Saturday, January 22, 2011

Toronto Archbishop welcomes Anglicans

Anglican groups interested in a Canadian Ordinariate will be gathering in Mississauga March 24-26 at the invitation of Archbishop Thomas Collins.

“To help move our dialogue and planning forward, I would like to extend an invitation to all those interested in Anglicanorum coetibus to join me for a conference dedicated to this topic,” the Toronto Archbishop said in an open letter posted Jan. 18 on the Toronto Archdiocese’s website.

“I look forward to meeting with clergy and laity from across the country this March to engage in prayer, fellowship and dialogue as we move forward with this important initiative,” said Collins, who the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith named as the episcopal delegate for Canada.

It’s his job to liaise with the Anglican groups interested in an ordinariate, the CDF and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB).

Though the conference schedule is still in the planning stages, Archbishop Collins has invited Father Christopher Phillips, who founded the first Anglican Use parish in the United States in 1983 under Pope John Paul II’s Pastoral Provision.

Phillips, a married Catholic priest, started Our Lady of the Atonement Anglican Use Parish in San Antonio, Texas with a mere 18 fellow Anglicans, including five children, who wished to avail themselves of the provision. 

The Atonement parish has since grown to over 500 families and runs a school that has more than 500 students who attend Mass everyday according to an approved Anglican liturgy.

Phillips hosted the Becoming One conference in San Antonio last November that drew Anglicans from across the United States and Canada, bringing together those from the Anglican Use parishes, the Traditional Anglican Communion and The Episcopal Church and other Anglican groups.

“When Archbishop Collins contacted me and asked if I would be able to take part in this meeting, I was impressed with his sincere desire to provide an opportunity for all the Canadian Ordinariate-bound folks to get together,” said Phillips.

“The Archbishop's dedication to the successful launch of the Ordinariate was very evident.”

“I'm looking forward to meeting him, and also to making lots of new friends in Canada,” he said on the Anglo-Catholic blog (http://www.theanglocatholic.com).

The event will take place at Queen of the Apostles Retreat Centre in Mississauga. Registration will open February 1. 

Details and registration information can be found at http://www.archtoronto.org/ordinariate. 

The web page also includes background information on the formation of an ordinariate in Canada, links to the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus, and a Q&A on the “practical aspects” of the erection of an ordinariate in Canada.

“Groups of Anglicans interested in being part of an ordinariate should study Anglicanorum Coetibus and its accompanying norms, and also the Catechism of the Catholic Church,” Collins said in the “practical aspects” section.

“Because this is a new structure in the Church, and because the situation in each country is quite different, it will take some time to establish ordinariates, but the process is underway and the various unresolved issues are being identified,” he said. 

“There are some challenges when the number of potential members of an ordinariate is likely to be very small, at least in the beginning, as is the case in Canada; we can, however, accommodate relatively small numbers.”

“Even the largest ordinariate will be small by the standards of a regular Catholic diocese,” Collins said.

The first Ordinariate, the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, was erected Jan. 15 in the area covered by the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales.

Three former Church of England bishops were ordained as Catholic priests and one of them, Keith Newton was named the first Ordinary.

Reports say two more Church of England bishops, both retired, will be received and ordained in March. 

The English Ordinariate is expected to eventually include about 50 Church of England clergy and about 500 lay people to start.

There is also former Anglican Bishop of Matabeleland, Zimbabwe, Bishop Robert Mercer, CR, who lives in England since his 2005 retirement as Bishop of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, (ACCC), part of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC).

Mercer was among the three bishops who delivered to the CDF the2007 TAC petition for corporate reunion with the Holy See, along with a Catechism of the Catholic Church signed by the TAC’s College of Bishops. 

The TAC church in England is small, but could add another 12-24 clergy and additional groups of lay people to the English Ordinariate.

In Canada, the ACCC has about 46 licensed clergy, including three or four who are over 80, who wish to join the ordinariate, and between 500-700 lay people in parishes and missions across the country.

A group of Anglicans in Toronto have also approached Archbishop Collins, and an Anglo-Catholic parish in Calgary, St. John the Evangelist, has also voted to leave the Anglican Church of Canada to join an Ordinariate. 

Other Anglicans as well as former Anglicans who have already become Catholics have also expressed interest in an Ordinariate.

“I’m excited by the chance for us all to get together in March,” said ACCC Bishop Peter Wilkinson, who is based in Victoria, B.C. 

“I look forward to meeting all concerned and expect there will be a good outcome to our time together.”

“It appears as if our hopes of the last 20 years since our first contact with the Holy See are about to bear fruit,” he said.

SIC: BC/CAN