Ordinariate community of St. Gregory the Great celebrates its Feast of Title - September 3, 2015

Spring Issue of Ordinariate Observer Available.

The Spring 2015 issue (a double issue) is now available for download. Included are articles on the meeting of all 3 ordinaries in London in February, the dedication of the US Chancery, Dr. Clint Brand's  papal knighthood, and updates from several of the parishes throughout North America.

http://ordinariate.net/documents/2015/3/Spring%202015%20Ordinariate%20Observer.pdf

‘Keep the Flame of the Christian Faith Burning’: Ordinariate Catholics Acquire Old Methodist Church

by Joanna Bogle, Register Correspondent 

Sunday, Mar 01, 2015

Welcome to the west of England. The railway line from Exeter St. David’s in Devon runs along the Exe Estuary — dozens of little sailing boats scurrying about on the water, with a green sweep of hills on the opposite bank — and then, somewhere around Dawlish Warren, it’s suddenly alongside the open sea, the waves occasionally  splashing against the side of the train.

Father David Lashbrooke is a priest in the nearby town of Torquay, and he is making history. He is a priest of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham (overseeing the flock of Anglicans who have come into full communion with the Catholic Church, thanks to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI). He and his flock — with the goodwill of the local Methodists — have taken over a local Methodist church and are turning it into the home of their flourishing Catholic community and a center for mission outreach.

“Keep the flame of the Christian faith burning in this place,” said the Methodist minister, as he handed a lighted candle to Father Lashbrooke at the Methodists’ last service in the church.

And the flame is indeed burning brightly. The former Chelston Methodist Church is about to be renamed as the Church of Our Lady of Walsingham and St. Cuthbert Mayne (a local man and one of the 40 English martyrs who died for their Catholic faith between 1535 and 1679), and it is already home to a good-sized congregation at a sung Mass each Sunday...

Read the rest at the web site of the National Catholic Register.

Hat tip to Shane Schaetzel via Facebook.

New US Ordinariate Chancery Dedicated and Blessed

February 4, 2015

Cardinal Levada with Msgr. Steenson

Houston – The Chancery of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter was blessed and dedicated on Sunday, February 1st, with all the majesty and magnificence of the best of our Anglican patrimony and Catholic heritage.

With the prayers and presence of two Cardinals, an archbishop, two dozen priests and deacons, a festive choir, musicians, a contingent from the Knights of Columbus and a crowd of several hundred, the Chancery was liturgically and officially prepared for use as the headquarters for our growing mission within the Catholic Church in the United States and Canada.

Read the rest of the story and see more photos at the web site of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.

Japanese congregation of the Australian Ordinariate

Posted on February 5, 2015by Ordinariate Support Group for Expats in Europe

Is this Raphael Kajiwara?

We have been made aware of an amendment to the website of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross indicating that it now includes a Japanese congregation in Tokyo under the leadership of “Father” Raphael Kajiwara.

It has long been mooted that members of the Traditional Anglican Church of Japan (TAC) – the Nippon Kirisuto Sei Ko Kai – around their former suffragan bishop, the Right Revd. Raphael Kajiwara, retired bishop of Yokohama, would be or have been received into the Catholic Church and that they would in fact join the Australian Ordinariate...

Read the rest of David Murphy's report at Ordinariate Expats

Fr. Paul Nicholson on the Anglican Ordinariates

In celebration of the Holy See's vision for Christian Unity

On February 1st, Septuagesima, the chancery building for the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter will be dedicated. The new ordinariate missal Divine Worship is also due to be presented at that time.

And a mere week later, on Sexegesima, all three ordinaries of the Personal Ordinariates will gather in London to celebrate a solemn Evensong & Benediction in celebration of the Holy See's vision for Christian Unity, of which the Ordinariates are a key part.

Please pray for the Ordinaries and all the people of the Ordinariate and the unity of all Christians.

Dedication services for new Chancery of US Ordinariate set for February 1-2

We are pleased to share with you the dates and times for the Chancery dedication for the Ordinariate. Please mark your calendars for February 1-2, 2015.The formalities officially begin with Evensong at 4:00pm on Sunday; however, Mass will be celebrated that morning at 11:15 in the presence of His Eminence William Cardinal Levada, who will be the homilist. Please let us know if you plan to be at the Mass and (for clergy) if you plan to concelebrate. We will send out more information in early January with the particulars for Mass and for Evensong.

We hope many of you can attend. Please do not hesitate to let us now in the Ordinariate office me know if you have questions.

from the Ordinariate Observer, Winter 2014-15 edition.

