradle Catholic who has worshiped in a Pastoral Provision parish for six years, and, like most Anglican Use parishioners, is eager for the U.S. ordinariate to be established. After talking with these conference attendees, I can see that the need is even greater among our Anglican brethren who are waiting. In a particularly challenging situation are the clergy of the ACA, other Continuing groups, and Episcopal Church groups who are working hard to serve the pastoral needs of the people, while at the same time holding their flocks together under extreme uncertainty about the timing. Let us hope that Rome is reading the blogs.

Further reports will be posted as time allows.

Following Morning Prayer, and before leaving the crypt chapel, the conferees were greeted by our host, the Most Reverend John Myers, Archbishop of Newark and Ecclesiastical Delegate for the Pastoral Provision. Invoking the words of our Lord Jesus in John 17 “that they all may be one,” the Archbishop wished us well in our work. We will see our host again at 5:00 pm for the Solemn High Mass at the high altar of the magnificent basilica which the Archbishop quite rightly called a “great work of art.”

Morning sessions were held in the auditorium of the Archdiocesan offices across the street from the Cathedral, and conferees will shortly reconvene for a lunch program. A more detailed report will be posted as time permits, but so far the meeting is characterized by great good will and cheerful collaboration.

Each year, members of the Society gather with an eclectic mix of Roman and Anglican laypeople and clergy to discuss a wide range of matters under the broad umbrella of Anglo-Catholic interests. In prior years, there was a heavy emphasis on the Pastoral Provision, and most conferences were hosted by Pastoral Provision congregations. (Recent annual conferences were held in Houston, San Antonio, Washington D.C. and Scranton.) This year, the emphasis will shift, and in ways that are difficult to predict, because in the interval since the last annual conference, the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus has been published. This promises to be a lively event, with much speculation, both informed and uninformed, and who knows, perhaps even some reliable news.

Mr. Campbell has summarized the official program in his post of last week, and the conference agenda is published on the conference website. The lineup of speakers is of the quality we have come to expect each year from Anglican Use Society president Joe Blake and the conference planners. Prospective attendees should keep in mind that some of the most informative moments of each year’s conference occur informally, between sessions.

It is not too late to register for the conference, and I want to urge all readers who have the ability to participate to consider attending.

Newark is not generally considered a tourist destination, or place of pilgrimage, except perhaps by diehard fans of The Sopranos. In fact, Newark is one of America’s great cities and contains one of the most important pieces of American Catholic material culture, the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart. This spectacular example of French Gothic architecture, and the fifth largest cathedral in America, will be the site of the conference liturgies. The 37-foot diameter rose window alone is worth the trip, and it is just one of more than 200 stained glass windows. The pipe organ is notorious and is said by some to be largest ever built. As the photos show, Chartres has nothing on Newark.

This magnificent building was envisioned by the first ordinary of the Newark diocese, Bishop James Bayley, who acquired the land and set the planning and design in motion. Bishop Bayley was later made Archbishop of Baltimore, and the work was continued by his successors. There is an interesting Anglican footnote to this story. Bishop Bayley was a cousin of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton. Like Mother Seton, Bishop Bayley was a convert from Anglicanism.

Mr. Campbell has kindly invited me to provide reports from the Conference, and I look forward to posting in the days ahead.

Archbishop Gomez has shown great support for the Anglican Use, and is one of the few bishops who actually learned to celebrate the liturgy from the Book of Divine Worship.  When I spoke to him about Anglicanorum coetibus, he expressed his full support for what the Holy Father is doing for us.

Having the Archbishop of Los Angeles as a supporter will be important to the development of an Ordinariate in the United States.  Of course, he’ll have many important and difficult tasks ahead of him in Los Angeles, but it’s nice to know we’ll have a friend in high places.  And please do pray for him.  He has expressed his great confidence in God’s guidance, but also his very human trepidation as he takes up the task.

Note: This is an initial proposition to stimulate reflection and work on the liturgy. It does not have the approval of any Church authority and should therefore not be used for actual liturgical celebrations.

* * *

The priest enters the sanctuary, reverences the altar and prepares the chalice. As he adds the water, he says:

From this be + blessing, for from his side came forth blood and water, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

He kisses the altar with the formula:

Take away from us, O Lord, all our iniquities, that we may be found worthy to enter the holy of holies with pure minds ; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

He then goes to the sedelia or stands in front of the altar.

The people standing, the Celebrant may say,

Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

R. And blessed be his kingdom, now and for ever. Amen.

In place of the above, from Easter Day through Pentecost,

Alleluia. Christ is Risen.

R. The Lord is ris'n indeed. Alleluia.

In Lent and on other penitential occasions,

Bless the Lord who forgiveth all our sins.

