Bishop Alan Hopes appointed bishop of East Anglia

from the Vatican News Service

Vatican City, 11 June 2013 (VIS) – Today, the Holy Father appointed Bishop Alan Stephen Hopes as bishop of East Anglia (area 12,570, population 2,855,000, Catholics 99,200, priests 118, permanent deacons 36, religious 131), England. Bishop Hopes, previously auxiliary of Westminster, England, and titular of Cuncacestre, serves as chairman of the Liturgy Committee on the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales.

Bishop Hopes is a former Anglican, and was instrumental in helping implement Anglicanorum coetibus in England. Our congratulations to him. Multos Annos!

Archbishop Gomez: San Antonio to Los Angeles

Archbishop José Gomez has been appointed as coadjutor bishop of Los Angeles. Roger Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles, will celebrate his 75th birthday next year, which is the age established in Canon Law for a bishop to tender his resignation. Sometimes bishops are asked to continue to serve beyond this age, but when a coadjutor (i.e., an assisting bishop with right of succession) is appointed, it usually means that the retirement is likely to not be prolonged.

As archbishop ordinary of an archdiocese with an Anglican Use parish, this could be very good news for Catholic-minded Anglicans in California.

Fr. Phillips reports:

Archbishop Jose H. Gomez is headed from the City of St. Anthony to the City of Angels. What this means for the Church in this country I’ll leave for others to speculate. For those of us whose future is in an Ordinariate, it’s very good news indeed.

From the time of his arrival in San Antonio, Archbishop Gomez has shown a great appreciation for the Pastoral Provision, and very recently expressed to me his complete support for the Holy Father’s Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum coetibus. The archbishop has made several pastoral visits to us at Our Lady of the Atonement Church, and put in the great effort of learning to celebrate our liturgical use, as a sign of how seriously he takes his responsibility of being our spiritual father-in-God...

Read the rest at The Anglo-Catholic blog.

Church of England bishop converts to Rome

February 17th, 2010
By Damian Thompson

The former assistant Bishop of Newcastle, Paul Richardson, has been received into full communion with the Holy See, I am pleased to reveal. Richardson – also a former Anglican bishop in Papua New Guinea and diocesan bishop of Wangaratta in Australia – was received into the Church at the chaplaincy at Durham University last month.

Read in full at Mr. Thompson's Holy Smoke blog.

Hat tip to Christian at The Anglo-Catholic blog.

A Good Experience With a Bishop

Lest we become discouraged with the accounts of obstructive bishops and their bad behaviour, I’d like to report a good experience.

I received a call last Thursday, and the voice at the other end said, “I’m calling from the archbishop’s office. He would like to arrange a time when you can meet him in his office.” I did a quick mental inventory, and there wasn’t anything I could think of that could possibly give reason for anxiety – one tends to do that when a call comes from diocesan headquarters. I asked if the archbishop had a time in mind. “Yes,” was the answer, “tomorrow afternoon at 3:30.” It seemed awfully quick, so I did the inventory again. Nothing.

It was a rainy day this past Friday, so I allowed myself plenty of time to get to the chancery. Too much time, in fact. I was thirty minutes early, so I slipped into the chapel to spend a bit of time with our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, just for a little reassurance.

The appointed time arrived, and the archbishop greeted me with a smile and invited me to sit down. It was a good sign – no desk between us, but instead we were in comfortable chairs. “I thought we should talk a little about what the Apostolic Constitution is going to mean for us,” he said.

Then we had a very good conversation...

Read the rest of Fr. Phillips' account on The Anglo-Catholic blog.

Fr. Hunwicke examines Archbishop William's Rome lecture

Fr. Hunwicke has been doing a series of posts on the speech given by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams last week in Rome. His posts are always worth reading, but I point you to this particular post:

More Rowan
Rowan's Rome lecture articulates an ecclesiology which is profoundly orthodox. Hoi polloi talk about "churches" when they mean denominations or 'national' churches: the "Methodist Church"; the "Church of Scotland". But Rowan knows that "the retheologising of ecclesiology, especially in dialogue with the Christian East, has meant that we are now better able to see the local community gathered round the bishop or his representative for eucharistic worship not as a portion of some greater whole but as itself the whole, the qualitative presence of the Catholic reality of filial holiness and Trinitarian mutuality here and now". This is profoundly in line with the ecclesiology set out by Joseph Ratzinger in two CDF documents Communionis notio and Dominus Iesus. Church means bishop, presbyterate, diaconate, laos. In this particular church, the Katholike is fully present. In practical terms, Rowan has spelt this out in his assurances that individual American dioceses which are "Windsor-compliant" would not be severed from full communion with the See of Canterbury because of their entanglement with the rest of PECUSA.