Choral Evensong to celebrate the 3rd Anniversary of the US Ordinariate

The congregation of St. Gregory the Great in Stoneham, Mass. will be celebrating the 3rd anniversary of the founding of the US Ordinariate on January 28th, with Boston Archbishop Sean Patrick Cardinal O'Malley as officiant.

New chaplain for St. Edmund's in Ontario

Gary Freeman of St. Edmund's Sodality reports that Father Jason Catania, former pastor of Mount Calvary Church in Baltimore, Maryland, will now be the full-time priest for St. Edmund's and arrived this past week.

He will be residing in the Rectory of St. Mary, Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows, Kitchener, Ontario.

Fr. Catania's first Mass with St. Edmund's will be this Sunday, at St. Mary's - Advent II, at 5:00 p.m.  I know it is short notice, but please make an effort to attend, if possible.  Our plan, initially, is to have a 5:00 p.m. Mass every Sunday at St. Mary's.

The sodality expresses its thanks to Father George Nowak CR, the Pastor of St. Mary's for offering accommodation for Father Catania and the use of his church, as well as to His Excellency, Douglas Crosby, Bishop of Hamilton, and to his Chancellor, Monsignor Murray Kroetsch for their assistance in getting them to this stage.

And, of course, a special thanks to Father Bill Foote, Pastor of St. Patrick's in Cambridge, who has served as the Chaplain for almost 3 years, and has said an Ordinariate Use Mass for the sodality's members every Sunday since January 1, 2012, the date their tiny community was received into the Catholic Church!

The Sodality of St. Edmund's meets at St. Mary of the Seven Sorrows, 56 Duke Street West, Kitchener, Ontario.

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.

SOLEMN HIGH REQUIEM MASS IN STONEHAM ON VETERANS DAY REMEMBERS WORLD WAR ONE DEAD AND ALL TOUCHED BY WAR

STONEHAM, MA — 2014 marks the hundredth anniversary of the start of the conflict originally called the Great War or the War to End All Wars; from 1919 until 1954 “Veterans Day” was “Armistice Day” because World War One ended on November 11, 1918. To commemorate both these events a Solemn High Requiem Mass with a Special Intention for all touched by war, especially the dead of the Great War, 1914 – 1918, will be celebrated by Saint Gregory the Great Ordinariate Catholic Church Tuesday, November 11^th at 7:30 PM at Saint Patrick’s Church, 9 Pomeworth Street, Stoneham. All are invited to attend; a reception will follow.

Traditional black vestments will be worn by the Priest, Deacon, and Subdeacon; the solemn Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) will be chanted (no longer required at funeral Masses, it is now more familiar from its use in Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique and many, many horror films); and a selection of the hymns chosen for the interments of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey (in 1920) and the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery (in 1921) will be sung to organ accompaniment. The vestments, ceremonial, and many of the prayers will be familiar to older Catholics or those who attend the Traditional Latin Mass; however the prayers won’t be in Latin but Elizabethan English, for this Mass will be in the Ordinariate Use, a unique liturgy approved by the Vatican in 2013.

The Ordinariate is a new element of the Catholic Church set up by Pope Benedict in 2009 as a response to requests from groups of Anglicans and Episcopalians around the world who (like Stoneham’s parishioners at Saint Gregory the Great) wanted to undo Henry VIII's break with Rome while retaining elements of their 500-year heritage. Many distinctive features of the Requiem Mass on November 11th in the Ordinariate Use will be the result of this unique, centuries-long blending of Catholic and Anglican traditions. Saint Gregory the Great has been warmly received by Stoneham’s Pastor Mario Orrigo and the people of Saint Patrick’s parish, where the young community has made its home since July.

As he prays for all those touched by war Saint Gregory’s Pastor, Jürgen Liias, will be praying for his own parents’ souls as well, for their lives were shattered by World War Two. Born in Germany after the war he came to the United States with his mother and father — a German and an Estonian — as Displaced Persons in 1952; they were given a home at an Episcopal Rectory in Charlestown. During almost three decades of his 40-year career as an Episcopal parish priest in the Boston area he was drawn towards Catholicism; the creation of the Ordinariate convinced him the moment to become a Catholic had arrived. He entered the Church as a layman and was Ordained a Catholic Priest of the Ordinariate in 2012.

Saint Gregory the Great offers a weekly Mass in the Ordinariate Use incorporating the Consecration and Offertory Prayers of the Traditional Latin Mass and some of the most beloved prayers from the Book of Common Prayer, all in reverent and beautiful Elizabethan English. Much of the Mass is sung, including traditional hymns with organ; lasts about an hour and a quarter; and is celebrated with Priest and People facing East. Coffee and light refreshments follow. Ordinariate Use Catholic Mass. Every Sunday, 9:30 AM; Saint Patrick’s lower church, 9 Pomeworth Street, Stoneham. For further information, visit www.saintgregoryordinariate.org or write office@saintgregoryordinariate.org.

