The Catholic response to the events

Biretta tip to the Catholic Herald for these quotes. Full article here:
The Catholic liason officer for the Ordinariate, Bishop Alan Hopes, an auxiliary of Westminster said: “We welcome the decision of Bishops Andrew Burnham, Keith Newton, John Broadhurst, Edwin Barnes and David Silk to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church through the Ordinariate for England and Wales, which will be established under the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.”
The Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi said, “Regarding the declaration of five bishops until now belonging to the Anglican Communion who have decided to join the Catholic Church and who therefore are obliged by conscience to resign from their current pastoral duties in the Church of England, we can confirm that the constitution of a first ordinariate is under study, according to the norms established by the Apostolic Constitution ‘Anglicanorum coetibus,’ and that any further decisions regarding this will be communicated at the proper moment.”


Bishop Alan Hopes’ full statement:
“We welcome the decision of Bishops Andrew Burnham, Keith Newton, John Broadhurst, Edwin Barnes and David Silk to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church through the Ordinariate for England and Wales, which will be established under the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.
At our plenary meeting next week, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales will be exploring the establishment of the Ordinariate and the warm welcome we will be extending to those who seek to be part of it. Further information will be made known after the meeting.”

Pastoral letter from our Bishop

My resignation has been formally announced. I know that for many of you this will be not unexpected but for others it will be a shock. I have thoroughly enjoyed being your Bishop and have thought it a great privilege. I remain utterly committed to our Catholic and Anglican heritage.

The Bishop of London intends to replace me and I hope that you will get a Bishop who is able to minister to you faithfully in the deteriorating situation in the Church of England.
It has been my great joy to work in three different Dioceses and in each of them I have felt welcomed and affirmed. I will miss many colleagues and the priests and parishioners of the parishes it has been my privilege to serve for more than 14 years.
My personal future is that I intend to enter the new Catholic Ordinariate being set up by the Pope. For 40 years I have been committed to the ARCIC process in which the Church of England seeks to unite with Rome. Recent decisions in our own church have made a positive outcome to these talks less and less likely. The Holy Father has made what seems to me a positive and generous offer to Orthodox Anglicans and I do not feel any choice but to accept. The consequence of this will be that our Catholic and Anglican heritage exists in two different places. It is important that we all remain friends and do not do anything to undermine or criticise each other. I am very grateful for the affection and love which Judi and I have both found in all the parishes. Many thanks for everything that you have done over the years and for all that we have achieved.
My final act as a Bishop will be to celebrate the Mass at Gordon Square on the eve of Christ the King, Saturday 20th November at 12 noon. I hope to see many of you there.


Every Blessing,


Yours as ever,
+John

Let us read and pray:

A statement issued by five bishops:
Like many in the catholic tradition of Anglicanism, we have followed the dialogue between Anglicans and Catholics, the ARCIC process, with prayer and longing. We have been dismayed, over the last thirty years, to see Anglicans and Catholics move further apart on some of the issues of the day, and particularly we have been distressed by developments in Faith and Order in Anglicanism which we believe to be incompatible with the historic vocation of Anglicanism and the tradition of the Church for nearly two thousand years.

The Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum cœtibus, given in Rome on 4th November 2009, was a response to Anglicans seeking unity with the Holy See. With the Ordinariates, canonical structures are being established through which we will bring our own experience of Christian discipleship into full communion with the Catholic Church throughout the world and throughout the ages. This is both a generous response to various approaches to the Holy See for help and a bold, new ecumenical instrument in the search for the unity of Christians, the unity for which Christ himself prayed before his Passion and Death. It is a unity, we believe, which is possible only in eucharistic communion with the successor of St Peter.
As bishops, we have even-handedly cared for those who have shared our understanding and those who have taken a different view. We have now reached the point, however, where we must formally declare our position and invite others who share it to join us on our journey. We shall be ceasing, therefore, from public episcopal ministry forthwith, resigning from our pastoral responsibilities in the Church of England with effect from 31st December 2010, and seeking to join an Ordinariate once one is created.
We remain very grateful for all that the Church of England has meant for us and given to us all these years and we hope to maintain close and warm relationships, praying and working together for the coming of God’s Kingdom.
We are deeply appreciative of the support we have received at this difficult time from a whole variety of people: archbishops and bishops, clergy and laity, Anglican and Catholics, those who agree with our views and those who passionately disagree, those who have encouraged us in this step and those who have urged us not to take this step.


