Anglo-Catholics Looking to Rome Launch 'Friends of the Ordinariate'

Today is the Forward in Faith Day of Prayer, a moment of reflection for Anglo-Catholics considering the Pope’s offer to enter into full communion with the Holy See on pretty much their own terms. That may sound flippant, but it can’t be stressed enough that the Ordinariate is the former Cardinal Ratzinger’s response to requests from his Anglican friends for special pastoral oversight.

What a good day, then, for a group of Anglo-Catholics to launch Friends of the Ordinariate (FOTO). The website proclaims:

We are Anglicans in the UK who are members of The Church of England, The Church in Wales, The Scottish Episcopal Church and The Church of Ireland, and we invite you to join with us as Friends of the Ordinariate in order to signify your interest in the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.

By joining us you will not be committing yourself to any course of action, present or future. We are a group of concerned Anglicans and we guarantee complete confidentiality and will not share your details with anyone else.

Here is the link to the FOTO website. I can’t see any reason for Catholics not to support this initiative wholeheartedly. The Holy Father has made an offer which is being misrepresented by ecumenical dinosaurs on both sides of the Tiber. This is an opportunity for the exchange of accurate information and ideas.

It’s a little confusing — am I to understand the Catholic Church is proposing to accept/incorporate the Anglican Churches into the fold? Kind of like saying Anglican=Catholic?

Or it is just me and I am not tracking well today...

The Pope recently published an apostolic constitution named Anglicanorum Coetibus ("Groups of Anglicans") which allows for groups (or parishes) of Anglicans to convert to Catholicsm en masse, so to speak. They will retain their own liturgical traditions and will be under the pastoral supervision of their own bishop (as distinct from the local Catholic bishop). Hence the term "Ordinariate".

That explains a lot — undoing quite a number of years of tradition.

I was raised and taught that Catholicism is pretty rigid (or is supposed to be) — you either is or you ain’t: Buffet style Protestantism wasn’t an option.

Doesn’t this start a drift away from that? One sanctioned in and by Rome?

Anglican are diverse as protestantism they go from Evangelical to High Church and everything in the middle.
The High Church you would see very little difference between their service and a Catholic Mass. They also tend to be much more conservative. They do not believe in female ordination.
The Traditional Anglican Communion which has about 400,000 members is what started this. They broke away from the Bishop of Canterbury years ago. They want to join the Catholic church as a whole. At the same time they did not want to loose who they were and be absorbed into the Catholic church. They believe and evidently the Catholic Church believed they had something to offer to the Church. In the US there are Anglican Use parish these are parishes that were Episcopalian in which most or all the parish became Catholic. The Anglican Use was only valid in the US. The Ordinariate was set up to create a sort or world wide Anglican use but with much more structure They will be under the Pope not the local bishop they will be diocese within a diocese with there own Bishops and the ability to create new Bishops.
They could not be there own rite because there Church comes from the Latin rite which is basically all the Western Catholic church. The Ordinariate was written so that it will be valid for years it is not closed ended.

Let me borrow NYers graphic:

The Catholic Church is a worldwide communion of churches and rites using a wide variety of languages and liturgies. They all share common Christian teachings. In the US, the Pastoral Provision for former Episcopalians has been in operation for 30 years. The Anglicans join the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church but retain many aspects of the Anglican liturgy.

The Anglicans join the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church but retain many aspects of the Anglican liturgy.

The liturgy, which the various Churches have, which is distinct from the Deposit of Faith, can be individual, as it is in most of the individual Churches. The Faith, however, is One.

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