One Church, Many Rites: The Anglican Ordinariate

I spent most of my childhood attending a church that maintained a fascinating juxtaposition. The Anglican Ordinariate Catholic Church of St. Mary the Virgin was truly one of the ugliest churches I have ever seen, and yet I have scarcely in life seen the Mass celebrated more beautifully than there.

The parish, like many in the “Personal Ordinariate,” was originally Anglican, but split when the Church of England decided to begin ordaining women. The priest at St. Mary the Virgin, Rev. Allan Hawkins, was the quintessential British vicar: Oxford educated, married, a staunch royalist, and possessing one of those old-guard English accents, the frequency of which diminishes with every generation since Queen Victoria.

No 10:30 a.m. Sunday morning Mass was ever shorter than an hour and a half, nor were there ever less than five altar boys in the processions. Organ music accompanied every mass, and on occasion there was even a trumpet.

My family is not English nor has anyone in my lineage, to my knowledge, ever been an Anglican. Our attending was the result of our sadness at the lack of beauty at the Masses in Texas and that our family had just moved from Rome. If the Ordinariate does one thing right, it’s liturgical beauty.

The Personal Ordinariate proper is the successor of a provision allowed by Pope St. John Paul II in 1980 for married Anglican and Episcopal priests to convert and function as Catholic priests.

In 1983 the first “Anglican Use” church, Our Lady of the Atonement, opened up in San Antonio, Texas. It was shortly followed in 1984 by Our Lady of Walsingham parish in Houston. Since then, over 100 Anglican priests have converted and become members of the Roman Catholic clergy.

On December 9, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI allowed for personal ordinariates for the Anglican Use parishes with his Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus. A personal ordinariate functions much like a diocese, though not territorially bound in the same way.

The first Personal Ordinariate created was Our Lady of Walsingham for England and Wales in January 2011. January 2012 witnessed the creation of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter for the United States. Finally, the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross for Australia was created in June 2012.

Churches in one of the Personal Ordinariates use a variation on the Mass called the Anglican Use Liturgy which seeks to combine the liturgical tradition loved by many with connection to the Church.

In recent years, the Personal Ordinariates have found tremendous success. In 2010, eight members of the House of Bishops of America voted to become part of the Church, bringing with them 3,000 parishioners in 120 parishes in four dioceses. A majority of the clergy of the Traditional Anglican Church supported a petition to join the Catholic Ordinariate. On March 12, 2010, the Anglican Catholic Church in Canada requested the creation of a Canadian Ordinariate.

Featured Image Courtesy of Catholic Church England and Wales via Flickr