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

Thursday, April 28, 2011

The Holy Spirit is at work in the ordinariate

By WILLIAM JOHNSTONE
Tuesday, 26 April 2011
William Johnstone explains how he overcame his initial misgivings about Pope Benedict XVI’s historic offer to groups of Anglicans

When the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus was first announced I had a few reservations. I was sceptical about the idea of group reception into the Church. My experience as a former Anglican clergyman has convinced me that it is not possible to sugar the pill of conversion. It is a process that involves giving up familiar things for the sake of the truth.

I also wondered if this was an option for the majority of Anglo-Catholics that I knew. The High Church wing of the Church of England has become more Roman in recent years. Many clergy have used Catholic liturgies for the whole of their ministry. It would be ironic if converting to Rome meant adopting Anglican forms of worship for the first time.

Quite recently, I happened to read some of the original Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) documents. This gave me a new understanding of the ordinariate and a conviction that it is a profoundly ecumenical gesture...

Read the rest at The Catholic Herald.
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