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

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

On Littleness and Liturgy (A Meditation on Anglicanorum Coetibus and Related Matters by Author Claudio Salvucci)

BY SHAWN TRIBE
Guest Article by Claudio Salvucci



There was a time, in reading the opinions of Anglicans who were weighing the momentous offer of the Holy Father in Anglicanorum Coetibus, when one frequently ran across an opinion that sought to sow doubt on the whole enterprise by calling attention to its littleness. I still see it crop up from time to time.

"I can't see very many Anglicans taking advantage of this," the opinion goes, "and it surely won't amount to much."

Well that, of course, is something for God to decide, though I personally believe it will amount to a great deal.

But for right now, I'd like to take the skeptics' assumption at face value that the Ordinariate will ever remain a tiny, negligible enclave of Anglo-Catholics within the giant megalith that is Roman Catholicism: not much more than the handful of parishes that now comprise the Anglican Use in the United States.

Ought that fact convince us to abandon the effort?

It may surprise Anglicans--it certainly surprised me--at how numerically negligible some of the existing ethnic enclaves within Holy Mother Church really are...

Read the rest of Mr. Salvucci's post at The New Liturgical Movement.

Hat tip to Fr. Phillips at the Anglo-Catholic blog.

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