Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross Contacts
September 1, 2012 32 Comments
The growing list of contacts for the Ordinariate in Australia was pointed out by Fr Ken Clark, with some familiar names on:
UPDATE: Information is now emerging on a The Continuing Anglican Church in Australia.
About Fr Stephen Smuts
What gives?
You have told us that Fr Owen Buckton is The Vicar General & Administrator of the TAC in Australia? David Robarts is a TAC bishop? Also Gordon Barnier a TAC Vicar General? !!!
And yet ++Hepworth was given the boot over being for a Ordinariate?
Since you are a TAC priest and this is a TAC friendly blog, tell us what gives in Australia.
John et al
The former men you mention are delaying their Ordinariate entry while they do some important work for the ACCA (TAC in Australia) and the latter is me. I suppose I will be Vicar General of Church of Torres Strait until my Chrismation day which should be before year’s end. My Parish of St Clare’s,Cairns, will join the OLSC Ordinariate and with the blessing and encouragement of Bp Nona and the Synod of CTS which will also ‘release’ the Parish at that time. So, relax, gasp and horror brigade. St Clare’s and myself will perhaps act as a kind of pathfinder and encouragement for the CTS in the Torres Strait islands proper.
When the Torres Strait Ordinariate is formed St Clare’s might transfer to it. We will see at that time.
An ordinariate for the Torrres Strait is progressing albeit slowly and with the considerable help of the local Catholic Bishop.
John, Bp Hepwoth’s situation is due to more than simply being ‘for a ordinariate’. Really, that of itself had little or nothing to do with subsequent events as far as I can tell.
Finally please pray for the first Priests of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross to be ordained in Melbourne on Sept 8, next Sunday.
Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross is a brilliant name,no? the Feast day is today, Sept 1st.
Today is the accepted day of salvation…..any one who genuinely believes that the Catholic Church is the Church , Christ founded and delays..like the rich young man etc are risking their souls.
Its a bit like saying the Church teaches sex before marriage is sin, but we are having a pre-marriage relationship to test out our compatibility, as we donot belive in divorce! Such is the sinful heart of man.
“There is a way that seems right to a man, and the end thereof is death.”
It is my firm conviction that the Ordinariate in Australia will not prosper. ( non infallible supposition of course!)..and it only got off the ground because Bishop Elliott went the extra mile. iF HE HAD BEEN CANADIAN , THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN AN ORDINARIATE IN CANADA.
185,000 practising Anglicans in Australia….about 55 percent of these Protestant evangelicals.
300 in ACCA ( and thats a generous estimate)
Possibly a thousand in TS.
180 is therefore about one in a thousand..the current proportion of the OLW to the Church of England..so maybe we could expect 200 Australians to join. Maybe a few Anglican Church of Australia clergy may join, when they have their pensions in the bag..and hedge their bets about Heaven.
What is it with you that you have to be so curmudgeonly? As I recall you youself were received into the Church. You should be rejoicing that more of our separated brethren are doing the same. Whatever the numbers may in the fullness of time prove to be.
What will become of the TAC once the “important work for the ACCA (TAC in Australia),” whatever that is, is done? Who or what is left.
Father Smuts has been balanced in his reporting on both TAC and Ordinariate matters, as far as they come. But he always maintains he is but a parish priest in RSA Africa under his bishop (Gill) doing gospel work.
Where is ++Hepworth. What of him and Father Chadwick and the group who wanted to be ordinariate but were rejected because they abandoned the catholic church before. What are they up to?
People need to know and have a right to. Bar Father Smuts, there is NO other reporting or news on the TAC (except the insignificant Anglican Catholic Chronicle — ACCC Canada Newsletter). The TAC website was last updated with Archbishop Samuel Prakash’s Ad Clerum of 5 June 2012 !!! The tide is ebbing rapidly.
This blog has become my TAC lifeline. Without it, we would be lost and confused. “relax, gasp and horror brigade” is exactly where we are Father Gordon Barnier !!! We are being abandoned and know not who is who !!! “Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock! the sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.”