R. His mercy endureth for ever.

The Celebrant says,

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. R. Amen.

The Summary of the Law may be said, or the Decalogue.

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

Here is sung or said, in English or in Greek, the Kyrie Eleison. On Sundays and Holy Days appointed, the following is sung or said, all standing.

Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, good will towards men. We praise thee, we bless thee, we worship thee, we glorify thee, we give thanks to thee for thy great glory, O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty. O Lord, the only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ; O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Thou that takest away the sins of the world, receive our prayer. Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father, have mercy upon us. For thou only art holy; thou only art the Lord; thou only, O Christ, with the Holy Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

The Celebrant says to the people,

The Lord be with you. R. And with thy spirit. Let us pray. Collect.

THE LITURGY OF THE WORD

The people are seated. One or two lessons, as appointed, are read, the Reader first saying,

A Reading from N.

After each Reading, the Reader says,

The Word of the Lord. R. Thanks be to God.

A Psalm, hymn, or anthem may follow each Reading. Then, all standing, the Deacon or a Priest reads the Gospel, first saying,

The Lord be in my heart and on my lips, that I may proclaim the Holy Gospel of God. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Lord be with you. R. And with thy spirit.

The Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to N. R. Glory be to thee, O Lord.

After the Gospel, the Reader says

The Gospel of the Lord. R. Praise be to thee, O Christ.

Here follows the Sermon, when appointed.

On Sundays and Solemnities there follows the Nicene Creed, all standing.

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, (genuflect or bow in honour of the Incarnation) and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man; (stand) and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried; and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost the Lord, and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spake by the Prophets. And I believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church; I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

For the Prayers of the People, intercession is offered according to one of the following forms.

Intercession I (Local Prayer Book forms of this prayer may be used instead of this one.)

The Celebrant says,

Let us pray for the whole state of Christ's Church and the world.

The Celebrant, Deacon, or other minister continues,

Almighty and everliving God, who in thy holy Word hast taught us to make prayers, and supplications, and to give thanks for all men: Receive these our prayers which we offer unto thy divine Majesty, beseeching thee to inspire continually the Universal Church with the spirit of truth, unity, and concord; and grant that all those who do confess thy holy Name may agree in the truth of thy holy Word, and live in unity and godly love.

Give grace, O heavenly Father, to N. our Pope, N. our bishop and to all bishops and other ministers, that they may, both by their life and doctrine, set forth thy true and lively Word, and rightly and duly administer thy holy Sacraments.

And to all thy people give thy heavenly grace, and especially to this congregation here present; that, with meek heart and due reverence, they may hear and receive thy holy Word, truly serving thee in holiness and righteousness all the days of their life.

We beseech thee also so to rule the hearts of those who bear the authority of government in this and every land, that they may be led to wise decisions and right actions for the welfare and peace of the world.

Open, O Lord, the eyes of all people to behold thy gracious hand in all thy works, that, rejoicing in thy whole creation, they may honour thee with their substance, and be faithful stewards of thy bounty.

And we most humbly beseech thee, of thy goodness, O Lord, to comfort and succour all those who, in this transitory life, are in trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity.

And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear, beseeching thee to be merciful and grant them fullness of joy in thy love and service; and to grant us grace so to follow the good examples of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of all thy saints, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom.

The Celebrant concludes,

Grant these our prayers, O Father, for Jesus Christ's sake, our only Mediator and Advocate.

R. Amen.

The Penitential Rite

The Celebrant or Deacon says,

Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbours, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways: Draw near with faith, and make your humble confession to Almighty God, devoutly kneeling.

All join in saying,

Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, maker of all things, judge of all men: We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we from time to time most grievously have committed, by thought, word, and deed, against thy divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; the remembrance of them is grievous unto us, the burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; for thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ's sake, forgive us all that is past; and grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please thee in newness of life, to the honour and glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Celebrant says,

May Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of his great mercy hath promised forgiveness of sins to all those who with hearty repentance and true faith turn to him, have mercy upon us, pardon and deliver us from all our sins, confirm and strengthen us in all goodness, and bring us to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. R. Amen.

The Celebrant, Deacon, or other minister may then say one or more of the following sentences, fist saying,

Hear the Word of God to all who truly turn to him.

Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you. Matthew 11:28

God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16

This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. 1 Timothy 1:15

If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the perfect offering for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. 1 John 2:1-2

The Celebrant says,

The peace of the Lord be always with you. or The Lord be with you.

