Catholic New Service is reporting that three former Anglican bishops were received into the Catholic Church just hours after they formally resigned from their offices in the Anglican communion.
John Broadhurst of Fulhan, Keith Newton of Richborough, and Andrew Burnham of Ebbsfleet — all in England– resigned at midnight, December 31 and were received into the Church later the next day.
They are scheduled to be ordained to the diaconate on January 13 and two days later to the priesthood. With their ordinations, they will be incardinated into the English ordinariate which will be established by papal decree sometime before the ordinations.
Pope Benedict XVI, on November 9, 2009, issued Anglicanorum coetibus which allowed the group reception of disaffected Anglo-Catholics to enter the Catholic Church. With this new ordinariate, the Anglican converts will be able to retain much of what was their Anglican liturgical practices and other aspects of Anglicanism, such as married priests.
Also received into the Catholic Church were three former Anglican nuns, and a group of former lay Anglicans.
It is reported that the new ordinariate will soon include up to 50 former Anglican bishops and clergy, plus hundreds of lay men and women. Other Anglican priest who wish to become Catholic will be ordained on Pentecost, June 12.
I suspect this is only the beginning of a larger phenomenon that will occur in the upcoming years in our relationship with Anglicanism. I am hopeful it signals an eventual reunification of what was a painful split in the Church 450 years ago when Henry VIII separate the Church in England from the Catholic Church in a dispute with the pope over Henry’s divorce and the indissolvibility of his first marriage.
Our Church, which is so often described as divisive, is in fact one of the most inclusive churches. We have so many rites, rituals, cultures, peoples and such a long history. We are a very human church with a divine master who guides the Church through what are at times very rough waters. Our time is not God’s time, and in His own time, God will bring us together again as one flock.
Our task is to do the leg work. We cannot just sit around and wait. Let us reach out to those who are disaffected around us and invite them back to the Church, their home.
