Mystici Corporis Christi - Part I

Almost three years have now passed since the apostolic constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus, was given by Pope Benedict XVI providing for the creation of personal ordinariates for Anglicans wishing to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church. That same apostolic constitution requires under Article XI that the Ordinary must go to Rome every five years for an ad limina visit to report on his ordinariate’s status. Since the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham has now been in existence for about a third of that time, it seems an appropriate time to consider what the Ordinary might relay to the Holy See if he were called now to account for the past year and a half.

First, however, it is necessary to return to that original document which, along with its Complementary Norms issued by William Cardinal Levada, forms the basis of the ecclesiastical authority and form of the ordinariates, but also entrusts them with their mission and vocation. This return to those founding documents will then provide us with the means to consider both what the objectives of the ordinariates must be, as formed in the mind of the Successor of S. Peter, but also to assess whether the ordinariates, particularly that established here in the Dowry of our Blessed Mother, have achieved anything of what they were created to accomplish, and whether they are well-placed to bring to fulfilment the prayers of Our Lady to win our country back for God. The aims of the ordinariates as expressed in Anglicanorum Coetibus can be refined into three distinct yet complementary objectives, and it is upon these that our assessment of the Ordinariate will be based.

The Lord’s mandate to the Successor of S. Peter to preside over and safeguard the universal communion of all the Churches

Since the Second Vatican Council much emphasis has been placed upon ecumenism, and yet since the publication of Lumen gentium, some elements within the Church have in certain ways lost a true sense of what ecumenism actually entails, and indeed what the Council Fathers understood by it. Across the world events involving other religions and communities have taken place which have sought to not only open up the Church to an understanding and dialogue with those traditions, but also to proclaim as equals the Catholic Faith and interpretations of the religion of Jesus Christ.  Furthermore, and particularly relevant to the Anglican Communion, there had been a not insignificant move away from position held for many centuries culminating with the conclusion reached in Apostolicae Curae that Anglican orders are ‘absolutely null and utterly void’. Despite there never having been an official retraction or amendment to that position, an attitude has arisen in sections of both the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion that their respective clergy were speaking the same words each Sunday morning, wearing the same vestments, and were performing equally valid and wholesome acts: all this as if they were each utterly interchangeable.

Clearly, this is not the truth that comes from God as received by the Church whose teachings are as His own. Lumen gentium itself made clear that ‘the sole Church of Christ which in the Creed we profess to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which our Saviour, after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd, and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority, which He erected for all ages as 'the pillar and mainstay of the truth,' as a society in the present world…subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him’.

The Creed is the identity of the Church expressed Sunday by Sunday during the Mass and declared by each individual wishing to assume that identity as their own in baptism. What is evident in the current pontificate is a clear longing for a recovery of this identity faithful to Christ’s own teaching which Anglicanorum Coetibus proclaims as ‘visibly manifested in the bonds of the profession of the faith in its entirety…united with its head, the Roman Pontiff’. The Holy Father has not only sought to recover traditional identity by drawing in Anglicans who hold firm to that which they received from S. Augustine and grew through faithful adherence to those teachings. The universal liberation of the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite as something that ‘earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too’ in Summorum Pontificum reminds the Church of her holy tradition which has professed our blessed Faith in all generations. It is this calling to mind of the Truth that makes us free which the apostolic constitution seeks to achieve first and foremost. The pastoral concern of the Vicar of Christ for the sheep entrusted to him cannot accept the ever more aggressive advances of the dictatorship of relativism, whether inside communities of faith or otherwise.

The apostolic constitution itself responds to those who, as illustrated earlier, appear to hold confused positions on orders apart from the Church. Article VI outlines provisions for those who ministered as Anglican deacons, priests, or bishops to be ordained as priests. The document does not make any comment on whether they are, or even might in certain cases arguably be, deacons, priests, or bishops in the sense meant in the Catholic Church. Whilst it is entirely right, as the constitution quotes from Lumen gentium, that ‘many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside [the Church’s] visible confines’, Anglicanorum Coetibus requires even the tiniest element of doubt to be removed, and ordination to Holy Order to take place.  Why would anyone wish to argue that even an iota of doubt should be allowed to remain?

What is strongly stated immediately following that quotation is that the gifts of sanctification and truth properly belong to the Church, and as such ‘they are forces impelling towards Catholic unity’. Many commentators on the Church’s position on ecumenism and the position of other baptised communities fail repeatedly to grasp the implications and force of this statement. To include it in his apostolic constitution founding the Ordinariate is a clear statement from the Holy Father that we are to be strong and firm in the Faith, and not to shy away from boldly proclaiming it.

Since the publication of Anglicanorum Coetibus, and particularly in the first days after its release, there has been widespread shock and criticism from leaders in the Anglican Communion, and indeed within the Church in England. Many expressed their distaste for the proactive approach taken by the Pope, and equated it with landing tanks in front of Lambeth Palace. Yet this is the mission of the Pope as Successor of St. Peter, the Rock on which Christ Himself wished to build His Church. Pope Benedict, in his own words, ‘could not fail to make available the means necessary to bring this holy desire to realisation’.

Has the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham succeeded in its efforts to realise the will of Pope Benedict in this regard? Clearly the result of the first objective is of success. Over a thousand souls have been received into the Church through the Ordinariate, and the stream of men and women, young and old, of diverse backgrounds continues week by week. In many ways this success renders the remainder of this post redundant, as the most precious and immediately important concern of the Church is to bring as many as possible to partake in the sureness of salvation won on Calvary’s tree, guaranteed in the faithful reception of the sacraments as acts of love and devotion for the Lord.

Yet in reality the number of Anglicans who have felt the call of the Holy Spirit and obeyed the command of Christ to be one could have been higher. Explanations for this are certainly complicated and multifaceted, and they can also be confusing.  Some of those Anglo-Catholics who are still in the Church of England, claiming  to be remaining loyal to the church of their baptism, have themselves petitioned repeatedly and insistently for fuller communion with the Pope, and continue to pray for him in the Roman Canon each day, and affix images of him to sacristy walls, exactly as though they were in that fuller communion from which they, in fact, prefer to separate themselves. 

The Ordinariate is called in Anglicanorum Coetibus to proclaim afresh the Faith of the Church so that England may indeed be free. The brave decision of the Ordinary to lead the Forty Days For Life prayer vigil this Autumn is one powerful example of how the Ordinariate can achieve this objective in the fight against one of the greatest evils of our generation. The commitment of the laity and clergy of the Ordinariate to the fight against the redefinition of marriage has been exemplary, and the devotion of priests in the worthy celebration of the Mass has become an ordinary part of the Ordinariate’s daily cycle.