The Right Revd Andrew Burnham
The Right Revd Keith Newton
The Right Revd John Broadhurst
The Right Revd Edwin Barnes
The Right Revd David Silk

Evangelium for iPod

As we look forward to Wednesday's Evangelium, it is good to be able to give news of another part of the Evangelium apostolate: a weekly podcast (available whether or not you have an iPod or iTunes) with a reflection on the Sunday readings. Fr Marcus Holden and Fr Andrew Pinsent, the compilers of Evangelium, are producing this and the results so far are well worth commending to you.

You can access Sunday Evangelium here.

Ordinariate: Frequently Asked Questions

The Friends of the Ordinariate have produced a user-friendly guide with some Frequently Asked Questions along with answers on their website. Do take a chance to have a look at it, especially in preparation for our Ordinariate Exploration Day on Saturday 20th November from 10.00 a.m. It may answer some questions before the day and it may also prove useful for further questions and routes of enquiry.

Of bricks and leaks.

A splendid and very generous team of people spent this wonderful sunny day in church removing bricks and other contraptions that constituted a temporary platform created some 35 years ago. The people who put it in were very considerate as it was all laid on greaseproof paper! There is now no sign that it ever was there. Hopefully some pics will appear tomorrow as I forgot to take any.

Many thanks for the solid army of the volunteers who worked so carefully in the embellishment of our church as tomorrow we celebrate our Consecration Festival.

While I was engaged in all this it seems that some leaks (biretta tip to my friend and brother priest Fr Ed) from Lambeth via Ruth Gledhill (is it me or is it that she always gets the first news from Lambeth?) are hitting the press; these are about the Ordinariate and the new Ordinary. The Daily Telegraph wants to speak to me about all this; I have not returned the call yet. While all seems credible, wait and see is what I would want to say. Let us focus on prayer that is what really matters.

Of faith and fire

 Last night we were blessed by a super attendance for our Evangelium session. We reflected on the baptised as the mystical body of Christ walking and leading others towards heaven. I am very much looking forward for the second session of this.
Tonight we had another excellent attendance for our youth group Veritas. Fr James organised toffee apples, marshmallows, popcorn, lemonade, a bonfire, sparklers and a splendid firework display. All enjoyed the evening and look forward for their meeting next month.

Some photos of St John's

I was glad to see these two postcards when visiting a member of the congregation this morning. They show the church before and after Fr Heal's reordering in the 1960s. The older photo shows the iron screen, from which the Lamb and Flag remains - this is on the east wall of the church now.

It is interesting to note that the reordered church was still designed for an east-facing High Mass.

EVANGELIUM begins tonight

Don't miss the first session tonight after the 7.00 p.m. Mass...

Please Pray for the persecuted Church

Three priests were killed along with 58 others in an attack on a Catholic church in Baghdad. Benedict XVI is offering prayers for the victims and is pleading for peace. 

On addressing the faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square on Monday, the Solemnity of All Saints, the Pope said that he is praying "for the victims of this absurd violence, which is even more ferocious as it struck defenseless persons, gathered in the house of God, which is a house of love and reconciliation."

Some 58 people were killed when gunmen stormed the Eucharistic celebration on Sunday in Baghdad's Church of Our Lady of Salvation. Another 75 were wounded.

Among those killed during the attack were Father Wasim Sabieh and Father Thaier Saad Abdal. A third priest, Father Qatin, was wounded and died later in the hospital, Aid to the Church in Need reported.

The gunmen, who had explosives attached to their belts, took the congregation hostage and demanded the release of Al-Qaeda members being held in Iraq and Egypt. Later in the day, Iraqi and American soldiers freed the hostages.

In his address on Monday, the Holy Father expressed his "affectionate closeness to the Christian community, which has been hit again," and he encouraged "all pastors and faithful to persevere in fortitude and in the firmness of hope."

The Pontiff said: "Lastly, in face of the cruel episodes of violence that continue to destroy the populations of the Middle East, I would like to renew my urgent appeal for peace: It is a gift of God but it is also the result of the efforts of men of good will, of national and international institutions."

Homily for the Solemnity of All Saints

This homily was given on Sunday as we celebrated the Solemnity of All Saints and launched Evangelium which begins this Wednesday after the 7.00 p.m. Mass - all welcome.

When preaching for this august solemnity at that great Anglo-Catholic institution in Oxford, Pusey House, our beloved bishop is reported to have got up from his seat, moved to the lectern, leant on it in that friendly, unassuming way he has, and, into the microphone said: “All Saints: what’s all that about then?” What, indeed?