R. And with thy spirit.

THE LITURGY OF THE EUCHARIST

During the Offertory a psalm, hymn or anthem may be sung. The Celebrant, standing at the altar, takes the chalice with the paten and, holding them slightly raised above the altar, says quietly,

Receive, O Holy Trinity, this oblation which I, an unworthy sinner, offer in thy honour and in that of blessed Mary and all thy Saints, for my sins and offences, for the salvation of the living, and for the repose of all the faithful departed.

In the name of the Father + and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, may this new sacrifice be acceptable to almighty God.

He may now incense the offerings and the altar, and afterwards the Thurifer may incense the people. The Priest, standing at the side of the altar, washes his hands saying quietly,

Cleanse me, O Lord, from all defilement of soul and body, that I may be clean to fulfil the holy work of God.

The Priest bows and says quietly,

In a humble spirit and a contrite heart, let us be accepted of thee, O Lord : and so let our sacrifice be in thy sight that it may be accepted by thee this day and be pleasing unto thee, O Lord my God.

He kisses the altar and signs the Oblations with this formula:

In the name of the Father + and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Standing at the centre of the altar, he faces the people and says,

Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.

The people respond,

May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands for the praise and glory of his name, for our good, and the good of all his holy Church.

The people kneel. With hands extended, the Priest sings or says the Prayer over the Gifts, after which the people respond

Amen.

The Great Thanksgiving

The Celebrant sings or says,

The Lord be with you.

R. And with thy spirit.

Lift up your hearts.

R. We lift them up unto the Lord.

Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.

R. It is meet and right so to do.

Then, facing the altar (if the preceding had been said facing the people), the Celebrant continues,

It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord, holy Father, almighty, everlasting God.

Here a Proper Preface is sung or said on all Sundays, and on other occasions appointed.

Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious Name; evermore praising thee, and saying,

Here follows the Sanctus and Benedictus.

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts : heaven and earth are full of thy glory : Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord : Hosanna in the highest.

The Celebrant continues with the Canon of the Mass.

Most merciful Father, we humbly pray thee, through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, and we ask, that thou accept and + bless these gifts, these presents, these holy and unspoiled sacrifices.

We offer them unto thee, first, for thy holy Catholic Church: that thou vouchsafe to keep it in peace, to guard, unite, and govern it throughout the whole world; together with thy servant N. our Pope, and N. our Bishop, and all the faithful guardians of the Catholic and Apostolic faith.

Remember, O Lord, thy servants and handmaids (N. and N.) and all who here around us stand, whose faith is known unto thee and their steadfastness manifest, on whose behalf we offer unto thee: or who themselves offer unto thee this sacrifice of praise, for themselves, and for all who are theirs: for the redemption of their souls, for the hope of their salvation and safety: and who offer their prayers unto thee, the eternal God, the living and true.

United in one communion, we venerate the memory, first, of the glorious ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of our God and Lord Jesus Christ, of Joseph her spouse; as also of thy blessed Apostles and Martyrs, Peter and Paul, Andrew, James, John, Thomas, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Simon and Thaddaeus: Linus, Cletus, Clement, Xystys, Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus, John and Paul, Cosmas and Damian and of all thy

Saints; grant that by their merits and prayers we may in all things be defended with the help of thy protection, through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

We beseech thee then, O Lord, graciously to accept this oblation from us thy servants, and from thy whole family: order thou our days in thy peace, and bid us to be delivered from eternal damnation, and to be numbered in the fold of thine elect, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Vouchsafe, O God, we beseech thee, in all things to make this oblation blessed, approved and accepted, a perfect and worthy offering: that it may become for us the body and blood of thy dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Who, the day before he suffered, took bread into his holy and venerable hands, and with eyes lifted up to heaven unto thee, God, his almighty Father, giving thanks to thee, he blessed, broke, and gave it to his disciples, saying: Take, and eat this ye all.

For this is my Body.

Likewise, after supper, taking also this goodly chalice into his holy and venerable hands, again giving thanks to thee, he blessed, and gave it to his disciples saying: Take and drink of this ye all.

For this is the Cup of my Blood of the new and everlasting Testament: the mystery of faith: which shall be shed for you and for many to the remission of sins.

As oft as ye do these things, ye shall do them in remembrance of me.

The Celebrant continues with his arms stretched out in the form of a cross,

Wherefore, O Lord, we thy servants, and thy holy people also, remembering the blessed passion of the same Christ thy Son our Lord, as also his resurrection from the dead, and his glorious ascension into heaven: do offer unto thine excellent majesty of thine own gifts and bounty, the pure Victim, the Holy Victim, the immaculate Victim, the holy Bread of eternal life, and the Chalice of everlasting salvation.

Vouchsafe to look upon them with a merciful and pleasant countenance: and to accept them, even as thou didst vouchsafe to accept the gifts of thy servant Abel the Righteous, and the sacrifice of our Patriarch Abraham: and the holy sacrifice, the immaculate victim, which thy high priest Melchisedech offered unto thee.

