Freemason membership, divorce and re-marriage have emerged as potential stumbling blocks for Anglicans seeking to enter the Catholic Church via an Ordinariate.
Melbourne Auxiliary Bishop Peter Elliott, the Holy See’s delegate for the Anglican Ordinariate in Australia, said at an Ordinariate festival in Melbourne on 11 June that divorced and remarried Anglicans should seek Catholic Canon Law advice before they try to enter the Church.
Addressing a “delicate but unavoidable issue”, the prelate urged Ordinariate-bound Anglicans who have remarried after divorce “to take your situation to a diocesan marriage tribunal so that your reconciliation in the Ordinariate will in no way be impeded next year”.
“Even if you received an Anglican permission to re-marry, this will need to be evaluated carefully to see if this conforms to Catholic requirements,” Bishop Elliott, a former Anglican, said. “However, I have been assured that Catholic Canon Law is followed in the Traditional Anglican Communion, which should facilitate matters for members of the TAC when they approach a tribunal.”
Regarding membership of a Masonic lodge, the prelate said that, “in spite of what you might hear from time to time, Catholics are not permitted to be Freemasons”.
“Men seeking to enter the Ordinariate will need to resign from the Lodge. This raises the spiritual challenge, whether commitment to Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour and membership of His Church takes priority in your life,” he said.
In November 2009, Pope Benedict XVI announced his decision to erect personal Ordinariates for former Anglicans who wanted to enter into full communion with Rome while preserving liturgical and other elements of their Anglican heritage, including a certain amount of governing by consensus.
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