Father Smuts is trying to build. Where are the others? Where are the bishops !!! The bishops of America serve to persecute us. They did that from the start. Where is ++ Hepworth. At least he communicated with the communion, notwithstanding all the misinformation.
I look to this blog for answers. Bishops do not want to speak on blogs (except the occasionally bishop Gill… he used to post good pastoral articles here but no more). But this blog has done more for the TAC than anyother webspot internet. . Come on !!! This is the age of technology!!! We come here to see what is take place and what is take place to our brothers and sisters who have gone over the Tiber. Now today we see men who are on ordinariate church sites but are also TAC. What is really going on? !!!
We have the right to know !!!
Keep God at the center of our lives. Bless our persecutors. Bless the liars. Bless the TAC. Bless those who leave on individual entry into the land of Peter. Feeling lost, confused, and really scared spiritually. John.
This sucks! What a mess. Does anyone remember what I said?
http://frstephensmuts.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/confusion-in-australia-acca-tac/#comment-10718
I can tell John there is no one left.
We are doing the best we can at the moment with, so far, extremely limited access to books and records and other boring administrative stuff that unfortunately is necessary to make the machine work. I don’t know who you are or where you are, but your local ACCA priest ought to be continuing to function, and is welcome to communicate with me or with his brethren in order to assist in rebuilding. If you need more information, ask Fr Smuts for my email address.
Like you, John, I have very little to go on. A couple of days ago, you took a vicious swipe at me, but I am a forgiving sort of person.
The evidence points to the TAC having made a collective commitment to Anglicanorum coetibus and will accept all and any conditions coming from Rome and the Roman Catholic bishops. The TAC as an entity forfeits its right to exist except as a “feeding tank” for the ordinariates for the reason of their taking a long time to establish. No provision will be made for those who remain.
The Indian TAC is unverifiable by anyone living outside India, and I believe that South Africa will continue to flourish owing to the complete indifference of the Roman Catholic authorities.
Deboragh Gyapong (and Fr Fleming for that matter) told me that Archbishop Hepworth will return to his native Church, as a layman. If that is so, we will never hear from him again. He contacted me in the early part of this year – and I’m being completely transparent – and he suggested a kind of fraternity. My big question was its fundamental justification, since he was clear he was not establishing a new competing continuing church. That question has not been answered, so I have not pursued and such collaboration. To my knowledge, so such fraternity has been established or even seriously planned. There has been no conspiracy.
What am I up to? You can read what I bash onto the keyboard. Otherwise, I worship God in my chapel, earn my living, live with my wife, go sailing and various other bits and bobs. I wait and see how things generally shape up over the remainder of 2012. There may be something of the TAC to stay in. There may be another serious church jurisdiction to join, or it might be time to call it a day.
Indeed, the tide is ebbing, and it is agony for us all. I too am surprised that the leading Australian clergy are keeping a TAC going but only as an “ordinariate feeding tank”. I find this way of proceeding cynical and callous, but the continuing Anglican world, like the RC traditionalists, is unstable and fragmented. This and the general cynicism of the institutional churches points to a greater and more sombre reality – or possibility – that Christianity is closing down.
Right to know? In the old days, when France had the guillotine, the condemned man was told about the time of his death only hours before. We can sit there helplessly, or we can do our own detective work by all means available to us. I am not part of any “smoke and mirrors”.
“but I am a forgiving sort of person.”
My God, man, your hypocrisy knows no bounds, does it?
I think the important work I referred to is ensuring that there is a viable ACCA for those in Australia who cannot or will not join the Ordinariate. As for the CTS we are ensuring that orderly transition to the TAC according what was always said was going to happpen. The context of my shock and horror brigade comment was meant to be a light hearted dig at those who might be too ready to think Cairns was breaking away from CTS and TAC.
John I do agree that those who now are leading TAC should communicate with the Priests and people. You could perhaps ask your Priest to let you and others know what is happening.