We humbly beseech thee, almighty God: command these offerings to be brought by the hands of thy holy Angel to thine altar on high, in sight of thy divine majesty: that all we who at this partaking of the altar shall receive the most sacred Body and Blood of thy Son, + may be fulfilled with all heavenly benediction and grace. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

Remember also, O Lord, thy servants and handmaids (N. and N.), who have gone before us sealed with the seal of faith, and who sleep the sleep of peace. To them, O Lord, and to all that rest in Christ, we beseech thee to grant the abode of refreshing, of light, and of peace. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.

To us sinners also, thy servants, who hope in the multitude of thy mercies, vouchsafe to grant some part and fellowship with thy holy Apostles and Martyrs: with John, Stephen, Matthias, Barnabas, (Ignatius, Alexander, Marcellinus, Peter, Felicitas, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecelia, Anastasia), and with all thy Saints: within whose fellowship we beseech thee, admit us, not weighing our merit, but granting us forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord;

Through whom, O Lord, thou dost ever create all these good things; dost sanctify, quicken, bless, and bestow them upon us.

By whom, and with whom, and in whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honour and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end.

The people respond, Amen.

The Celebrant continues

And now, as our Saviour Christ hath taught us, we are bold to say.

People and Celebrant

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who tresspass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

Deliver us, O Lord, we beseech thee, from all evils, past, present, and to come: and at the intercession of the blessed ever Virgin Mary, Mother of God, with thy blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and with Andrew, and all the Saints, graciously grant us peace in all our days: that by the help of thine availing mercy we may ever both be free from sin and safe from all distress.

The Celebrant breaks the Sacred Host.

Through the same Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.

The peace + of the + Lord be + always with you. R. And with thy spirit.

O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace.

May this holy + mingling of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ be unto me, and to all who receive it, salvation of spirit and body, and a wholesome preparation for eternal life, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

In Lent, the following is said.

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast.

The following prayer is said by all.

We do not presume to come to this thy table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table. But thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the Flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his Blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

Showing the Chalice and Host to the people, the Celebrant says,

The Gifts of God for the People of God.

Behold the Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world.

The people respond,

Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst come under my roof, but speak the word only, and my soul shall be healed.

The priest receives Communion with these prayers:

Hail for evermore, thou most holy flesh of Christ, unto me before all things and above all things the highest sweetness. The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ be unto me, a sinner, the way and life, in the name of the + Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Hail for evermore, thou heavenly drink, unto me before all things and above all things the highest sweetness. The Body and Blood of Christ avail unto me, a sinner, for an everlasting healing unto life eternal, in the name of the + Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Holy Communion is administered to the people by intinction on the tongue with the words, The Body (and Blood) of our Lord Jesus Christ keep you in everlasting life, and the Communicant responds, Amen.

During the ministration of Communion, Psalms, hymns, or anthems may be sung. After Communion, the Celebrant says,

Let us pray.

The people join in saying this prayer.

Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank thee for that thou dost feed us, in these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ: and dost assure us thereby of thy favour and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs, through hope, of thy everlasting kingdom. And we humbly beseech thee, O heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen.

The ablutions are done with these prayers:

Grant, O Lord, that what we have taken with our mouth, we may receive with a pure mind, and that from a temporal gift it may become for us an everlasting remedy.

Let this communion, O Lord, purge us from sin, and make us partakers of heavenly healing.

He bows before the Cross and says:

Let us venerate the sign of the Cross, whereby we have received the Sacrament of salvation.

The Priest then says the Communion antiphon, and then,

The Lord be with you. R. And with thy spirit.

He then says the Postcommunions, and again

The Lord be with you. R. And with thy spirit.

The Deacon, or the Celebrant, shall dismiss the people, saying

The Mass is ended, depart in peace. or, when the Gloria has not been sung, Let us bless the Lord. R. Thanks be to God.

In Eastertide

The Mass is ended, depart in peace, alleluia, alleluia.

R. Thanks be to God, alleluia, alleluia.

After this, he kisses the altar after having said this prayer:

May the office of my bounden duty be pleasing unto thee, O holy Trinity, and grant that this sacrifice which I, an unworthy sinner, have offered in the sight of thy Majesty, may be acceptable unto thee ; and obtain forgiveness from thy mercy for me and for all those for whom I have offered it. Who livest and reignest, God, world without end. Amen.

The final Blessing is given in this form.

The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord; and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be amongst you, and remain with you always. Amen.

