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, January 18, 2011

The Ordinariate has got off to an impressive start – but now it needs a London church

January 18th, 2011
By Damian Thompson Religion

At the first Mass of Fr Andrew Burnham at the Oxford Oratory on Sunday, the great Dominican theologian Fr Aidan Nichols described the Ordinariate as “nothing less than the reconfiguring of Anglicanism by union with the Petrine centre and its criteria of orthodoxy”.
That is a sweepingly ambitious statement of the Ordinariate’s purpose – and it might have seemed over the top had it not been for the extraordinary scenes at Westminster Cathedral the day before, when Archbishop Vincent Nichols ordained the former Anglican bishops of Fulham, Ebbsfleet and Richborough. Rather to the surprise of some commentators, the Bishops of England and Wales really seem to have lined up behind the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham...

Read the rest of Mr. Thompson's reflections at his Telegraph blog Holy Smoke.
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