Anglican Use Community Welcomed To New Home On All Souls Day

Father Ernie Davis, leader of Kansas City’s Our Lady of Hope Anglican Use Roman Catholic community, celebrates Mass on All Soul’s Day at the community’s new home, Our Lady of Sorrows Parish next to Crown Center.

By Kevin Kelly, Catholic Key Associate Editor

KANSAS CITY — It was a stunning question to open a homily, and one that had more than one answer.

“What in the world are we doing here?” Father Ernie Davis asked his congregation of Catholics who in 2008 came into full communion with Rome as one former Anglican community.

Yes, they were celebrating Mass for the first time in their new home, Our Lady of Sorrows Parish, adjacent to Crown Center.

Yes, though still small in number, they still dream big and of one day becoming a full parish in the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, an organizational structure established by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI for united Catholics from the Anglican, Episcopalian and Methodist traditions to celebrate unity while retaining their adapted prayers and liturgy.

But what a day for all this to happen. All Souls’ Day. Anathema to the European and English Reformations of five centuries ago.

“Praying for the dead? Mass for the departed?” Father Davis told his congregation. “This was done away with 500 years ago. It was the first thing that was erased in the English Reformation. We would have been thrown in jail,” he said...

Read the rest at The Catholic Key.

‘Bring people to Christ,’ new society is told

Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, head of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, speaks with Father Ernie Davis,
administrator of St. Therese Little Flower Parish, and Jim Carlyle, Jan. 25 after Msgr. Steenson
 formally inaugurated the Our Lady of Hope Society into the ordinariate.(Kevin Kelly/Key photo)

By Kevin Kelly

Feb.7,2014
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI — It was as simple has handing over a stack of some 20 signed applications.

On Jan. 25, following an Anglican Use High Mass, Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson personally received the applications from Father Ernie Davis and accepted the Our Lady of Hope Society as part of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.

“You might wonder why we do this. It’s because the Pope says so,” Msgr. Steenson said, further explaining that the Vatican wants the ordinariate to have on file the documents from each member seeking full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

The Vatican established the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter two years ago to receive in full communion former members of the Anglican Communion who also desired to retain their own prayers and forms of liturgy as full members of the Roman Catholic Church.

Pope Benedict XVI first announced the structure of the “personal ordinariate” which might, though not quite precisely, resemble a “diocese” covering all of the United States and Canada, for receiving former members of the Anglican Communion in 2009 in the apostolic constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus.

Pope Bendict also appointed Msgr. Steenson as the founding “ordinary”, and elevated him to the rank of protonotary apostolic, the highest rank of monsignor.

Because he is married — “Happily married for 40 years” — he could not be ordained as a bishop, although he is a full member of the both the United States and Canadian conferences of bishops.

Msgr. Steenson however reminded his newest community that they are attached to a parish which remains a parish of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, and celebrates its 4 p.m. Saturday Anglican Use High Mass under the care of a former Episcopalian priest, Father Davis, who remains a priest of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, although the community itself is no longer a “personal parish” of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, but now a “community of the Ordinariate.”

“We’re plowing new ground,” he told the community. “Bishop (Robert W.) Finn is the bishop of this place, and that includes our community.”

Confusing? In his homily at the Mass of inauguration, Msgr. Steenson simplified for the community the task before them.

“Fly under the flag of evangelization,” he said. “We need to bring people to Christ.”...

Read the rest at: The Catholic Key

Hat tip to Mary Ann Mueller.

News about Our Lady of Hope, the Anglican Use community at St. Therese the Little Flower, Kansas City, MO

Anglican Use Mass Is Moving to Saturday Afternoons

Solemn Mass at St. Theresa's on November 9, 2012 at the annual
Anglican Use Society Conference.

 

            The Anglican Use Mass will be shifting to Saturday afternoons at 4:00 p.m.  Many Anglican Use Mass communities that share space at Catholic parishes must be scheduled at odd times in order not to conflict with the regular parish Mass Schedules.  Kansas City ’s Anglican Use Mass continues to have the privilege of having a prominent place on the calendar at St. Therese Little Flower.  The shift to Saturday will allow the parish to have a regular Saturday celebration for the first time in decades.  The Anglican Use is a form of the Roman Rite and all Catholics are welcome to participate. Visitors are always welcome, also.
            Please check the summer schedule because Mass times will be shifting gradually.

Sunday June 2             11:15 a.m.

Sunday June 9             11:15 a.m.

Sunday June 16           11:15 a.m.

Saturday June 22      4:00 p.m.

Saturday June 29      4:00 p.m.  Fifth Anniversary Celebration

Sunday July 7             11:15 a.m. (Fr. Bob McElwee)

Sunday July 14           11:15 a.m. (Fr. Bob McElwee)

Saturday July 20       4:00 p.m.

The Anglican Use Mass will continue on Saturdays at 4:00 p.m.

 

Anglican Use Community Celebrates Fifth Anniversary

            Everyone is invited to join the Fifth Anniversary celebration with Mass on Saturday afternoon, June 29, at 4:00 and for a birthday supper afterwards.  St. Therese welcomed a small group of refugees from the Anglican Church in November, 2007, and on Pentecost Sunday, 2008, they were received into the full communion of the Catholic Church.  That small group has continued to grow to include members from various faith backgrounds.

