For over 20 years I have belonged to an organization that represents the ecumenical directors from the various dioceses throughout the United States, it is called the Catholic Association of Diocesan Ecumenical and Interreligious Officers (CADEIO). I have been a member of the CADEIO Board in various capacities over the years and was recently named liaison to the Episcopal Diocesan Ecumenical and Interreligious Officers (EDEIO).
I have an opportunity to meet with the EDEIO Board twice a year. Our February meeting promises to be interesting given the announcement made on Oct. 20 by Cardinal William Levada, the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Archbishop Augustine Di Noia, secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, that Pope Benedict XVI has signed an Apostolic Constitution that will allow disaffected Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church as discrete bodies.
They announced that “in this Apostolic Constitution the Holy Father has introduced a canonical structure that provides for such corporate reunion by establishing Personal Ordinariates which will allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony.” John Allen, who writes for the National Catholic Register, explains “personal ordinariates” as, “similar to the structures created throughout the world to provide pastoral care for members of the military and their families. The structures are, in effect, non-territorial dioceses, provided over by a bishop and with their own priests and seminarians.”
These Personal Ordinariates will be established within local Catholic dioceses.
This new structure will allow married Anglican clergy to receive ordination after their formal entrance into the church and then will be able to serve as Catholic priests. In keeping with the ancient tradition of both Catholic and Orthodox tradition, married Anglican bishops that seek ordination in the Roman Catholic Church can seek only priesthood. The new provision also allows married seminarians to become Catholic priests, similar to the permission given to seminarians and priests in the Eastern rite ecclesial communities in communion with Rome.
Until now Anglicans have been allowed to join the church primarily on an individual basis. With the new provision, groups of Anglicans from around the world will be able to join new parishes headed by former Anglican clergy, who will provide spiritual care of the new Anglo-Catholics. A model for the future already exists here in the United States, where a handful of such parishes already function, including three in Texas. This came about through a 1980 Vatican decision to accommodate Episcopal faithful and priests who wanted to convert. These parishes use a Vatican-approved Book of Divine Worship, based on the Book of Common Prayer, which includes Catholic and Anglican rituals. The new model doesn’t create a new rite, but rather an Anglicanized liturgy within the Latin rite.
No one expects a sudden mass exodus out of the Anglican or Episcopal churches because of the new provision. Cardinal Levada explained in his announcement that this new provision was in response to many requests that have come to the Vatican over the years from Anglicans disillusioned with the Anglican Communion’s gradual acceptance of women priests and bishops, openly gay clergy and the blessings of same-sex marriages. The cardinal did not give exact figures, although he said 30 to 40 Anglican bishops had been in touch with him.
The spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, said he did not believe that the Vatican decision was a commentary on Anglican problems. He said after the announcement, “It has no negative impact on the relations of the communion as a whole to the Roman Catholic Church as a whole.”
In a statement from the Episcopal church, Bishop Christopher Epting, ecumenical and interfaith officer, who sits on the EDEIO Board that I attend twice a year, said the announcement “reflects what the Roman Catholic Church, through its acceptance of Anglican rite parishes, has been doing for some years more informally….We are in dialogue with the archbishop’s office and will, in the coming days, continue to explore the full implications of this in our ecumenical relations.”
As I wrote in the first paragraph the February meeting should be interesting.
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