Unlike his dim colleagues on the English bench of bishops, Rowan knows that this is why "A code of practice will not do"; pastoral arrangements designed with the discriminatory intent of ensuring that Mrs Bloggs never actually has to see a woman priest in her own church are worse than useless. Whether he has the clout to cajole his colleagues into consenting, even at this late stage, to a Third Province for us seems more than doubtful.

It is on the basis of this ecclesiology that Rowan makes a deft criticism of the 'Ordinariates' which has eluded the journalists but is uncomfortably closer to home than we might care to admit. "It remains to be seen whether the flexibility suggested in the Constitution might ever lead to something less like a 'chaplaincy' and more like a church gathered around a bishop"...

To read the rest, and the comments, many of which are also insightful, visit the blog Liturgical Notes.

Back to before Nicaea

One of the things I have noticed in some of the reactions to the announcement of the Apostolic Constitution and then to its publication on Monday, especially in some of the blogs and statements from Continuing Anglicans, is that they just don't get how these new Personal Ordinariates are very different from the Pastoral Provision and "Anglican Use" parishes (and Liturgy!) which have existed in the USA for the past 30 years. But there are very radical changes. I have refrained from posting on other blogs about this, first because I don't have the time it would take to correct all the misperceptions, and second, because I prefer to blog about what other, more knowledgable people have to say. And so here is one of those important posts, from Fr. Hunwicke in England. He highlights a right given to the Ordinariates that is not possessed by any regional church that I know of: selection of candidates for bishop (ordinary). I believe that this is one more example of what I said in my interview with the Boston Pilot a couple of weeks ago: the Holy Father, in developing this initiative for Anglicans, has one eye on the East, and is taking their concerns and traditions to heart. Enough from your editor; on to Fr. Hunwicke:

I skip the statements-of-the-obvious about our Holy Father's generosity in Anglicanorum coetibus (everybody else has been busy doing that) to make a couple of ecclesiological points.

In the nineteenth century, the appointment of bishops in the Latin church was, by a process of bureaucratic centralisation, removed from the local churches who, in primitive days, chose their own Bishop. Previously, various customary processes had survived in a lot of places: election, for example, by the Chapter. By the time that Canon Law came to be revised in the twentieth century, only a handful of examples of the old ways survived. The usage of the Western Church at this present time is that a diplomat - the nuncio - consults around and submits to Rome three names: a terna.

In AC, the terna, it is true, survives. But it is to be submitted to Rome by the Priests' Council, the Governing Body, of the Ordinariate. I find this remarkable ... and I wonder what some episcopal conferences will make of it. This is the first time for centuries that the centralising impetus of the Counter-Reformation has been rolled back. I am not surprised that it is this Pontiff who has done it...

Read the rest at Fr. Hunwicke's blog Liturgical Notes.

Pope: Married Bishops in all but Name

Ruth Gledhill writes about the Apostolic Constitution on her TimesOnline blog:

Tremendous day. The Apostolic Constitution has been published. It is all that Catholic Anglicans hoped for and more.While it officially keeps the door closed on any relaxation of the norms on celibacy - former Catholic priests who became Anglicans, married or no, will not be permitted to join the new Ordinariates - it is clear from Article 11 that former Anglican bishops can become Catholic bishops in all but name, even where they are married. They will officially retain the status of presbyter, but will be allowed to be the Ordinary or head of the Ordinariate, will be allowed to be a member of the local Bishops' Conference with the status of retired bishop and, significantly, will be allowed to ask permission from Rome to use the insignia of episcopal office. This leaves the path clear for Bishop of Fulham Father John Broadhurst, married father of four, to head the new Ordinariate in Britain. Heady stuff indeed - and I mean that theologically and metaphorically...

Read the rest at Articles of Faith

Apostolic Constitution: married ex-Anglican bishops may keep insignia of episcopal office

November 9th, 2009
By Damian Thompson

I’m going to analyse the Constitution in detail later, but let me draw your attention to an intriguing detail which demonstrates just how far Rome is prepared to go to make special provisions for ex-Anglicans. Married ex-Anglican bishops will not be ordained Catholic bishops – but, if they become Ordinaries, they will be able to join Bishops’ Conferences with the status of retired bishops, and may be allowed to use “the insignia of the episcopal office”. This is from the Norms...

Read the rest of Damian's reflections at his blog Holy Smoke.

