Under the protection of Our Lady of Walsingham and with Fr. Jeffrey Steenson as its first Ordinary. Go here to visit the Ordinariate's new web site.
Here is the full text of Cardinal Wuerl's remarks at the USCCB meeting…
…and the Ordinary will be named at that time. Thanks be to God.
Here is a live text feed from this afternoon's session of the USCCB. Anglicanorum Coetibus news to arrive within an half an hour or so. Cardinal Wuerl to hold press conference at 4:00 PM EST.
Archbishop John Hepworth, the Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, has just released a pastoral statement regarding the continuing process of implementation of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus in the UK and other countries and regions around the world.
There have been exquisite difficulties this year. The implementation of the Apostolic Constitution has posed difficulties including the way in which the text of the Apostolic Constitution should be interpreted. We have discovered how little detailed knowledge we have of the way the Catholic Church does things, and Catholic officials have discovered, I believe, their need to acquire a better and more profound knowledge of contemporary Anglicanism. There have been times when we have felt excluded. We have not been able to see clearly how the Ordinariate will be initiated, or what the processes for clergy and laity will be. That uncertainty led to feelings of insecurity. As and when my duty as Primate required it, I raised a number of serious issues with Catholic authorities to assist the implementation process.
Obviously the past year has witnessed a marked disconnect (often manifested in embarrassing media missteps and unbecoming internet skirmishes) between the narrative of the TAC Primate and his partisans and the often more sober perspective of the Roman authorities — and the realities of Anglicanorum Coetibus itself — but hopefully, this pastoral letter hints that the Archbishop has finally come to terms with the reality of the situation. As we prayed in San Antonio, may the Lord allow us to "become one" and that soon! As Fr. Phillips noted in one of his excellent after dinner talks in San Antonio, the Traditional Anglican Communion, her constituent parts, and the other Anglo-Catholic ecclesial groups which have striven to maintain the Faith amidst the disintegration of global Anglicanism should now come to an end. They must decrease so that the ordinariates may increase!
It should be also noted that not all of the TAC has been confused or felt excluded from the process. Here in the United States, for example, immediately upon the announcement of the Pastoral Delegate for the implementation of the Apostolic Constitution in the USA, parishes, missions, groups of laity, and individual clergy of the ACA (despite the positions of their hostile bishops and no clear leadership from Australia) moved to contact Archbishop Wuerl's office. They have received a warm reception and the feeling in the States generally is that the implementation process is moving along quite well, with our Anglican concerns and fears being quite thoroughly and charitably addressed.
Perhaps our little online project has helped to disabuse our people from the more fanciful aspects of the official TAC narrative (which after all may have been well-intentioned) in time for them to be open and receptive to the overtures of Cardinal Wuerl, Fr. Scott Hurd, Fr. Christopher Phillips, and others who have worked to prepare the way for our communities to come into the full communion of the Catholic Church on honorable — but realistic — terms. No doubt, history will tell.
Archbishop Hepworth, Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, has finally issued a letter addressed to the wayward ACA bishops who have effectively renounced their solemn oaths to uphold the teaching of the TAC (and the Catholic Church) and are presently engineering an intercommunion/merger scheme with the Anglican Province of America (a "Continuing Anglican" body with a decidedly Protestant bent).
This week, the American bishops are meeting at The National Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows in Belleville, Illinois, and it is expected that the three dissenters will push for their own APA merger agenda. As insiders are well aware, the three are hell-bent on their course of action (however it may play out in its specifics); unfortunately, the Primate's warning of disciplinary action by the TAC COB will go unheeded. I'm afraid we needed this sort of pastoral guidance — or holy discipline — many months ago!
UPDATE 9/28/10 1:05 PM EDT:
This letter is already causing some consternation in Belleville where the three dissident bishops are exceedingly anxious that the Primate's rebuke not be made public. They've asked for all copies to be destroyed (the original was faxed to their place of meeting) while they try to come up with a positive spin on their outrageous actions. Unfortunately for them, Archbishop Hepworth's office, wisely or unwisely, leaked the letter via other channels. It is published here on The Anglo-Catholic as part of the record — as the copy that we received was marked (presumably by +Hepworth) for publication. It should be noted that the letter itself commends it to the public domain.
