Ordinariate -- Sightings


What's an Ordinariate you ask?  Well, Martin Marty aims to define this word for us.  It has something to do with Anglicans converting to Catholicism in England.  The Pope set up this process making it easier for Anglicans to move across the religious aisle.  Many thought this would lead to a mass stampede of disaffected Anglicans.  But alas, nothing near as momentous has taken place.  Marty offers thoughts on all of this for a last Monday in August.  So, take a read, and let's have a conversation about relationships across our denominational lines.  
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Sightings  8/29/2011

Ordinariate
-- Martin E. Marty

Hurricanes, earthquakes, droughts, famines, tsunamis, floods, volcanic eruptions, and many other natural disasters—supernatural disasters and signals to Glenn Beck and Pat Robertson—are prime global and local topics. They inspire prayer and practical responses, but they also provide metaphoric language for religion. Try this, from National Catholic Reporter: “NO EARTHQUAKE FROM OVERTURE TO ANGLICANS,” a story by John L. Allen, Jr. This week he could have communicated as well by writing “No Hurricane after overture to Anglicans.” “Earthquake” works better, so let it stand.           

The overture in question is the new “Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham,” a two-year-old structure instituted by Pope Benedict XVI to make it possible for hosts of Anglican clergy—and, less-noticed, laity, into the Roman Catholic communion. Don’t know where and why Walsingham is? We don’t need to. Don’t know what an Ordinariate is? Neither did the authors of the Catholic dictionaries on my shelf, but you can figure it out, and may need to if this issue interests you. It made possible the group reception of clerics into Catholicism as opposed to one-at-the-time processing through “conversion.” By the way, Allen wrote on June 8 that the ordinariate numbered 900 laity and 60 clergy “including some newly minted Catholic priests who had already retired from Anglican ministry at 70.”
           
Some nervous Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and ecumenically-minded “others” had foreseen a surge—see how that metaphor creeps in?—of Anglican priests who oppose the ordination of women. Allen foresees some more ordinariateers when Anglicans welcome women into the priesthood. (By August 19 he revised the statistics to “1,000 laity and 64 clergy . . .” scattered across 27 different communities.)  
           
Allen says “there’s scant evidence of a revolution,” so this earthquake has to be “downgraded” to near zero on Richter scales, since it represents “roughly .02 percent of the 5 million Catholics in England and Wales.” That number, he thinks, could go down, or a bit “up” if, as foreseen, Anglicans will begin ordaining women to the episcopate next year. By the way, Allen, when interviewing leaders, makes a point of describing them as “thoughtful” and not antic or frantic. Still, despite all the predictions: “No Earthquake.”
           
Such a judgment applies outside the U.K. as well. In 1952 when I was ordained, without the help of an ordinariate, we would hear on occasion of a minister in our communion or others who had “defected” from the Catholic priesthood and been “converted” to some Protestant group. Perhaps because the events were rare and the gulf between Catholics and Everyone Else then was cosmic, such pastors became celebrities. Like “apostates,” of whom Max Scheler wrote, they “spent their whole subsequent careers taking revenge on their own spiritual past.” The gulf between communions has now narrowed; the ecumenical spirit has taken the roughest edges off the old abrasions.
           
Now and then we hear of the move of a Protestant minister to the Catholic priesthood, news accompanied by predictions of a forthcoming surge of such moves. In some circles of the church these predictions create tremors. However, eased ecclesial relations, the sense that the vocation of others is sacred and not to be judged by uninformed people at a distance, and an awareness that even if the statistics rise to .03 percent, we must still say “No Earthquake.” The rumblings may even provide opportunities to listen and learn and not merely to yawn. Or quake.

References

John L. Allen, Jr., “NO EARTHQUAKE FROM OVERTURE TO ANGLICANS,” National Catholic Reporter, August 19, 2011.

John Allen interviews Fr Mark Woodruff,” Ordinariate Portal, August 6, 2011.

UK Catholic Questions the need for the Ordinariate,” Kiwianglo's Blog, August 27, 2011.
Auguste Boudinhon, Ordinariate.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911).

Martin E. Marty's biography, publications, and contact information can be found at www.memarty.com.

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In this summer’s Religion and Culture Web Forum: What does religious education look like in the globalized realities of the 21st century? This was the question put to a distinguished panel at the recent meeting (May 22-28, 2011) of the International Association of Black Religions and Spiritualities (IABRS), an organization that “represents the religions and spiritualities of darker skinned peoples globally.” This month, we feature the response of Dr. James Massey, the male Dalit (India) delegate to the IABRS. Dr. Massey argues that peace among the world’s religions will require finding not only a “common ethic” (per Hans Kung), but an “appreciation of differences.” To both these ends, Dr. Massey calls for “re-looking at the religious traditions.”

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

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