At The Catholic Church of England and Wales' Flickr Photostream, there is a set of 25 high resolution images licensed under Creative Commons:
Anna Arco, whose reporting on all things Anglicanorum coetibus over the year has been unmatched, has filed her story on the Westminster ordinations at the Catholic Herald.
At the start of the Mass, Archbishop Nichols read the Bull establishing the ordinariate. In it, Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said the ordinariate “marks a unique and historic moment in the life of the Catholic community in this country”.
The three men were presented for ordination by Westminster auxiliary Bishop Alan Hopes, himself a former Anglican.
In his homily, Archbishop Nichols thanked the Church of England, especially the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.
Archbishop Nichols said: “I want in particular to recognise your dedication as priests and bishops of the Church of England and affirm the fruitfulness of your ministry.
“I thank so many in the Church of England who have recognised your sincerity and integrity in making this journey and who have assured you of their prayers and good wishes. First among these is Rowan, Archbishop of Canterbury, with his characteristic insight and generosity of heart and spirit. This journey of course involves some sad parting of friends. This too we recognise and it strengthens the warmth of our welcome.”
He added “We thank our Holy Father Pope Benedict for not only placing this ordinariate under the protection of Our Lady of Walsingham but also for giving it Bl John Henry Newman as its patron.”
Referring the Pope’s December 20 speech, Archbishop Nichols spoke about Blessed John Henry Newman’s idea of conscience.
He added: “Today we thank the Holy Father for the courageous leadership he gives in establishing the first personal ordinariate. His intentions are clear. It is as he said, ‘a prophetic gesture’. It is to contribute to the wider goal of visible unity between our two Churches by helping us to know in practice how our patrimonies of faith and living can strengthen each other in our mission today.”
Archbishop Nichols said the Pope’s ministry was the visible unity of the Church.
He said: “It is central to the faith of those who enter into full communion in this ordinariate. It is central to the welcome, encouragement and support the Catholic community in England and Wales gives to this development and to all who seek to be part of it.”
He entrusted the Ordinariate to the intercession of Our Lady of Walsingham.
After the laying on of hands and the prayer of ordination, Mrs Broadhurst, Mrs Burnham and Mrs Newton brought their husbands the symbols of the priesthood, the vestments.
The three former Anglican sisters at Walsingham who were received into the Church with the former bishops, brought up the gifts to Archbishop Nichols.
The music at the Mass was sung by Westminster Cathedral choir. The Mass was Missa O quam gloriosum. There was music by Elgar and Stanford. The closing hymn was Newman’s Praise to the Holiest.
More than 60 priests from across England and Wales concelebrated at the Mass of Ordination and laid their hands on the ordinands.
At Communion, many people came up to receive blessings from the new priests.
The stories continue to come in from yesterday's ordinations to the diaconate at Allen Hall. The video above comes via Fr. James Bradley of Sevenoaks, St. John the Baptist, whose media contributions over the last year have been invaluable.
Fr. Bradley also has a set of photos from yesterday on Flickr.
Anna Arco has this piece recounting the day's events at the Catholic Herald.
At Ordinariate Portal, there are now four eyewitness accounts of yesterday's events:
May God bless Fathers Broadhurst, Burnham, and Newton during their profoundly transitional diaconate. More news as it comes…
Sevenoaks, St. John the Baptist has our first eyewitness account of the diaconal ordinations:
Where were you when JFK was shot? Where were you when the white smoke came from the Sistine Chapel that elected Pope Benedict? Where were you when the Ordinariate began?
Tonight, quietly and calmly – but with the beauty and splendour of the Mass – the face of English Christianity changed. Tonight the first three men were ordained for the Ordinariate in these isles and another step towards the fulfilment of Christ's prayer – that all may be one – was made.
John Broadhurst, Andrew Burnham and Keith Newton are brave men of great integrity who, only a few days ago, left their old lives behind to follow Christ's call and to take up the great challenge laid out by the Holy Father in Anglicanorum coetibus. These three, now in the full communion of the Catholic Church, gave up all they had been given and this evening submitted humbly to 'the quiet rectification', in Aidan Nichols' words, of their orders.
It was moving beyond words to be present at this momentous occasion.
The Catholic League is carrying the following piece:
We warmly congratulate the Revd John Broadhurst, the Revd Andrew Burnham and the Revd Keith Newton on their ordination to serve in the sacred order of deacons in the Catholic Church today, 13 January 2011, at Allen Hall. The three who will form the founding clergy of the Ordinariate, were presented for ordination to Bishop Alan Hopes by Mgr Seamus O'Boyle, Vicar General of the Diocese of Westminster, with the insertion of the words 'with the approval of the Holy See.'
The prayer created by the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship giving thanks for previous ordained Anglican ministry used in the past by Cardinal Hume was not employed.
Because the Ordinariate is not yet formally announced, the deacons are not 'acephalous clerics' nor of the diocese of Westminster. They were ordained under the direct authority of the Pope, the Archbishop of Westminster through Bishop Hopes acting on his behalf.
At the end of the Mass, the Bishop offered a prayer of thanksgiving and blessing over Mrs Broadhurst, Mrs Burnham and Mrs Newton.
The decree of erection, the naming of the patron, and, presumably, the naming of the Ordinary have to come by Saturday.
Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us!
William Oddie writes in the Catholic Herald:
The English ordinariate, it seems, will be well on its way by the middle of this month. Three former Anglican bishops were received into full communion with the Catholic Church during a Mass at Westminster Cathedral on January 1. One of the comments following the Herald online report, noting that they were received in secular clothing, opines that “For Bishops to wear ties is simply saintly and to lose all that prestige they once held is stunning to the mind of a Catholic Bishop”.
Well, indeed. But I think that their former prestige is the least important aspect of what they are giving up: they are abandoning certainty and recognition within an established institution, for uncertainty within an institution – the ordinariate – that doesn’t even exist yet. What this shows is an absolute faith in the Catholic Church of which it will be a part, especially as it is embodied by the present Holy Father.
I last saw the most senior of the three, John Broadhurst, formerly Bishop of Fulham, splendidly caparisoned in full episcopal fig (I have known him, on and off, for over 30 years, and have never seen him except in clericals: I can hardly imagine him in a secular collar and tie) at the 150th anniversary of that great Anglo-Catholic institution, Pusey House, Oxford, just after the publication of Anglicanorum coetibus. I asked him for his reaction to the document (it was pretty clear that most of those present were elated by it): his reply had to do, not with the visionary excitements of the proposed ordinariate, but with its practicability: “it’s doable”, he simply replied.
Now, it’s being done (by him and others), and at a dizzying speed. After their ordination on January 1, the three former “flying bishops” will be ordained to the Catholic diaconate on January 13, and to the priesthood two days later. This, I am pretty sure, is unprecedented: Anglican clergy have previously had to undergo a period of seminary training before they are accepted for ordination in the Catholic mainstream.
What this new development demonstrates, apart from anything else, is the degree of knowledge, gained by the former Cardinal Ratzinger after a decade and a half of discussions with these men, of their already existing understanding of and belief in Roman Catholic doctrine and practice (entirely based, since its publication, on the Catechism of the Catholic Church and on other essential Catholic texts). The Pope is well aware that the Anglo-Catholic clergy who will inaugurate the world’s first ordinariate already have a degree of authentically Catholic priestly formation which some of our seminaries are today far from achieving or even attempting.
