Ordinariate Ordinations in Melbourne
August 3, 2012 67 Comments
Sentire Cum Ecclesia is reporting:
I’ve just received news that eight priests will be Ordained at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, East Melbourne on Saturday, 8th September 2012 at 10.00 a.m. (five for Melbourne and three others) for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross.
The news item said that further details will be forthcoming.
HT: Conchúr
And names via Friends of the Anglican Ordinariate:
About Fr Stephen Smuts
http://friendsoftheanglicanordinariate.com/
Well bless you indeed ” anon” I know a number of the Priests concerned personally – FrNeil Freyer , retired ex All Saints East Saint Kilda, Fr Ramsay Williams former Parish Priest from All Saints East St Kilda and Father Christoper Seton Parish Priest of All Saints Kooyong .
I served briefly at All Saints Kooyong , I assisted Fr. Fryer with the thurible when he was in Coburg. Will make an effort to go along to Saint Patricks. All Saints East Saint Kilda is the only true Anglican Catholic Place left in Melbourne. As I have said a number of times on this blog ,
I wish them well on their new journey, but it is not for me. Perhaps we can start rebuilding
the ACCA/TAC now. Anyway my prayers go with the Clergy concerned.
Father Ed Bakker
Bendigo
The OOLSC website is still ‘sketchy’, but the news is also there (along with info about another information day – this time in Brisbane).
http://ordinariate.org.au/news/
Apart from the initial “big three” in the UK and the Ordinary himself in Australia, with these four men this will be the shortest time to ordination (less than 2 months) in all three ordinariates. Probably, they were undergoing some training in that long period when there was relative silence about the Ordinariate in Australia.
Yes, I had noticed it there too CC.
Blessings
FrEdBakker
There is a two-year old, yet interesting piece about Fr Seton’s initial reaction to AC. He has stuck to his initial decision for two years.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/a-home-in-rome-20091023-hdfc.html
It seems that the Ordinariate community in Melbourne will be based on FiF. Another example how Ordinariates can re-unite TAC and Anglican Communion Anglicans.
Sorry, I was initially confused by the way the first report was worded. There are in fact four candidates for the Ordinariate – the other four will be diocesan priests for the Archdiocese of Melbourne.
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I think it ironic and fitting that these ordinations will take place right across the road from that once great bastion of Anglo-Catholicism – St Peter’s Eastern Hill.
The New Testament enjoins, ” lay hands on no one quickly”… I think there will be problems in the future. Now the ordinariate in Australia has 47 members of which 5 will be priests.. ratio of 9 laity to 1 priest.
(i) The group in Perth has grown to about 60 since the initial reception (as reported in the August issue of the Portal magazine). Hence the ratio is 60:1. And you simply cannot have less than one priest if there is any group, small or large.
(ii) The new priests are for a new community in Melbourne (or perhaps also elsewhere, as there are ‘exploratory events’ held in different cities in Australia), so really nobody knows how many lay people are going to be received as well.
Don’t worry, RIW, it can only be rationally deduced that when these men come into communion with the Bishop of Rome, groups of laity will do the same, just as happened when Fr Entwistle was ordained – Rome is not setting up a mere Additional Curates Society.
As for “quickly”, you must realize that the very word is unheard of in the Roman Church! As a wag put it, the telegram of the 1923 Anglo-Catholic Congress to the then Pope was only answered by Benedict XVI in 2007.
As I have said before, and I am not in any Ordinariate myself so nothing to grind, I think the Australian Ordinariate will do pretty well, at least in the long run. I hope Bishop Elliott can check Fr. Entwistle, if need be? The latter is questionable to my mind, but I hope I am wrong. And I have gone out on the plank here!
Could I make it clear that the addition to the logo of Our Lady of the Southern Cross of the words ‘Mea Gloria Fides’ has no authorisation from anyone in the Ordinariate. They were added by a well intentioned individual on a blog. If you use this logo in future, please do so without the unauthorised additions.
