The first principle of the Ordinariate is then about Christian unity. St. Basil the Great, the Church’s greatest ecumenist, literally expended his life on the work of building bridges between orthodox brethren who shared a common faith, but who had become separated from one another in a Church badly fragmented by heresy and controversy. He taught that the work of Christian unity requires deliberate and ceaseless effort...St. Basil often talked with yearning about the archaia agape, the ancient love of the apostolic community, so rarely seen in the Church of his day. This love, he taught, is a visible sign that the Holy Spirit is indeed present and active, and it is absolutely essential for the health of the Church.

- Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, Homily on the Occasion of his Formal Institution as Ordinary

Friday, October 30, 2009

Anglicans ponder Pope’s ‘generous’ offer

30 October 2009
by Anna Arco

Traditionalists in the Church of England have welcomed the news of a papal decree offering a new legal structure for Anglicans wishing to be in communion with Rome.
Members of Forward in Faith - a group of conservative Anglo-Catholics within the Church of England - met for their annual National Assembly last weekend, only days after the news broke that the Holy See was welcoming Anglicans into communion with the Catholic Church with a new canonical structure. During the assembly members of the group, including some of its bishops, welcomed Pope Benedict XVI's gesture with "gratitude", calling it "mind-blowingly different", "generous" and the "answer to our prayers".
But it was far from clear that a majority of its 1,000 clergy will accept the offer in the short term. They will wait to find out more about the "Personal Ordinariates" set out by the Apostolic Constitution, which is yet to be published. It is expected to provide details of a new structure similar to that of military dioceses. This would accommodate Anglicans who wished to be in full communion with Rome but to retain aspects of their liturgical and spiritual heritage...

Read the rest in The Catholic Herald.
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