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Vatican publishes text of Anglicanorum Coetibus
by Bill Bowder
 "Legal reality": Archbishop Nichols |
| THE Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus and the Complementary Norms that provide for Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans entering into full communion with Rome were published on Monday.
“The Holy Spirit has moved groups of Anglicans to petition repeatedly and insistently to be received into full Catholic communion individually as well as corporately,” the Constitution says. In response, the Pope, who signed the Constitution on Thursday of last week, writes that he “could not fail” to provide the means for “this holy desire to be realised”.
The Constitution and Norms say that the Personal Ordinariates — there could be one or more in England and Wales — would legally be like dioceses, led by an Ordinary who was a former Anglican cleric — either as a celibate bishop or, if already married, a priest.
Anglican rites approved by Rome would be celebrated. Any Roman Catholic could attend them. The Ordinary would be aided by a Governing Council and a Finance Council. He would have the same powers as a bishop, except that a bishop would be needed to ordain. The Ordinary could set up “personal parishes” and “territorial” deaneries for the former Anglicans, and those who were baptised and confirmed in the Ordinariate.
Those baptised as RCs would not normally be able to register as members. Men whose marriages were “irregular”, and former RC priests who had become Anglican, could not be priests in it.
These restrictions (Article 5 and 6 of the Norms) were acknowledged by the leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), Archbishop John Hepworth, on Tuesday. He had, in October 2007, with TAC’s other 37 bishops, petitioned the CDF for “a communal and ecclesial way of being Anglican Catholics in communion with the Holy See”.
At the time of the petition, he had wanted to make his personal situation clear to Rome, he said; so he had sent a letter of resignation to Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict), then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), to take effect when unity was achieved, “if that is what Rome requires”.
The reason why he had done so was that he had been married twice, although his first marriage was not recognised by Rome.
“Ratzinger wrote back to me in his own hand.” The Archbishop had responded: “The ball’s in your court. I will bring them [TAC] to your door. I will fade out, and you must do what you want.” Other bishops in the TAC had also offered their resignations to Rome.
He expected most of the 400,000-strong international Communion, which, he said, had a Sunday attendance of 210,000, to vote to enter into unity with Rome. TAC in Britain had voted to do so on 29 October. “We will meet in Rome in Low Week after Easter, and we will present the yes vote to the CDF.”
The RC Archbishop of Westminster, the Most Revd Vincent Nichols, said on Monday that former Anglican bishops would be able to retain their mitres, crosiers, and episcopal rings. They could sit with other RC bishops in the Bishops’ Conference, and would have the status of retired bishops; but, if they were married, they could not become RC bishops. “The established tradition of celibate bishops is not changing and will not change,” he said.
Allowing them to retain their insignia “acknowledges the esteem and ecclesial respect bishops are held in in the Church of England and allows that to be carried forward”.
The arrangements did not create “a Uniate Church. It would be more like a military Ordinariate.” He had “absolutely no idea” how soon such Ordinariates might come into being, what size they would be, or how they might be funded. They were a response by the Pope, who had said that he wanted “to advance reconciliation in ‘small and not so small ways’. The size of what we have here we will have to wait and see. The Ordinariates are to be seen as a possibility; they do not become a reality just because there is a legal reality.”
Former Anglican married clergy would not have to become members of the Ordinariate to be priested. “This has been a one-by-one process, and my understanding is that that will continue. This provision is for those Anglicans who see being in communion with the see of St Peter as essential for the life of the Church. It is, as both the Archbishop of Canterbury and I have said, intended to bring to an end a time of uncertainty.”
The Bishop of Guildford, the Rt Revd Christopher Hill, who chairs the C of E’s Council for Christian Unity, said that it would now be for the Anglicans in question “to study the Apostolic Constitution carefully in the near future and to consider their options.
“The Vatican response to certain requests from individuals and groups across the world does not deflect us from either the continuing mission of the Church of England in its parishes and dioceses throughout the land, or its longstanding commitment to seeking the unity of all the Churches, including the Roman Catholic Church.”
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