On January 1, Pope Benedict XVI formally announced the creation of a new personal orindariate for Anglican groups in the United States wishing to convert to Catholicism. The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, which is “juridically equivalent to a diocese,” will bring both lay and clerical members of the Anglican church into full communion with the Bishop of Rome while permitting them a large degree of control over liturgical matters (especially allowing the retention of the Book of Common Prayer, the language of certain rites, and married priests).
Though this is only the second such ordinariate, following the creation of one for England and Wales in January 2011, media reports indicate that further ordinariates are under consideration for Canada, Australia, and other English-speaking nations.
The expected proliferation of these exceptional cases is remarkable for several reasons. First, their growth represents a new tack in evangelization that is simultaneously more accommodating of converts and more aggressive in outreach to them. It also indicates a deepened seriousness on the part of the Vatican to pursue Christian reunification, a project which has been of particular interest to Benedict XVI’s thought and papacy.
But perhaps the most intriguing facet of this project is the (re)newed Catholic willingness to accept entire groups of converts and allow them to retain significant hallmarks of their Christian traditions, even when these traditions are somewhat alien (though not in opposition to) what has traditionally characterized Latin-rite Catholicism. Recalling Lumen Gentium, the website of the new ordinariate notes the balance between pluralism and universality that the project aims for:
“[though] the one Church of Jesus Christ is said to subsist in the Catholic Church: [. . .] many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure, [and] these elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity. There is an inner dynamic in the life and teaching of Anglicanism which continues to draw Anglicans to its source.”
Tailoring the structure of the Catholic Church to make group conversion a feasible option represents something of a ‘grand experiment’ in recent ecclesiology. Yet it is not entirely novel, as it recalls some of the conversions in the early church recounted in Acts of the Apostles, when “many thousands” of individuals, including, sometimes, entire families or towns, were baptized at the same moment. And the longstanding inclusion of Eastern rite Catholics (as well as efforts at rapprochement with breakaway movements in Europe) suggests there is precedent for this emerging big tent strategy.
Representing both a numerically augmented and more communally sensitive approach in which individuals may not have to face down members of their family, friends, or former parish over their decision to enter the Catholic Church, the simultaneous conversion of entire groups, the pope seems to believe, will the one of the ways the Christian church moves down the road to eventual reunification, and is one of the ways the twenty-first century church’s evangelization will be both significantly different from its recent past and freshly in-touch with more ancient roots.
January 4th, 2012 | 6:50 pm
I thought liturgical pluralism already existed in the Catholic Church. As a Melkite Greek Catholic, my Church employs the Byzantine-Orthodox liturgy, as does the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church, the Romanian Greek Catholic Church, the Russian Catholic Church, the Italo-Albanian Catholic Church, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Hellenic Catholic Church, and the Bulgarian Greek Catholic Church; moreover, each of these celebrates the liturgy according to slightly different texts and usages. Uniformity is not for us.
In addition to the Byzantine rite Churches, the Catholic Church also includes the Armenian Catholic Church (Armenian rite); the Coptic Catholic Church (Alexandrian rite); the Maronite Catholic Church (Maronite version of the West Syrian rite); the Syrian Catholic Church (West Syrian rite); the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church (East Syrian rite); and the Chaldean Catholic Church (Edessene rite).
Even within the Latin (or Roman) Church, there are multiple liturgical rites (in addition to the two Roman rites now in use): the Ambrosian rite (Milan); the Mozerabic rite (Toledo); and the rites of the various religious orders such as the Dominicans. Why the Latin Church developed this mania for uniformity is an interesting question for experts, but needless to say, a Church that now espouses the virtues of “inculturation” would be better advised to seek the real thing (e.g., restoration of the Gallic rite in France and of the Sarum rite in England; wider use of the Mozerabic and Ambrosian rites within their territories), than the kind of faux ethnic liturgies (Polka Masses, Mariachi Masses) that cause so much pain and embarrassment to those of us non-Latin Catholics who have to watch this kind of liturgical foolishness.
January 4th, 2012 | 6:57 pm
Unity must be the grounding of every authentic Christian impulse, since our Founder pleaded so forcefully for that unity.
Also, because the evangelical mission of Christianity, to transform the world and order it to its Creator, is itself severly hampered, even defeated, by the present fragmentation.
Finally, because the deepest quest of every soul which seeks to follow Christ must be the truth. After all, Jesus identified himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The Truth by its very nature must be unitary and not fragmented. Truth claims by Christians are naturally harmed by the divisions among us, and thus union with Christ would have us in union among ourselves as well.
