Vatican statement on the Personal Ordinariate
of Our Lady of Walsingham in England and Wales
January 15, 2011
In accordance with the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus of Pope Benedict XVI (November 4, 2009) and after careful consultation with the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has today erected a Personal Ordinariate within the territory of England and Wales for those groups of Anglican clergy and faithful who have expressed their desire to enter into full visible communion with the Catholic Church.
The Decree of Erection specifies that the Ordinariate will be known as the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham and will be placed under the patronage of Blessed John Henry Newman.
A Personal Ordinariate is a canonical structure that provides for corporate reunion in such a way that allows former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of their distinctive Anglican patrimony.
With this structure, the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus seeks to balance on the one hand the concern to preserve the worthy Anglican liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions and, on the other hand, the concern that these groups and their clergy will be fully integrated into the Catholic Church.
For doctrinal reasons the Church does not, in any circumstances, allow the ordination of married men as Bishops. However, the Apostolic Constitution does provide, under certain conditions, for the ordination as Catholic priests of former Anglican married clergy.
Today at Westminster Cathedral in London, the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, ordained to the Catholic priesthood three former Anglican Bishops: Reverend Andrew Burnham, Reverend Keith Newton, and Reverend John Broadhurst.
Also today Pope Benedict XVI has nominated Reverend Keith Newton as the first Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.
Together with Reverend Burnham and Reverend Broadhurst, Reverend Newton will oversee the catechetical preparation of the first groups of Anglicans in England and Wales who will be received into the Catholic Church together with their pastors at Easter, and to accompany the clergy preparing for ordination to the Catholic priesthood around Pentecost.
The provision of this new structure is consistent with the commitment to ecumenical dialogue, which continues to be a priority for the Catholic Church.
The initiative leading to the publication of the Apostolic Constitution and the erection of this Personal Ordinariate came from a number of different groups of Anglicans who have declared that they share the common Catholic faith as it is expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and accept the Petrine ministry as something Christ willed for the Church.
For them, the time has now come to express this implicit unity in the visible form of full communion.
ABOUT OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM
The image of Our Lady of Walsingham at the Slipper Chapel, which is the National Shrine of Our Lady in England.
In 1061, Mary appeared in a vision to Richeldis de Faverches, a devout Saxon noblewoman, in the village of Walsingham in Norfolk, England. According to tradition, Our Lady asked for a replica of the house of the annunciation in Nazareth to be built in Walsingham. It soon became a shrine and a place of pilgrimage even for English monarchs up to the time of Henry VIII.
In the mid-14th century, a wayside chapel - the one now known as the Slipper Chapel - was built and dedicated to St Catherine of Alexandria, to serve the pilgrims on their way to England's Nazareth. St Catherine was a patron saint of pilgrims to the Holy Land and her Knights protected the routes to Nazareth during the crusades.
After the Reformation, the Chapel was used as a poor house, a forge, a cow shed and a barn. It was not restored as a chapel until 1896, but the first Mass since the Reformation was not celebrated in the Slipper Chapel till August 15, 1938, when Pius XI designated it as the National Shrine of Our Lady for England. (There is a separate Anglican Shrine in Walsingham).
The image now venerated in the Slipper Chapel is a modern statue based on 15th-century designs, and was crowned by Pius XII's Apostolic Delegate on August 15, 1954.
Mary is depicted as a simple woman, a mother. She is seated on the throne of Wisdom, in the midst of the Church which is represented by the two pillars symbolic of the Gate of Heaven, with seven rings to signify the seven sacraments and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. The arched back of the throne reminds us of the rainbow which was set as a sign of God’s fidelity to his creation.
Our Lady is clothed in the blue of divinity, the white of motherhood and the red of virginity. In her hand she holds a lily-sceptre with three blooms because she was virginal before, during and after the Saviour’s birth.
As the Woman of the New Creation, the New Eve, she crushes beneath her feet a toadstone, symbolic of the power of evil. As the Queen of Heaven and of England, her Dowry, she is crowned with a Saxon crown. On his mother’s knee is the child Jesus who, as the Word of God made Flesh, holds the book of the Gospels. He extends his right arm in a double gesture of blessing and protection of his mother.
For the record, the NYT account of this historic event is rather perfunctory, though Donadio manages inject hr bias snarkily in the second paragraph:
Vatican welcomes first Anglicans
converting under new rules
By RACHEL DONADIO
January 15, 2011
ROME — The Vatican on Saturday welcomed the first group of traditionalist Anglicans who plan to convert to Roman Catholicism through a new structure the Vatican created to facilitate such group conversions.
The Vatican angered many Anglicans, including the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, when it announced the new structure in October 2009, because it appeared to upend decades of interfaith dialogue by implying that the Roman Catholic Church sought to encourage the conversion of Anglicans, especially those uncomfortable with the Church of England’s ordination of women and openly gay priests.
But tensions were somewhat eased with Pope Benedict XVI’s state visit to Britain in September, which was widely seen as a success.
In the first concrete result of the Vatican’s offer, the archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, presided Saturday over the conversions of three traditionalist Anglican bishops at Westminster Cathedral in London, the Vatican said in a statement....
{The rest of the story - a few more paragraphs - simply summarizes the decree that erected the Ordinariate.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/01/2011 13:51]