Anglican Ordinariates Mark Five Years of Benedict XVI’s Unitive Document

A former Anglican priest said, ‘Every now and then, a momentous event takes place. Few if any since the Reformation have more significance than Anglicanorum Coetibus.’

by Charlotte Hays 11/04/2014

WASHINGTON — When Cardinals Donald Wuerl of the Washington Archdiocese and Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, stopped by for a visit to the ordinariate community of St. Luke’s at Immaculate Conception Church in Washington, the cardinals and priests halted in the church on the way out to sing together the hymn Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy.

In a quiet way, it was a remarkable, unplanned scene: Fathers Mark Lewis and Richard Kramer, who had begun their ministries as Episcopal priests, singing a hymn to the Virgin Mary with two cardinals of the Catholic Church, Msgr. James Watkins, pastor of Immaculate Conception, and several priests from Rome, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of then-Pope Benedict XVI’s Anglicanorum Coetibus.

Issued Nov. 4, 2009, Anglicanorum Coetibus is an apostolic constitution that provided for personal ordinariates for Anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church. The document allows former Episcopalians and Anglicans to bring elements of their patrimony, including their distinctive liturgy, into the Catholic Church....

Read more at the National Catholic Register.

NEWMAN FELLOWSHIP BECOMES ORDINARIATE PARISH

Yesterday evening (Sunday, 02 November 2014) The Fellowship of the Blessed John Henry Newman (http://blessedjohnhenrynewmanfellowship.org/) was received as a group into the Anglican Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter (http://www.usordinariate.org/) established by the Constitution “Anglicanorum Coetibus,” issued by Pope Benedict xvi, and became an official parish of the Ordinariate, at Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church in Wayne, PA (http://www.olastrafford.org/).

David L. Moyer, formerly the rector of the Episcopalian parish, The Church of The Good Shepherd, and pastor to the Fellowship during its period of discernment, presented the parishioners to the Rev. David Ousley, who received the group on behalf of Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, the Ordinary. The formal reception into communion took place during a Solemn High Mass celebrated by Fr. Ousley using the Anglican form of worship approved by the Holy See for use in the Ordinariate. The service was followed by a reception hosted in the Assumption Parish Building by the congregation of the Church of St. Michael the Archangel (http://www.anglicanphiladelphia.org/), for which Fr. Ousley is Pastor.

Approximately forty families left The Church of The Good Shepherd to follow Moyer when the Episcopal Church deposed him as Rector. Thirty of these have now entered communion with the See of St. Peter through the Ordinariate. Some families were already Catholic, and others have entered communion with the See of St. Peter through their local Roman Catholic parishes.

The Ordinariate was established by Pope Benedict xvi to allow groups of Anglicans to enter communion with the Holy See as corporate bodies, while retaining their married clergy and Anglican forms of worship. The Newman Fellowship joins the 35 other parishes of the Ordinariate, for which the Church of Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston (http://walsingham-church.org/) is the mother church and the seat of the Ordinary. Father Ousley, Pastor of the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in Philadelphia, is interim Pastor for the Newman Fellowship, as well as for the Church of St. Michael the Archangel, the two parishes of the Ordinariate in the Philadelphia area. The Newman Fellowship has its temporary home at the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption.

Hat tip to Mary Ann Mueller.

St. Luke’s Bladensburg, Former Episcopal Church, Now Catholic, Moving to Nation’s Capital

Renamed, St. Luke’s at Immaculate Conception, was first Episcopal parish to join U.S. Ordinariate; Masses begin September 7th

Washington, DC (PRWEB) September 03, 2014

St. Luke’s Bladensburg, the Episcopal congregation that made headlines in 2011 as the first U.S. parish to join the Roman Catholic Church under a new, expedited process, is moving to Washington, DC on September, 7, 2014. Their new home is Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, 1315 8th St, NW, in the diverse Shaw neighborhood two blocks from the Walter Washington DC Convention Center. The congregation will now be known as, Saint Luke’s at Immaculate Conception.

The move accommodates its present parishioners from DC, Maryland, and Northern Virginia in a more centralized location, and hopes to attract new members who can now easily reach St. Luke’s by Metrobus and Metrorail Green and Yellow lines at the Mt. Vernon Sq. 7th St/Convention Center.

