With 60 newly ordained clergy ready to start their Catholic ministry,
morale is high in the Personal Ordinariate of our Lady of Walsingham.
The launch of the Pope’s new ecclesial structure for ex-Anglicans has
been less traumatic than anticipated – though there is an urgent need
for money: visit the website of the Friends of the Ordinariate to find out how to support this prophetic venture.
I say “prophetic”, but we can’t take it for granted that the prophecy
will be fulfilled.
Every day brings fresh inquiries from Anglicans
wanting to join the second wave of Ordinariate converts – but some of
them are worried that the independent structure envisaged by Benedict XVI is coming together rather slowly.
I think the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is in
charge of the setting up of Ordinariates worldwide, needs to ask some
tough questions.
Why is it taking so long to provide the Ordinariate with a suitably imposing church to serve as its permanent headquarters?
Are Ordinariate priests being used to plug gaps in dioceses rather
than being helped to establish permanent communities of their own?
Are some diocesan bishops treating Ordinariate priests as “their”
priests, just because they ordained them?
That is not how the Apostolic
Constitution works.
Do some bishops see the Ordinariate as a half-way house to full
diocesan integration for the new faithful?
Again, that is not the
purpose of this new structure, whose Anglican patrimony is supposed to
be a lasting gift to the Church.
I’ll leave it there for now.
But Cardinal Levada should be advised
that, in this as in other areas, he must not assume that the Bishops of
England and Wales will implement the Holy Father’s plans with any
particular urgency or imagination.