Canadian Anglicans to Unite with Rome

Deborah Gyapong in WCR:

Ottawa – On Divine Mercy Sunday April 15, two bishops of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC) – Bishop Peter Wilkinson in Victoria, and Bishop Carl Reid in Ottawa – will lead their clergy and people into the Catholic Church.

Other congregations and fellowships across the country, part of the ACCC’s temporary Pro-Diocese of Our Lady of Walsingham, will follow on April 22 or dates soon to be announced to become ordinariate parishes-in-waiting in their respective Roman Catholic dioceses. There are groups in Edmonton, Oshawa, Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, Montreal and possibly Vancouver.

Victoria Bishop Richard Gagnon and Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast will receive the groups at special Masses and afterwards provide spiritual oversight and priests for the new Catholics until their priests are ordained and the parishes can join the American ordinariate.

Until the ACCC priests are ordained, Catholic bishops will supply priests to celebrate the Anglican Use liturgy for the new ordinariate parishes-in-waiting.

These parishes will join two already received into the Catholic Church to eventually form the Canadian deanery of St. John the Baptist of the American Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter that was established on Jan. 1, 2012 with Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, a former Episcopalian bishop and married Catholic priest, as ordinary.

FIRST FRUITS

Prendergast described the move as “among the first fruits” of the response to Anglicanorum coetibus, Pope Benedict’s apostolic constitution that offered a way for Anglicans to become Catholic while bringing in approved aspects of their tradition, including their liturgy.

“While the apostolic constitution left open the possibility of an ordinariate in Canada this linking Anglicans in Canada to the United States ordinariate as a deanery attached to it is a good step for now,” said Prendergast.

 

Don’t Misunderstand

Somehow, an important part of the Ordinariate’s message isn’t getting through.  A lack of awareness of an fundamental part of what makes the creation of the Ordinariate such an important gesture is causing the usual internet forums to get unnecessarily excited.

Therefore, it’s time to provide a little explanation, in a purely personal capacity of course, on a topic that seems to get people very wound up indeed…

Read on at the Ordinariate Support Group for Expats in Europe here.

 

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Catholic Church in Israel to Change the Date of Easter

Source:

For pastoral reasons.

The Catholic Church in the Holy Land plans in  future to celebrate Easter according to the Orthodox calendar. The reason is consideration of the many inter-church families, said the Franciscan Custos Pierbattista Pizzaballa. In ecumenical dialogue, the date of Easter is one of the major hurdles.

The alternative date for Easter in Catholic communities could probably be introduced next year, said Pizzaballa, who is one of the higher leaders of the Catholic church in the Holy Land. Then the Orthodox celebrate Easter on 5 May; the Churches of Western tradition celebrate the feast in 2013 in contrast five weeks earlier on 31st March (Cathcon- last year, they were the same, this year the Orthodox are a week later. The Orthodox are either 0, 1 or 5 weeks ahead (or should that be behind??) depending on the year). The Eastern churches determine the date of Easter according to the old Julian calendar, using a different calculation method.

The Franciscan Custos explained that the deviation from the true Catholic date was considered for pastoral reasons. “Most Christian families in the Holy Land are of mixed denominations,” said Pizzaballa. Excluded from the proposed scheme, however, were the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. There the “status quo” of 1852 applies, which minutely specifies the use of sacred sites for the various denominations , and this cannot be changed.

Cathcon note- Ukrainian Catholics also use the Julian calendar, so this move is not without precedent.

HT

There is something suspicious about this… And what of all the pilgrims (thousands) from the around the world going to the Holy Land for Easter according to the Roman Rite or the Revised Common Lectionary?

 

Good Friday Message from the Acting TAC Primate

Traditional Anglican Communion News

Via the pen of the Presiding Bishop of Anglican Church in America in his April Newsletter. It gives us a good idea of the direction that the so-called ‘new’ TAC  is taking:

The College of Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion met for five days outside Johannesburg, South Africa from February 27 – March 2, 2012. Much business was transacted in a spirit of brotherly love and affection.

The venue for our gathering was the St. George Conference Center, located approximately ten miles from Johannesburg. The venue afforded us good conference facilities with which to make necessary decisions regarding the future of the TAC. Bishops and Vicars General were from Australia, Canada, The United States, Ireland, Central America, South Africa, Zimbabwe and India. A quorum was clearly present and a meeting of the College of Bishops was duly convened. Those who attended from the United States: Archdeacon Lana Koller, Mr. Peter Thomas, Bishop Stephen Strawn, Bishop Brian Marsh.