Today’s feast acts as a sort-of ecclesiastical trophy cabinet. Through the Liturgical Year, we talk of Saint X and Blessed Y, we commemorate and venerate and beg the intercession of, and all of this for specific holy men and women who, the Church has decreed, are now serving the altars of God in the heavenly Jerusalem.

Today, however, we group them all together, remembering, commemorating and venerating not just the great and popular but those quiet, unassuming saints whose lives of holiness and whose prayers for the living, have meant that the Church cannot ignore them any longer and, instead, proclaims their elevation to Christ’s eternal presence.

Those lives of quiet, unassuming sanctity are not obscure or alien to us. We, each of us, are called to that life. It may be (and I say this without any hint of irony or sarcasm) that you are sitting next to a saint. Anyone who has received the graces of baptism is equipped with the necessary tools to become a saint, and to live in heaven as part of that heavenly choir, singing Holy, Holy, Holy.

So it is with some luck that it is also on this day that we launch Evangelium, our new initiative of catechesis and teaching. This is no mistake. If baptism and sanctity are the source and summit of our lives of Christians, then it is vital that we learn and know what it is that we need to be counted among the blessed: to become saints.

Evangelium means Good News, or Gospel. Just as we listen to the words of the gospel texts sung or read each day at the Mass, so in our catechesis through this course, we will unpick those texts and learn how to live them. We will learn and re-learn how to be people who live the gospel and proclaim it by the way we live.

This Church has, from its origins, been a place of great Anglo-Catholic teaching, practice and devotion. It was established in the midst of the great Oxford Movement and, from the outset, founded on principles more obviously at home on the continent than in the Protestant-glazed Church of England. The job of churches like this, and indeed of the people who worshipped in them, was to reassert and reaffirm the catholic nature of the Church of England, drawing her back to her roots and, thus, closer toward the Rock from which she was hewn.

Living this Catholic life within Anglicanism was, for the most part, a struggle against the establishment of the Church of England, but with a deep-seated respect and love for it. The diocesan bishop, no matter how liberal, Protestant, or indeed atheist, could be invited once a year by Father so-and-so, to dress up in some bejewelled vestment, swing a thurible, administer a sacrament and then go home, reverting to that liberal, Protestant, or indeed atheist, theology in which so many establishment figures placed their trust: not least in order to gain a seat in the House of Lords, or the bench of bishops, or both. How very little some things have changed!

Parishes like this could do just that because, despite the slightly dodgy theological beliefs of Bishop X, that man was a bishop, and there was nothing that anyone in the Church of England could do to refute it. In other words, it was not about what he believed but about what he was: in theological language, ontology, not function.

You do not need to be reminded of how drastically things have changed. In some sense, we are in a different hemisphere, in another sense, nothing has changed. What has changed is that the assurances which the Church of England was able to offer about the nature of its ministers, has disintegrated and we are left in the unhappy and (dare I say it?) un-catholic situation of not knowing that some of the Church of England’s clergy are just that.

What has not changed is our profession of faith: that is a constant. The Creed which we rehearse at our baptism, and every Sunday, is the same yesterday, today and for ever. And that is why we need, more than ever, to appreciate that creed (that set of beliefs and understandings), in order to live out a full Christian life.

We need to ask: ‘What is it that we need to be part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church?’, and then ‘Is that available to us here and now?’

These questions, like the ritual, the music, the vestments, the daily mass, the sacrament of confession, the devotion to Our Lady, the rosary, the praying for our beloved dead, the societies, the guilds, the lamps, the candles, the altar, the bells, the incense and the Mass, is and has always been a question posed to each and every member of parishes like this—clergy and laity alike—up and down the country.

As the familiar landscape of the Church of England changes once more—and this is not the first nor the last time that it has or will—it is our job to ask if what our predecessors in this place stood for is still possible, desirable and, most importantly, what God is asking of us.

We are, in that sense, on a journey, searching for Truth. Our mission is, as it has always been, to seek out the realities of our faith and to live them—day by day, and Sunday by Sunday. That faith, once delivered to the saints, has been guarded as a precious treasure and handed on, without addition or subtraction, to us. That is why we call it catholic—universal—because it is the same yesterday, today and for ever.

And so I stand before you now with a challenge, with a dare. Over the coming weeks—on Wednesday evenings after the 7pm Mass—we will be exploring our faith through Evangelium and facing our situation head-on, asking what it means to be a Catholic Christian.

