ABOUT THE NEW ROMAN CATHOLIC ORDINARIATE...

The Personal Ordinariate in the United States of the Chair of St Peter under the protection of Our Lady of Walsingham

From the National Catholic Reporter:

Pope Benedict XVI established a new nationwide U.S. ordinariate Jan. 1 for U.S. Anglicans (Episcopalians) who wish to become Catholic. He named Fr. Jeffrey N. Steenson, a Catholic theology professor in Houston and former Episcopal bishop, as its first head.

The new Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter will be based in Houston, according to Jan. 1 announcements released in Rome and Washington.

In a news release on its new Web site the ordinariate said that more than 100 Anglican priests in the United States and nearly 1,400 individuals from 22 communities are seeking to enter the Catholic Church as part of the ordinariate. Two of those communities entered into full communion with the Catholic Church this past fall after a period of preparation.

After 28 years of ministry in the Church of England and the U.S. Episcopal Church, in 2007 Steenson and his wife became Catholic. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 2009 and was instrumental in establishing the formation program for Anglican priests applying for Catholic priesthood as part of the ordinariate, which has been in the planning stages for the past two years.

Fr. Steenson is currently a professor of patristics, the study of the early Christian theologians known as the Fathers of the Church, at the University of St. Thomas and St. Mary's Seminary in Houston.

A sampling from the comments at NCR is below.

The largest and by far the most flourishing Anglican Use Parish in the US, Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio/TX has many members, probably the majority, who were never Anglicans, but came to them from other Latin Rite parishes, or who entered the Catholic Church through Our Lady of the Atonement.
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WWJD comes to mind about the reason for their conversion to Catholicism? Is there a Catholic Church we women can join because we do not like the male clergy only of the Catholic Church? Would the Pope mind appointing such a church ordinariate so that we women can feel more fulfilled as fully formed in the image of God? I personally will welcome the day when there is a woman priest in the area where I live, so that I may attend a liturgy to help me heal from the injustice of the Roman Catholic Church.
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100 priests and 1,400 people already have asked to join? That's great, 1 priest for every 14 members! This has to be the best priest to member ratio in the entire world. No, "I can't get the priest to answer my call" in those parishes.
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Submitted by whiteycat (not verified) on Jan. 02, 2012. (yes, our whiteycat)

I guess the Vatican needs to bolster its anti-woman, anti-gay membership since American RCs appear to be going in the other direction.

At least those who don't like the new Roman missal will have an alternative!
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Submitted by Grandmère Mimi (not verified) on Jan. 03, 2012.

What's with the members of the ordinariate calling themselves Anglicans? They may use an Anglo-Catholic (Sarum) rite, but they are converts to the Roman Catholic Church, no more, no less.

And I'm pleased to see someone noted upthread that a good many of these folks had already left the Episcopal Church or were never part of it.

The new ordinary, the Rev Jeffrey Steenson, was received into the RCC by the recently retired Cardinal Bernard Law.

How the ordinariate brings about any sort of reconciliation with the Episcopal Church is a mystery to me.

Correction: Rather than being received into the RCC by Cardinal Law, the Rev Steenson was ordained to the diaconate by the cardinal.

Not just anyone will be permitted to join a parish in the ordinariate. One must have been Anglican/Episcopal or enter through marriage or family relationship. Some might say that the ordinariate fails the inclusive test.

And yes, I'm late to the US ordinariate party which started on New Year's Day, but not for lack of notification by my trusty stringers. I simply wanted to let the excitement die down first.

The office of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter is located on Shadyvilla Lane in Houston, Texas.

PLANS FOR THE FUTURE RC ORDINARIATE IN THE US

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette blog:

Wednesday’s session of the meeting of the U.S. conference of Catholic Bishops was a feast for ecclesiology wonks of both the Catholic and Episcopal/Anglican persuasion. Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington DC, better known to my readers is the former bishop of Pittsburgh, reported on the progress of starting an ordinariate – a sort of non-geographical, nationwide diocese – for Anglican parishes that wish to convert en masse to Catholicism.

