It’s sad that the Bishop of Fulham, the Rt Rev John Broadhurst,
should have decided to take advantage of the Pope Benedict XVI’s
Ordinariate for those who cannot accept women bishops in the Church of
England.
It’s similarly sad that an Anglican congregation in Folkestone
should be seeking the protection of Rome.
And it’s sad not just because
no adequate accommodation could be found in the Church of England for
those who cannot in conscience accept women’s episcopacy, but because
such departures to Rome represent an erosion, with the possibility of
eventual eradication, of the catholic tradition within our established
Church.
But there is an aspect of all this that receives little attention:
These departures for the oversight of the Holy See have been reported
throughout this weekend (by the BBC among others) entirely separately
from the story of the prospective closure of Ushaw College in County
Durham, which is the home of the historic St Cuthbert’s Seminary, which
trains young men for the Roman Catholic priesthood.
It is to close for
lack of seminarians; there are 26 currently at St Cuthbert’s, where once
year-groups could be counted in the hundreds. If it closes next June,
as is expected, there will be no Roman Catholic seminary north of
Birmingham.
We can expect a bounce in vocations to the catholic priesthood after
Pope Benedict’s state visit, but there is no denying that there is now a
severe crisis in the supply of young men for the Roman Catholic
priesthood, in Britain as elsewhere.
The Anglican boast can be heard
that there are now more ordinands in a single diocese of the Church of
England (and, for sure, we have our challenges in this regard) than
there are seminarians in the entire country.
I have even heard it said
that there are fewer training for Roman Catholic priesthood in the whole
of northern Europe than there are in the Church of England, though
that’s harder to verify.
So it would be entirely wrong to suggest that the Ordinariate is only
aimed at offering sanctuary to those Anglicans who are disaffected with
plans for women bishops (in any case, the Ordinariate is a worldwide
phenomenon, not a solely Church of England issue).
It also offers
sanctuary for much needed priests and potential seminarians of catholic
orthodoxy.
Furthermore, while we might and should mourn the weakening of the
catholic tradition in the Church of England, we might take heart that
the Roman Catholic Church in these shores is receiving some vital and
welcome support to its ministry and mission at a very difficult time for
it.
SIC: TC/UK