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

Sunday, July 1, 2012

You should support this

I would like to second this appeal from Vincent Uher's Tonus Peregrinus. I lived for a year in Colombia, on the coast in Barranquilla, not in the mountains where Fr. Walters works. But both on the coast and in the mountains, there is great poverty and need, made all the worse by many years of war, both civil and guerilla since the 1940s, with a short respite for 20 years in the 70s and 80s. I lived with a gracious doctor and his family, who were thoroughly Catholic. The many people I got to know through church, many of them poor, were also deeply attached to the Lord Jesus and his Blessed Mother. Like poor people throughout the world today and in history, they knew they could rely only on the Lord, just as this morning's psalm at Mattins reads: "It is better to trust in the Lord, * than to put any confidence in man."


Casa Walsingham founded by Fr. Peter Walters (a former Anglican now Catholic priest serving in Colombia) is something that all of the Ordinariates and Anglican Use parishes should support.
Fr. Peter Walters


Casa Walsingham is supported by the registered charity Let the Children Live or in SpanishFundación ¡Vivan Los Niños!  known asFunvini for short.
There is a great risk that the Anglican diaspora in the Catholic Church will be excessively inward (even navel) gazing as structures are developed and challenged.  Looking out beyond the national borders to the mission field beyond is one salutary way of seeing to it that we all stay focused on the Mission of the Church.  Think St. Paul and the Collection for Jerusalem, dear reader.  Should not the Ordinariates around the world have at least one foreign mission in common -- a mission outside of their own continents and nations?
We all can see the need to support a good work drawing its spiritual inspiration from Our Lady's Shrine at Walsingham in England.  Casa Walsinghamis that good work.
Remember to pray for Father Peter Walters and the children!  Please donate to support this vital work.  The charity is registered in the UK, and in the USA in the past we have sent donations to Father Peter via Our Lady of Walsingham Catholic Church (Anglican Use) in Houston, Texas to the attention of Margaret Pichon.
Please share these thoughts with other Ordinariate Catholics, Anglican Use Catholics, and the Anglican diaspora within and outwith the Catholic Church.
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