The personal ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, under the patronage of St Augustine of Canterbury, will be established on June 15. It will be Australia’s first.
A Personal Ordinariate is a church structure for particular groups of people who wish to enter into communion with the Catholic Church.
In 2009 Pope Benedict announced special arrangements to cater for groups of Anglicans who wished to join the Catholic Church. This provision allows them to maintain some of the traditions of prayer and worship of Anglicanism.
Personal Ordinariates have already been established in the United Kingdom (2011) and the United States of America (2012).
Fr Warren Wade, 78, a grandfather who was ordained 50 years ago, will lead at least 10 of the 15 members of the North Turramurra Anglican community into the ordinariate after they undergo instruction. He said that some Anglicans had been “praying for unity for a long time” and “their prayers have been answered”. The ordinariate wiil be based at Holy Cross church in Melbourne.
Auxiliary Bishop Peter Elliot of Melbourne acknowledged the difficult journey
“We must not be triumphalist about it; we must respect the sensibilities of other Anglicans who do not choose to make this step,” he said. “I would invite Catholic people to reach out and welcome these men and women who are choosing unity.”
Kevin Parsons, 85, and his wife, Judith, have chosen to join the ordinariate, as they had been dissatisfied with the “overwhelmingly evangelical” nature of the Anglican diocese of Sydney and changes, such as the ordination of women.
“The Anglican Communion has lost, in my opinion, much of the tradition on which it was based,” he said.
He regarded it as a “pivotal point” that the personal ordinariate will allow former Anglicans to retain their own liturgy and traditions.
“I’ve been an Anglo-Catholic all my life, as far as I can remember, and it’s always been in the background for myself and many of my friends that, sooner or later, Anglo-Catholics and Roman Catholics should have an arrangement for some sort of union.”
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