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

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

The Anglican Ordinariate and the Reform of the Reform

April 6, 2011
BY SHAWN TRIBE


How and to what extent the Anglican Ordinariate will become manifest in the life of the Church is a question which will only be able to be answered with the passage of some time. However, it strikes me that the Ordinariate, with its corresponding intent to retain certain aspects of the Anglican liturgical patrimony, brings with it some interesting potentialities; potentialities not simply for the Ordinariate itself but also for the reform of the reform -- most particularly within English-speaking regions.

What I am suggesting is that I believe the potential exists for it to contribute to the broader conversation going on within the Church about the sacred liturgy, particularly in the light of certain, oft-discussed points of Sacrosanctum Concilium. To be clear, it is not that I believe these potentialities and aspects are absent from the conversation without the Ordinariate, but rather that the Ordinariate, bringing with it its own lived experience, history and "culture", brings another and additional dimension to the conversation; a dimension that, importantly, will be a lived one and will be able to be referred to and consulted equally by Catholics within and without the Ordinariate...

Read the rest of this post at The New Liturgical Movement.

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