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

Monday, April 25, 2011

The Ordinariate faithful have arrived in the Catholic Church. What difference will they make?

By Damian Thompson

By the end of Holy Week, nearly 1,000 former Anglicans will be members of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, an entirely new structure within the Roman Catholic Church. For an indication of what a big deal this is, look at the picture above. Mgr Keith Newton is wearing a mitre and holding a crozier – yet he is not a bishop. These are symbols of an office within the Church that did not exist until Pope Benedict XVI created it especially for ex-Anglicans. And they are also symbols of freedom: that is, the freedom of members of the Ordinariate to organise their own liturgy under the supervision of their own superior rather than that of a diocesan bishop...

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