After reverencing the altar, the priest may say the Prologue of Saint John as a private devotion on his way back to the sacristy:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him ; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his Name : which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Pope Benedict XVI does not work that way, but has on numerous occasions, even as Pope, decried the ostracism against those who prefer the traditional rite. Truth be told, this Pope obviously wishes the two uses of the Roman rite (as he described them in Summorum Pontificum) to coexist and influence each other. Having lived in continental Europe and having known something of the old French and Belgian liturgical movements, I appreciate the need for a more balanced spirit in the liturgy, between the extremes of counter-Reformation rigid rubricism and the “heresy” of formlessness which all too often prevails in the celebration of the modern liturgy.

One example of liturgy we have overlooked is the European monastic patrimony, carefully restored and nurtured since the days of Dom Guéranger and the foundation of Solesmes. The Benedictine movement did more than anything else to get people to learn to sing Gregorian mass settings and begin to participate in the sacred action with some intelligence. The monastic liturgical movement simplified vestments and introduced flowing chasubles, copes, albs and surplices. In the 1990’s, I spent six months as a working guest at the Abbey of Triors in France, a daughter house of Fongombault, grand daughter of Solesmes. I was able to live the liturgy (1965 Roman rite and Monastic Office) in its plenitude and solemnity. The processions in the cloister were very “pre-Reformation” rather than rigid counter-Reformation. Those monasteries kept a different spirit from the dioceses or the various religious congregations of priests founded since the sixteenth century.

The monastic movement was often applied in French and Belgian parishes after World War II and often before. One shining example was the parish of Mesnil-Saint-Loup under Father Emmanuel in the nineteenth century. Anglicans would do well to study the Liturgical Movement in the Catholic Church and be aware that only one tendency within it was in favour of a liturgical vision reflecting modern deconstructionism and secularism. Many other strands within this movement were noble and inspiring in their vision.

As the Holy Father seeks to create a situation in which there would be free interchange between the two forms of the Roman rite to influence each other for the better via a long process of organic development, the same could be possible with the Anglican Ordinariates. We could have Sarum in either Latin or English, or a combination of the two languages, alongside an improved version of the Anglican Use containing more familiar material from the post-Reformation Prayer Book tradition.

It is true that the Prayer Book was the “novus ordo” of its time in Anglicanism, and was imposed by brute force – on pain of a highly unpleasant death. As the centuries passed, it became the patrimony of “parish Catholics”, people who continued to frequent their parishes as in pre-Reformation times without too much of a thought for church politics or the concerns of the clergy. In this way, a Catholic spirit did survive in spite of the radically Protestant regime in the English Church.

Concretely, I would see the Anglican Use Order of Mass as something very positive. I would proceed by removing the parts borrowed from the modern Roman rite which were in 1980 a sine qua non, but much more relative now. In their place, I would substitute the relevant parts of the Sarum ordinary. For example, the preparation of the chalice, the offertory prayers, the Roman Canon, the prayers after the Lord’s Prayer for the Fraction (including Christ our Passover). I have a copy of the Book of Divine Worhip and David Burt’s beautifully edited Anglican Use Gradual. I like the wealth of prefaces and prayers of the faithful, and this all comes in with the Pope’s ideas of opening up the wealth of liturgical diversity, bringing both old and new from the treasure-house.

The Proper can be that of Sarum minus the sequences. In such a way, the Anglican Use and the Sarum Use could be perfectly harmonised, and would function according to the same calendar, temporal cycle and lectionary. I would certainly like to help Fr Phillips contribute to the future work of a liturgical commission – as he would be likely to be on it.

Like Michael LaRue, I am not in favour of borrowing to any great extent from the counter-Reformation Roman tradition any more than the rite of Paul VI. We should not refuse the Roman rite (either form) when pastoral ministry calls on us to do so, but within our own usage, we should be Anglican and English – or English-inspired.

Such a liturgical vision of an eventually converging dual rite would incorporate the treasures of post-Reformation times: the hymns of Charles Wesley and many other inspired Christian poets, the musical tradition of nineteenth and twentieth century Anglican cathedral choirs, Anglican chant for the psalms, settings for the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, the Versicles and Responses, the hundreds of choral anthems and much more.

I have every reason to believe that a “Sarum-ised” Book of Divine Worship alongside an optional use of the Sarum Use itself and the already explicit possibly of using the Roman Rite (either form) would not leave a single Anglican unsatisfied. The diversity is limited, but made very flexible by the use of a Book of Divine vastly improved by the removal of the “lame duck” Novus Ordo material.