A small but important point is that Rome has not rejected anyone per se but has rejected former RC clerics for ministry. I think they would be welcome to reconcile.
The TAC has not forfeited its right to exist and nor is it a’feeding tank’ unless it allows itself to become such. It’s up to the clergy and people to decide.
For myself I would not have joined TAC all those years ago if I had thought it was an end in itself, for ever and ever. What would be the rationale for that? Alphabet soup like in the USA? and my joining of the ordinariate is not dependent on my being accepted for the priesthood.
A correction to my last post- the ordination of the Ordinariate Priests in Melbourne is on Saturday, Nativity of the BVM.
For myself I would not have joined TAC all those years ago if I had thought it was an end in itself, for ever and ever.
I’m sorry, Father, if I seem to be nit-picking, but would have joined the TAC seven years ago if I knew that it was all about winding up in the same situation as before Archbishop Hepworth had the kindness to take me under his jurisdiction? For someone who was before joining the TAC:
- a Roman Catholic priest,
- a Roman Catholic deacon,
- a Roman Catholic seminarian,
- or (as Fr Hurd would put it) someone having “left the Catholic Church as adults (the delict of schism)”,
- – - apparently no distinction is made between a cradle RC like Archbishop Hepworth and those who were originally Anglicans as most of us were. Our crime was to make our individual submissions under illusions!
How is your reflection different from saying that the only purpose of the TAC is to be a “feeding tank” for the ordinariate and show complete and cynical callousness for men in the above canonical situations?
I am aware that the TAC may have no future in the western world, but telling us we have to go through the sausage machine is not pastoral. This was the reason I started the blog New Goliards (http://neogoliard.wordpress.com/) to get the message out that we can trust our own resources and live on. Yes, in the case of some of us, our vocation is our life, and we can’t switch it on and off at will.
How do you propose “ensuring that there is a viable ACCA [or other parts of the TAC elsewhere] for those in Australia [or elsewhere] who cannot or will not join the Ordinariate”? What convincing answer can you give to the hard-liners of the Continuum?
I’m not being nasty or negative – just wanting an intellectually and pastorally satisfying answer from someone in a position of authority, and therefore of knowledge.
I was following your blog at the time you and Hepworth were exploring the question of a possible solidality, I can well understand the position of any cleric who believes that his ministry as a priest need to be exercised in conjunction with a bishop. I recall that at one time you were concerned that with the abolition of the Patrimony of the Primate you could be so to speak, left high and dry without a bishop to whom you could look and you were exploring the concept of the vaganti.
I assume that just as the sole remaining TAC Canadian bishop has been designated as the Episcopal Visitor for the UK, some similar provision could be made for you and, if at the end of the day there is no TAC person in episcopal orders in Australia, some similar provsion will have to be made for any TAC clergy in that territory who elect not to join the OLSC Ordinariate.
The position of Catholics who have received major orders in the Catholic Church and then gone to other churches is very different. Their route back to communion with the Catholic Church is generally via their previous superior and not an easy process.
If I have understood things correctly, the various TAC jurisdictions were formed by bishops, priests and laity who felt they could not longer continue as part of the already established Anglican Communion churches in their respective countries. Certain of the TAC bishops, priests and laity then decided that the way forward for them is to join the Catholic Curch, some via the Ordinariates, some otherwise.
It is perhaps inevitable that not 100% of people will want to take that course. We have already had the example of Canada and the UK. In Canada, one of the TAC bishops elected not to join the Catholic Church and he is already ordaining new TAC priests – so it is to be assumed that the TAC will continue there – at least for the time being.
In the UK many of the TAC clergy have been received into the OLW Ordinariate and for the time being the sole Canadian bishop of the TAC is also named as “Episcopal Visitor” to the UK. I’m not sure whether there is very much to visit.
Now in Australia it is becoming clearer which of the TAC clergy will wish to join the OLSC Ordinariate and which not and time alone will tell whether there will be (1) a bishop and (2) clergy of the TAC who will continue as TAC clergy to provide pastoral care for laity who elect not to join the Ordinariate.