This should not be seen as an attempt to push this or that agenda: it is about reaffirming what we, and this Church, have always stood for: the Catholic Faith, unadulterated and unhindered, so that we might proclaim the gospel of Christ to a waiting world.

Will you face that challenge? Will you seek out that Truth and renew your faith and commitment to the gospel, and to Christ?

If we do, if we dare to question our uncertainties and to challenge ourselves afresh to profess our faith with confidence, then we do justice to our baptism and we do so in hope of our heavenly reward.

If we know our faith, then we can live our faith. And if we live our faith, truly live it, we cannot fail to be counted amongst the saints whose honour we celebrate this day and to whose prayer and intercession we humbly entrust ourselves and our parish as we journey, together, toward our heavenly home.

With whom are we in communion?

This article by Bishop Peter Elliott, Auxiliary Bishop of Melbourne, Australia, and Episcopal Delegate of the Australian Bishops Conference for the Ordinariate, has published this article which seems timely, and worth a wider audience. Bishop Elliott is himself a former Anglican:

The Holy Father’s offer of the Ordinariate will take concrete form in 2011. In light of this impending reality, it is a matter of some urgency to clarify the options that confront traditional Anglo Catholics at this time. At first sight there seem to be four options: 1. Rome, via the Ordinariate or by personal reconciliation 2. Eastern Orthodoxy. 3. the Continuing Anglicans and 4. remaining in communion with Canterbury.

However these options fall into two groups. If you take either of the first two options, you are entering communion with traditional apostolic Churches which understand the Church in terms of communion. In the second two options you are either joining some form of independent association of continuing Anglicans or you are choosing to remain part of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The key word is “communion”. On that we can all agree. Across the four options, in varying degrees, this is a shared understanding of what it means to be a member of the Church. But communion as a visible reality depends on bishops.

In the apostolic tradition we have received from Saint Paul, Saint Ignatius of Antioch and the Fathers of East and West, we understand the Church in terms of the episcope of the successors of the apostles. The bishop is the centre of each “particular Church”, later known as a diocese.

However, in an “Episcopalian” understanding of the nature of the Church on earth, no bishop exists in isolation. He has to be in communion with other bishops, a communion of shared faith and order. He is part of an apostolic college that across the ages reproduces the original community of the twelve. Within the particular church where the bishop presides, his clergy and people are in communion with him. Yet his Church is meant to be in communion with other Churches, particularly apostolic patriarchates.

The communion of a college of bishops is visibly maintained in the Catholic Church (in its Roman and Eastern Rites) and in the venerable Orthodox Churches of the East. From the East we receive a beautiful and concrete understanding of the sacramental meaning of this communion, in terms of whether a bishop can share the same chalice with another bishop. Eucharistic communion with Jesus Christ, organic union with his Body, is communal, ecclesial. It flows from the Eucharist, summit and source of the life of the Church on earth. It is celebrated and perfected in the Eucharist.

“Communion” in Anglicanorum Coetibus

However, to understand communion we turn to God, the Holy Trinity, source of unity and communion. Communion is expressed in a God-centred way in the concise opening paragraphs of Pope Benedict’s Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, establishing a distinctive ecclesial community for former Anglicans within the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Let us listen to the words of Pope Benedict:

“The Church, a people gathered into the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, was instituted by our Lord Jesus Christ, as “a sacrament – a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all people.” Every division among the baptized in Jesus Christ wounds that which the Church is and that for which the Church exists; in fact, “such division openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages that most holy cause, the preaching the Gospel to every creature.” Precisely for this reason, before shedding his blood for the salvation of the world, the Lord Jesus prayed to the Father for the unity of his disciples.”

Then the Holy Father focuses on the Holy Spirit source of communion, emphasizing that the Church is visible:

“It is the Holy Spirit, the principle of unity, which establishes the Church as a communion. He is the principle of the unity of the faithful in the teaching of the Apostles, in the breaking of the bread and in prayer. The Church, however, analogous to the mystery of the Incarnate Word, is not only an invisible spiritual communion, but is also visible; in fact, “the society structured with hierarchical organs and the Mystical Body of Christ, the visible society and the spiritual community, the earthly Church and the Church endowed with heavenly riches, are not to be thought of as two realities. On the contrary, they form one complex reality formed from a two-fold element, human and divine.”

The communion of the baptized in the teaching of the Apostles and in the breaking of the eucharistic bread is visibly manifested in the bonds of the profession of the faith in its entirety, of the celebration of all of the sacraments instituted by Christ, and of the governance of the College of Bishops united with its head, the Roman Pontiff.

