Ship of Fools: St Alban’s, Rochester, New York, USA
The Mystery Worshipper
Shipmate
Ship of Fools: St Alban’s, Rochester, New York, USA
The beauty of holiness
Read the full Mystery Worshipper report here
Comments
Query for you, Miss Amanda or whoever else might know: The heading says the denomination is “Roman Catholic.” Is an ordinariate congregation properly called “Roman” Catholic? I thought “Roman” in “Roman Catholic” means using the Roman Rite.
No, "Roman" means a member of the denomination headed by the Bishop of Rome. so we don't get the Ambrosian Catholic church if we go to Milan and so forth.
The Roman Catholic Church is the Latin Rite church. I’m guessing that the liturgy used by the Ordinariate is considered a form of the Latin Rite, as are (as I understand it) the Roman, Ambrosian and Mozarabic rites.
As an aside, does anyone know what happened to those CoE bishops who in effect went on strike in their last month or so before moving to the Ordinariate, drawing their stipends etc
but doing precious little episcopal in that time?
Here's the Wiki article on one of them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Broadhurst
The heads of the three ordinariates are appointed by the pope and may not even be bishops, though they all dress up like them and attend meetings of the local bishops. They use their own prayer book which aims to preserve the best bits of both. Not having a copy I couldnt comment. Having been to masses in a catholic parish where an ordinariate priest was supplying, my impression is that they love their bowing and hand waving and perform them with an almost military precision and vigour.
The two priests I know personally who joined the Ordinariate now seem to be fully integrated, as it were, into the mainstream RCC, serving in their respective RCC parish churches. In all fairness, one of them, a forceful sort of chap, has been instrumental in reviving the RC church in a large village - whilst his former urban parish has also experienced new life under their new priest!
Whether the congregations the two priests took with them from the C of E have been absorbed as well, I couldn't say, though I do know of a few folk who have rejoined the C of E, returning to their former churches.
Our Lady of the Buckets have got a new priest. He used to be CofE.
Thats nice, a new priest.
Yes, hes married.
Oh, he cant be a priest then, he must be a vicar.
Neither fish nor fowl.
It is to be hoped that they either return or integrate. I suspect the RCC is not quite the animal they thought it was.
Nowadays priests can move from one rite to another. We have here a married Ukrainian Byzantine rite priest who generally celebrates the Roman rite. It is to be hoped (by many) that in time the Ordinariate Catholic priests will integrate completely into the Roman rite.
Taking the example of Ukrainian Byzantine rite Catholics who arrived and stayed in Scotland after World War 2 most of the descendants of these people have now either integrated into the Roman rite or have abandoned the practice of religion. This is why the Ukrainian priest finds that he has more pastoral work caring for those of the Latin rite. there is a good turnout at the Byzantine rite church at Christmas and Easter and other special days,but not so much at other times.
The Ordinariate has not taken of here at all (and not just Sydney, Oz generally). Thanks for that link. Others may have a different opinion, but at the time I thought that the 3 bishops should have resigned immediately and not waited on full pay, but doing next to no work, until the end of the holiday season.
Thanks also for all those comments about the various churches of the east, independent but in full communion with Rome. I find them fascinating, a real link back to the vey earliest days of the spread of Christianity.
Hardly an influx - a tiny trickle, at best!
(I won't make any remarks about the existing conservative misogynists possibly already present in the RCC...
But Miss Amanda has a point, and it may well be that some Ordinariate parishes/clergy do indeed make a positive contribution to the liturgical excellence of their services - though there are No Excuses for the list of horrors she mentions...
Nobody wants those horrors. Not sure what is meant by singing nun music. Our lot raise the roof singing modern stuff. But there you go. Oh yes, there are plenty of misogynists among our brand - we just don't need any more, its hard enough dealing with the ones we already have.
Point taken re misogynists...
I was being mischievous...
My fellow-Reader, who chooses the hymns at present, is over-fond (IMHO) of the ditties of one Ken Drick...
...but we do get the occasional song by Bernadette Farrell, or John Bell, so All Is Not Lost.
You mean the scripture based songs that replaced the mawkish emotional theologically empty congregational hymns that they have replaced?
True, the 'Roman' influence at Our Place, now departed, was responsible for peddling some pretty dire congregational slush, dating, IIRC, from the 20thC.
In the circles I moved in at the time there was a lot of excitement (but not on my part) regarding the creation of the Ordinariate which turned to severe disappointment when the details were actually published. The more dedicated Rome-lovers went into it, but the rest thought it was not the imaginative gesture they had been encouraged to expect. I had to bite my tongue not to say 'I told you so' as I had been sceptical all the way through, and I was and am too much of a Protestant to go for it anyway. It seems to work for a few people, and certain churches have made the switch, and they tell me they are very happy in their new homes.
Unfortunately, I have been around for a while, and have seen several of these initiatives come and go. I have reached the conclusion that both the Ordinariate and the Western Rite Orthodoxy options both come down to "convert to us and we'll let you use some bits of your old liturgy." Of the two, the WRO folks tend to get the better deal, but they also get the problems associated with Orthodoxy in America, which has never really thought its way out of being Greek, Serbia, Russian, etc..
Anecdotal evidence suggests that a fair few did indeed find, as @Alan29 says, that the RCC was not quite the animal they thought it was! Some have returned to the C of E fold, but I do wonder if others, disillusioned maybe, have given up 'church' entirely.
I don't know of entire congregations who made the switch, though there are some churches whose numbers were certainly drastically reduced for a while. Happily, those churches are continuing within the C of E, and one or two cases have had something of a revival.
At the risk of prolonging a slight tangent, I wonder if any C of E churches in the UK have had to close down in recent years, because everyone went over to Rome? I've not heard of any buildings changing hands, either (there would be major legal issues), though AIUI some are shared with an Ordinariate group.
I must admit to having a certain affection for the Free C of E. It has a long history, and, even today, probably resembles closely the BCP-based Low Church Of My Yoof (in which context I was first licensed as a Reader).
There aren't any FC of E places handy, otherwise I'd probably treat myself to the occasional excursion...
I was middle-to-high back then, so the FCE was a bit basic for me, but closer than the majority of FiF parishes. I got used to north end, no stoles, and no candles when the bishop was looking quite quickly, and was involved in their first attempt at a church plant for quite a long while. The one that used to be closest to us in Leeds left the FCE for the Evangelical Connection in 2004, so it has probably gone modern.