Right Reverend Father, I have removed the unauthorised logo from the post. Thank you for informing us and visiting the blog.
With every good blessing.
Fr.Robert, good morning ,
It is a bit late now to talk about Bishop Elliott checking out Fr.Entwiste. I dont think
Bishop Elliott is overconcerned about the bulleying of Clergy Fr.Entwistle has done in the past and his association with former Abp.Hepworth. I know the Priests concerned being ordained, was
initially thinking of going to Saint Pats, but Entwistle is there too and I have no desire to put my eyes upon him.As I said before, I hope and pray that after the Australian Ordinariate is in place
we can start looking at rebuilding the ACCA/TAC God willing.
Father Ed Bakker
Bendigo
Indeed Fr. its a done deal I guess. Rome always seems to like authoritarian types, at this level anyway. Yes, I hope the best for all concerned! It would be nice to see some real ecumenical contacts again, further down the road. I mean, respecting each others differences somewhat, but still maintaining our own theological positions. I am always going to be Augustinian and Reformed Anglican, myself. But then hey, I am one of those “theolog” types!
I am always reading and thinking here! It is too obvious, that I am a Pauline student to the end!
I will be very surprised if there are one hundred souls in the Australian Ordinariate by this time next year. What happened to those nice Torres Islander folk?
Australian folk seem to be a lot more discerning..that’s why they’ve got a Welsh prime minister.
Surprise is often the precursor of enlightenment.
I am with you Mourad, “Surprise” is always the way of our Lord! Often surprise is a blessing, even if the road gets hard. And these are certainly hard days in both church and culture!
A Welsh PM – who has been polling ever so badly and whose government seems set to lose in a landslide when the next election is held.
But to speak of the matter at hand: already sixty members of the only parish yet established, and with soon Melbourne, then later Adelaide, Brisbane and other cities to have men prorated, laity enrolled, parishes set up… I think one can confidently expect more than a hundred. Why be so “glass half-empty”?
Sorry – mysteriously “priested” was changed by my iPhone to “prorated”, whatever that means!
That’s why I’m a BlackBerry man
Robert Ian Williams suggested that Australians might be a lot more discerning and because of that they presently have a Welsh Prime Minister. Strange to say, I immediatey thought of the exchange in “A Man for All Seasons”. Master Rich has just given the perjured evidence which will result in More going to the scaffold. More sees that Rich is wearing a chain of office and More asks to see the medallion. There follows this exchange:
“(MORE examines the medallion) The red dragon. (To CROMWELL) What’s this? CROMWELL Sir Richard is appointed Attorney-General for Wales.
MORE (Looking into RICH’S face, with pain and amusement) For Wales? Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world . . . But for Wales!“
One priest for ten lay members is the current ratio in the OOLW; clearly this is regarded as acceptable, as ordinations are ongoing in the UK. Given the current paucity of ordinands, an Additional Curates Society would be quite welcome in most Catholic jurisdictions.
From what I understand, Anglican congregations tend to be at least one if not two orders of magnitude smaller than Roman ones in the same countries, and – with honourable exceptions! – TAC ones in the USA, UK and Australia are smaller yet. Hence it is no surprise that the new Ordinariates, drawn as they are from such a milieu, have a high ratio of priests to laity.
It is true that while an average American Catholic parish has 3,277 members, there are few Episcopal parishes in that league. However, the ratio of ordained to lay members of the Episcopal church is about 1:100, not 1:10.
Torres islanders?
The quote from a man from All Seasons..not from Sir Thomas More but Robert Bolt the Protestant author.The Welsh, the original British and not Germanic immigrants!
Ms Gillard is a survivor as PM.
60 in Perth include 20 cradle Catholic attending out of interest. Cradle Catholics are the people who kept and keep the Anglican Use going in the USA.
