It has been a year since Pope Benedict XVI offered the chance for Anglicans to join the Catholic Church. This offer has enticed some Anglo-Catholics, both inside and outside of the Anglican Communion, to request membership in the Anglican Ordinariates.
Shane Schaetzel of the St Augustine of Canterbury Anglican Use Society in Springfield, Missouri has created and is updating a map of Anglican churches in the United States that are joining the ordinariate. (Hat Tip: The Anglo-Catholic)
View Emerging U.S. Anglican Catholic Ordinariate in a larger map
The map shows how the various Anglican parishes are entering the ordinariate. Most are joining the already established, but previously limited, Anglican Use and will therefore be grandfathered into the ordinariate. The second group is part of the Anglican Church in America, which is a branch of the Traditional Anglican Communion. The ACC and TAC have long been trying to be incorporated into the Catholic Church.
The final category is currently limited to Mount Calvary Church of Baltimore, Maryland. This parish is leaving the Episcopal Church USA (TEC is official branch of the Anglican Communion in the United States). Currently TEC is fighting tooth-and-nail against evangelical parishes that have left it for other branches of Anglicanism in lawsuits over church buildings. In these cases the wealth of TEC has only had to contend with parishes that manage to merely stay afloat financially. It will be interesting to see if TEC will sue Mount Calvary Church and the Catholic Church over the church building. That could turn into a lawyer war with both sides being well funded.
2 comments:
"It has been a year since Pope Benedict XVI offered the chance for Anglicans to join the Catholic Church. This offer has enticed some Anglo-Catholics, both inside and outside of the Anglican Communion, to request membership in the Anglican Ordinariates."
Actually, from what I read last year when this happened, various Anglican communities asked the Pope to let them in as communities rather than individuals. He just responded to their request by creating a way they could do this since it had never been done before. He did not "entice" them to come in as if he were doing something underhanded, as some people wrongly criticized him for.
Hi Anonymous,
What you said is true. But the requests were mostly limited to the Traditional Anglican Communion. The Pope's offer is open to all Anglican groups as long as they go through a Papal-made process.
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