The project stems from a constitution that Pope Benedict approved in 2009, following years of lobbying by some theologically conservative Anglicans worldwide, particularly in Australia. One was founded in England and Wales in January and Cardinal Wuerl said that he wouldn’t be surprised to see one in the U.S. by the end of 2011. But in the meantime there are complex issues to address, ranging from retraining for priests to assisting Anglicans who are divorced and remarried through the annulment process in the Catholic Church. He also addressed a mistaken public perception that married priests will remain the norm in these Anglican-heritage parishes.
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Cardinal Wuerl is a good friend of Archbishop Robert Duncan of the Anglican Church in North America, who is on record that he doesn’t expect many parishes in his new church to be interested in converting to Catholicism. Many of them identify with the evangelical or charismatic traditions rather than Catholicism. And the ACNA bishop for Anglo-Catholics in that body has said that he’s not interested because of differences with the Catholic Church over papal authority and other doctrinal issues.

Friendship only goes so far for "Archbishop" Duncan.

“It’s only the first generation that will have married clergy. In the second generation the intention is that candidates for priesthood coming out of the community will be celibate. Provision has been made for an ad hoc petition [for an exception] to the Holy See, but the presumption is that this is for the first generation,” he said.
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Ultimately the inquirers will be sorted into three categories: Those who can he ordained as Catholic priests after a specially-developed nine-month intensive seminary course; those who require more intensive seminary education and "those whose formation histories would not recommend them for either of these options.”

Among those who will not be accepted as Catholic priests are those who were originally Catholic priests and left the Catholic priesthood for the Episcopal or Anglican churches, Cardinal Wuerl said.

“They are automatically excluded. . . A former Catholic priest cannot apply for this,” he said.

So. To the priests who left the Roman Catholic Church, married, and now wish to be welcomed back into the RCC fold as a priests, forget about it. And any Roman Catholic priests who have ideas, you are forewarned.

Married Anglican bishops can be ordained as Catholic priests, but not as Catholic bishops, Cardinal Wuerl said. This maintains a tradition shared with Orthodox Christianity, which has a married priesthood, but celibate bishops.

Sorry, Your Graces, no mitres for you.

A practical and pastoral problem is the number of Episcopalians and Anglicans who are divorced and remarried. While such remarriage requires permission of the bishop in the Episcopal Church, the Catholic Church requires an annulment in which a church court determines that the first marriage didn’t meet the church’s standard for a sacramental union. He asked the bishops to make their marriage tribunals available to these couples. Causes for a declaration of nullity can range from having signed a pre-nuptial agreement, to a marriage forced by pregnancy to being hung over on the day of the wedding.

I did not know being hung over on the day of the wedding invalidates a marriage. Actually, what I've seen a time or two is a groom and his groomsmen who have obviously been hitting the bottle on the very day of the wedding. I wonder what the rules are about that situation.

The tribunals will determine “what can be regularized,” he said. But if there are no grounds for annulment, “then there is the pastoral decision of who cannot, therefore, receive the Eucharist.”

All right, then. Do I have this right? Converts will be received into the RCC church, but they will not be able to take communion until they obtain an annulment. Come on in, but don't come to the table. The folks who are divorced will have to get what looks to me very like another divorce, a Roman Catholic divorce with only a change of name to an annulment.

There you have it - a glimpse of the rules for parishes, bishops, and priests who wish to join the RCC en masse.

Two items of note in the announcement by Bishop Cardinal Wuerl:

The St. Mary’s faculty member in charge of it is the Rev. Jeffrey Steenson, formerly the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande, who was received into the Catholic Church in 2007.

Hmmm.

And:

Once all of that documentation [on the clergy] has been sent to the Vatican, the candidate will cease celebrating the Anglican Eucharist.

Why would an Episcopal priest continue to preside at the Eucharist after he believes his orders are invalid?

Thanks to Ann V. for the link.