 

Anglican Use Community to Study Relationship with the Ordinariate

            Two years ago Pope Benedict established an Ordinariate in the United States and Canada for the purpose of uniting the various Anglican Use communities in a common mission of unity and evangelization.  Most existing communities joined immediately, and since that time a number of former Anglican and Episcopalian parishes have joined the Catholic Church and new ones have been established.  Bishop Finn has recently given his blessing, and we are also seeking the support of Archbishop Naumann and the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas , to begin discussing how our Anglican Use community could become part of the Ordinariate for the entire Kansas City metro area while maintaining a mutually beneficial relationship with the parish and diocese.  We hope that once we receive Archbishop Naumann’s blessing that we can publicize these discussions widely and open them to other former Anglicans who have already entered the full communion of the Catholic Church.  Meetings should begin later this summer or early fall.

Walsingham Society Looking to Establish New College in Kansas City

The Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese may have found a way to fill up the empty floors in its 10-story headquarters.

A nonprofit organization in Fort Worth, Texas, wants to open a small Catholic liberal arts college in Kansas City and is looking at leasing part of the historic building at 20 W. Ninth St. that now houses the diocesan chancery. The diocese bought the former New York Life building in 2010.

“This would be a private college,” said Jude Huntz, chancellor of the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese. “They would rent the space from us. I think they would fit in nicely with the other colleges here, and it would be a benefit to downtown to have more people down here.”

The Walsingham Society of Christian Culture and Western Civilization contacted diocesan officials last year to talk about its plan to establish Christ College in Kansas City, Huntz said.

Brinton Smith, president of the Walsingham Society, described Christ College in an email to The Kansas City Star as “a Catholic, seminar-based, Great Books course of study.” ...

Read more at the web site of The Kansas City Star

Hat tip to Fr. Zuhlsdorf at his blog What Does the Prayer Say and the Cardinal Newman Society

Choral Evensong from AUS Conference

The first event of the Anglican Use Society's annual conference, just concluded, was a Choral Evensong & Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. This was followed by a delicious dinner in the pavilion pitched outside the church in the parking lot, and the first talk, already posted here, by Fr. John Jay Hughes. The music provided for the Evensong is provided by the organist and musicians of the parish of St. Therese.

‘Bells of Peace’ to ring in troubled neighborhood

The Rev. Ernie Davis (from left), Bruce Prince-Joseph and the Rev. Jeffrey Hon have worked
together to rejuvenate an electronic carillon in its new home,
St. Therese Little Flower Church.

Volunteers hope vintage instrument will ring out hope for neighborhoods plagued by crime.
BY EDWARD M. EVELD

A rare and vintage electronic carillon, a Kansas City treasure known as the Bells of Peace, first rang from the Liberty Memorial in 1961.
It was a gift from Joyce C. Hall for the memorial’s rededication, attended by Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. The carillon, a collection of “bells” played from a keyboard, has twice fallen silent, a victim of its somewhat old-school technology.
So maybe it’s appropriate this spring that the Bells of Peace once again are being resurrected. But this time it’s away from downtown, in a part of the central city dubbed Kansas City’s Murder Factory in a series by The Star, which found the 64130 ZIP code was home to more convicted murderers than any other in the state.
Just last week, police responded to reports of gunfire one evening and found the body of a 21-year-old man in a front yard near 55th and Euclid streets, three blocks from the limestone bell tower, five stories tall, of St. Therese Little Flower Church.
No bell was ever installed at the church, built in 1948. But soon four loudspeaker “horns” will be installed in the tower, and the carillon will chime on the hour and regularly serenade the neighborhood with its orchestra of 405 “bells,” actually brass rods. How soon depends on whether volunteers reviving the carillon can coax sound from some obstinately quiet rods.
“This is a thing of beauty,” said the Rev. Ernie Davis, pastor at St. Therese. “It’s a reminder of the divine, of God’s presence.”
No doubt people’s lives in these city neighborhoods are troubled by poverty and violence and struggles of all kinds, he said. The bells will be a signal of hope, Davis said....

A few months into the installation at St. Therese, McDonald, who again was enlisted to help, died suddenly. Hon is trying to complete the work, with the assistance of electrical engineer Brian Haupt, but they have hit a snag.
A large number of the bells, including the robust Flemish bells, refuse to ring, and they aren’t sure why. Hon said he would welcome input from anyone with ideas, particularly those with experience in vacuum tube and amplification technology from the 1950s and ’60s.
Initially the hope was for a carillon concert on Easter. But although many of the bells are working, Davis and the others didn’t want to showcase the carillon until it was in full voice.
Davis has confidence the carillon’s final crankiness will be resolved and the parish, active in the community, will be able to present its new gift. St. Therese serves about 220 families, provides charitable ministries including a food pantry and utility assistance and offers a Gospel Mass and a form of “High Mass” on Sundays. Its former parish school houses Hogan Preparatory Academy Middle School.
“I think that St. Therese — not the church, but the saint — is interested,” Davis said. “I think she’s pulling strings.”

Read the entire story at The Kansas City Star.