News from St. John Fisher Catholic Ordinariate Community

Dear Friends of the St. John Fisher Catholic Ordinariate Community,

Happy Feast of St. Augustine of Hippo.

Thank you for your patience.  Even the relatively slow month of August has been a busy one behind the scenes.  We have a list of several Ordinariate-related events to share with you this time.

Revised schedule:

Due to scheduling (and other) factors, we are planning a service of Anglican Use Evening Prayer on Sept. 8 at 5:00pm at Holy Spirit Catholic Parish.  We had hoped to begin a regular Mass at St. Mary of Sorrows Historic Church on that date, but scheduling conflict has sent us "back to the drawing board" on that front.  We hope to have more news on this in fairly short order.  In addition, we have learned recently that the revised Ordinariate Mass is to be introduced this fall, so we are weighing the relative merits of spending perhaps less than two months with the existing Book of Divine Worship and then switching to a different version in October or November.

***Note that the weekly Anglican Use Mass at Our Lady of Hope (5:00pm) will continue during this time, in any case.***

Fr. Sly on EWTN Radio tomorrow:

Fr. Randolph Sly, our chaplain, is scheduled to appear on the "At Home with Jim & Joy Pinto" radio show at 2:00pm tomorrow, August, 29.  To listen online or find your local station, see the website:  https://www.ewtn.com/radio/other/athomewithjimandjoy.asp

"Devil's Advocate" debate series:

The Office for Family Life of the Diocese of Arlington will sponsor a series of three "debates" on successive Tuesdays in September - Sept. 10, 17 & 24, 7-9pm at the Bishop Ireton High School auditorium.  Flyer is attached below.  The Sept. 17 debate ("Protestant Critiques of Catholicism") will feature our own Vaughn Treco.  Map: http://mapq.st/16LJV6J

Fr. Bergman to speak at Institute of Catholic Culture (ICC) event:

On Sunday, Sept. 22 at St. Michael Catholic Church in Annandale, VA, Fr. Eric Bergman, pastor of St. Thomas More Catholic Church, the Ordinariate parish in Scranton, PA, will speak at the second of two presentations, "Catholic for A Reason: Stories of the Conversion to the True Faith."  The Institute of Catholic Culture (website: http://www.instituteofcatholicculture.org/) will be familiar to readers of our email newsletters.  The first presentation in the series (Sept. 15) will feature Msgr. Stuart Swetland of Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, MD.

For directions and more information about these events: http://www.instituteofcatholicculture.org/catholic-for-a-reason-stories-of-conversion-to-the-true-faith/

Remember, this and many other ICC events can be viewed live online and are available after-the-fact via video or audio through their extensive Media Library: http://www.instituteofcatholicculture.org/library/

40 Days for Life begins Sept. 25:

The Fall 2013 40 Days for Life Campaign, a focused pro-life campaign with a vision to access God's power through prayer, fasting, and peaceful vigil to end abortion, will take place from Wed., Sept. 25 through Sunday, Nov. 3.  To learn more about campaigns in the local area, including Alexandria, Falls Church and Manassas, visit their websites -

Alexandria:  http://40daysforlife.com/alexandria.html

Falls Church:  http://40daysforlife.com/fallschurch.html

Manassas:  http://40daysforlife.com/manassas.html

Updated form to request membership in U.S. Ordinariate:

The form requesting membership in the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter has been updated recently.  Those of you who have not yet submitted a form will want to use the updated version.  Those of you who have already submitted a form would do well to re-submit your request using the new form, which is attached below the "Devil's Advocate" flyer below.

Contribute to the work of the St. John Fisher Ordinariate Community:

We invite you to contribute to the work of the St. John Fisher Ordinariate Community. Your financial help will assist us in our growth and development.  (We also welcome volunteer help with the numerous other tasks necessary to do a weekly Mass.)

Please make checks out to St. Luke's Catholic Church and add "St. John Fisher Ordinariate Community" on the "For" Line.   Checks may be mailed  to:

SJFOC

C/O Bernard L. Seward, Jr.

8308 Fox Harrow Lane

Annandale, VA  22003

In Christ,

Heide Seward
Secretary
St. John Fisher Catholic Ordinariate Community,

a mission of St. Luke's Catholic Church, Bladensburg, MD

St. Luke's Bladensburg and the Anglican Use in the nation's capital

Father Scott Hurd wrote on Facebook last Sunday (September 9th):

Great meeting last night at which the future of Saint Luke's (in Bladensburg, for now) was unveiled. It was great to be with my friends and colleagues Fr. Mark Lewis and Fr. Rick Kramer, the communications directors for both the North American and UK ordinariates; Susan Gibbs and Fr. James Bradley.

The shape of that future was not mentioned in Fr. Hurd's post, and the web sites of the Ordinariate and St. Luke's are not updated yet with info. However, I have heard from a friend that the future that is contemplated is that there will be a unified parish at St. Luke's in Bladensburg for all Anglican Use Catholics in the area. While St. Luke's will sponsor regular Anglican Use masses at Our Lady of Hope Parish in Potomac Falls, VA, there is no provision for services to continue at the Benedictine Abbey of St. Anselm's, which has been hosting the Anglican Use Society of St. Thomas of Canterbury for nearly two years now.

The current plan includes moving St. Luke's from its current site in two years after the lease period is up. A search for a new site has yet to be found, possibly in the northeast quadrant of DC. At the same time, the Archdiocese apparently would like St. Luke's to consider moving to a place where Catholics are underserved by parishes now, which, for all practical purposes, could amount to the same thing. There is also talk of a capital campaign to purchase and build the new place, wherever it is to be located. However, that plan has not yet been put into place.