Having set out the sacramental (baptismal, Eucharistic) and Petrine principles, the Holy Father goes on to identify the visible Church as the Catholic Church. He repeats the teaching of the Second Vatican Council that recognizes the working of Grace beyond visible unity with Rome:

“This single Church of Christ, which we profess in the Creed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic “subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him. Nevertheless, many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside her visible confines. Since these are gifts properly belonging to the Church of Christ, they are forces impelling towards Catholic unity.”

In the light of these teachings, we can re-interpret the question some perplexed Anglo Catholics are asking “Where do we go?” Once you grasp what communion means, agonising about “going” somewhere is unreal. The geographical metaphor is too narrow. The organic metaphor is Scriptural (Pauline) and Patristic and it focuses us on communion with God and through God communion with other people. With whom are we in communion? That is the question. It clarifies the future.

Congregationalism?

An ecclesiology of communion also throws light on the last option, that is, when some Anglo Catholics choose, even reluctantly, to remain in communion with Canterbury, “come what may” as they say. Note that I only refer to convinced traditional Anglo-Catholics. I do not include those Anglicans who, in conscience, do not hold to the necessity of apostolic order as taught by the Tractarians and their successors, that is, that bishops are of the esse of the Church.

Hard questions can be asked. Could it be said that Anglo Catholics who choose “to remain” have embraced congregationalism? Do they contradict their own Tractarian insistence on “our apostolic descent”? Are they now saying that the Church is a collection of local congregations of those who maintain Catholic doctrine and sacramental practices? In this perspective, each parish becomes a Church in itself. But how can that be? What would St Paul, Saint Ignatius of Antioch and all the Fathers of East and West, say about this?

The vicar and parishioners can dig in and hold on, but others may ask whether they in “the trenches” – or just down a bunker? They can ignore the bishop and persistently regard their parish as a Church in itself, but whether they like it or not, official Anglicanism carefully maintains the forms of apostolic order. Inevitably the day will come when empirical reality conquers. The vicar will retire or die and. because this is pretend congregationalism, the parishioners know that they have no authority to provide a successor. Then the bishop they pretended did not exist, will act. He or she will send them a vicar not of their choosing or even close their church. Do not these sad projections expose the unreality of the fourth option – when chosen by traditional Anglo Catholics?

I need to add something that Anglicans have brought to my attention – the temptations of “building worship” and “ancestor worship”. This is a painful matter, entering an Ordinariate and having to let go and sacrifice a familiar, much loved, place of worship with so many family memories. We hope and pray that arrangements can be made to keep this to a minimum. In Australia we do not know to what extent that will be possible. Yet this mentality is not unrelated to the congregationalist tendency. The church is not buildings, rather it is that Holy Temple of living stones, a communion of people, united to Christ the Lord, one in faith, one in grace.

The Incarnation and Catholicism

Moreover, in the future, Anglo Catholics who remain in communion with any bishop of the official Anglican Communion are morally bound to respect and accept the duly established order he represents. That now includes the ordination of women as bishops and priests and whatever may be enacted through synodical government. Either they assent to that new order or else their communion with the bishop seems meaningless and their friends may tell them that they should admit that they are “Affirming Catholics”, no matter how many mental reservations they may store in their heads.

Here we confront a difference between apostolic Christianity and Protestantism. Religion is not simply “what I hold in my head and my heart”. Indeed personal faith is essential and unity in the faith is vital, but Catholicism involves much more. It goes beyond what is within us to what exists in material reality around us, a community of persons who are in communion with one another through the bishops. It integrates body and soul, matter and spirit, visible and invisible, avoiding a tendency towards dualism, old or new.

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The Word did not send us some doctrines or a philosophy of life. The Faith revealed in Jesus Christ is incarnational – a visible Church, tangible sacraments, human beings born again, new creatures through grace in Baptism and Confirmation. Gathered by God for eucharistic worship around the successors of the apostles, they are “in communion” with one another as the organic working Body of Christ in this world.

Therefore choosing options involving communion with other people cannot coexist with mental reservations, such as were made in times past over the words of the Thirty Nine Articles. There can be no evasion of the visible structure of the Church, an empirical reality before our eyes. To retreat from this structure into congregationalism may indicate a shift to privatised pietistic Protestant individualism. But it might even descend to an apocalyptic mentality; “we are the last ones.…the faithful remnant as the end draws nigh”. Such unbalanced stoic spirituality wiped out the Catholic Apostolic Church (the Irvingites). Convinced that the end was nigh, they simply ceased ordaining clergy.