Among the most important decisions made by the College were these:

Archbishop John Hepworth’s resignation was accepted with immediate effect.
Archbishop Samuel Prakash, as senior metropolitan of the TAC, was elected Acting Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion.
Bishop Michael Gill was appointed Secretary to the College of Bishops.
Bishop Craig Botterill was appointed Episcopal Visitor to the United Kingdom.
Bishop Michael Gill was appointed Episcopal Visitor to Zambia and Kenya.

The College of Bishops voted to decline the Ordinariate offer from the Vatican (Anglicanorum coetibus) and will send a letter to that effect to the appropriate Vatican office.

The Patrimony of the Primate was, with the establishment of the Ordinariates, terminated.

The Concordat of the Traditional Anglican Communion is in the process of being amended.

A new Board of Directors for the International Anglican Fellowship was elected. The Board will now include two lay members.

The reconciliation agreement between the ACA and the APA was affirmed unanimously by the College of Bishops.

The “moratorium” against the election and consecration of new bishops was ended, opening the door to the election of additional bishops for the ACA and, by extension, the TAC.

Finally, and most importantly, the College of Bishops affirmed its commitment to the purpose of mission and evangelism, recognizing that this is our calling as followers of Christ.

These were the substantial issues addressed by the College. All who attended agreed that the meeting was one of the best high-level church meetings they had attended.

There is further some local Diocesan News (ACA – Diocese of the North East) all in pdf. here.

Just a quick word on the ‘reconciliation agreement between the ACA and the APA affirmed unanimously by the College of Bishops’, for those who may not be in the loop: The Anglican Province of America chose to leave the Anglican Church in America and the Traditional Anglican Communion amid turbulent times in 1995 over a dispute concerning the election of a successor Diocesan Bishop.

The Anglican Province of America also has intercommunion concordats with the Angican Church of Nigeria (Canterbury Communion) and the Reformed Episcopal Church in the United States.

 

Annual Spy Wednesday: Reflection on the Sins and Shortcomings of the Clergy

Msgr Charles Pope:

In some ways its been a tough year for clergy on the blogs. A lot of what I consider to be bishop bashing has been going on, and lots of wrath and venom for the Catholic clergy in general. While I expect this from the secular world, most of it of late has come from certain segments of the Catholic laity.

For many on the right, we clergy don’t take up their agenda with sufficient zeal or follow it to last detail. Hence we are a grave disappointment. For many on the left we have long been dismissed as an outdated “boys only club” with an out-dated and irrelevant doctrine.

In all this we clergy are not merely innocent victims. Though the doctrine of the Church we teach is not flawed, we who preach it are flawed. We have sins and shortcomings. Sins of omission, and of commission.  I am not sure we deserve as much venom as we get, and I remain very alarmed at the open hostility to bishops who are, after all, our shepherds and fathers. My own earthly father was not perfect but I had been schooled to appeal to my father with respect and do air my differences with him privately and with deference to the fact that he was my father.

But the fact is we clergy do need your mercy and forgiveness, your prayers and understanding, your patience and encouragement and also your kind but clear rebuke. For we do fall short in many ways and are sometimes unaware or insensitive to the negative impact of our personal shortcomings.

If there ever was a golden age when the clergy were all we want them to be, I am not sure when it was. For even at the beginning the apostles showed forth sin, ineptitude, and the struggle to live perfectly the life they proclaimed. Even after Pentecost any reading of Acts or the pastoral epistles shows some divisions and shortcomings of the clergy. Paul’s advice to Timothy and Titus to be careful before laying hands on men also suggests that there had been troubles.

Wednesday of Holy Week is traditionally called “Spy Wednesday” since it is this day when Judas conspired with the Temple Leadership to hand Jesus over. He would accomplish his task the evening of the next day, but today he makes arrangements to hand Jesus over and is paid.

One way to reflect on this terrible sin is to reflect that Judas was among the first priests called by Jesus. We see in the call of the Apostles the establishment of the ministerial priesthood. Jesus called these men to lead his Church and minister in his name. But one of these priests went wrong, terribly wrong, and  turned against the very one he should have proclaimed.

Among the other “first priests” we also see great weaknesses evident. Peter in weakness denied Jesus, though he repented later. All the others except John fled at the time of the passion. And so here we see the “sins of the clergy” made manifest. Christ did not call perfect men. He promised to protect his Church from officially teaching error but this does not mean that there is no sin in the Church and among those who are called to lead. The story of Judas shows that even among those who were called, one went terribly wrong…

Read on here.