For its inaugural Mass at Immaculate Conception (8:30 am on Sunday, Sept. 7), St Luke’s is honored to host Monsignor Jeffrey N. Steenson, as celebrant and preacher...

Read the full press release and see video at PR Web.

US Ordinariate begins publishing "Ordinariate Observer"

The Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter has completed an important item on its to do checklist with the publication of the initial issue of The Ordinariate Observer.

This initial publication has articles on the move of the congregations of St. Luke's from Bladensburg, MD to Washington, DC and St. Gregory the Great's from Beverly to Stoneham, MA. Monsignor Steenson writes on "The Joys and the Challenges of Growing our Congregations".

Other articles include "News from our Principal Parish: Our Lady of Walsingham"' "Target Date for our New Chancery: Early 2015"; "And there I was in Afghanistant: Special Report by Fr. Jerry Sherbourne"; "Reports from Our Clergy"; "Presbyteral Assembly in October Needs the Help of All of Our Congregations"; "Clergy Retirement Plan Approved"; "A Beautiful Church Plus Beautiful Country: A Perfect Place to Live?" about Holy Nativity in Payson, AZ; "Father Paul Manning to Lead Fall Retreat in Belleville, IL"; "First Combined Ordinariate Mass Celebrated in California"; "From Philadelphia: New Ordinariate Community Begins From Former Anglican Fellowship"; and "St. Gregory's Journey From the Winter of 2012 to Today: A Journey of Joy." 

Spring Liturgies at Mount Calvary, Baltimore

Anglican minister becomes Catholic priest

Father Shier joins Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter set up by Pope Benedict
By Agnieszka Krawczynski

25 March 2014

The fruits of Pope Benedict's efforts to welcome Anglicans to the Catholic faith were manifest at Holy Rosary Cathedral as Deacon Michael Shier was ordained a priest for the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.

"It's amazing that the ordinariate has actually happened," Father Shier said after his ordination March 15.

The Rev. Shier, a pastor for the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, and 11 members of his former parish converted to Catholicism in June 2012.

"It started when Anglicanorum Coetibus was given by Pope Benedict," explained Barbara Shier, his wife.

The apostolic constitution, written in 2009, describes the possibility of creating ordinariates, which function like dioceses, for Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church while keeping some liturgical and spiritual traditions.

"He invited us to make the transition and to bring the best of Anglicanism with us," Father Shier explained. "We sent our prayer books and missals to Rome and received back a liturgy that surpasses all our hopes and dreams."

The Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, created in January 2012, spans all of North America. Its ordinary, or head, is Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, who arrived from Texas and concelebrated along with about 20 other priests of the ordinariate or the Vancouver diocese.

"It is our brothers and sisters in the whole Catholic Church who have strengthened us and given us a joy in our lives. We are so pleased and so happy to be with you in full communion," he said.

Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, celebrated the ordination Mass. "(The priesthood) is both a gift and a mystery," he pointed out in his homily...

Father Bruce McAllister, archdiocesan chancellor, prepared the congregation of converts to join the Catholic Church through a series of retreats while Msgr. Steenson trained their pastor.

Father Shier "is a very scholarly person," said Father McAllister, also a former Anglican.

"He is a man of deep prayer. You'll often see him at prayer in church prior to the liturgy. And I know that he prays for many people, including those who are his former parishioners who have not come into full communion" with the Catholic Church.

Father McAllister guessed 20-25 priests in Canada are former Anglican clergymen, including those incardinated in the ordinariate and those incardinated in dioceses...

Father Shier and his congregation will use the chapel at St. Patrick's Parish in Maple Ridge.

Read the rest at The B.C. Catholic

Hat tip to Mary Ann Mueller

New administrator announced for Mount Calvary, Baltimore

Fr. Scharbach at his First Solemn Mass at Mount Calvary,
November 16, 2013.

Mount Calvary is very pleased to announce the appointment of Father Albert Scharbach as its new permanent priest administrator. Fr. Carleton Jones, O.P. made the announcement publicly at the 10:00 am Mass on Sunday, March 9th. Fr. Scharbach will officially assume this assignment on Friday, March 14. A copy of the official letter of the announcement can be read at the parish web site.
Fr. Scharbach was ordained as a priest of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter on Friday, November 15, 2013, and celebrated his First Mass as a priest at Mount Calvary on the following morning. Fr. Scharbach currently serves as the Pastoral Associate to Auxiliary Bishop Denis Madden of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and previously served as the Curate of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Rosemont, Pennsylvania while he was an Anglican priest...


For more on Fr. Scharbach and his appointment, please see the links on the parish web site.

Another Mass for the Ordinarite's Feast of Title -- in Canada