On Thursday, 3 September
in the Year of Our Lord 2009
a Very Special Mass
will be Celebrated
in the Chapel
of All Saints Convent
Catonsville, Maryland
with the Archbishop of Baltimore -
Edwin O'Brien - as the Chief Celebrant
During this Mass
Mother Christina, Sister Emily Ann,
Sister Mary Joan, Sister Hannah,
Sister Elizabeth, Sister Elaine,
Sister Catherine Grace, Sister Julia Mary, Sister Mary Charles, and Sister Margaret will be received into full communion with the Holy See.
Mother Virginia and Sister Barbara Ann have chosen to remain Anglican. [Source]
10 comments:
There's still two sisters left. That's something.
I just hope they don't completely ruin their liturgy if they really go to Rome.
hopefully they'll use the Book of Divine Worship.
PART ONE
The departure of these good Sisters underscores the disintegration of the Anglican Communion, and re-affirms the fact that there is no place left for traditionalists/conservatives in that once-admirable body.
Until the last 40 years or so, it was possible for generations of holy priests and earnest faithful to believe that we were part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, holding no other beliefs and subscribing to no other Creeds, as indeed it was possible for Archbishop Fisher of Canterbury to state in the 1950's.
However, God had another plan for us - to disappear, to surrender so much that is beautiful and lovely in Anglican liturgy, music and parish life; and to leave what is now - mostly - a counterfeit of Holy Church, and to bring those gifts and those experiences with us on a journey that is wrenching personally but right intellectually, placing them humbly at the Chair of Peter before and to whom all Catholic Christians must submit.
PART TWO
As Fr Jeffrey Steele - who swam Tiber last week - wrote in his admirable Blog De Cura Animarum - "What I became aware of was that it was almost impossible to say 'the Church teaching is' within the Anglican church because there are so many various opinions on matters of sacraments, liturgy, morality, scripture etc. What I did not want to experience anymore was proclaiming the teaching of the Church only to end up defending myself rather than the Anglican church defending me. This has become an ever-increasing impossibility that is no secret to the entire Anglican world. My preaching would always be seen as a matter of personal opinion rather than having the authority of the Magisterium that backs up what I teach publicly. Of course there is dissent in the Catholic Church but it is always that, dissent towards what Mother Church proclaims as authoritatively true."
So now is the time for all of us to consider how we make that same swim. And, somehow, we must shed the bitterness we feel at the way "our" church has treated us and rather, assume the joyful garb of the suppliant, praying - but not expecting - that the Holy Father may ease our path through creating a Personal Prelature for Anglicans.
PART THREE
As we leave, we look back at a host of associations and experiences and people, all of which formed us and which must have been of God; yet we at the same time know we cannot repeat the error of Lot's poor wife, and become further calcified in a salt casing caused by our further delay, the scandal of increasing congregationalism as we seek out "safe" parishes with male priests ordained by orthodox male bishops and holding fast the faith - rather we must consider and share the tremulous expectation with which our pilgrim fathers in the faith crossed over Jordan afer their wanderings.
It is time to quit the desert and drink abundantly of the water of the Church towards which we have always believed it was the vocation of Anglo-Catholics to lead Anglicanism to be re-united. We simply did not expect it would fall to us, and our time, to make the crossing without some of our brethren and without most of those with whom have shared a denominational identity.
But God, as always, had His own plan, and has so worked matters in His own good time so that - eschewing the seemingly attractive call of "continuing churches" who cannot agree on basics of the faith and who indeed are united only in dissent from current Anglicanism (to their credit) and whose numbers seem overwhelmed by many splendidly-attired bishops - we are led to the Source of Catholic Authority and Truth - the Church founded by Our Lord and entrusted to Peter.
PART FOUR AND LAST
It is there that our souls will find peace; and there, too, that while there may be battles to be waged, our worship and our souls will be nourished by a Faith that is essentially unchanging, for its "old eternal rocks" are not based on the "passing and of little worth" which have grabbed hold of Anglicanism, but rather on the Deposit of Faith once received by the Saints.
"So long Thy power has stayed me, sure it still
Will lead me on - o'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent
Till the night is gone.
And with the morn I'll see those
Angel smiles
Which I have loved long since - and lost a while."
http://members.boardhost.com/Anglicandissent/
"Peace" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
WHEN will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I’ll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?
O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
He comes to brood and sit.
Of all the "converts" from Anglicanism/Episcopalianism to the RCC, Fr. Hopkins surely knows both the anguish and the joy of the moment. May his gentle soul guide us and pray for us!
There is an option to "Swimming the Tiber" and that is Western Rite Orthodoxy. Make no mistake, even though the Liturgy of the Western Rite will be familiar to most Anglo-Catholics, the Western Rite is not "warmed over" Anglicanism but thoroughly Orthodox. It is possible to preserve the best of Anglo-Catholic practice without submitting to the strange notion of Papal Infallibility.
Anonymous - "dissent towards what Mother Church proclaims as authoritatively true."
How can one dissent from the Truth?
It's a question for some as to whether "Mother" Church's claims are true or not. When she begins to bear resemblance to the Church founded by the rabbi Jesus and his fisherman disciples, I'l give it another thought.
If you are happy, all to the good, but your pilgrimage sounds painful and not one of joy.
It seems that all this "fuss and bother" about affiliation is just that. God is grander than that. The bruised shoulders of Christ are broader than that. The key is and always has been the simple, yet demanding commandments of our Redeeming Lord ~ Love God with all your being and love your neighbor as yourself.
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