THE P RTAL
December 2013
Page 20
A More Excellent Way
by Geoffrey Kirk
So what
is the Ordinariate for? There are, I know, pious aspirations
about ecumenism, but it is as well to be honest: where the Church of England
is concerned, after intemperate talk about the Pope’s tanks invading the lawn of
Lambeth Palace, there is little hope of an immediate rapprochement. Cardinal
Kasper put his finger on it when he told the House of Bishops of the Church of
England that they had before them a choice between the undivided church of
the first millennium and the Protestantism of the sixteenth century. By claiming sovereignty over their own
orders those bishops have clearly made their decision. With ecumenism in the doldrums, there remains for
the Ordinariate only the matter of ‘patrimony’, and that is a mine-field where pride and humility are at war
with each other. But there is, I suggest, a more excellent way.
too many chiefs and too few Indians
others, celebrating masses at inconvenient times and
The problem, for the Ordinariate, is well known: too with scant liturgical resources, Ordinariate groups
many chiefs and too few Indians. But that can be an could wither in less than a generation.
advantage as well as a disadvantage in a church starved
All that talent, enthusiasm and devotion to the
of clergy. Beset in many areas with failing parishes and
clergy shortages, the Catholic Church has resorted of Catholic faith frittered away in genteel seclusion!
But imaginatively employed in parishes which need
late to closures and parochial amalgamations.
the infusion, they could bring to congregations
a church-plant
- some long starved of it – a new vision based on
One such parish was the Ordinariate church of the the pastoral theology and liturgical priorities of
Most Precious Blood, close to London Bridge Station Benedict XVI. And that might turn out to be what
in the Borough. There the South London Group has the Ordinariate was for.
settled, and is devoting itself to revitalising the life
of a parish which was surely on somebody’s list for
annihilation. What in effect is taking place is what, in
the Church of England would be called a church-plant.
Effectively forty or so people – like many ordinariate
lay-folk the life and soul of the parishes from which
they came – have been parachuted into a church which
culturally and by happenstance, has never developed an
active and enthusiastic laity of its own. With Anglican
levels of giving – time, talents and treasure - the group
seems determined to make a difference. And with the
changing demography of the area (the congregation
is attracting new young merchant bankers as well as
seasoned, long-term residents), they may well have got
there in the nick of time.
a new vision
Of course the Ordinariate cannot itself determine on
such ‘plants’. The experiment in the Borough depended
upon the vision and courage of the Archbishop of
Southwark, Peter Smith. Archbishop Vincent Nichols
has taken a similar risk at Warwick Street on the
fringes of Soho. Now it is the turn of others to take up
the challenge.
One can easily see that left to eke out an independent
existence on the periphery of the parochial life of
The Church of the Most Precious Blood