I have read and considered Fr Hunwicke’s arguments for the “Roman” Anglicanism of the Society of St Peter and St Paul, the Big Six on the high altar, churches like St Mary’s, Bourne Street and a counter-Reformation ethos, though very different in spirit from the Society of St Pius X or pre-Vatican II continental Catholicism. Many do feel alienated by the “Roman” and baroque tradition in Anglicanism: baroque altars, baroque vestments (yes, I use them too), lace albs, cottas, birettas – all the things they have at Gricigliano! The only thing is that at Gricigliano, they are continental Roman Catholics.

I can understand the visceral attachment many have to the Prayer Book, and what in the Prayer Book needs to be kept and reused in a Catholic context. There is the Collect for Purity, the Summary of the Law, the magnificent prayer of confession, the absolution, the Comfortable Words, the Prayer of Humble Access, the Thanksgiving. All these prayers figure in the Book of Divine Worship, and would presumably be kept in a revised and improved version. Despite the wide use in England of the modern Roman rite, I think there is still a bedrock of Parish Catholics who would be attracted by a rite containing these prayers from the Prayer Book, and the whole rite being in the same style of English language.

I have said many things and I try to be positive, not to please the greatest number, but to find a way forward by comparing the issues in Anglicanism with the wider crisis in the Catholic Church over issues of identity and patrimony. We can tease out what is most characteristic of our liturgical tradition in a hermeneutic of continuity bridging the pre-Reformation and post-Reformation traditions. I’m sure the Holy Father is looking to us for inspiration, as we are certainly going to prove to become a laboratory for the regeneration of the entire Church. I see wider issues than the number of candles on the altar or buttons on the Vicar’s cassock.

Let’s give this new slant some thought, now that I see Fr Phillips and I (learning from each other) are pushing in such similar directions…

From Rorate Caeli we learn of unrest in the parish of St. Anthony of Padua in San Antonio, Florida (which is in the Tampa Bay area).  A group of dissidents is upset that the pastor, Fr. Edwin Palka, in a weekly schedule of eleven eucharistic celebrations, has the audacity, in accordance with the Holy Father's will, to offer just two Masses in the Extraordinary Form, one on Sunday morning and another during the week.  The malcontents have managed to arrange a meeting with the Bishop of St. Petersburg, Robert Lynch, who appears to be no friend of tradition.  In 2000, Bishop Lynch issued guidelines which all but forbade the practice of Eucharistic Adoration outside of Holy Mass in the diocese.  Even more appallingly, Bishop Lynch was, at least morally, an accomplice in the murder of Terri Schiavo, and subsequently gave his permission for her husband (the murderer) to marry, in a diocesan church, the woman with whom he had an adulterous relationship.  I wonder if traditionalists find it so easy to get an audience with the bishop?  Somehow I think not.

Perhaps both of these matters will yet be resolved in favor of the lawful rights of the priests and Christian faithful involved.  God willing they will be.  I cite these two cases simply because they are presently in the news and I am familiar with the background of each.  We should pray for everyone involved.

Occasionally, Roman Catholic commenters here on The Anglo-Catholic express their distress over the suspicion with which, they perceive, many Anglicans regard some Catholic bishops.  We have even been accused of being less than charitable for be so bold as to question the motivations of those prelates who flagrantly disregard the legitimate aspirations of their people and the teaching of the Holy Father and the Magisterium.  How dare you traditionalist Anglicans — who, after all, are petitioning the Holy See for an extraordinary accommodation and are lucky that the Roman authorities deign to give you the time of day — challenge these well-meaning prelates!  Where do you get off bringing this strife and rancor into the Catholic Church?  You can't possibly understand what it means to be Catholic.  Show some humility!

Perhaps such episodes as these illustrate why some Catholic-minded Anglicans are reluctant to trust that all Roman Catholic bishops will have our best interests at heart.  After all, if Catholic bishops show such disregard for the lawful — and truly awesome and salutary — expressions of their own tradition, why should we believe that they will be respectful of ours?

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales, through its spokesmen, has expressed concern that a future personal ordinariate might become a sectarian enclave not fully integrated into the life of the larger Catholic Church in that country.  Certainly the historic relationship between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Establishment presents some real challenges that must be overcome, but, I wonder: when English Catholic bishops receive requests from the faithful that Anglican Use services be celebrated in a diocesan church, how willing will they be to grant permission?  Will they encourage their priests to share worship spaces with ordinariate communities?  Will they themselves recognize the Anglican Patrimony as endorsed by Anglicanorum Coetibus as a legitimate and honored expression of the Catholic Faith?  In the United States, will diocesan bishops who, for decades, refused to sanction the establishment of Anglican Use/Pastoral Provision communities in their territories now, with fond solicitude, welcome and care for their Anglican petitioners?  This remains to be seen!

