Anglican Conversions Formalized By U.S. Catholic Church

WASHINGTON -- Anglicans in the United States who want to become Roman Catholic will have a formal structure to oversee the conversion starting New Year's Day.

Catholic Cardinal Donald Wuerl announced Tuesday the equivalent of a diocese for converts who want to retain some of their Anglican heritage.

The new body will be called the Anglican Ordinariate for the United States. It follows an unprecedented invitation from Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 for Anglicans to join the Catholic Church in groups or as parishes. Formerly, converts were accepted on a case-by-case basis.

The Vatican created the first such ordinariate last January in Britain.

Anglicans have their roots in the Church of England. They split from the Holy See in 1534 when English King Henry VIII was refused a marriage annulment.

Comments

[KenInd]

06:36 PM on 11/22/2011

Is that photo for real? The faces seem to be primarily Asian. Is it in the Philippines?

[jonnyturtleneck]

04:06 PM on 11/16/2011

I really love the Catholic Church. I find it reasonable that there is a God. It's reasonable that God would want to communicate in the form of being made flesh. It's reasonable He would want to establish a church. It's reasonable that He would want a unified voice to that Christian following. It's reasonable that the Catholic Church is that desired unified voice. At least more so than other church's that were established much after the Catholics. I understand that it can be debated whether the Catholic Church is the first. But there are great arguments that it is. With that being said it is certain that many other Protestant churches are not the original church.

[KenInd]

06:37 PM on 11/22/2011

Well, I am glad you like it. I am afraid I do not share your enthusiasm. But the good news is: we don't have to agree.

[naschkatze]

11:17 AM on 11/16/2011

Does anyone have a figure on how many Episcopalians have converted to Roman Catholicism since the Pope's invitation?

[arabia]

11:45 AM on 11/16/2011

"...how many...."

Not many, at least for a church the size of the Catholic Church, which, according to Pew Research, accounts for 24% of the American population (over 73 million of 309 million Americans). That's why it is better former Episcopalians to start their own entity (Anglican Use parish or Ordinariate parish) within the Catholic Church rather than be absorbed into the whole American church. Like the Maronite Catholic Church and Eastern Catholic Churches, etc., the Anglican Use/Ordinariate parishes can be Catholic while still retaining certain liturgical and choral qualities of their former church. Such is America!

[KenInd]

06:19 PM on 11/22/2011

I don't know, but in my small town of 8000 about half the Catholics have left their church in the past few years.

[libwingoflibwing]

10:49 AM on 11/16/2011

I have to say I despise articles that have no more information than is already given in the headline.

[thegodlessgeneration]

10:32 AM on 11/16/2011

A formal conversion. I bet Jesus would want formal conversion rules put in place for anyone who wanted to worship him. I can just see him now preaching about the kingdom of god and formal conversion rules.

[AUveritas]

07:58 AM on 11/17/2011

Jesus did implement "formal conversion rules". Baptism, repentance, faith, obedience, etc. were all stressed by Jesus as requirements to come to Him.

[thegodlessgeneration]

09:36 AM on 11/17/2011

The only process is Baptism. The rest are not formal conversion rules because they are central to the faith anyway.

[AUveritas]

02:01 PM on 11/17/2011

Which would make them rules...

[Cindy Tregan]

09:34 AM on 11/16/2011

The Pedophile Church of Rome is resorting to this kind of dirty trick to get its numbers (and tithes) back up?

[AUveritas]

07:59 AM on 11/17/2011

So, they are converting Anglicans by force? It seems that Anglicans are simply wanting to return home. You may want to think before typing.

[Tomthorpe328]

09:31 AM on 11/16/2011

I know there are legal issues standing in the way, but I would like to see the Episcopal Church in the USA develop a similar program for Roman Catholic congregations who wish to transfer their membership en masse. Probably there would be few takers, though, since the Roman Catholic Church, reversing an earlier progressive trend, now is re-emphasizing its view of itself as the "one true church." Oh, well.

[arabia]

10:21 AM on 11/16/2011

"...transfer membership...."

Our great country is a free one, with freedom of speech, freedom to worship as we like, etc. enshrined in our Constitution. People can join any church they like. I don't believe, however, a group of people unhappy with their parish or diocese, can leave and take their "Episcopal property" with them. That usually stays behind.
Currently, there are a number of Anglican Use parishes in the US who have had to start from scratch. When these Episcopalians asked to become Catholic, they knew that they couldn't take their parish property with them. They had to leave that behind and come up with funds to build a new Anglican Use parish in the Catholic Church.

How Anglicans Use parishes and the new Ordinariate parishes will get along remains to be seen. The Catholic Church already has 24 different Catholic Churches (Maronite, Syro-Malabar, etc.) in communion with the Holy See so I guess one more such entity won't harm. All the merrier!

[Tomthorpe328]

10:58 AM on 11/16/2011

Yes, polity (who makes the rules and who owns the property) is what I had in mind when I mentioned legal difficulties that might make it impossible for Roman Catholic congregations to transfer their affiliation to the Episcopal Church.

I have no real denominational loyalty. I don't believe Jesus ever intended to found a church, that is to say an organization separate from the Judaism of his day. Events of the 9th and 10th decades of the first century CE, however, caused a complete separation between Jesus' followers and the Jewish community. The growing number of Gentile converts to "The Way" as the Jesus movement was called in its earliest days, complicated that situation.

There never was a single "Christianity." "Christianities" would be a more appropriate description of what was going on in the first three centuries after Jesus. When Rome legalized Christianity and then made it the state religion, the Roman passion for uniformity mandated that one brand of Christianity become official. And so it was. The other points of view didn't vanish. They were relegated to the role of "heresies."

Today's situation, with hundreds of Christian denominations and a variety of points of view that can literally be called Christian, is, I think, the legitimate descendant of the earliest Christian environment. History tells us that those earliest Christians did not always model the Christian which we believe Jesus taught. Unfortunately, today's Christians don't always model that love either.

[KenInd]

06:22 PM on 11/22/2011

Many local Catholics have simply stopped going to church in my town. I wonder why the church is not interested in them?