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.