Yes, those Cradle Catholics who have been so deeply hurt by “Roman” Catholicism! There are even many in Ireland and England!
You speak some nonsense mate – but always amusing.
In England, most Catholics I know may not practise but get very annoyed if you try to suggest they are anything other than Roman Catholics; please don’t assume your personal journey is the same one as anybody elses.
@Vincent: You forget “mate”, that I am 62, and have been an Anglican priest-presbyter for many years (I’m semi-retired now), and I really express what I have seen and hear pastorally. Sadly, I have even now as a hospital chaplain, several former Roman Catholics that are very wounded! And I am talking about Roman Catholics that have left “Catholicism”! Besides, people that don’t “practise” their so-called faith, really don’t have any! There’s almost nothing worse than an old one time R. Catholic, who sits in judgment, but doesn’t go to Mass anymore. I have a few Irish extended family members like that!
And just a note Vincent, I left Rome in my late 20′s. My only axe to grind with Rome really is biblical and theological, and mostly on soteriology or salvation! I am not anti-Catholic really, but just not convinced of the papacy, historically and of course her authority/infallibility. But I do see the RCC as part of the historical Church, note I am Reformed and Reformational, myself. Yes, we had a Reformation, and that principle still stands!
No, sir. These are not cradle Catholics. Perhaps, some of cradle Catholics have been attracted as well, but it would be in addition to these 60.
“After the Ordination Mass, (…) Father Harry Entwistle was announced as Ordinary.
Several hours earlier 40 of the laity of his congregation
were admitted to the Catholic Church. (…) Since then Father Harry
has ADMITTED (emphasis mine) another 20 of the laity in Perth.”
http://www.portalmag.co.uk/read.html
I would presume that most or all of these additional members are other former Anglicans who have permission to formally join the ordinariate.
Perhaps, as in Mrs Gyapong’s parish in Ottawa, not every member of Fr Entwistle’s parish who had decided to enter the Catholic church was able to attend the initial reception.
Has any one heard anything abouty the Torres Islanders..there are about 6,000 of them aren’t there?
Nothing, alas – the only comment I can recall is from one more in the know who made a cryptic remark to the effect that matters in the Torres Strait are very complex.
NB They are “Torres Strait Islanders”, not “Torres Islanders” – the latter term is incorrect, as the reference is to people who inhabit and/or come from the islands of the Torres Strait. There is no such place as the “Torres Islands”.
The figure is closer to 1,000 according to a former post by a senior priest of the Torres Strait TAC.
Thanks Joshua….maybe their former Anglican communion status and their subsequent schism with the ACof Australia,makes the Vatican cautious? Maybe there are property issues..also if there is a local catholic Church, thay may be upset by a celibacy dispensation. Having children is still important to many indigenous peoples.
The Torres Strait Islanders petitioned Rome in 2010. A lot has changed in the perception of AC since then.
Perception of AC.. Apostolic constitution or Anglican Catholic?
Actually, neither.
It stands for “Anglicanorum coetibus” (which, of course, is also an apostolic constitution, yet one of many).
Yes, I meant “Anglicanorum Coetibus”. In July 2010 the ACCC(TAC) Synod voted nearly unanimously to petition the Catholic church for membership. Two years later fewer than ten percent of the laity have been received. Faraway fields looked greener, perhaps.
Indeed the full face of the so-called Continuing Anglican Churches, or Anglo-Catholics toward the “Anglicanorum Coetibus” does not look well, especially in the numbers of the so-called laity! Plenty of would be and newly made priests it appears, and certainly guys my age (60′s) therein, but not the lay people. Strange? No doubt there are all kinds or reasons. And only time will tell if this really gets into the air, and fly’s?
