Reporting on Recent Events on Patheos

Kathy Schiffer reports on some Ordinariate events of the past week at her blog on Patheos.

A few days ago, I announced the wonderful story of Orlando’s Cathedral of the Incarnation. On Sunday, September 16, the entire congregation of 140—including a bishop, clergy and laypeople—were received into the Catholic Church.

And in the same week, it was announced that St. Mary the Virgin Parish in Arlington, Texas—currently part of the Diocese of Fort Worth—will join the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. (Here in the United States, the Pope has established the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter to serve the needs of Anglicans who seek reunion with Rome, but who want to retain some elements of their Anglican worship.)

On Monday I spoke by phone about these events with Fr. James Bradley, a priest of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, in England and Wales, who was visiting here in the U.S. and who attended the Mass of Reception at Incarnation Parish...

Read the rest at Seasons of Grace.

Hat tip to Mary Ann Mueller.

American Anglican bishop goes to Rome; brings cathedral congregation with him Circuitous road to Rome started with 1976 General Convention

By Mary Ann Mueller
Special Correspondent
www.virtueonline.org
Sept. 19, 2012

ORLANDO, FLORIDA---Traditional Anglican Communion Bishop Louis Campese was speechless on Sunday, Sept. 16, as he joyfully witnessed his flock of American Anglicans be shepherded into the Roman Catholic Church.

"Oh, I'm still on Cloud Nine or Cloud 10," the former bishop of the Anglican Cathedral of the Incarnation told VOL Tuesday afternoon. "It was just amazing."

Bishop Campese's road to Rome was long and arduous ... 36 years long. It was filled with pitfalls and stumbling blocks, crooked turns and blind alleys, wonderings, questions and uncertainty. And finally that day came - 36 years to the day that the Episcopal Church voted in favor of women in the clergy - when he humbly led his Anglican cathedral congregation into the Catholic Church and witnessed firsthand the fulfillment of a dream, the fleshing out of a vision, the answer to Christ's prayer for Christian Unity and his own prayer to live long enough to see it all happen.

The bishop's flock is nearly 200 members strong - babes-in-arms, youngsters, teens and adults - yet, one by one, 140 young adult and mature adult members of his congregation were confirmed as Catholics at the hands of Monsignor Jeffery Steenson of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, and Catholic Bishop John Noonan of the Catholic Diocese of Orlando. The younger children, family and friends looked on as another historical first was happening in the Ordinariate. This is the first time a cathedral parish has crossed over the Tiber and into the Ordinariate. Together the two Catholic ordinaries confirmed and received all who were seeking entrance to the Catholic Church at Incarnation.

"We have finally reached the promised land," Campese said likening his journey to the Israelites wondering in the desert. "My people are in a safe harbor. That's the important thing..."

Read the whole story at Virtue Online.