My correspondent assures me that some of the members of St. Luke's, of the St. Thomas Society and the St. Gregory Society (the branch in Northern Virginia) were consulted ahead of this announcement, but the correspondent was uncertain as to whether they had any real input into the actual formation of the plan. It will be the case, as announced earlier, that there will be regular Masses in Northern Virginia at Our Lady of Hope church in Potomac Falls.

Two concerns are raised by the announcements at this meeting.

First, one of the great things about the group that had been meeting at St. Anselm's was that they were regularly meeting for Evensong. It cannot be stressed enough that Evensong is one of the true jewels of the Anglican Patrimony. It should be a goal of every parish to offer it regularly. It is a service that is at once rooted in the earliest liturgies of the Church, that shows forth the beauty of holiness in liturgical worship and yet is a fully evangelical service: the perfect vehicle, as it were, to reach out to other Christians and the unchurched. Of course, as we have all been taught, the Mass is the summit of Christian prayer; but St. Paul didn't enter a town, celebrate the Divine Liturgy and invite folks in: he went to the synagogue for its regular servcie of psalms and lessons and preached the Gospel there, where anyone, Jew or Gentile, might hear (as the daily lesson from Acts in the Daily Office earlier this week reminded us).

John Wesley, in his The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America declared:

There is no LITURGY in the World, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more of a solid, scriptural, rational Piety, than the COMMON PRAYER of the CHURCH of ENGLAND.

As quoted on page 5 in American Methodist Worship by Karen B. Westerfield Tucker.

This endorsement of the value of the Prayer Book liturgy, and especially the daily offices, are echoed by scholars and liturgists down to our day. Fr. Louis Bouyer, of the Oratory wrote in his great book Liturgical Piety:

We must admit frankly that the Offices of Morning Prayer and of Evensong, as they are performed even today in St. Paul's, Westminster Abbey, York Minster, or Canterbury Cathedral, are not only one of the most impressive, but also one of the purest forms of Christian common prayer to be found anywhere in the world.

and more recently, in an article by Ed Franklin in The Walsingham Way, (published by the principal church of the US Ordinariate, Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston), Eamon Duffy is quoted as writing:

Anglican Choral Evensong is to my mind the greatest liturgical achievement of the Reformation, a perfect blend of noble prayer in memorable language, interspersed with the reading of two extended passages of scripture, all set to glorious music.

Secondly, one of the issues that many of the Anglican Use parishes face, whether Ordinariate or Pastoral Provision, and which they share with many parishes of Eastern Catholic Churches, is the great distance that parishioners must travel in order to attend worship at the parish church. In Boston, we are well acquainted with this: I travel almost 45 minutes from the south to the church, while my fellow schola member Allen travels almost 45 minuters from the north. It means that, except for Sunday and occasional Holy Days, there is no contact with the church. Many of the parishioners cannot reasonably come even every week because of the distance. But what if there were a way to have regular worship closer to home? It would certainly be feasible to have one or two additional sites (preferably a church or oratory, but even a home or other setting) for midweek worship and fellowship.

My DC correspondent wrote that a suggestion was made during the meeting by one of the clergymen that there might be faith formation offered during the week for people in DC, i.e., the people from the St. Thomas of Canterbury Society, since St. Luke's will be offering similar catechesis on Wednesdays in Bladensburg. In theory, there could be an informal evening prayer or compline service during these sessions, but the prayer component was not discussed at that time. I hope it will be.

In the D.C. area up until this time, there was an opportunity for worship close to home at St. Anselm's, where I was fortunate enough to visit back in January of this year. And as that community grew, it recognized this need for worship opportunity close to home, and started the associated Society of St. Gregory the Great for Northern Virginia residents. It would be a shame if this attempt to meet the needs of parishioners was discontinuted, particularly for a parish as richly blessed with clergy as St. Luke's is, which counts among its clergy Fr. Lewis, Fr. Kramer, and Fr. Sly.

CUA is blessed with a number of chapels (the one in Caldwell Hall is particularly beautiful) and is surrounded by religious houses like St. Anselm's (including the wonderful Dominican Study House. located right across Michigan Ave from the center of CUA's campus). Why not regular services on campus and introduce the Ordinariate and the Anglican Use liturgy to a cadre of students who would then bring the memory and hopefully the practice of those treasures of Anglican patrimony out to the world as they graduate?

Regular Anglican Use Mass to be celebrated in Potomac Falls, Virginia

Beginning September 16th, Fr. Randolph Sly will offer an Anglican Use Mass at Our Lady of Hope Church in Potomac Falls, Virginia at 5:00 pm each Sunday. All Catholics are invited to attend (and yes, this Mass will fulfill your Sunday obligation!).
Mark your calendars now! More details about this Mass and about the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter will be available soon. The web site for Our Lady of Hope is http://ourladyofhope.net.

Another Ordination for the US Ordinariate

Former Charismatic Episcopal bishop Randy Sly is ordained on June 23rd to the Catholic priesthood by Arlington, Virginia Bishop Paul S. Loverde at Our Lady of Hope Catholic Church in Potomac Falls, Maryland. Father Sly is Associate Editor for Catholic Online (www.catholic.org) and CEO for the Catholic Online Virginia Edition - North. Father Sly was ordained for the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.