For those TAC laity who do not feel able to join an Ordinariate, this will undoubtedly be a testing time until they learn whether there will be clergy avaliable to minister to their needs.
I think, at this stage, that I should point out that I have not been rejected by the CDF or anyone else. I doubt any application was ever made on my behalf, and I have not made one myself. For me personally, the question is entirely academic.
Fr. Chadwick, I seem to recall one of your Catholicus Anglicanus postings wherein you mentioned your wife writing the letter required by the CDF that very day. Do you not remember posting it? In the same article you waxed lyrical about your application being taken to Rome by your Archbishop. Selective memory?
That was for the file to be sent to Archbishop Hepworth. Archbishop Hepworth knows what he did with it. In any case I have not received a letter from Rome. No selective memory!
There is an independent jurisdiction in Australia titled “The Continuing Anglican Church in Australia” (CACA). This jurisdiction is awaiting the consecration of its first Bishop. The clergy of the CACA are formermembers of the ACCA. Those clergy and laity of the ACCA (TAC) who do not intend to enter an Ordinariate would do well to consider joining the CACA.They would be most welcome.
And again a new splinter Christian group…. Satan must be laughing….
Let us pray with the Saviour: That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee; that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
+ PAX et BONUM
http://frstephensmuts.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/the-continuing-anglican-church-in-australia/
Mourad, I fear I am realistic….unfortunately you hide behind your screen name.
CACA sounds dreadful.. I WOULD not like to say what it means in Welsh.
Please remember these denominations are tiny ACC etc..but even one soul is precious to our Lord.
Also remember the Word Of God……. “Unless the Lord build the house, thaose that ;labour, do so in vain”..and as for aspiring clergy…..” better a door keeper in the House of the Lord, than a dweller in the tents of the Ungodly.”
I welcome Hepworth back as a layman, and I hope he gets his marital status sorted out.
Thank God that in Australia the Anglican diocese in Sydney is doing well in the classic sense of the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles! This in fact reaches much further back than most so-called Continuing Anglican groups, also. And the point for me at least, is as the Anglican Articles of both: Of The Church, XIX, and, Of The Authority Of The Church, XX. Here the foundation, purpose, and nature of the Church is presented, of course with the true “Characteristics” of the Church. And here the Church is One because it is united to Christ, and it is so, notwithstanding the impossibility of outward unity of earthly government (The Church as Visible is not Infallible, but Pilgrim); The Church is Holy because it is possessed by the Holy Spirit of God. And the Church is Catholic because Christ is proclaimed everywhere and its life is independent of place and time, (1 Cor.1: 2). And the Church is Apostolic because it is true to the NT Apostolic teaching, (Acts 2:42). In the end, “the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church is neither a mere aggregate of visible Churches nor a single invisible community of individuals. It is none the less real because its life is in Christ and its character spiritual. The Church of the New Testament is that Body of Christ which consists of all the faithful in Him, and every separate community of such people is a true visible Church.” (Rev. W.H. Griffith Thomas, D.D. – At one time, ‘Formerly Professor of Systematic Theology, Wycliffe College, Toronto, and sometimes Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford’).
Of course as has been quoted, Anglicans most certainly believe the Catholic or Ecumenical Councils & Creeds, especially the Nicene Homoousios – ‘In Christ’ we are confronted by God Himself, for Christ Incarnate is ‘very God’! And btw, the Incarnation itself, is on the one hand a ‘veil’ in which the God of majesty confronts us, and on the other, as a ‘glass’ or ‘mirror’ in which HE is to be beheld. Such is the reality for all true Christians. Here alone we find both the crucified and hidden God, but too in the Light of Faith, the Risen and Ascended God-Man, Who alone is the Mediator! (1 Tim. 2:5) And I challenge any Roman Catholic to find demerit here!