This is not to say that there remain no issues. There are some who have the mistaken impression that the Catholic priesthood in which Ordinariate clergy serve is identical to the Anglican priesthood in which they served so recently.  To take this view is to see their Catholic priestly ordination as merely a confirming in their pre-existing orders for the wider Church, signalling a failing in sacramental theology and also in understanding of the Catholic insight into holy orders. Similarly the sacrament of Confirmation which, along with Holy Orders and Baptism, cannot be repeated, with simulating such being sacrilege. It is absolutely wrong for clergy to preach or teach such divergences from the Faith, or to instruct candidates that they are merely continuing exactly what they have always enjoyed, with nothing whatsoever having changed. Whilst such deviations from the teaching of the Church are rare, they can be found, and for as long as they continue, the Ordinariate will have an extra challenge placed before it as it seeks to fulfill its fullest potential as a sign and symbol of Christ to the English people. Certainly we must preach to our separated brethren by kindly words, and we must at all times take great care to avoid arrogant pride: but in that spirit of friendship and humility, we must not hide or deny the integrity which we attained when we decided that it was indeed better to be together with the Sucessor of St Peter.

In the Vatican Council’s decree Unitatis redintegratio, the Fathers noted the numerous communities of the baptised which present themselves to men as the true inheriters of Jesus Christ, but also that whilst it is true that division amongst the baptised wounds the Church and causes scandal, those separated communities fall short of what those in the Ordinariate now achieve. It is essential, therefore, that the Ordinariate does not falter in its preaching of the Church being ‘the all-embracing means of salvation’, which all men must embrace so that they can be sure of being able to benefit fully from the means of salvation within her.

Continues.

Beyond the End of Our Noses

A few days ago, someone left a comment on our blogpost The Extraordinary Form in Hong Kong, asking what the contents of that post had to do with the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.  A response was provided, stating that, as explained in the opening paragraphs of the post, the Ordinariate was part of the Catholic Church, and that it was a good thing that Ordinariate members were interested in what was going on in the Catholic Church.  It would be ridiculous for us not to be.

The person who left the comment didn't leave any clues as to their identity, so we cannot know if it was someone quite genuinely asking a question without any preconceptions or prejudice, or if the comment was an uncharitable attempt at a snide remark. Given that doubt, it should be made clear that the rest of this post refers to a general phenomenon, and is in no way an assault on (nor a guess at) the views of Anonymous of a few days ago.

I must confess to having been rather irritated by the question raised in the comment: I know, I should know better than that.  What irritated me is that it reminded me of a habit amongst some of delighting in fantasising that the Ordinariate is somehow pointless.  Those prey to this phenomenon criticise the Ordinariate as not being Anglican enough ("What's the point of it?") and yet simultaneously and no less ill-informedly criticise the Ordinariate as not being Catholic enough ("Why don't they just become 'proper' Catholics?").   Anonymous of a few days ago brought all this to mind because his or her remark seemed to imply that Ordinariate members should only be interested in the Ordinariate.

When they leave polemic aside and reflect calmly, I wonder what these people believe that those like me thought we would be signing up to when we joined the Ordinariate.  I wonder what they think our motives were.  They cannot seriously imagine that we wanted to create a little ghetto for disgruntled ex-Anglicans to hang about in, a ghetto in which we could ignore the rest of the Church.  They must surely know that we were answering a call to Unity in the Catholic Faith, in the Catholic Church, in communion with the Successor of St Peter.  No longer do we sojourn in a halfway house.  They cannot be under the misapprehension that we were called upon to renounce anything of our Anglican past, they must know that indeed the contrary was asked of us, that we should bring our Anglican Patrimony with us so that this might become part of the wider treasures of the Catholic Church. 

Ordinariate members are fully part of the Catholic Church, and we are full of joy to be so.  We are not Ordinariate members first and somehow members of the Catholic Church second.  We are delighted to have come into the full communion of the Catholic Church: joining the Ordinariate was a wonderful means of achieving this, it was not itself the goal. 

We do indeed look beyond the end of our noses, and realise with great happiness that we are part of the Church, part of an "organisation" that is present around the world and has over a billion members.  We are not interested in obsessing only about our little constituent part of the Catholic Church. 

Ordinariate members do not (and should not) spend their time focusing solely on their own immediate environment, ignoring the wider Catholic Church around them. The shortest of trawls of Ordinariate-related blogs makes this perfectly clear. Fr Ed Tomlinson talks regularly of the joy of unity that the group of Anglicans he led out of St Barnabas Tunbridge Wells and into the Catholic Church now shares with their now fellow Catholics in Pembury, and of what has been achieved for his group by both Monsignor Newton and by the Archbishop of Southwark and his Area Bishop John Hine. Fr Edwin Barnes frequently highlights joint events with diocesan parishes, indeed one of his recent posts talked of how he had attended two Chrism Masses this year, the Ordinariate Chrism Mass and also the Portsmouth Diocesan Chrism Mass.

As Anglo-Catholics, we for many years managed to cling on to the belief that the Church of England was part of the one Universal Church, separated from the wider Church only by misfortune and accident of history.  This was the vision that was shared for generations, but it was also a vision and ecclesiology that crumbled around us, a phenomenon that caused Dr Eric Mascall and many others great anguish.  Now that we are undoubtedly fully part of the Catholic Church, why would anyone think that we would not rejoice in being in that wider communion, why would anyone think that we would not be interested in the Catholic Church as a whole?

Two follow-on comments :

• Criticisms of this nature are often accompanied by melodramatic sweeping comments such as ".....and I know lots of Catholics who are very worried by the Ordinariate."  Well, perhaps such people do, but from personal experience, I can only say that I have encountered nothing other than joy and welcome from my fellow Catholics.  Members of the Marylebone Ordinariate Group were especially touched at the support shown to the Ordinariate's First Anniversary Evensong and Benediction by members of the St James's parish congregation.
• There are some who rather mystically decree that the Ordinariate is not about Unity.  Their logic escapes me entirely.  It really does.  Unity is about people coming together, not about finding new and exciting ways in which to split Christianity.  This marvellous initiative from Pope Benedict, who is truly showing himself to be the Pope of Christian Unity, is a real gift. 

In one of our earliest posts on this blog, The Universal Church, we referred to how when we were Anglicans we thought we knew all about the concept of believing in unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam, we even sang those words every week, but now that we were truly part of the Catholic Church, we had realised that we had a lot to learn.   What a joy it is to learn about being part of the Catholic Church, and to come across its treasures across the world.

Ordinariate Chrism Mass 2012

The Apostolic Nuncio celebrated the Ordinariate's first ever Chrism Mass yesterday, a great event that was held at St James's Spanish Place.  People certainly came in large numbers, not only the 60+ Ordinariate priests who had travelled from across the country, but also many lay members of the Ordinariate, other Catholics encouraged by Fr Colven's announcement at Mass on Palm Sunday morning of what was to happen the following day, and no doubt a number of people who happened to be passing by and came across something rather bigger than they expected to see happening in church.  The photo below shows the reception held afterwards in the St James's Social Centre, with the Nuncio and Msgr Newton in cheerful conversation.

The St James's choir was on its usual excellent form, and a number of servers from the regular St James's team kindly gave up their time to help the Ordinariate celebrate this great occasion.  Thanks are due to them and to the Rector for all that they do to help the Ordinariate, in line with the Holy Father's wishes.