* * *
Traditional Anglican Communion
Office of the Primate – Archbishop John Hepworth
28th September 2010
By Facsimile:
Bishop Williams
Bishop Strawn
Bishop Marsh
Cc: Archbishop Falk, Lay Canon Woodman, TAC COB.
Dear Fathers,
I write in reference to the letters that you have published recently concerning the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus and its implications. I am also conscious of the various statements that you have published on Diocesan Websites and elsewhere on the same matter.
Since you have published your comments prior to any discussion in College, I am making my response also public.
I have discussed with Archbishop Falk the possibility of action being taken concerning your published statements on unity and your actions in seeking what one of you has described as a “merger” with another Continuing Church in the United States, the Anglican Province of America. I am aware that Bishop Grundorf has publically rejected the Apostolic Constitution, as has Archbishop Haverland.
The power to intervene in disciplinary matters concerning members of the College of Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion is enunciated in section 6.3 of the Concordat, which each of us is sworn to uphold in the Consecration Oath made by bishops-elect. It specifically enables the College to deal with “any credible allegation of dereliction of consecration vows in the life or teaching of one of its members”.
When William Cardinal Levada wrote to each of us last December stating that the Apostolic Constitution was “the definitive response of the Holy See…to your original request”. The Cardinal went on to note “I am only too aware of the delicate process of discernment that will no doubt be embarked upon by many of our Anglican brothers and sisters, and no less of the many practical issues that will need to be faced”.
The College of Bishops has been committed to seeking unity with the Holy See since the inception of the Traditional Anglican Communion. I accompanied my predecessor, Archbishop Falk, in conversations in the Vatican a short time after the TAC was promulgated. I have been at every meeting of the College, and at every meeting the policy of seeking full, corporate reunion with the Catholic Church has been reinforced. Details of these decisions have been regularly highlighted in the publications of the TAC. I say this because you are the three most recently consecrated bishops of the TAC.
At the Portsmouth meeting of the College in 2007, this policy took a more concrete form in two ways. A formal petition seeking unity in clear terms was unanimously approved, and after several days in which concerns could be raised (but none were) was signed by each bishop on the altar in the midst of the Holy Sacrifice and committed to me and two of our fellow bishops for conveyance to Rome. Secondly, exercising the powers noted in the Concordat that ”the final authority to determine questions of Catholic Faith and Apostolic Order (which authority resides by virtue of the nature of the episcopal office in the College of Bishops)…” the College with equal unanimity stated that “We accept that the most complete and authentic expression and application of the catholic faith in this moment of time is found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and its Compendium, which we have signed together with this Letter as attesting to the faith we aspire to teach and hold.” These two matters are binding on members of the College.
The Petition of the TAC also makes a very clear statement about the nature of the Church, which each of you have contradicted in your public statements this year: “We accept that the Church founded by Jesus Christ subsists most perfectly in the churches in communion with the See of Peter, to whom (after the repeated protestation of his love for Jesus) and to whose successors, our Divine Master gave the duty of feeding the lambs and the sheep of his flock.”
With even more significance to your published statements, the Petition also makes very clear the faith of the bishops of the TAC concerning the source of authority in the Church: “We accept the ministry of the Bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter, which is a ministry of teaching and discerning the faith and a “perpetual and visible principle and foundation of unity” and understand this ministry is essential to the Church founded by Jesus Christ. We accept that this ministry, in the words of the late John Paul II in Ut Unum Sint, is to “ensure the unity of all the Churches”.
Whatever the doubts and difficulties of a bishop, he is bound to teach the faith received from the Apostles and proclaimed by the Church in every age. It is to the Church that a bishop looks for the source of his teaching, not to his own doubts and fears.
In the three years since the submission of our petition, most of us have made sure that our clergy and people have become familiar with the Catechism. It has been a careful process of teaching and leadership. In the TAC, as in the Catholic Church and the Churches of Holy Orthodoxy, truth is not reached by democratic means. It is not reached by the recreation of some golden moment of history. Our Petition also states that: “We understand that, as bishops separated from communion with the Bishop of Rome, we are among those for whom Jesus prayed before his death “that they may be completely one”, and that we teach and define matters of faith and morals in a way that is, while still under the influence of Divine Grace, of necessity more tenuously connected to the teaching voice of catholic bishops throughout the world.”