With respect to your own Evangelical sensibilities, the so-called “Anglican” Diocese of Sydney does not on the whole represent any recognisable or historical Evangelical or Low Church tradition of Anglicanism. There is nothing much “classic” about it at all. The diocese is essentially a sect of its own creation and also borders dangerously on the virge of being a cult. This is the view of many other Evangelical Anglicans, not only more Catholic Anglicans.
It has been several years since I was in Sydney and Australia (note I am almost 63, late next month, and semi-retired) and I am one of those who somewhat stands closer to the Reformed Anglicans in Sydney, etc. Old T.C. Hammond, the Archbishop Marcus Loane, etc. I would admit too the Evangelicalism of the Sydney Anglicans, has other places, more independent than I am certainly. (As I have written on this blog many times, I am more of an eclectic Evangelical Anglican, myself.) But, this is somewhat the nature of Evangelicals, i.e. biblical and spiritual liberty ‘In Christ’! Btw, calling any Evangelical Anglican, in a negative sense of the word “cult”, would have to be somehow proven and measured. If you can show such? then bring it on, or otherwise your comments are just personal. My whole point, is that the overall history of Anglicanism has always been Evangelical, and certainly close to the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles! Yes, there has also been both the High Church and Broad Church Anglicans, and these have with Evangelicalism often mingled together in some people. I have been myself somewhat an Anglo-Catholic (years past), but my biblical and theological Evangelicalism, with the Reformation and Reformed has always been the major factor that has moved my own thinking. Indeed always, the Ecclesia semper reformada (always reforming) in “spirit and truth”!
You Robert Father are a good commentator. You dealt with that Crusader Ioannes, fought him daily and won. But what church are you Father in? Please tell us. I hope you are TAC. You speak like an evangelical. I see it in Father Smuts too but he is TAC. He love the Bible as do you and thus you are welcome.
@John: I am not in the TAC, but an old Irish-Anglican, though I am somewhat Anglo-Irish (educated theologically in England, holding both the D.Phil., & Th.D.) Yep, I am an old theolog!
Note, now I am semi-retired, living with my wife in the USA. I do mostly some hospital chaplain work now, but I also love to do some preaching in other Evangelical Churches, Lutheran and Presbyterian, etc. I am in fact FV (Federal Vision) friendly! I confess that I rarely find myself with “Anglicans/Episcopalians” these days! Most can see that I don’t enter into the Anglican Continuing Church debates, though I generally agree that the great Hepworth event was a sad affair, and I do wish the TAC better days! And in general, I give my support to my TAC friend and priest, Fr. Stephen! 
I wish you real and certain blessings ‘In Christ’! Keep reading and making the Holy Scripture your daily diet!
No, he hasn’t.
Sadly, as just about any spiritually minded Christian can see, poor so-called “Ioannes” suffers, as St. Paul said of old “Israel”: “For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.” (Rom.10: 2)
Terry says: September 2, 2012 at 05:29
“but I am a forgiving sort of person.”
My God, man, your hypocrisy knows no bounds, does it?
You are Antichrist!
Please, gentlemen, peace!
Let us outdo one another in showing honour, not tear and bite each other!
Do we not seek to love Christ, all of us?
Love one another.
You Terry STOP!! Fr Chadwick is a priest !! Where is your respect you disrespectful and rude ignoramus.. Fr Chadwick teaches repentance and forgivness, and he has stopped posting that controversial English Catholic. ++Hepworth is gone and they don’t walk together any more or so he says. Time will tell.. and if he is lying he will be cursed.. But you don’t get to judge others without cause. STOP it !!!
To John.
I think it’s time we had a fireside chat… My e-mail is on http://civitas-dei.eu/contact.htm
Please write.
Father Chadwick we must remain transparent.. I do not want to comment but when I speak all must see what I say.. I do not want to speak to Father Smuts or Fr Chadwick or Dr Mc Coll alone because I am a church nobody.. Only part of the anxious laity.. I love reading blogs of all kind !! That’s all..