Monsignor Newton pointed out in his homily that since his authority as Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham is vicarious on behalf of the Roman Pontiff, it was wonderful and entirely appropriate that the Apostolic Nuncio, His Excellency Archbishop Mennini, had come to celebrate the Ordinariate's first Chrism Mass.  In this year when we mark the 30th anniversary of the establishment of full diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Court of St James, there was an added feeling of this just being exactly right. 

Archbishop Mennini's presence and obvious delight at being able to participate were a clear sign, if any were necessary, that the Ordinariate is a project that the Holy Father very actively supports.  Fr Ed Tomlinson, in his blogpost last night, wrote of the Archbishop's very warm words at the end of Mass.

Something that seems to have struck a lot of people present is the total sense of Unity of the event.  In theory, this ought not to be anything new, but for former Anglo-Catholics, it most certainly is.  Chrism Masses are a unifying event for a particular church with its Ordinary, but since the early 1990s Anglo-Catholics never really had that.  They faced the choice of attending diocesan celebrations alongside people of whose orders they were not entirely sure, or there was the option of a Forward in Faith / PEV Chrism Mass.  Those latter occasions were certainly joyful, encouraging and full of enthusiasm when they began, and I remember clearly attending such an event in Reading c.1995 (the first time I had the chance to sing the hymn below, yes any excuse to include Frank Patterson.....), but even then there was a knowledge at the back of everyone's mind that the ecclesiology of a separate arrangement, out of communion with those with whom we were technically in communion, was not obviously catholic.  As priests have left to join the Ordinariate, and as this trend continues, one wonders how long these PEV events will survive, particularly after the likely changes in legislation affecting the Church of England.  While people are on friendly terms, having the local Anglican diocesan bishop present and involved in a PEV Chrism Mass may be a sign of hospitality and indeed even of communion, but if the future is less rosey than that, a diocesan bishop insisting on joining in might be rather political.



One member of the Marylebone Ordinariate Group summed it up like this :

..... I overheard a priest say exactly what I had said to myself at Mass, it was the first time I had been at a Chrism Mass where I felt myself fully in union with Bishop, priests and people, and that was the most joyful and moving experience of the day.

Fr Ed Tomlinson, in the blogpost mentioned above, put it this way :

It was a happy day. But above all it was a day that underlined a thrilling truth. In previous years I would always feel a pang of sorrow during the Chrism Mass because Anglo-Catholics felt unable to attend the main diocesan event and held a separate service. It was a visible sign of the disunity with which we had to live. But today there was no sorrow only joy. For this was the main event- there was only unity. A unity that exists between all Catholics the world over. It is good to be home.

As Monsignor Newton said in his homily, we have gone forward in faith together, into an environment where we are part of that Unity to which we are all called.  In this respect, it was pleasing to see so many familiar faces amongst the clergy and people, with whom we are once again united. 

It is also worth commenting on the enthusiastic singing from the congregation, both in the hymns and in the responses.  This is one aspect of Anglican Patrimony that is immediate and audible, and which sounds wonderful in a stunning building such as St James's.  It was also striking (as you can see in this photo) that the unkind rumours spread by some of the modern day deniers about all the Ordinariate clergy being pensioners is manifestly untrue. 

We have posted a set of photos on our Flickr site, a few of which are reproduced below.  The Ordinariate has also produced a very good set of photos on their Flickr site. 

All said, a very joyous occasion, and one that brought home that we are truly part of the Church, all in the same communion.

Just to conclude, Msgr Newton quite righly pointed out that there are many in the Catholic Church whom we thank regularly, justly so.  However, we also owe a sincere debt of thanks to those very brave men (and in many cases their families) who gave up not only the Church of England as a spiritual home, but also took a far greater risk in material terms by leaving behind housing, employment and future pension accrual.  We thank Fr Colven and the clergy at St James's regularly here on this blog, but we are also very pleased to take this opportunity to thank Fr Christopher Pearson publicly, Fr Pearson being the nearest that the Marylebone Ordinariate Group has to its own priest.

Lenten Sundays Begin

The servers at St James's must breath a sigh of relief when Lent arrives.  No longer the mad dash between the end of the 0930 Extraordinary Form Mass and the 1030 Solemn Latin (OF) Mass to change everything from purple into green.  For a good few weeks (and with a couple of days of exception), it is purple all the way.  Here is how the sanctuary looked yesterday immediately after the crowds for the EF had dispersed (but before the 1030 congregation had arrived), and how it can remain for some time.  Notice the calm in the sanctuary.

We were pleased to welcome an old friend from Bourne St, still Anglican, to join us both for Mass and for a drink afterwards.  He very much enjoyed his visit, and revealed that not only had he been with us on 3 September 2011 (for our Reception Mass), as we already knew, but that he had also from time to time attended the 0930 Extraordinary Form Mass at St James's.  His visit recalls this earlier post of ours, when two friends from our earlier Anglican days joined us at St James's.

Now might be a good time to mention two sets of Lenten talks, with different themes, that might be of interest to those in and around London this Lent. 

The first is the series being organised by the Ordinariate, taking place on Monday evenings at 7pm at St George's Cathedral, Southwark.  More details can be found here.  The talks sound like they are ideally suited for those who, while not new to the Catholic faith, are new to the Catholic Church. 

The other series of talks are being held at St James's, and are labelled Perspectives in Healthcare, with various medical professionals coming to talk about their role.  St James's is situated in Marylebone, where there are many hospitals and clinics (including those in the famous Harley Street).  At the time of writing, more details can be found here.  The talks are held on Wednesdays in Lent at 6pm, the first one being given by Professor Roy Sanders.

To conclude this short post, a comment on yesterday's music.  For the mass setting, we had a Palestrina Mass setting that I didn't know, the Emendemus, very appropriate for the season of course.   It was wonderful, especially the Sanctus.  Not being able to find it on youtube, here is the no less wonderful Agnus Dei from the Palestrina Missa Brevis.



The communion motet was one of my favourite Byrd motets Civitas Sancti Tui.  In this youtube version, sung by the Hilliard Ensemble, it is correctly placed as the second half of a longer piece, following Ne Irascaris Domine.  Having said that, Civitas Sancti Tui more than stands up on its own, the Sion Deserta and Ierusalem section of the piece is immensely powerful.

A Candlemas Welcome

About 100 or so attended the 6pm Solemn Mass at St James's for Candlemas last Thursday.  We have a small number of photos of the event, starting with a picture of The Golden Lady, the statue of Our Lady and the Infant Jesus that is situated near to "Ordinariate Row" at St James's.

Welcome to Scott Anderson, one of the Ordinariate's newest Catholics.  May he feel as welcome and as content as we do.  Scott becomes part of the London (South) Ordinariate group. 

We must highlight the choice of final hymn last Thursday.  The Race that Long in Darkness Pined has a a certain resonance for those of the Marylebone Group who were once Presbyterians, but it did also seem immensely apt for those now finding their home in the Catholic Church.

One other thing to highlight was the incident whereby poor Scott found himself "locked" in the sanctuary.  He had been bidden into the sanctuary in order to be the first lay person to receive communion.  While this was going on, one of the servers, in accordance with usual practice, locked the altar rails in preparation for the congregation to come up to receive communion.  Scott was therefore trapped : Fr Colven wondered if this might be a sign of things to come in the future, a sign that Scott might one day return to duties in sanctuaries. We shall see, this is not the current plan we understand, but who knows what the future might hold.