Yes, this is indeed a concern – perhaps clergy are more prone to move than the laity? It was explained to me that, in the case of the TAC laity, they had all had to make the very hard and painful decision to leave the Anglican “mainstream” – I know one such who described in heartrending terms how he was so cruelly dealt with for opposing WO that he knelt one last time in his parish church, farewelled that once-happy spiritual home, and left for good – and, given their age, it was somewhat less likely that they would go through the whole process again, humanly speaking. I have great sympathy for all people of whatever stance who have gone through that experience: worst of all must it be for those who leave but feel they have no where to go. Pray for such.
Indeed one would hope that many of the clergy would help shepherd those so-called lay people who need the support in making the move? It is at times like this that one can see who has that call of God on their lives! “..whose faith follow”. (Heb. 13:7)
Presumably they wished to help shepherd them, but the sheep were having none of it. The fact that some congregations were split 60/40 and some 90/10 suggests that the difference was not in the demography or the previous experience of the laity, but in the pastoral ability of the clergy. The ACCC cathedral in Victoria was heavily in favour of the Ordinariate until the rector was rejected for ordination and did an about-face. At this point the majority of those who had been prepared to enter the Catholic church apparently decided that staying with their rector was a preferable option.
@EMPS: Your point is well put! And one cannot change hats in one day, either.
Well..with a bit of luck ( not that i believe in luck) the Australian Ordinariate may reach 100 by next Spring. Can any one work that out as a percentage of 180,000 practising Anglicans in Australia?
Information available online suggests that congregations will be formed not only in Perth and Melbourne, but in Adelaide, Rockhampton (northern Queensland) and other cities… if you had predicted that there will be less than 1,000 members in a year, I could agree with you, since Australia has a smaller population than the UK, and local Anglicans tend to be Low rather than High; but to say there will be less than one hundred members of the Ordinariate here sounds rather a sour and bitter claim. Try not to be mean-spirited.
It is not really accurate to claim that “most” Anglicans in Australia are “Low rather than High”. The great majority of Australian parishes, apart from those in the Diocese of Sydney, could be called “moderately high”. The percentage of obviously “Anglo-Catholic” parishes is much less than in England and probably the United States as well.
Sorry, I should have used the more correct terminology – thanks for the correction.
Yes, thank God for the Diocese of Sydney! Still Low Church Evangelical and Reformed for the most part! Jenson and Company! This goes back to the legacy of the Irish “Cork” man, T.C. (Thomas Chatterton) Hammond, Principal of Moore College (1936-53). (We train men not mice! On Moore College students War record, 1944)
*Jensen
Even this Wiki piece shows the depth of history of this great Anglican Australian Diocese of Sydney! Would that we had more like it! (Note too, the great Archbishop of Sydney, Sir Marcus Loane, died at an amazing 97, in 2009!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_Diocese_of_Sydney
Canada has about 600,000 Anglicans on current parish rolls, and about 200 members of the Ordinariate. If OOLSC attracts 100 people in a year it will be vastly more successful than its Canadian counterpart, in percentage terms.
Sorry if I sounded mean spirited. The Diocese of Sydney accounts for half the number of practising Anglicans in Australia..all the once Anglo-Catholic diocese are on their last legs financially and congregations are in free fall.
As for TC Hammond ( mentioned by Irish Anglican ) who shaped Sydeny Anglicansism , is whole life was one of hatred towards the Catholic Church. He abominated Anglo-Catholicism as well, which he saw as a deviation within Anglicanism of Cranmer’s Protestant patrimony.
@Robert: Certainly the battles between Irish Protestants and Irish Catholicism was very real in Ireland in Hammond’s time, and always more political really, as well as theological! And Hammond certainly saw the RCC as triumphalist and intolerant. ‘It was a time when the evangelical cause in the south of Ireland was under constant verbal and occasionally physical attack from instruments of Catholic action and at the same time was being deserted by friends who were either leaving Ireland in fear of Home rule or whose ardour was being quenched by Modernism and the effects of misguided biblical criticism. It was, in fact, the last days of old establishment evangelicalism.’ (Warren Nelson’s little Bio on T.C. H., Banner) So it was just a different age than ours! I have myself several of T.C. Hammond’s books, and he was certainly a Reformed protestant, evangelical and a certain kind of Anglican in the light of the Irish Articles 1615, as the Thirty-Nine Articles. Btw, Hammond was almost 60 just before he went to Australia, he died at 84. And we must say that Hammond kept faith and defended evangelicalism through a period really when it was rather theologically weak, but his well known book: ‘In Understanding Be Men’ is still a broad evengelical classic!