Who can possibly say that the ecumenical impulse belongs to Benedict XVI uniquely? It should and must be equally our own, all of us.
That is why the Anglican Ordinariate is valid. It extends a cordial invitation to feel oneself at home in Rome, without however compromising the truths of the faith. An important point which was not very clear in this post.
Praise God for this master stroke of our quiet, holy, humble, and thoughtful leader.
January 4th, 2012 | 7:00 pm
The article also needs to distinguish between the reception of various Protestant “ecclesial communities” back into the Latin Church whence their ancestors separated in the 16th-17th centuries; and the so-called “Uniate” Churches formed in the 16th-18th centuries from splinter elements of various Orthodox Churches.
The Catholic Church, in the Balamand Declaration, specifically renounced uniatism both as policy and as a model for reestablishing communion between the Eastern and Western Churches. The Eastern Catholic Churches, which are true autonomous Churches (Ecclesiae sui juris) and not mere ritual appendages of the Latin (Roman) Church, exist only for the spiritual benefit of their members, and to serve as an example that one may be truly and completely “Eastern” while in communion with Rome, and not for the purpose of “luring” other Eastern Christians into communion with the Church of Rome.
While the Catholic Church respects the freedom of conscience of individual Orthodox Christians, and will receive those who, of their own free will, desire admission to the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church has foresworn all actions that even give the appearance of proselytization of members of other apostolic Churches, stating clearly that those true Churches are fully sufficient to provide for the salvation of their members.
Therefore, to equate the creation of special ordinariates for the reception of Anglican or Lutheran congregations is a very different thing from the reception of elements from other true Churches that were never part of the Catholic communion. To imply that this is a viable model will create a host of difficulties in the continuing ecumenical dialogue with our Orthodox brethren.
January 8th, 2012 | 3:09 pm
I am afraid that the model of the Ordinariate will not contribute to greater unity, because it makes plain that, as far as the Vatican and the Pope himself are concerned, the only pathway to unity is submission to the jursidiction of the bishop of Rome, something that the vast majority of non-Roman Catholic Christians do not see as biblically warranted.
There was a smidgen of hope among some of us when the previous Pope issued his call to non-Roman Catholics to suggest how the Petrine ministry of unity could be exercised in ways not offensive to other traditions; unfortunately, nothing ever came of that, and the Ordinariate, while obviously a welcome overture to more Rome-oriented Anglo-Catholics under pressure from their revisionist Anglican and Episcopal church leadership, is actually viewed more as sheep-stealing than as Evangelism.
This is precisely the charge levied by the Roman Catholic church against Evangelicals and Pentecostals who evangelize nominal Roman Catholics, and by institutionalizing the same approach the Roman Catholic church has effectively given a moral carte blanche to these conservative Protestants and their evangelistic efforts.
January 8th, 2012 | 3:51 pm
[...] First Thing’s blog “First Thoughts”, Matthew Cantirino suggests that the Personal Ordinariates created by Pope Benedict XVI for disaffected Anglo-Catholics in [...]
January 8th, 2012 | 4:38 pm
[...] dem Blog “First Thoughts” der Zeitschrift First Things argumentiert Matthew Cantirino dass die Personal-Ordinariate, die Papst Benedikt für unzufriedene und ihren Kirchen entfremdete [...]
January 9th, 2012 | 10:04 am
Wolf Paul’s comments unfortunately underline the type of misunderstanding that would occur from conflating the Anglican ordinariates with the formation of the Eastern Catholic Churches.
Most of the misunderstanding is entirely due to Mr. Paul, however, for not discerning the very real differences in the situations pertaining to the formation of the Ordinarites as opposed to the phenomenon of “uniatism”. Whether this was willful or not is something only Mr. Paul knows.
However, to restate the history: while the Unia were created through fractures in Eastern Orthodox Churches that had never been part of or under the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome (and were in fact indigenous responses to insurmountable problems confronting certain Orthodox communities under Western rulers), the Ordinariates were created to reintegrate Anglican communities that trace their ancestry back to the Church of Rome itself.
Whether Mr. Paul wishes to recognize this or not, all Protestants are Western Christians, who came out of the Church of Rome, and who, at some point or another, will have to return to the Church of Rome if unity is to be achieved. This is just the reverse of the situation facing the Eastern Catholics, who, if unity is to be achieved, must at some point return to their Orthodox Mother Churches after the restoration of communion between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.
January 17th, 2012 | 2:37 pm
[...] Mass Conversions, Liturgical Pluralism: Path to Christian Unification? – Mt. Cantirino, FT [...]
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