The less said about the incident when a St James's regular nearly found herself going up in flames holding one of the Candlemas candles, the better. 

A little more information on Scott's arrival in the Catholic Church can be found here.

Ordinariate Anniversary Evensong at St James's

"Happy Birthday" sang the gathered crowds at the reception that followed the service of Solemn Evensong, Procession of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction on Sunday night at St James's.  There was indeed a feeling of joy and celebration, and the exuberant and spontaneous (if arguably not totally successful) attempt to sing "Happy Birthday, Dear Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham" was proof of that.

One can certainly understand why.  The success of Sunday night exceeded all expectations. 

Earlier in the week, we made reference to the difficulty of planning for a service when we genuinely had no idea how many people would attend.  The number of orders of services printed was based solely on the number of gift aid envelopes we happened to have in stock (281).  The quantities of food and wine were decided on the basis of a guess that 200 of the 281 would come downstairs to the St James's Social Centre to join the reception, noting that Tesco on Marylebone High Street was moments away should the bar run dry and Monsignor Newton's powers to replicate the stock management practices at the Wedding at Cana not prove up to the task.

Setting up the sanctuary after the St James's 4pm parish mass, it was very clear to all involved that there were going to be far more people there than we had dared think possible.  Our estimations had gone from 100 in pessimistic moments to 300 in what we thought were wildly optimistic moments. 

In fact, there were close to 500 people present, filling up the central section of St James's, all the way from the altar rails to the back of church, with some considerable spillover into the side aisles.  Fr Colven, the Rector of St James's, watched proceedings from the triforium, and attempted to count the numbers present : he stopped counting sometime after 400, so our estimates seem to be about right.

The beautiful pictures in this Flickr set give some sense of the scale of the event, as well as of the beauty of the liturgy and of St James's church.  We intend to post some further pictures of the service, as well of the reception, later in the week. 

What was also wonderful was that the congregation was genuinely a mix of people, many Ordinariate members of course, but also a large number of Anglicans and a large number of non-Ordinariate Catholics.  In particular, we were delighted to see a good number of people from St James's who had come to learn more about the Ordinariate.  One of them had turned up at exactly 5pm expecting to be able to take her pick of seats, not being aware that attendance might be high : she said to me afterwards that on arrival it had felt almost like Christmas Eve, both in terms of the numbers and in terms of the sense of anticipation.

That the congregation was made up of these different groups, all coming together through the Ordinariate, was extremely pleasing.  How appropriate that this mix of people should gather to celebrate a movement that is at is heart built on a call to the unity for which Christ prayed on the night that He was betrayed.

We only wish that every one of those, whether Catholics or Anglicans, who do not yet understand the value or purpose of the Ordinariate could have been there to witness the occasion.  This truly was an example of Anglican Patrimony meeting Catholic practice, with the most pleasing results on both sides.  The wisdom of the Holy Father in launching Anglicanorum Coetibus was perfectly visible on Sunday night.

Monsignor Newton's sermon can be found here. 

Fr Edwin Barnes won the prize for being the first of the well-known bloggers to post on the subject of last night.  This is all the more impressive as he led a coach trip of Ordinariate members from Bournemouth and Salisbury to be with us, so it must have been a rather tiring day.  Here is his report, and I do hope Fr Barnes will not mind if we steal one of his photos to head up this blogpost. 

Another of his pictures, which he posted on the Anglo-Catholic blog, shows Mgr Newton in conversation in the sacristy with the Rector of St James's, Fr Christopher Colven, who kindly allowed us the use of his church and was extremely welcoming and patient with us at all times. 

Other internet reports are now starting to appear.  We note a very positive report on the well known blog A Reluctant Sinner, which has some kind words to say about how Sunday night, among other things, helped to explain to non-Ordinariate Catholics some of the gifts that the Ordinariate, with its Anglican Patrimony, brings with it into the Catholic Church. 

Fr Ed Tomlinson reports here. 

The Tablet has reported on the event here. 

The music was, as ever, of the very highest standard.  Thanks are due to Dr Terry Worroll (Director of Music) and Iestyn Evans (Organist) for their part in that, thanks also to the choir of St James's, who with Terry and Iestyn were pleased to have had the chance to sing a very different repertoire from their usual fare.  Many in the congregation commented on how nice it was to hear Anglican Chant being sung for the psalms, with the opportunity it gives the organ to show off its full tone palette.  Although everyone, of course, enjoyed the Introit being Parry's I was Glad, some seemed particularly to like the way that the grand musica anglicana finally gave way in the Tantum Ergo to the beautiful unaccompanied setting of that text by Déodat de Séverac, the perfect prelude to the Benediction that was to follow moments later.



Thanks are also due to John and Paul, of the St James's serving team, who helped us out not only by being acolytes, but by guiding us around the sacristy to make sure we could find all the things we needed.

The format of the liturgy will have been familiar to the many in the congregation who had in the past witnessed similar celebrations at St Mary's Bourne St, with a few variations in the order of Evensong so as to match the order approved by Rome for use in the Ordinariate.  The Procession of the Blessed Sacrament involved around 30 people, and managed to weave its way around church  in a very dignified manner, with the canopy being carried by Knights of Malta.  Working out the order of the procession when the man who wrote the rule book on such things was going to be present (Bishop Peter Elliott) was a daunting task, but I am happy to report that I heard no complaints.

One of the Marylebone Ordinariate Group commented to me that hearing the sacring bell sound in the distance as the procession continued, getting further away and moving round the church was immensely powerful.  This was the first time I had heard (well, it was me doing the ringing) a sacring bell being used in procession in a church on St James's scale, and I can quite imagine that the sound could have had quite an impressive effect as the procession moved around.

It was an honour to have Bishop Peter Elliott (the Holy See's Delegate for the Ordinariate being established in Australia) present, as it was to have His Excellency Fra' Duncan Gallie (Chancellor of the Grand Priory of England, Sovereign Military Order of Malta) and Monsignor John Armitage (Vicar-General, Diocese of Brentwood) there.  It was equally an honour for members of the Ordinariate to be present together with each other, with our Ordinary, Monsignor Newton, and with so many friends and supporters to mark this great day.

Thanks to Monsignor Newton for leading us through both Sunday night and the past year, to Fr Christopher Colven for his hospitality and forbearance, to Sister Catherine in the St James's Social Centre, to Fr Christopher Pearson for his inspired idea of holding an anniversary Evensong and Benediction, and to all those who helped out on the night (not least those from the London (South) Ordinariate Group, without whose fantastic help the reception would have been far harder work for those of us from the Marylebone Group).  This was a great team effort, and it is exactly in this spirit of joyful co-operation that all of us in the Ordinariate intend to carry on, following the Holy Father's call to follow Our Lord's prayer for Unity.