“If you are in a Church remain in it until you are satisfied from a study of the Word of God that you are being asked to accept teaching which is not only [not] contained in the Scriptures but is in manifest contradiction to the truth therein revealed. But do not act hastily. God in His provdence placed you where you are and nothing but true conviction can jusify you leaving the religious body to which you have been attached. This applies equally to Roman Catholics and Protestants.” (Evangelical Action, Sept. 1957,T.C. Hammond)
Yes, you’re quite right – alas.
If I were to assent to the 39 Articles, etc., then Sydney Anglicanism would be the logical choice BUT for their far too Low Church aversion to liturgical worship, to the extent that the noticeboard outside their cathedral in Sydney advertises, not Mattins, nor Holy Communion, nor Evensong, but “Public Christian Meetings”! Yes, Jensen and Jensen (the Archbishop and the Dean, both close relations, brothers or cousins or something, I forget; some whisper of nepotism) stand firm for morals, but as to their doctrine – well, it was told me that there’s no point politely inviting any of them to attend a Catholic Mass (as otherwise is the ecumenical practice for episcopal ordinations, Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, etc.), as they hold it in abomination (very 16th C., that); and when Benedict XVI came to Sydney for WYD, the Jensens fled the city, lest the presence of Antichrist contaminate them. The joke is that the Scotsman asks a policeman the way to the Kirk, and is politely directed to the Anglican cathedral as the local bastion of Presbyterianism!
That said, I reiterate that the Jensens in particular and the Sydney Anglicans in general are arguably honestly faithful to mainstream Anglicanism, whereas you rightly say that “all the once Anglo-Catholic diocese are on their last legs financially and congregations are in free fall.” I asked a Catholic bishop of a country diocese near Sydney about the local Anglicans; he replied they were very high but believed in nothing (“liturgical atheists” I think was his phrase).
Jensen et al. are good honest Evangelicals-cum-Puritans-cum-Calvinists.
@Joshua: I like to think I am myself something of the so-called classic Anglican eclectic, evangelical. I am only somewhat Low Church, seeing the great Ecumenical Councils, and too seeing with the Council of Ephesus that Mary is the Theotokos (Mother of the Incarnate Christ). But, certainly Mary is not a matrix of any graces, personally, she is an elect vessel of grace for the Incarnate Christ. And too btw, I believe Mary had but one Son! (Ever Virgin) And for me too, as the Holy Scripture, there is only “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”. (1 Tim. 2: 5) So Christ as prophet, priest and king, is alone the Mediator!
And as I have said before, I am close to Luther on the Eucharist! But yes, I am Reformed and something Calvinist (an Augustinian, but closer to the Reformation, as both Luther and Calvin, i.e. Augustinian).
Too btw, if we would learn to respect at least each other (not so much our different theologies themselves), we would do better as Christians, who must disagree! I was raised Irish Roman Catholic myself, in Ireland. I still have extended family and friends who are Roman Catholic. And we are able somewhat to dialogue.
Btw Robert, “hatred” and “abominated” are way over the top I believe for Hammond towards Catholicism (noting my quote from Hammond). He died in 1961. He certainly (as I see too and feel) that theologically “Catholicism” has serious error! But, there are and have been very profound Christians in Roman Catholicism! As I seek to state over and over, there is simply no perfection in the Pilgrim Church!