Very clearly, you have renounced this understanding of your fellow bishops, and no longer teach with the same voice as them. Equally clearly, you have not taught and led the people committed to your care with that one voice of a united College. Each of us has started from the same position as that which you have confronted. Tragically, I am forced to the conclusion that some have led their people, others have followed them.
May I make some observations about the way forward?
Communion with any other ecclesial body requires the consent of the College of Bishops. Any act of Communion without the consent of the College betrays the College and puts its own unity at peril.
There is no urgent pressure on individuals to join an Ordinariate. Individual discernment and a response in conscience undergird the corporate reunion that is at the heart of Anglicanorum Coetibus. There is no such luxury permitted to bishops, who have the sacred obligation by virtue of their office itself to teach in such a way that clergy and people form a true conscience. A bishop who cannot teach what the College has defined (and what is the universal teaching of the East and the West) has only one option, and that is to stand aside until he can teach in accord with the Church.
The Traditional Anglican Communion is not a Protestant ecclesial body. In a television interview in Canada several years ago, I said that the most difficult thing that each of us would face in the pathway to unity would be shedding ourselves of the question “What do I think?” and instead asking, “What does the Church teach?” We are not a body that allows each member to approach the Scripture alone and discern a private truth. We understand that the Church is a Divine Gift in which God is present to His People – Teaching, Sanctifying and Creating. We partake of Divine Truth – we do not create it.
As you meet with the other American bishops this week, you must know that you have the prayers and the hopes of your Communion around the world bestowed upon you. You carry the dreams and the destiny of Anglican and Catholic people.
Anglicanorum Coetibus is the first mutual attempt to heal the unity fractured between Rome and Canterbury over four centuries ago. You also bear the burden of history.
With my blessing,
John Hepworth, Primate
As had been rumored for several months, today the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has issued a press release confirming that Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington has been appointed Pastoral Delegate for the U.S. for Anglicanorum Coetibus. Let us welcome Archbishop Wuerl and keep him in our prayers.
Doctrine Of The Faith Congregation Names Archbishop Wuerl To Guide Bringing Anglican Groups Into Catholic Church In U.S.
WASHINGTON (September 23, 2010) — The Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) has named Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington to guide the incorporation of Anglican groups into the Catholic Church in the United States.
In this position, he is a delegate of the congregation and heads the U.S. bishops’ ad hoc committee charged with assisting CDF in implementing the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus. Pope Benedict XVI issued the document in November 2009 to provide for establishing personal ordinariates for Anglican groups who seek to enter corporately into full communion with the Catholic Church.
The personal ordinariate is a canonical structure similar to a diocese that covers the area of a bishops’ conference. This permits the incoming Anglicans to be part of the Catholic Church while maintaining aspects of their Anglican heritage and liturgical practice.
Other members of the ad hoc committee are Bishop Kevin Vann of Fort Worth, Texas, and Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester, Massachusetts. The committee will be assisted by Father Scott Hurd, who was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1993, joined the Catholic Church in 1996, and was ordained a Catholic priest for the Archdiocese of Washington in 2000. Father Hurd will assist Archbishop Wuerl as staff to the ad hoc committee and a liaison to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
Interested Anglicans are asked to contact Archbishop Wuerl through the Washington Archdiocese.
The ad hoc committee has two tasks:
1. To facilitate the implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus in the United States
2. To assess the level of interest in such an ordinariate in the United States.
The House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America, the American Province of the Traditional Anglican Communion, have issued the following press release.
Orlando, FL – 1 pm EST – Bp. George Langberg
Released by the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America, Traditional Anglican Communion 3 March 2010
We, the House of Bishops of the Anglican Church in America of the Traditional Anglican Communion have met in Orlando, Florida, together with our Primate and the Reverend Christopher Phillips of the "Anglican Use" Parish of Our Lady of the Atonement (San Antonio, Texas) and others.
At this meeting, the decision was made formally to request the implementation of the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum cœtibus in the United States of America by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.