A Catholic Christmas

A few days ago, on Christmas Eve, we put up a blogpost shortly before going to Midnight Mass, our first Midnight Mass as Catholics.  In it, we talked of looking back to how we had marked Christmas in previous years, and sent our best wishes to our friends at Bourne Street.  No doubt you are all dying to know how it all went, and how we felt in the new environment.  Worry no more.

First of all, a couple of photos : before and after photos of the Outdoor Crib at St James's, taken upon leaving from and arriving for Midnight Mass.

The pictures may be of too poor quality for you to notice that the first one, the "after" picture, has the representation of the Infant Jesus in the manger, whereas the second one, the "before" picture does not.  If you happen to be passing St James's in the next few days, do walk along George St and have a look.

Back to the comparison between this year and last.  Last year was probably my favourite ever at Bourne St.  One of the pleasing constants between last year and this year was the Proclamation of the Nativity.  In 2010, I had the chance to chant this.  It was being sung for the first time at Bourne Street (as far as anyone could remember), inspired by noting that the chanting of this text had returned at St Peter's in Rome, and had been appearing at Anglo-Catholic parishes such as St Barnabas Tunbridge Wells and St John's Sevenoaks.  Here is a photo of that moment, and yes, I can confirm that reading the text and plainchant was not at all easy in the dark. 

This year, after carols from the choir (including the always popular O Holy Night), and at the start of Mass one of my favourite hymns (It Came upon the Midnight Clear), Fr Irwin ascended the pulpit steps and read the same well known text from the Roman Martyrology.  It was wonderful to hear those words again.

There are those who are not keen on the Proclamation of the Nativity, on the grounds that its historical accuracy is not always beyond challenge.  The text is indeed very specific about its dates, but perhaps one should not get too hung up about this, otherwise why mark Christmas on 25 December, why refer to this year as being 2011?  The point of the text, as it is read or chanted to us today, is to remind us that at a particular moment in our human history, God clothed Himself in human flesh, humbling Himself to be amongst us as one of us.  This was something that happened at a real point in time, as tangible as the time at which Midnight Mass started last Saturday night. 

St James's was packed to capacity, but with customary Spanish Place efficiency, the entire service was concluded and many hundreds communicated (to the accompaniment of the Darke setting of Rossetti's In the Bleak Midwinter) in only a little over an hour. 

As so many times before, there was a huge amount that was familiar to us about this service.  The Proclamation of course, but also the habit of sticking to a midnight start, and the habit of the Procession to the Crib occurring at the end (during that procession, what a pleasure it was to sing Adeste Fideles in Latin : I haven't done that since school). 

It was a true joy to be there.  We were delighted to have made the effort to have turned up so early, even by ten past eleven there was little seating left in the front half of the church.  The only slightly negative note was that even though St James's was absolutely full, we were conscious of those who were no longer with us, ie those at Bourne St with whom we had shared many Christmas midnights.  Prayer for Christian Unity must continue.

Happily, to distract us from any temptation towards such self-indulgent melancholy at this festive time of year, we are now very much throwing ourselves into the task of helping with the arrangements for the Ordinariate's "first birthday" service on Sunday 15th January, to be held at St James's.  It promises to be a very exciting event, the perfect occasion on which to give thanks for the creation of the Ordinariate and its huge contribution to the increase of unity amongst Christians in this country. 

At 5pm that day, we will have Solemn Evensong, followed by a Procession of the Blessed Sacrament and finally Benediction.  The music list is now being put together, and promises to be spectacular.  Those of you who know St James's will know that the choir is of a very high standard, so we will all be able to look forward to hearing some very fine and mostly familiar pieces of Anglican choral music in a splendid new Catholic setting. 

We have asked you before, and we will ask you again, do please come along on the 15th, and do please encourage all your friends to do so too, Catholics and Anglicans. 

To conclude, what else but O Holy Night.  Not in the choral setting in English that we all know, but in the original French : the Cantique de Noel Minuit, Chrétiens by Adolphe Adam, here sung by Robert Alagna. 

What Would Dr Mascall Have Done?

One of the many subjects debated between those who have decided to join the Ordinariate and those who have not is what the late Fr X or Bishop Y would have done if they had been faced with a similar decision. 

It is, of course, impossible to come up with a definitive answer.  The circumstances are too different in most cases, and indeed the Church of England, and its Anglo-Catholic constituency, have transformed themselves dramatically.  (To be fair, the way Rome engages post Vatican II and the initial stages of ARCIC also change the analysis.)  People used to talk of corporate reunion between Canterbury and Rome, of a need to remind the Church of England that (if one accepts the theory) her rightful place is as the  historic Ecclesia Anglicana, part of the one universal Church.  Instead, people now talk about whether or not to preserve a cordonned-off space within the Church of England in which Anglo-Catholics can carry on peacefully ie a more or less catholic enclave within a Liberal Protestant church, or even about whether the Catholic Church and the Pope have the monopoly on being the Catholic Church.

None of this was properly imaginable even a generation ago.  Indeed, it is so bizarre that it barely seems imaginable even today : yet it is reality. 

Of the three most famous founding fathers of the Oxford Movement, we all know what Newman did, and perhaps Keble seems the one most likely to have understood the approach of the modern day deniers.     Pusey, well, it's true that he was not burning with enthusiasm for a ticket to Rome, but on the other hand would he have felt more positive about following his friend Newman's example if he had been a part of the Church of England as it is now, where Holy Orders are defined by majority vote?  There is quite simply no way of knowing, although one rather thinks that the scope for debate would be rather more limited if one imagines Dr Pusey having to decide between Rome and for example the US Episcopal Church as it now is.

All such debates are fun but rather futile.  To stand a chance of coming close to being able to speculate slightly more accurately on what the great figures of Anglo-Catholicism might have done, one needs to move much nearer to current times.  The most obvious example is Dr Eric Mascall, a towering figure of Anglo-Catholicism and indeed of theology in the twentieth century, who was for many years one of the clergy at St Mary's Bourne Street (the former home of the members of the Marylebone Ordinariate Group). 

Clearly, there can be no certain answer as to what Dr Mascall would have done.  While the dramatic events of 1992 and 1993 unfolded in England, he was too ill to reach a conclusion about what path he might take, and indeed he died before the first of the ordinations of women priests in the Church of England (although after the decisive vote in General Synod).  Nonetheless, Mascall is probably the nearest to us in time of those leaders of Anglo-Catholicism who died before a decision came to be necessary.  Monsignor Graham Leonard and the Rt Revd Eric Kemp both lived long enough to make their decisions, and as such they fall just this side of the dividing line : there is very little gap between the time of their decisions and the death of Mascall. 

Having had some email correspondence with Professor William Tighe on the matter, we have included below an article that he wrote for the excellent Anglo-Catholic blog in February 2010, on the 17th anniversary of Dr Mascall's death.  Many of you may have seen the article already, but fewer of you will have picked up on one of the comments, one posted by Professor Tighe himself.  The comment demonstrates just how awkward the situation is for faithful Anglo-Catholics who remain in the Church of England, as compared to the more compassionate and pastoral approach that would have been favoured by Dr Mascall.  Here is the comment, followed by the text of the original article by Professor Tighe, with thanks and acknowledgement to the Anglo-Catholic blog, where the article was first posted.

