The Ordinariates at 12: An Acorn Growing into a Mighty Oak

Twelve years ago, God answered the prayers of generations of Anglicans in giving us, through the hand of Pope Benedict, an apostolic constitution that established the portion of our ecclesial community that was ready as a full-fledged church. Put another way, he established a type of particular church for us: the Ordinariate.

It is not always easy to see what God is doing in human history at the time He is doing it. We are taught to be grateful and to thank him for all things, but with Anglicanorum Coetibus we already can see the broad outlines of what he has done for our people.

We should be grateful not just for what he has done for us in the here and now, but also what he has done for our descendants, and even for our ancestors. He has established our living Anglican tradition in the Catholic Church as a Catholic tradition. He has given our descendants what could potentially come to be known, if the Western Church were ever to embrace categories of ecclesiastical governance similar to sui juris particular churches in the East, as a full-fledged, authentic Anglican Catholic Church in full communion with Rome.
And for our ancestors, God has given them an answer to their prayers, and the triumph of having their children and descendants brought into the Catholic Church as a community with its corporate integrity intact.

Often when I make such points about what the Ordinariates are an embryonic version of, many misunderstand. All large churches began small, just as oak trees begin with the planting of an acorn. What Pope Benedict planted may one day also become a mighty oak. It would be a mistake to think that a comparison with the Eastern Churches is to apply their specific characteristics to a Western reality.

If one compares one’s driveway to a football field, saying “it’s as long as a football field,” it would be to completely miss the point to say “you can’t compare a driveway to a football field, a football field is for sports!” And yet this is the type of mistake many people make when they hear the comparison of the Ordinariates to sui juris Eastern Catholic Churches. If we make the mistake of thinking that because there has never been such a thing in the West, hence there can never be such a thing in the West, then we risk losing sight of the fact that this may very well end up being the best contemporary parallel to what we have indeed been given. Only time will tell.

In the meantime, we have been given all of the essentials of an Anglican particular church that is in full communion with Rome, and hence fully a Catholic church. We have our own potential seminaries and houses of formation, our own clergy, our own ritual forms, our own customs with full approbation, our own tradition of governance, and our own identity.

This not only makes our lives richer, it strengthens our faith, and makes our Catholic faith something that is internal to our culture, to our sense of home, and to our identity. And finally it is a treasure within the whole Church to be shared, which will stand as a witness to all men of the universality and diversity, and hence of the truth, of that one Church. For all of this we have to give our everlasting gratitude to Pope Benedict and to God.

Time flies when you’re having fun, and it is almost hard to believe that it has been 12 years already. Just imagine what Pope Benedict’s gift to us and to Jesus Christ’s Church will look like in the generations yet to come.

Christopher Mahon is the secretary of the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society. The author’s views expressed here are his own.