I have heard pious pessimism such as “The last one out please snuff the sanctuary lamp”. That is miserable nonsense when set against the visible reality of millions of people just getting on with being Christians in communion with one another. Anyone can see this in the largest community who live in full communion with the Successor of Saint Peter and the college of Catholic bishops. Australians saw it vividly when our first saint was canonized, Saint Mary of the Cross MacKillop. The saints are witnesses to the reality of communion, for “the communion of saints” we profess in the creed begins here in the visible Church.

I warn of illusory congregationalism, because I am trying to respond to the pain and sorrow that some clergy and laity have shared with me. They are perplexed by the options that face them. They tell me that they “are not ready for the Ordinariate yet” and I can understand that, at least in 2010 when we cannot see the visible structure. We cannot open a church door and say “welcome!” Soon, pray God, that will happen.

However it is not my brief to outline or suggest any other option except the Ordinariate generously offered to them by the Holy Father. I point them towards this offer because it is hope beyond sadness and self-pity. It is freedom from nostalgic slavery to dead issues and lost causes. It is reconciliation with God and His People, hence a step into unity and inner peace.

The Ordinariate Process Begins

The steps towards establishing Ordinariates in the United Kingdom, the US, Canada and Australia are well under way. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has recently approved programs of preparation for the laity and formation for the clergy who intend to be reconciled through the Ordinariate. Here the key resource is the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Clergy will also need to familiarise themselves with the magisterial sources for systematic and moral theology and the Code of Canon Law. The “magisterium at your finger tips” may be found in an excellent series of paperback volumes, Precis of Official Catholic Teaching obtainable from the United States. These handy books take us into the living teaching voice of the Popes and Councils. I also recommend the new United States Catholic Catechism for Adults.

To establish the Ordinariates, two stages are envisaged next year: 1. the reconciliation and ordination of clergy who have applied for Orders in the Ordinariate and been accepted, then 2. at a later date, the first reconciliations of the lay faithful. The clergy will therefore be in place to welcome and minister to former Anglicans in a community that maintains the familiar Anglican patrimony of worship, spirituality, scholarship and pastoral care. We saw how that patrimony has enriched English Catholicism during the magnificent papal visit to Scotland and England, particularly during the beatification of Blessed John Henry Newman.

More concrete details will appear soon. I believe the model will be set by what proceeds in the United Kingdom in terms of a clear time line built around the two stages. However, at present it is important to keep informed, for example through circles such as the Friends of the Ordinariate.

What to do now? Those who believe that God is calling them to full communion should take practical steps, obtaining evidence for their Baptism which will be needed before registering for reconciliation through Confirmation with Chrism next year. Those who are in irregular marriage situations need to go at once to the local Catholic Marriage Tribunal and seek whatever is possible to regularise their situation. These tribunals are pastoral, welcoming and maintain respect for confidentiality.

Above all pray. We are now entering the Vigil of the Ordinariate. In a spirit of “watching and praying”, In invite you keep vigil by reflecting on the wonderful mystery of the Church, the organic working Body of Jesus Christ. But let that visible reality of the living Church confront you. Let her challenge you, as you ask, “With whom are we in communion?” If that remains a painful or perplexing question, bring it before the Lord. Then may the Holy Spirit of unity and communion guide you and lead you to inner peace.

Thanks to Fr Paul Spilsbury for drawing our attention to this.

All Saints Sunday

Yesterday being the latter end of half term we had some familiar faces away but numbers were steady due to some who were visiting and some new people.

As we kept All Saints' Sunday we gave thanks especially for those saints who worshipped in our own church. 

Yesterday saw also the launch of Evangelium. This will start this Wednesday after the 7pm Mass and will explore our Christian Faith. More details on the poster at the side bar.

It was a great joy to welcome among us for the first time Theo Benedict (not even a week old), obviously the first of many to come.

In the evening we had Rosary and Benediction, a fitting conclusion to the month of October. After Rosary almost everything was made ready to celebrate All Souls day on Tuesday.

Masses on Tuesday are at 9am, 9.30am, 10.15am and 8pm. If you have any departed loved ones you would like us to pray for please send the names through the comment box.

On Tuesday too we shall welcome as our guest Fr Nazar a young Ukrainian Catholic priest on his first ever visit to the UK. Fr Nazar is a friend of Fr Dimitry a Catholic priest of Vienna who is a close and much loved friend of this Parish. We all wish Fr Nazar

 a very pleasant stay.