In my posting, I wrote:

"His correspondence, now in the archives of Pusey House, Oxford, contains some tense and even fraught exchanges with his old friend Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, over some of the resolutions of the 1968 Lambeth Conference, and over the Anglican-Methodist unity votes of 1969 and 1972, which the Methodists supported, as did Ramsey, but which failed to achieve the requisite majority in the Church of England’s General Synod, and which, in their final form, Mascall opposed."

When reading through Mascall's correspondence in the Pusey House archive in July 2007 I was struck by one exchange between Mascall and Ramsey in the lead-up to the 1972 vote. Ramsey had written rather vehemently to Mascall protesting the latter's eventual opposition to the scheme (Mascall had earlier joined with his fellow Anglo-Catholic Graham Leonard, and with two Evangelical Anglicans, Colin Buchanan and James Packer, to propose alterations which, if adopted, would make the scheme acceptable in their sight); evidently Mascall had expressed the view that to proceed with the union, even with the requisite two-thirds majority in the General Synod, would be inappropriate, given that to do so would make it morally necessary for a large portion of the opposed minority to separate from the Church of England, as likewise for a considerable proportion of the approximate 20% minority in the Methodist Church who opposed it. Ramsey, in reply, urged Mascall to consider how unsatisfying and absurd it would be to allow a small bitter-end rump of Protestants (or words very much to the same effect) to block the achievement of sacramental reconciliation between the Church of England and the Church of Rome, "a cause which, as you know, is as dear to my heart as it is to yours."

In his reply, Mascall acknowledged his long-standing desire for just such a reconciliation, but he went on to declare that if there were any organized and recognized body of Anglican opinion within the Church of England that could not accept the terms of such an Anglican/Catholic reconciliation, he would prefer that such a proposal be deferred, or even defeated, rather than seeing conscientious fellow-members of the Church of England being driven to leave. Mascall's reply is a vivid expression of his pastoral sensitivity — but it also related rather closely to his final apprehension that that the Church of England in particular, and "Anglicanism" more generally, was a church structure consisting of "three parties or groups 'severally holding three irreconcilable views of the nature of the Christian religion' existing alongside one another in the same church" — a logical inference from which is that until the triumph of one particular party, the one with the least scruples about treading upon tender consciences, the illiberal "Liberals," that is, in order to achieve their goals, which is what recent decades have seen among Anglicans in America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and elsewhere, and more recently in England, Angican churches generally would be unable to achieve ecumenical goals of any sort without the risk and reality of fragmentation.

How times changed over the past forty years.  The General Synod in its voting record has much to learn from the charitable approach of Dr Mascall, concerned as he was to bring people along with him rather than leave a minority in an impossible position.


ARTICLE FROM THE ANGLO-CATHOLIC BLOG
DATE 14 FEBRUARY 2010
ORIGINAL TEXT CAN BE FOUND AT THIS PAGE


Eric Lionell Mascall as Anglican Patrimony

February 14, 2010 marks the seventeenth anniversary of the death of Eric Lionel Mascall, one of the great luminaries of English Anglo-Catholicism in the Twentieth Century, a man to whom his distant kinsman through marriage, Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P., dedicated his admirable book, The Panther and the Hind: A Theological History of Anglicanism in 1993 — a book of which a new edition may be in prospect — referring to Mascall in the dedication as magistro catholicae veritatis, which one might render as a “masterful teacher of catholic truth.” He would be pleased, I think, at the prospect of the “rescue mission” for elements of the “Anglican patrimony” offered in Anglicanorum Coetibus, and at the place within that patrimony which his writings will surely come to hold.

Unlike his friend Dom Gregory Dix, Mascall did not espouse an overtly “Anglo-Papalist” ecclesiological stance, but neither did he espouse an anti-papalist one such as did Austin Farrer, another one of his friends. His criticisms of some of the excesses and conundrums of a “hyper-papalist” ecclesiology in the last two chapters of his The Recovery of Unity: A Theological Approach (1958) are cogent and forceful because of their limited scope, and given his explicit acceptance of the postulates that Christ conferred a primacy over the Church and the other apostles upon St. Peter, that that primacy was transmissible to his successors, and that his successors are the Bishops of Rome. One might even claim to find in the writings of Joseph Ratzinger, now happily reigning as Benedict XVI, some of the same kinds of criticisms and reservations, and one might likewise see in Vatican II the beginning of a remedy for some of these “excesses,” while the greater “excesses” of theological revisionists have underlined the need for a magisterial authority rooted in the Tradition which it both serves and defends.

Mascall has chronicled his life in charming and full detail in Saraband: The Memoirs of E. L. Mascall, which appeared in 1992, months before his death (he once told me that his preferred subtitle was “the memoirs of a senior citizen,” as he was much taken with that American term). Briefly, here — he was born December 12, 1905, read Mathematics as a Cambridge undergraduate, taught Mathematics from 1928 to 1931, then studied for ordination, and was ordained in the Church of England in 1933. Curacies followed, then in 1937 he became Sub-Warden of Lincoln Theological College, in 1945 a don at Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1962 Professor of Historical Theology at King’s College, London, from which he retired in 1973. During his years in London he lived in a suite of rooms in the top floor of the presbytery of St. Mary’s, Bourne Street, an Anglo-Catholic “shrine church” close to Sloane Square, and he continued to live there after his retirement until ill-health necessitated his retirement to a nursing home in 1987 where he passed the remaining five years of his life in some loneliness and among mostly demented fellow patients.

I had discovered the works of Mascall on my own, as a library-haunting undergraduate at Georgetown University in the early 1970s. Later, as a graduate student at Yale I happened to read in a newspaper that he was preaching the three-hour’s devotion at the Church of the Transfiguration in Manhattan on Good Friday, and so I decided to go down to the service, and after it met him. He invited me to correspond with him, and when I told him that I would be leaving Yale for Cambridge in 1978 he invited me for tea with him at his flat.

That was for me the beginning of a long and valued acquaintanceship. In the years that I lived in Britain, 1978 to 1986, we tended to meet three or four times a year, and more often during the two years I lived in London. In subsequent summer stays in London I traveled to the nursing home in Sussex in which he lived to visit him, for the last time in August 1992, some six months before his death. Our conversation ranged through many areas, theological, historical and ecclesiastical. He gave me copies of many of his books and articles, and we discussed others. In his earlier years he had professed a robust Anglo-Catholicism, believing that the Church of England was a truly “Catholic church,” although unfortunately (in his view) separated from the mainstream of Western Catholicism by the self-interested actions of Tudor monarchs in the Sixteenth Century, and the subservience to them of Archbishop Cranmer (for whom he expressed to me more than once a thorough detestation), and although interested in contemporary Roman Catholic theology, had many lively and ongoing contacts with the Orthodox world through the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius, of which he had been “present a the creation” in 1927 and in which he was to be active for over sixty years, but by the time that I met him his confidence in the tenability of such a view had weakened.

