U.K. Catholic Church to Welcome 50 Anglican Clergy Early in New Year

Catholic Bishops from England and Wales will unveil their plans for receiving 50 Anglican clergy - including five bishops - early in 2011. This event will be astounding, let alone historic. The opening door for Anglicans is probably a foretaste of what will be in store for Lutherans and others who are being called into full communion. This is about our future unity.There is a homecoming foreshadowed that will eventually bring about a fullness of the Church which existed in her beginning.

WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) - The Telegraph reported on Monday that there will be 50 Anglican Clergy - including 5 bishops - who will be received into the Catholic Church early in the new year. These clergy will form the beginning of the Anglican Ordinariate in the United Kingdom.

According to Religious Affairs Correspondent Jonathan Wynne-Jones, plans for reception of clergy along with hundreds of laity will be announced at the end of the week by the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster and head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales.

The Telegraph also indicated that many Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England who are considering departure seem to be waiting for the next General Synod and see if the Church will, in fact, finalize plans for the consecration of women bishops, which was initiated this past summer.

Currently, the Catholic bishops are meeting in Leeds in order to work out more of the details regarding the forthcoming Ordinariate and the receptions. It looks like the long wait for the first glimpse on how the process will work is about to come to an end.

What we will be witnessing in the coming months will be nothing short of astounding, let alone historic. Without any alteration in her faith, Sacraments or ministry, the Catholic Church has initiated an invitation for more than just refuge, but reunion. This opening door for Anglicans is probably a foretaste of what will be in store for Lutherans and others who are being called into full communion.

However, most of what you hear in the press about the move, particularly regarding those from the Church of England, focuses on where clergy and laity are leaving rather than where they are going.

There are obvious problems taking place within the Anglican Communion, no doubt. The issue of women in the episcopate is only one in a long line of departures from orthodox Anglicanism in the past quarter century.

The Right Reverend Andrew Burnham, the Bishop of Ebbsfleet and one of those who will be received into the Catholic Church, told The Telegraph that clergy have become dismayed at the liberal direction of the Church of England and the way traditionalists have been treated.

"There's only a certain amount of time you can accept being described as the National Front of the Church of England," he stated. "We're seen as out of date for not accepting women's ministry as equal, but the debate concentrates on sociology rather than theology."

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While dissatisfaction with the Church of England may be a catalyst for some, the resignation letter of Right Reverend Keith Newton, Bishop of Richborough describes another component not commonly discussed by the secular media who seem predisposed to areas of intrigue within the Anglican and Catholic world.

"Since the inception of the ARCIC (Ed. - Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission) process, set up by Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey in the 1960s, most of us have longed and prayed for corporate union with the Catholic Church; union which in our own time has seemed less likely because of the new difficulties concerning the ordination of women and other doctrinal and moral issues affecting the Anglican Communion.

"The creation of Personal Ordinariates within the Catholic Church provides an opportunity for visible unity between Anglicans and the Catholic Church now, while still being able to retain what is best in our own tradition which will enrich the Universal Church. 

"This is a hope which has been expressed many times by Forward in Faith and many others within the catholic tradition of the Church of England   So I hope you will understand that I am not taking this step in faith for negative reasons about problems in the Church of England but for positive reasons in response to our Lord's prayer the night before he died the 'they may all be one.'"

Those who participate in the Ordinariate are not coming in (and should not be coming in) merely as "Anglicans in exile," but as a part of the Church that is able to fully express their Catholicity while representing the contribution that is brought through Anglican patrimony.

Pope John Paul II, who referred to those unifying words of the Lord in his encyclical "Ut Unum Sint" ("May they be one") in 1995, envisioned a great reunion of Christ's Church where both lungs - East and West - would again breathe together and Anglican as well as other Protestant jurisdictions would be received in full communion within the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

There is something really profound taking place both with regard to the Catholic Church reaching out and Anglican Church reaching in. There is a homecoming foreshadowed that will eventually bring about a fullness of the Church which existed in her beginning.

As Pope John Paul II said in "Ut Unum Sint, "It is not a matter of adding together all the riches scattered throughout the various Christian Communities in order to arrive at a Church which God has in mind for the future.

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"In accordance with the great Tradition, attested to by the Fathers of the East and of the West, the Catholic Church believes that in the Pentecost Event God has already manifested the Church in her eschatological reality, which he had prepared 'from the time of Abel, the just one.'"

Over the past thirty or forty years in particular, pockets of Evangelicals and other Protestants have begun to re-discover Sacraments and liturgy. They have also begun to experience the brokenness of Christ's Body here on earth as never before. They voiced a call to communion but did not know what that looked like.

Perhaps this coming year we will to see the beginning of this call being fulfilled. All this is happening while we continue to listen to the voices from both the Catholic and the Orthodox Church who are anticipating a return to communion as a path to unity as well.

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