THE P RTAL
August 2014
UK Pages - page 18
Manchester Ordinariate
O
n Sunday
13 July 2014 Fr Andrew
Starkie, leader of the Manchester
Ordinariate Mission, led a service of Choral
Evensong at St Joseph’s Catholic Church,
Heywood – home of the Manchester
Ordinariate Mission.
Members of the 2301 (Heywood) Squadron
Air Training Corps paraded their flag. Fr Starkie
is chaplain to the Corps. The singing was led by
the choir of the Manchester Ordinariate Mission.
The service – which marked the 74th anniversary
of the Battle of Britain on 10 July – was the first
time for some years that the Heywood Air Cadets
had held a Church Parade.
Christian Unity Not about
Christian Uniformity
and pastoral practices which enriched the wider
Church. This, he said, had “important ecumenical
implications”.
The Ordinary spoke of the Ordinariate Use Mass,
approved by Rome last year, which integrates elements
of the Church of England Book of Common Prayer
into the Roman rite. He said the Book of Common
Prayer was one of the “treasures to be shared” with
the Catholic Church. People in Portsmouth who
were interested to find out more could go to an
Ordinariate” exploration day “event being held by the
he Ordinary of the Personal local Portsmouth Ordinariate group at St Agatha’s
Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, Church on 6 September where they could experience
Monsignor Keith Newton, preached to hundreds the Ordinariate Use Mass.
of Mass-goers in Portsmouth Cathedral, where he
spent the weekend of 26/27 July, about the vision of
Mgr Newton’s visit to Portsmouth was arranged as
Christian unity held out by the Ordinariate.
part of an appeal by the Friends of the Ordinariate,
which was set up to assist the Ordinariate and support
He said that people sometimes asked members of its work. By kind persmission of Bishop Philip Egan
the Ordinariate why they couldn’t become “proper of Portsmouth, the Ordinary celebrated three Masses
Catholics”. “What they mean”, he said, is “why can’t and preached at all the Masses over the weekend.
you just be absorbed into the wider Catholic Church There was a retiring collection for the Friends of the
so that what you bring disappears like sugar dissolved Ordinariate.
in water”. The answer , Mgr Newton said, was that
Christian unity was not about Christian uniformity;
The Ordinary’s homily included an appeal for
rather it was about exploring the possibility of sharing prayers for the persecuted Catholic Christians of the
a common faith in communion with the successor of Eastern Rite who are suffering in Iraq and elsewhere
Peter and yet having different liturgical, devotional in the Middle East.
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