There were various reasons for this. One was what he saw as the remarkable “opening” of the Roman Catholic Church to ecumenical activities, discussion and hospitality — a hospitality he personally enjoyed in various Catholic venues in Rome, Europe and America from the late 1960s onwards. He had a strong admiration for Pope Paul VI, an admiration that seems to have been reciprocal, and as one who, as he told me, had always thought the 1930 Lambeth Conference’s acceptance of the practice of contraception an error, he was a strong supporter of that pope’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae. Secondly, he had come to believe since around 1968 and in connection with that year’s Lambeth Conference, that the Anglican Communion was becoming more and more “unprincipled” in its ecumenical dealings with other Christian traditions, and more tolerant than was wise of heterodox theologians and their theologies. His correspondence, now in the archives of Pusey House, Oxford, contains some tense and even fraught exchanges with his old friend Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, over some of the resolutions of the 1968 Lambeth Conference, and over the Anglican-Methodist unity votes of 1969 and 1972, which the Methodists supported, as did Ramsey, but which failed to achieve the requisite majority in the Church of England’s General Synod, and which, in their final form, Mascall opposed. Thirdly, he was an “impossibilist” on the ordination of women, at least to the priesthood and episcopate (I never heard him express an opinion on the ordination of women to the diaconate) and felt that to “ordain” women destroyed the credibility of the “Catholic claims” of any church body that did so.

From the 1960s onwards his more “polemical” books, such as The Secularization of Christianity (1965), Theology and the Gospel of Christ (1977) and Whatever Happened to the Human Mind (1980) — none of which dealt solely, or even mostly, with matters of Anglican concern — reflected this concern with “things gone awry.” His final unpublished book manuscript, now in the Pusey House archives, which seems to date from about 1985 and had the title The Overarching Question: Divine Revelation or Human Invention, is, like these other works, not primarily Anglican in its focus, but has a final chapter, “And Anglicanism Whither?,” in which he attacks both the synodical structures of modern Anglican churches, in which truth is “created” by legislative-assembly-style votes, as with the “ordination” of women, and the inability of successive Lambeth Conferences to exercise the type of authority which he believed was inherent in the episcopate as understood by Catholics. In what seems to have been remnants of an earlier draft version of the book he attacked the Anglican theory of “comprehensiveness” and the related idea that it was the glory of the Church of England and Anglicanism generally that it possessed three “schools of thought,” the “catholic,” the “evangelical,” and the “liberal,” each one of which embraced a part of the truth but each of which needed the others to “complement” and “balance” it — he saw it rather as an administrative devise or plausible fiction to conceal the fact of three parties or groups “severally holding three irreconcilable views of the nature of the Christian religion” existing alongside one another in the same church; and in it he went on to criticize what he saw as a return of a form of the Anglican “Liberal Catholicism” of the 1920s and 30s, in which a “magisterium” of academic scholars would be the ultimate arbiters of Christian Truth and Church Tradition.

On my final visit to Mascall in August 1992 I found him visibly and emotionally upset in a way that I had never previously experienced. The Women’s Ordination (Priesthood) Bill was to come up for its final vote in November of that year — it squeaked by the necessary two-thirds majority by only two votes, the votes of Evangelical laymen who changed their minds (or at least their votes) in response to the emotional pleas in favor of the bill by the new Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey — and he was alarmed a the prospect. “I know what I shall have to do if the bill passes,” he said to me, “but I don’t know if I shall have the strength and health to do it. I hope I die first.” I didn’t dare to ask him what “it” was, and he did die first: the General Synod did approve the measure in November 1992, but the passage of the legislation through Parliament subsequently, and the “Act of Synod” providing compensation for those opponents of women’s ordination who would feel compelled to leave the church, and a scheme of Provincial Episcopal Visitors (or “flying bishops”) for those who wished to remain in the Church of England — a scheme now evidently to be withdrawn and terminated in connection with the legislation to allow women bishops — ensured that the measure did not come into legal effect until February 1994, a year after Mascall’s death.

What would he have decided? After his death I made some attempts to contact the executor of his will, listed in his obituary in The Times as “Col. Robert Gould,” but to no avail. A friend of mine inquired some years ago of the recently-deceased former Bishop of Chichester, Eric Kemp (1915-2009), a friend of Mascall’s, who in his memoirs said that in the unlikely event that he would ever feel compelled to leave the Church of England he would become Orthodox, who replied that he thought he would become Orthodox. Another friend made the same inquiry of the late Msgr. Graham Leonard (1923-2010), a former Bishop of London who became a Catholic in 1994, and likewise a friend of Mascall, who responded that he was sure that he would have become a Catholic. Then a chance telephone conversation with a friend led to another with a colleague of that friend, who identified “Col. Robert Gould” as in fact “Fr. Robert Gould,” a man who in his youth had been a colonel in the “territorial army” (the British equivalent of the National Guard), had then been ordained in the Church of England, served as a priest in it for many years, until he had become a Catholic at the time of Mascall’s death, and had resumed the use of the “courtesy title” of colonel until his subsequent ordination in the Catholic Church. I was given Fr. Gould’s telephone number at the retirement home in which he lived, and in subsequent conversations with him learned that Mascall, whose confessor Fr. Gould had been, had after much agonizing come to the conclusion that he would have to leave the Church of England if the legislation should pass — but that by the time it did pass his advancing debilitation had reached such a state that he concluded that he did not have the mental faculties to make such a decision. At the end, though, it seems that he was a Catholic in desire if not in fact. We should remember him today, and on this day, as someone whose thought, writings — and lived experience — forms a bright tessera in the mosaic of the Anglican patrimony that is moving towards reconstitution within the Catholic Church. Perhaps he might one day be a candidate for canonization, a suggestion made recently concerning Edward Bouverie Pusey, as one of the earthly inspirers and heavenly patrons of this movement.

Punchy

A short additional blogpost to bring to your attention a posting by Damian Thompson over at his excellent Daily Telegraph blog. 

His post is entitled "The English Bishops are trying to Smother the Ordinariate.  How long will Rome tolerate this situation?"

We have previously highlighted Damian Thompson's views of the English Bishops and their interaction with the Ordinariate. 

• The first time was in a blogpost expressing our own views on how the Catholic hierarchy in England supports people like us, as compared to our views on how the Anglican bishops used to.
• The second time was very recently, on the very sensitive topic of setting up a principal church for the Ordinariate.

Whatever you think of the subject under discussion, it's clear that Damian Thompson's post will help the debate continue.  The development of the Ordinariate is not something that should be allowed to slip quietly into the background, neither in terms of a principal church, nor in more general terms.  The debate is healthy and is necessary.  Damian Thompson's tone is more forthright than that of this blog, but there is no harm in that : it is good to raise points of concern in this way, especially on topics such as how to make sure the Holy Father's intentions for his personal project are implemented.

We still think that Ordinariate clergy running a large London parish as its principal church might not be a bad idea.  This was suggested flippantly at the end of one recent post, but it could be a good solution that both fulfils the Holy Father's wishes, and addresses the valid concerns of those both inside and outside the Ordinariate about the practicalities.  The Oratorians and Jesuits, amongst others, do it, yet no-one suggests that they are fully subsumed by that role within the local diocese.  Equally, no-one suggests that the local, non-Ordinariate parish population is any way badly served by having non-diocesan clergy in charge.