We Anglicans watch the struggles of Roman Catholic traditionalists with concern, not because our interests are identical to theirs, though there is certainly some overlap, but because, like the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus was necessitated by the failure of many Catholic bishops, over a long period of time, to respond with generosity and charity to the pleas of estranged groups of the Christian faithful.  As we have explored in previous posts, the Apostolic Constitution creates for us "a church within a Church," protecting our legitimate interests from local diocesan bishops who might not always appreciate them.  But we have no desire to turn inward or to remain confined to an Anglican ghetto.  Like the adherents of the older form of the Roman Rite, we merely seek our rightful place in the life of the Catholic Church.  We pray that when we do enter into the full communion of the Church, we will not find ourselves asking with the Holy Father, "Why are the [...] bishops so unapostolic?"

* * *

Fr. Christopher Phillips

Invited by the host, Fr. Phillips began by sharing a few details of his journey into the Catholic Church.  He was raised in a Protestant family, found his way to Anglicanism in the Episcopal Church, and his faith tested by the breakdown of Catholic Faith and Order in the Anglican Communion, and with personal doubts about the validity of his ministry in TEC, he became one of the first Episcopal priests to be received into the Catholic Church under Pope John Paul II's Pastoral Provision.  Starting from very humble beginnings, he founded the parish of Our Lady of the Atonement which is today a thriving church and school.  His story should be familiar to readers of The Anglo-Catholic.

As he pondered his future in the Episcopal Church, he wrestled primarily with the issue of authority.  Blessed with a strong father as a role model, he understood the importance of paternal authority and came to see that, in an ecclesiastical context, this authority could only be found in the Catholic Church.

Different families have different expressions of the same truth; there are different ways of living in families.  Anglicans will be returning to the full unity of the Church with the laudable traditions unique to their family, and these particular family customs will be expressed ecclesially in the context of personal ordinariates, akin to ordinary dioceses.  Due to the comprehensiveness of the Anglican tradition, the personal ordinariates will be similar to ritual churches in some respects, but as Anglicanism is an offshoot of the Latin Rite, it is only appropriate that it be rejoined to it.

The Apostolic Constitution will not provide a "back door" to those seeking to undermine the universal norm of clerical celibacy (a discipline not a doctrine) in the Western Church.  Future ordination of married men to the priesthood will be scrutinized by the Ordinary assisted by his Governing Council of priests and subject to the permission of the Holy See.

Asked about the public response to Anglicanorum Coetibus, Fr. Phillips said that he had not heard anything at all negative.  At a recent meeting of priests in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, many of his confreres enquired positively about the development.

The Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) is in the forefront of those groups anticipated to avail themselves of the Apostolic Constitution.  The TAC is represented by the Anglican Church in America (ACA) in the USA and many of its members are ready to go.

Fr. Phillips receives enquiries almost daily from Anglican priests and others interested in Anglicanorum Coetibus.

A caller asked if there were any correlation between the circumstances of Anglicanism and the Eastern Orthodox.  Fr. Phillips pointed out that while Rome holds Anglicanism in special regard, she sees Orthodox jurisdictions as proper Churches, which while separated from the Holy See, have maintained all of the essential elements of Catholic Faith and Apostolic Order.

He noted that the Apostolic Constitution may prove a door for many separated brethren to enter the Catholic Church.  Protestant visitors to Our Lady of the Atonement find much that is familiar in the Anglican expression of the Catholic Faith (the exposition of Sacred Scripture, hymnody, &c.).

A caller asked if there will be a role for permanent deacons in the personal ordinariates.  Fr Phillips said that he hoped so, noting that the personal ordinariates, functioning equivalent to dioceses, will have all of the normal elements of Catholic life (e.g. parishes, religious houses, &c.).

A caller asked if there were any particular theological stumbling-blocks for Anglicans considering the Apostolic Constitution.  Fr. Phillips answered that while certainly there would be Anglicans here and there with hang-ups — just as there are Catholics with qualms about individual points of doctrine — the type of Anglican likely to take up the Holy Father's offer already accepted the fullness of Catholic teaching.  He noted that the TAC already had adopted the Catechism of the Catholic Church as its standard of faith.

Mr. Grodi asked if there were a risk of sectarianism in the future Anglican personal ordinariates.  Would these people still consider themselves "half-Anglican"?  Fr. Phillips brilliantly pointed out that the whole point of the Apostolic Constitution was that the incoming faithful retain their Anglican identity, noting that this was not his idea, but the will of the Holy Father himself.  When he came into the Church, he brought with him his eucharistic vestments, his chalice.  There is much in Anglicanism that is already Catholic.  These elements are to be retained.

