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November 3, 2021Fr. Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Anglican bishop of Rochester, was ordained to the priesthood of the Catholic Church on October 30, 2021 at Our Lady of the Assumption and St. Gregory’s on Warwick Street in London, the mother church of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walshingham.
Fr. Nazir-Ali, once considered for Archbishop of Canterbury of the Church of England, was received into the Catholic Church on Sept. 28, 2021 via the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, a Catholic diocese with Anglican traditions for the United Kingdom that was established under Pope Benedict XVI’s 2009 apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus. He was ordained to the Catholic diaconate on Oct. 28, and then ordained to the priesthood on Oct. 30 to the Catholic priesthood by Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the Catholic archbishop of Westminster and president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales.
Below is a transcript of Fr. Michael Nazir-Ali’s remarks delivered after his ordination to the priesthood at Our Lady of the Assumption and St. Gregory’s, briefly explaining why the former Anglican bishop joined the Catholic Church and why he did it through the Ordinariate:
Thank you, Father Keith for this opportunity. First of all, of course, I’d like to express my gratitude to His Eminence Vincent Cardinal Nichols for coming and spending so much time. Actually more time than he had allocated because he had arrived an hour earlier than he intended to, [laughter] but I’m sure that’s in God’s providence. And of course to Msgr. Keith and to Jill for their gracious hospitality. For Archbishop Bernard for journeying with me, and actually even turning up at the railway station to show me the way. So that’s really quite literally showing me the way! Thank you very much, indeed.
To so many of the clergy in the Ordinariate whom I have known previously for many years, it is very good to see so many here today. You will have seen various interviews and pieces of writing from my side about why I have done this. So very briefly, to say – well, there are many reasons, of course, I don’t want to give them all – but first of all, to belong to a Church where decisions that affect everyone are actually made effective in the whole Church; where decisions stick.
Secondly, where there is a clear body of teaching to which appeal can be made when that is necessary to do.
And thirdly, where there is an adequate, sufficient teaching authority to guide the faithful in matters that are contentious in this culture, or that. Cardinal Nichols, of course, alluded to this in his homily.
So those are the reasons for why. And then some may ask -- some have asked – why in this way? Why the Ordinariate way?
And of course the reason there is that although I have experienced certain lacks in the Anglican Communion, which the Catholic Church makes up, again as that wonderful prayer said so eloquently. But equally there are gifts that the Anglican tradition has to offer the wider Church. You have experienced some of those gifts this afternoon.
But I would say, yes, the beauty of worship. Whatever else Archbishop Cranmer’s gifts may or may not have been, I think beauty of language was certainly one of them. And I commend such beauty to our liturgists today. It is not always a gift that is found among them in recent years, may I say.”
Secondly, an approach to the study of the Bible that is inductive, historical, and devotional at the same time.
Thirdly, an approach to ministry that recognizes the wider community and is not simply restricted to the congregation.
There are other things more difficult to define: an approach to moral thinking for instance, which is not developed not just out of the needs of the confessional but of a wider engagement with the community. And I think that can be valuable for the wider Church. And the rich hymnody, the tradition of hymnody, to which St. John Henry Newman contributed so magnificently, as we have heard this afternoon.
So that is why I’ve done it, and that is why I have done it in this way. Thank you for your love and your prayers and your patience. God bless you.
Here endeth the transcript.Peter Jesserer Smith is the vice president of the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society.
