Sunday, October 18, 2015

Are There Any Groups-In-Formation In The US-Canadian Ordinariate Pipeline?

A visitor responded to my earlier post today suggesting
[N]obody publishes the identities of clergy and congregations of various Anglican or "continuing Anglican" bodies who are discerning their call, or even preparing for reception into full communion of the Catholic Church and, in the case of clergy, Catholic ordination. Thus, there is no certainty that the initial wave has ended. Rather, most likely, it has not. Indeed, St. Mary of the Angels could well be added to the list as soon as the legal cases get wrapped up.
I would say on the contrary that lists of parishes and clergy intending to enter the US-Canadian Ordinariate were frequently published on the various Anglo-Catholic blogs during 2011 and 2012, and the progress of parishes like the Church of the Incarnation and St Mary of the Angels, and clergy like Fr Chori Seraiah, Fr Andrew Bartus, and others was discussed in detail and at length. There was no reason to keep that information confidential. If parishes are going through discernment now, there is no reason to keep the process in confidence, and it would presumably be discussed in parish newsletters, Facebook pages, etc, and announced in venues like the Ordinariate News blog.

As far as I'm aware, the most recent reception of a group-in-formation was the Flushing, NY community that was received into a diocesan parish at the 2015 Easter vigil. However, I believe the blog post was erroneous in calling this an Ordinariate group at its reception. Although as I pointed out in the earlier post, the OCSP website list of parishes is not reliable, the Flushing group has never been on it.

In addition, the group's reception was noted in the diocesan newsletter, with acknowledgement to the parish RCIA coordinator, which strongly suggests to me that although their Anglican pastor, Dr. Antonio Contreras, had been leading them into the Ordinariate at the time of his passing, their ultimate reception was via the Flushing, NY diocesan parish RCIA program, and they continue to attend the Spanish-language mass there. I am not sure what the most recent Ordinariate group reception was before this one.

I haven't heard of any new prospective Ordinariate groups in formation. Clergy without groups attached are, of course, being ordained fairly frequently, for whatever that's worth. If anyone is aware of new groups actively discerning Ordinariate membership, I would be most interested to hear of them, and I'll post any information I get here.