In clergy ratio terms – in England one is already seeing diocesans asking for Ordinariate help in maintaining the level of Sunday Nass celebrations in diocesan parishes or making a joint appointment with the Ordinary of an Ordinariate prise to serve both a diocesan parish and an ordinariate group. On the whole this has worked better than one might have thought possible.
Groups rainge in size from over 60 coming in at one time, to just 2 or 3. But this was regarded as a “mustard seed” project. We’ll have some better idea of how well things are going in 20-25 years.
Matters are benig helped enormously by events within the CofE which seems to outsiders like me to be in something akin to “self destruct” mode, but I think everyone is coming to understand that while being “against something” may be the occasion for seeking to find out morre about the ordinariates, is not in itself a good reason for joining.
As an interested observer – is the C. of E. in fact in “self-destruct” mode? Are such statistical measures as practice rates, etc., showing a larger decrease than in other denominations (not excluding Catholicism)? Assuming the C. of E. is declining at a steeper rate, is there evidence showing that this has accelerated since WO and other controversial changes (such as winking at more and more sexual license)? Now, I would suspect that that is the case… (there is, I understand, evidence for this in the parallel case of the Episcopalians in the US) but is that a case of wishful thinking on my part?
TC Hammond headed the Irish Church Missions to Roman Catholics ( still in existence), before moving to Australia. He edited a book called The Hundred Texts..a very badly put together refutation of Roman Catholicism.This poison stll circulates in the Sydney theological blood.However his greatest contribution was help design a Constitution for teh Church of england in Australia which makes each diocese independent and self governing. Sydney Diocese is in reality a church all on its own.With 90,000 active communicant Anglicans, Sydney is half of the practising Anglicans in Australia. By contrast some of the Anglo Catholic dioceses have less than 2,000 communicants.
I think it’s defensible to claim that a large percentage of Sydney Anglicans are only notionally “Anglican” in terms of beliefs and worship. There is very little, in many cases, actual identity with any recognisably historical form of Anglicanism. They have become a breed unto themselves ~ and a church within a church ~ and do not represent traditional Low or Evangelical Anglicanism. Any discussion of Australian Anglicanism needs to treat Sydney, on the whole, as an unrepresentative and separate entity.
Hence the jokes about the Anglican Cathedral being “the Kirk”, i.e. Presbyterian, I suppose? Is it fair to say that they are like the English Puritans of old, who wished for the C. of E. to be a good deal more reformed than it was; from what I understand, they are Calvinist in doctrine (though under Elizabeth I that was quite acceptable for Archbishops even); and virtually aliturgical. I know that they removed the fixed altar table from their Cathedral, and wheel a table in when they need one; and the preferred liturgical attire is the business suit.
@Joshua: Indeed when I was in Sydney, and other places in Australia on a pastoral visit (several years back as I remember), I was considered by some to be a High Church type Anglican, at least in some of my belief and ecclesiology, though I am certainly Reformed on the Doctrines of Grace. But, I would not do the Holy Eucharist without Alb and Stole! Though I admit in some very Low Churches, I only preached the Word, but even the Word itself is the Royal Sacrament! (And at least with always my Stole & Collar!) Funny, with some Anglican evangelicals I am “High” Church, and with others.. Anglo-Catholic, I am Low Church. In reality I think I am somewhere in between, again that Eclectic Anglican!
And yes for me anyway, this is one of the beauty’s of being Anglican!
Btw, I would agree somewhat that “Sydney” Anglicanism, is more traditionally Reformed, than really even the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles, at least with many! But Article XVII is still quite good enough for me! I still read and use Charles Simeon, as John and Charles Wesley, not to forget Dr. Luther! (I even like and read Barth!
)
And for “Robert”, I have an old copy of T.C. Hammond’s ‘The One Hundred Texts’ myself, from, ‘The Society For Irish Church Missions’, Fourth Complete Edition, 1952 (Marshall, Morgan And Scott, LTD.) Yeah, I still like to read Hammond’s Irish-Anglican Calvinism!