In any event, we strongly feel that where realistic and viable options arise, they should be explored actively.  No-one should jump at the first idea that comes along, and the anxieties about practicalities cannot be set aside, but nonetheless, very serious consideration should be given to plans that appear even semi viable. 

Please pray for the growth and success of the Ordinariate in this country, and around the world.

UPDATE TO ORIGINAL POST

Fr Ray Blake, on his excellent blog, which we often cite, has also now posted some thoughts following Damian Thompson's article.

A Principal Church for the Ordinariate

It was after coming home last night from having attended the 5.30pm Sung Mass at Westminster Cathedral, the "mother church" of the diocese in which our Ordinariate Group is based, that I happened upon the Ordinariate Portal's news update on Facebook that some comments by Archbishop Vincent Nichols on the subject of the Ordinariate and a possible "principal church" for it had been reported on the Ordinariate Portal's website.

The Mass itself had been very good.  The usual dignified style, a stirring hymn to kick things off (Hail to the Lord's Anointed, the same Advent hymn discussed by Monsignor Andrew Burnham on the Oxford Ordinariate blog), the plainsong to Mass XVIII sung congregationally, and a good homily on happiness (we are all obsessed by trying to find it, perhaps prayer and spirituality are very effective ways to get nearer to it, Gaudete!).   It was a little more restrained, all in all, than the Beethoven in C mass setting that resounded around St James's yesterday morning, but there is a place for everything.

Although I couldn't place him at the time, I now realise that the celebrant and homilist was Fr Alexander Masters, the Precentor of Westminster Cathedral, who sang so beautifully for the recent Radio 3 live broadcast of the Requiem Mass for All Souls' Day.  You can find a little information on Fr Masters here, but the reason I recognised him in the end is that his identical twin brother was at University with me.

A couple of photos from last night are shown below.  I am very pleased with the first one, a rare example of my taking a reasonably good picture, whereas the second is of note only because it shows the Cathedral High Altar with the rose pink altar frontal appropriate to Gaudete Sunday.

One can imagine that the subject of a principal church for the Ordinariate is something that the Archbishop of Westminster is asked about quite frequently.  It is also, no doubt, a question that is addressed by and put to Monsignor Newton fairly often (the topic cropped up in the meeting described here, and is covered at the end of Monsignor Newton's long address described in the 2 October 2011 post over at the Catholic League blog.

From our discussions with other Catholics, both members and non-members of the Ordinariate, we are aware that there is some strength of feeling on this. 

There are those who see the establishment of the principal church as being likely to add definition to the Ordinariate, and thereby to add to its appeal to former Anglicans.  They see it as a key part of the mission of the Ordinariate.  They note that although the Ordinariate is not, by any means, awash with cash, the hard work of the Friends of the Ordinariate in particular is starting to bear fruit.  They consider that the Holy Father's intention is that the Ordinariate must have a principal church, and that we should press ahead with it. 

The ever-interesting and ever-forthright Damian Thompson put it like this recently.  He wonders if the Bishops of England and Wales are doing all that they could be.  The Catholic Herald also expressed a similar view in a recent editorial.  It is certainly hard to detect a sense of driving urgency and enthusiasm in the reported words of the Archbishop of Westminster on this topic, but is the obvious caution of the Bishops' Conference really such a totally bad thing?

The counterargument to the admirable drive to find a principle church asap is far from totally watertight, but it does contain a few points that cannot be swept aside without any thought.  I do not suggest that the obstacles are insurmountable, far from it, and indeed the courage that Damian Thompson and the Catholic Herald call for might help overcome them, but they do most certainly exist and will need to be dealt with. 

First, there is the question of the building.  There is certainly a small number of vacant or little used Catholic churches in London, but the list is not endless.  One imagines that the Bishops' Conference would be wary of proposing something in too poor a condition, or too far out of the way, for fear of appearing to be trying to fob the Ordinariate off, or of appearing to be trying to rid themselves of something no longer wanted rather than offering something of value to assist a personal project of the Holy Father.  Equally, as indeed hinted at by Archbishop Nichols, the Ordinariate would probably not want to take on the financial burden of a building in a state of considerable disrepair.  A couple of months ago, we put up a blogpost covering our thoughts on the support given by the Bishops of England and Wales.   Whether or not there is room for greater levels of wholehearted support for the Holy Father's intentions for the Ordinariate in some quarters there, we know for sure that the Anglican Diocese of London is not going to offer any space whatsoever.  "Why should they?" some ask : and that does indeed seem to be the attitude of Dr Chartres. 

Second, there is the question of attendance.  There are members of the Ordinariate in Central London, and some of them, with other ordinariate members and some interested Anglicans, would come together to build a congregation for a principal church.  There would of course also be other Catholics, both those interested specifically in the Ordinariate (perhaps being former Anglicans themselves) and those who happen to live or work in the area.  Any Catholic church in Central London benefits from there being a significant core Catholic population.  Even with all this combined, which would be more than the average Church of England parish in Central London could muster, would it be enough?  Nobody wants to set up a principal church that ends up, even in the early stages of its life, like the sad but familiar spectacle of a dying Anglo-Catholic shrine with more people in the sanctuary than in the nave. 

Third there is the question of funding.  Very simply, as Archbishop Nichols asked, has the Ordinariate reached a position where this can be paid for?  We are certainly at the stage where it is right not to be too gung-ho, but we are also at the stage where we are genuinely able to begin explore possibilities with a realistic expectation of being able to implement them, if it seems appropriate.

So where does this leave us?   It seems that the cautious approach is going to continue, and we can only guess the extent to which the possibilities of finding somewhere in the immediate future are being actively explored.  We hope that they are being explored, and that if they don't make sense they will be rejected (there is no need to go for the first thing that comes along), and that if they do, people will start doing some soul-searching and some number-crunching, and will have the courage called for by Damian Thompson and the Catholic Herald. 

One further thought.  Although his remark in no way diminishes the imperative of establishing a principal church in the right way at the right time and in the right place, Archbishop Nichols is absolutely right in our case at least to say that, for now, we are more than happy in our diocesan church. St James's is a wonderful place, especially for former Anglicans (all the parish clergy are former Anglicans, though not members of the Ordinariate (perhaps some honorary memberships should be handed out?)). 

That rather flippant reflection leads to a more serious one : the Oratorians, the Jesuits and others run parishes throughout the land, the Ordinariate runs the quasi-parish of St Anselm's Pembury (the Tunbridge Wells Ordinariate Group) : why might not the Ordinariate do the same thing for its principal church in London?  Perhaps the anxiety about the funding of a principal church comes from the assumption that it might be Ordinariate only, or at least largely Ordinariate only, with a few local and visiting Catholics from elsewhere to make up the numbers.  I don't think that that needs to be the case. 

Not everyone at the London Oratory is an Oratorian, and not everyone at Farm Street is a Jesuit.  For that matter, not everyone at St Anselm's in Pembury is a member of the Ordinariate.  What they are is all Catholics, just like everyone around me at Westminster Cathedral last night.