Grodi: Talk about (Archbishop Thomas) Cranmer.  Fr. Phillips:  Cranmer was a heretic — but a translator of beautiful liturgical prose.  The common people of England desired to remain Catholic.  Cranmer tried to fool them by creating an ambiguous liturgy, one which retained many Catholic elements.  He only fooled himself.  The Catholic elements took root in the now Protestant Church and allowed the Catholic tradition to continue.

A caller asked Fr. Phillips about that which he felt was lacking in his previous ministry.  Fr. Phillips: Authority.  The General Convention of the Episcopal Church, governed by a democratic process, presumed to alter not just ecclesiastical discipline but Catholic doctrine.  How can a question like the sanctity of human life be decided by a majority vote?

Grodi — as per his almost fanatical modus operandi — questioned the validity of Anglican orders.  Fr. Phillips' answer was exceptional.  The Church is not pronouncing on the efficacy of the former ministry of Anglican clergy.  Obviously it transmits grace.  Is this the same grace as that transmitted in the Catholic Church?  The Church is not deciding this question.  Many Anglican bishops have Old Catholic or other "valid" lines of succession.  Perhaps these are sufficient.  The Church only seeks certainty.  She can not live with 'perhaps'.  He noted that as Anglican clergy come closer to their ordination in the Catholic Church, this becomes less of an issue.  It is an issue of peace of mind and obedience to God.

What does the Queen think of the Apostolic Constitution?  Fr. Phillips: I have no idea but reports suggest that she's none to pleased with the state of affairs in the Established Church and throughout the Anglican Communion.

Marcus Grodi wonders if the Apostolic Constitution is meant for England.  Certainly yes.  Fr. Phillips notes that the Apostolic Constitution will have perhaps its greatest effect in India where there is a large TAC presence.  This is a worldwide movement.

A caller asked what it was like for Fr. Phillips when he came to have a relationship with Our Lady.  He related a story about how, driving on his way to a job as a youth minister in college, he would listen to the recitation of the Holy Rosary on the radio.  He learned the devotion and began to carry a pair of beads.  Our Lady threw it over his neck and pulled him with it into the Catholic Church.  Noted that Anglicanism is full of Marian devotion and that he specifically desired that his parish be dedicated to Our Lady.

A question about contraception.  Fr. Phillips related the moral cesspool that is the modern Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion.  In the TEC, contraception, and even abortion, are often seen as moral goods.  Spoke further on the disaster of the democratic definition of doctrinal and moral issues.

A caller from the ACA asked an ambiguous question about 'open communion'.  Fr. Phillips, unclear on the caller's intention, answered that Anglicans in the personal ordinariates will be full Catholics, in communion with all other Catholics (and hence not able to share Eucharistic communion with separated Christians).  Every member of the personal ordinariates will make a profession of faith.  Folks often hesitate over small issues, he said; many are simple misunderstandings and need not have presented trouble in the first place.  Communication is the key to overcoming these perceived obstacles.

A caller asked a general question about sacramental confession and how to explain to his Protestant friends the need to confess to a priest (as opposed to "directly to God").  Fr. Phillips answered that the confession was made "directly to God"; the priest is only the mediator.  Christ himself ordained and commended the sacrament.  Though he had made confessions numerous times in his private prayers, Fr. Phillips said that his first sacramental/auricular confession, when he spoke his sins aloud to the priest, was the most liberating thing he'd ever done in his life.

A caller asked about the Anglican/Episcopalian view of the Real Presence.  Fr. Phillips again noted that this is not likely to be an issue for the variety of Anglican likely to be interested in the Apostolic Constitution.  So much of the Anglican liturgy is reflective of a belief in the reality of Christ's presence in the consecrated elements.  Few Anglicans would find the Catholic teaching unfamiliar.

Grodi closed by asking Fr. Phillips what he would tell Anglicans thinking about "coming home" to the Catholic Church.  Fr. Phillips: Because it is what Our Blessed Lord desires.  It is that for which He prayed on the night before He suffered.  John 17.

Fr. Phillips gave his priestly benediction to the audience.

Shortly after the program ended, I spoke with Fr. Phillips and he's now on his way back to San Antonio from the EWTN studios in Birmingham, AL.  Since he is a contributor to the site, I'll refrain from editorializing too much about the program until he's had the opportunity to share his own impressions of the experience (which I am sure he will do very shortly).  For the moment, suffice it to say that I think that his performance was excellent.  I've already gotten some feedback from members of the TAC, most notably from Bishop Louis Campese, Ordinary of the ACA's Diocese of the Eastern United States, who called me midway through the program, and then again immediately afterwards, to express his delight at a wonderful effort on the part of Fr. Phillips.

In a few minutes, I will post a summary of tonight's discussion and I would invite readers of The Anglo-Catholic to share their impressions of the program.