Ordinariate Watch: British ordinariate welcomes first members

They were received into full communion not at the Easter Vigil, as normally happens when people become Catholic, but in low-key ceremonies during Holy Week. The first 1,000-odd members of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham — 950 laypeople and 64 clergy in 27 groups across the United Kingdom — are former Anglicans who have responded to Pope Benedict XVI’s historic creation of a means by which former Anglicans can be received as groups, together with their clergy, while retaining their distinctive traditions.

Unifying move

Although described in media reports as “disaffected Anglicans” who are jumping ship in exasperation at divisions within the Church of England over homosexuality and women’s ordination, the members of the ordinariate see themselves very differently — as pioneers of Christian unity.

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Take note of the description of the disaffected Anglo-Catholics, more accurately Anglo-Papists, who joined the UK Ordinariate as "pioneers of Christian unity"--a reoccurring talking point in Roman Catholic articles on the personal ordinariates--and its reference to the Roman Catholic Church as "the universal church." This article is very revealing of Roman Catholic attitudes toward other Christians, Eastern Orthodox as well as Protestant, as have been a number of previous Roman Catholic articles posted on Anglicans Ablaze.