Bishop Announces Final Decisions on Parish Restructurings

[N.B. The Scranton diocese is the home of the St. Thomas More Society, the Anglican Use community of Scranton under the leadership of Fr. Eric Bergman. The Society worships at St. Anthony of Padua church, and the offices of the society are in the former rectory of St. Clare parish, which parish hosted the Society in it first years.]

Bishop Joseph F. Martino [of Scranton, PA] has announced his final decisions on parish restructurings.
The plan, which was communicated through a recorded message from the Bishop that was played at all Masses the weekend of January 31 - February 1, affects every parish in the 11-county Diocese in some way. Implementation will begin in July.
The plan is the fruit of Called to Holiness and Mission: Pastoral Planning in the Diocese of Scranton, the project designed to foster the spiritual and pastoral renewal of the Diocese, starting with the Diocese’s most basic unit, the parish. It also intends to respond to demographic changes, diminishing financial resources, and the need to assign priests in a more effective way to serve the faithful.

Final Decisions for the Northern Pastoral Region

CLUSTER # 5 – the parishes of St. Peter’s Cathedral, Scranton; Immaculate Conception, Scranton; Holy Family, Scranton; St. Paul, Scranton; St. Clare, Scranton; Christ the King, Dunmore; St. Thomas More Society, Scranton:
* The creation of a Partnership among all the parishes in the cluster no later than July 2009.
* Holy Family, Scranton and St. Peter’s Cathedral, Scranton, will link no later than July 2009. Holy
Family, Scranton and St. Peter’s Cathedral, Scranton will consolidate no later than July 2010, at the St. Peter’s Cathedral site. Holy Family Church building will close no later than July 2010.
* Immaculate Conception, Scranton and Christ the King, Dunmore will consolidate no later than July 2010 at the Immaculate Conception site. Christ the King Church building will close no later than July 2010.
* St. Paul, Scranton and St. Clare, Scranton will consolidate no later than July 2010 at the St. Paul site. There will be an additional worship site (the possibility of one weekend Mass with occasional funerals and weddings) at St. Clare, due to its current use by and relationship with the school. This will be reviewed within two years, based on geography, attendance, fiscal realities and the availability of priests.

CLUSTER # 14 – the parishes of Holy Rosary, Scranton; St. Joseph, Scranton; St. Anthony of Padua, Scranton and the St. Thomas More Society, Scranton:
* Holy Rosary, Scranton, St. Joseph, Scranton and St. Anthony of Padua, Scranton will consolidate no later than July 2011 at the Holy Rosary site. The St. Thomas More Society will maintain its current relationship with St. Anthony of Padua, Scranton until such time as the future consolidation takes place. St. Joseph and St. Anthony of Padua Church buildings will close no later than July 2011.

Read the full announcement from Bishop Martino at the DIocese of Scranton web site.

Former Episcopal Bishop Describes the 'Joy' of Being Catholic

Converts from the Anglican tradition to Roman Catholicism are nothing new, whether among laity or clergy. However, as former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande, Jeffrey Steenson, D.Phil., stood out among the rest last Advent when he was received into the Catholic Church in Rome’s Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore...
Read the rest at Headline Bistro.

An Open Letter from the Archbishop of Santa Fe

December 2007

As your Shepherd, I greet you in the name of the Lord and wish you a Merry and Blessed Christmas! Later this month we will celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. One of the core teachings of Christianity is that God the Father sent his Son Jesus to be born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem for our salvation. Although Christmas has become highly commercialized in our secular western society, we must look through the tinsel, bright lights, and nicely wrapped presents to see what the season is all about: it is about Jesus Christ...
Read in full on the Anglican Use Society web site.

From Convert to Church Leader

June 11, 2007

MELBOURNE, Australia, JUNE 11, 2007 (Zenit) - A love for the liturgy attracted former-Anglican Peter John Elliott to the Catholic Church, a love which he will carry over into his activities as an auxiliary bishop.
Bishop-designate Elliott, 63, of Melbourne, is the third Australian prelate to have an Anglican background. He converted to the Catholic Church during his studies at Oxford. He will receive his episcopal ordination June 15...
Read in full at Catholic Online.

Bishop Herzog Joins the Roman Catholic Church

March 29, 2007

The Rt. Rev. William H. Love, Bishop of Albany, has appealed for unity following news that his predecessor has entered into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.
The Rt. Rev. Daniel Herzog retired as Bishop of Albany Jan. 31. Bishop Love said he learned of Bishop Herzog’s decision in a letter dated March 19 which he received upon his return from the spring retreat of the House of Bishops.
Read in full at The Living Church News Service.