As promised, here are a number of high resolution photographs from the Procession and Mass of Palm Sunday at the Ordinariate-bound Cathedral of the Incarnation in Orlando, Florida. On this day, Monsignor Jeffrey Steenson made his first visit to the Cathedral of the Pro-Diocese of the Holy Family.
Here comes the Procession...
Watch that zuchetto!
I have just returned from the Procession and Mass of Palm Sunday at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Orlando, Florida, my home parish. In addition to the pageantry of this Sunday beginning Holy Week, there was a large class of First Communicants, and perhaps just as special, Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, the Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, was among us.
Having met together with Bishop John Noonan of the Orlando Diocese, Bishop Louis Campese of the Anglican Pro-Diocese of the Holy Family, and other clergy yesterday evening, Msgr. Steenson assisted at Mass in Choir. He also gave a touching homily for the great benefit of those children celebrating their First Communions.
At the following reception (or as Fr. Barnes would put it, "bun-fight") in the Royal Hall, Monsignor had the opportunity to meet many of the congregation and First Communion guests. He remarked several times that he was simply "blown away" by the vitality and youth of the congregation; he had not expected to find such, especially in a parish having its roots in the Traditional Anglican Communion (to which, by the way, the parish and Pro-Diocese have no substantive connection; the TAC is for all intents and purposes dead, though we have chosen not to cover the tragic events surrounding its disintegration over the past months).
While the Cathedral clergy humbly continue in the formation process, the entire parish is looking forward to the moment when the community will be allowed to enter the new Ordinariate. Everyone is anxious, and folks were queuing up to meet and thank the man who will soon be, God willing, their Ordinary. Msgr. Steenson was very generous with his time, making a point to speak, sometimes at length, with everyone who wished to meet him.
I had the opportunity to speak alone with Msgr. Steenson for quite some time, and I came away very much encouraged for the future of the Ordinariate. There are challenges ahead, to be sure, but the good Monsignor is coming to understand the singular needs of the various groups in the United States and Canada waiting to find their permanent home in the Catholic Church and the Ordinariate. Pray for him.
Pictures of the event will follow shortly.
Kipling, great poet of Empire, asked "What do they know of England, who only England know?" Now my brief on being given a spot on this blog was to give an English slant, particularly for American readers, to news of the Church. This last week, though, I have spent in Texas, and I've written about it on my Ancient Richborough musings for the sake of my fellow-countrymen. It could be, though, that a Limey has spotted one or two things about the great old U.S. of A … so, very daring, here I go. Be ready to put me right.
The end of the Trail
First, it is very big. Crossing the Atlantic in flying home from Dallas/Fort Worth to London last night, we were over land for the first half of the journey — not just across the centre of the United States as far as the Great Lakes, but then the long haul across Canada to the far reaches of Newfoundland. And although Europeans like to think they are less Provincial than many Americans, when I asked how many in a Texas audience were native born Texans, fewer than half put up their hands. If you have lived in, say, both Seattle and New Orleans, you have experienced differences as wide culturally and geographically as if you had resided in Spain and Sweden. In England we feel we care about our history; but America seems much better at celebrating its history, even if it is shorter than ours (at least so far as those with European ancestors are concerned) hence those wonderful bronze cattle!
Apres Mass
It may be because the USA does not have a pub culture — though ours is fast disappearing — but the Church is even more of a community and social hub than it is in Britain. Perhaps it is the isolation created by great distances, and the refusal of Americans to walk anywhere, that Church fulfils such an important role — and that is true in every denomination, not just the Catholic Church or among Episcopalians. You might not call it a bun-fight, but Americans do their communal meals very seriously indeed.
It was an Anglican Use Parish I was visiting, and many in the States will not have encountered one, since they are few and far between. They gave me, though, an insight into what the Ordinariate might become in England.
St Charles, Austro-Hungarian Emperor
It will take time — but some of those Pastoral Provision parishes have been hugely successful in bringing Anglican Patrimony into the Catholic Church in America (and in the case of St Mary the Virgin Arlington, creating a shrine to the last canonised Holy Roman Emperor!).
Secret Vatican Manuscripts
We paid a visit to the Meadows Museum, set up by a family foundation in the middle of a vast Methodist University Campus. Its great strength is in Spanish art (not something English Methodists are known for) and currently it is displaying illuminated manuscripts – most of which were 'liberated' or threatened with liberation by Napoleon. It was a reminder to me that America is full of wonderful museums, galleries, orchestras, all funded by private benefactors. When are some of our fat-cat bankers going to follow that example of munificence? And when is any Government going to encourage them to do so with tax-breaks? Altogether, this was a week full of great hospitality and generosity — thank you, Fr Allan, and all your folk. Please, everyone, pray for the early erection of an Ordinariate for America.
[P.S. On my return home I found I have been cleared by the Government's Criminal Records Bureau through their Enhanced Disclosure Procedure -- and in the space for "Name of Employer" they have put OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM. Is this a first?]
Rotherhithe Parish Church
Mayflower connections this week; we were in Rotherhithe, where I preached on Corpus Christi (celebrated on Sunday) and also gave thanks for Fr Mark Nicholls' first twenty years of priesthood. He has served in northern England (he was ordained in Liverpool diocese), has spent four years as a parish priest in Zimbabwe, worked with Martin Warner at the Shrine in Walsingham, was parish priest in Rickmansworth in St Alban's Diocese, and now is very happily settled in the ancient riverside parish of Rotherhithe.
The first Rector noted in history was there just seven hundred years ago. More recently the Captain of the Mayflower was from the parish, and that vessel sailed from there before calling at my hometown, Plymouth, and setting off for the New World. So I thought our transatlantic friends might value a few images of the place. Not least because Plymouth, at least, is one place of which Americans seem to have heard… and if it is not, Rotherhithe should be.
The present Church in Rotherhithe dates from a rebuild in the mid eighteenth century, when clearly this was a very wealthy area (which it mostly is not just now). There is some magnificent church plate, and woodwork, plaster and chandeliers are of the finest.
There was also a grand eight-bedroomed Rectory, but that is to be sold and its replacement will look like a narrow tenement, or perhaps servants' quarters, attached to the old house. It was meant to be complete by October, and meanwhile Fr Nicholls is living half a mile away, waiting on the builders and also the local Planning Department who are having misgivings about the bricks.
Chandelier and Organ