By Deborah Gyapong

Holy Communion at the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada Synod, held July 12 – 16. Photo courtesy of Canadian Catholic News.

"We are not leaving a body and going into another one," said Archbishop John Hepworth, the primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), a worldwide communion that includes the ACCC. "Corporate reunion means a corporate body goes into communion, and in the process becomes the ordinariate."

According to Wikipedia, a "personal ordinariate" is defined as "an intended canonical structure within the Catholic Church enabling former Anglicans to maintain some degree of corporate identity and autonomy with regard to the bishops of the geographical dioceses, and to preserve elements of their own tradition and forms of worship."

The ACCC is the first of the seven national groups of Anglicans which have formally responded to Pope Benedict's Apostolic Constitution Angicanorum coetibus to complete an internal legal process, readying the church's corporate entity for coming into unity with the Catholic Church through a personal ordinariate.

"We are beginning to sense the excitement of the reality," said Hepworth.

At the ACCC's triennial Synod July 12-16 in Surrey, B.C., bishops, clergy and lay delegates from across Canada passed a resolution to endorse the March 12 letter the ACCC bishops sent to the Holy See seeking an Anglican ordinariate in Canada.

Synod also passed a resolution enabling the bishop and the provincial council to make all adjustments to the diocese's canonical legislation for the formation of the ordinariate.

The ordinariates will allow Anglicans who accept the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Petrine Ministry (the role of the pope) to become Catholics, while retaining their Anglican liturgy and other aspects of their patrimony.

"The only thing that has puzzled me is the intensity of the opposition to us doing this, from those who have no intention of doing it themselves -- and seem desperate that no one else does it," Hepworth said.

TAC members around the world have received packets of misinformation from other groups, he claimed. "Each individual has been subjected to intense pressure from groups that have absolutely no right to be doing it," Hepworth said. "In Australia, our people have had up to six mail-outs from the group that is mostly responsible for this."

Some Synod delegates expressed concern the Apostolic Constitution amounted to a "take over" that would lead to "absorption" by the Roman Catholic Church and a consequent loss of Anglican identity.

"We have wanted unity; so we claimed. But will our prayer turn out to have meant, 'Lord give us unity, but not yet?' Has the pope called our Anglican bluff?" asked Bishop Robert Mercer. The retired ACCC bishop, who now lives in England, took part in ARCIC talks as Anglican Bishop of Matabeleland in Zimbabwe from 1977-1987. Pope John Paul II once came to preach at his Bulawayo cathedral during Evensong. He said he has prayed for Anglican/Catholic unity for most of his life.

Mercer, a fixture in the pro-life movement when he lived in Ottawa 1988-2005, joined Hepworth and ACCC Bishop Peter Wilkinson in delivering to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith the 2007 letter, signed by all the bishops and/or vicars general of the TAC, that asked for full corporate communion with the Holy See.

The letter requested that the Holy Father find a way for them to retain the Anglican liturgy and other aspects of their patrimony. The Apostolic Constitution was a response to this request and those from other groups that followed.

Continue article >>

"To the end of his life, St. Paul said, 'I am a Jew,'" said Mercer. "He meant of course a completed Jew, a fulfilled Jew, a Jew as he is meant to be, that's to say, a Jew in Christ, but a Jew all the same. I hope to be able to say, 'I am an Anglican, a completed Anglican, a fulfilled Anglican' -- an Anglican in full and visible communion with the universal primate of the universal church, but an Anglican all the same."

When the resolutions came to a vote, only two lay delegates voted against, while three abstained. Among clergy, support was unanimous.

In Canada, the ACCC is the main body seeking corporate reunion. Requests from individuals and clergy outside the TAC have been going to Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins, who has been named the liaison between the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) and Anglicans wishing to be part of an ordinariate.

The TAC formed in the early 1990s with the express purpose of seeking unity with the Catholic Church. It gathered under a world-wide umbrella breakaway Anglican churches in a worldwide communion headquartered in Australia. The ACCC was formed in the late 1970s, after its clergy and lay people left the Anglican Church over the ordination of women. Its founders believed a God-ordained sacrament such as Holy Orders could not be changed by democracy.

The ACCC has 64 licensed clergy, in addition to Peter Wilkinson, who is based in Victoria, B.C.; and two suffragan (auxiliary) bishops, serving Central Canada and the Atlantic provinces. The ACCC has 28 parishes and missions scattered across the country.

In the United Kingdom, the TAC church is a much smaller player relative to Forward in Faith (FIF), which represents Anglo-Catholic bishops and clergy and between 1,000 and 2,000 parishes inside the Anglican Communion led by the Archbishop of Canterbury. A recent Church of England Synod approving women bishops has put additional pressure on FIF, whose members hold to catholic teaching on Holy Orders.

Hepworth said the Church of England Synod has put FIF clergy in an extremely difficult position. The Synod vote may be part of a legal strategy to "throw them out for being sexists," he said.

The TAC has remained in communion with FIF bishops in the UK and in Australia, and has coordinated with FIF on approaches to the Holy See -- as there will likely be only one ordinariate per country to start.

The United States has a FIF, but it is allied with the Anglican Church in North America, (ACNA) a largely evangelical and charismatic Anglican body under Archbishop Robert Duncan -- which broke away from the Episcopal Church over the election of active homosexuals in the episcopate, and differences over the authority of scripture. There has not been as much interest in the ordinariate on the part of FIF in the United States.

However, the U.S. has a small but strong network of 'Anglican Use' parishes, some that are quite large, that are already part of the Roman Catholic Church -- but are using an approved Anglican liturgy. The Anglican Use parishes have joined with TAC bishops in the Anglican Church in America (ACA) in making a joint request for an ordinariate in the U.S.

In Canada, the FIF presence is very small, and allied with the FIF in the United States. Some individual parishes and clergy may want to be part of a Canadian ordinariate. The Anglican Network in Canada (ANiC), a more recent breakaway body from the mainstream Anglican Church of Canada includes mostly evangelical and charismatic Anglicans -- who may not believe in Christ's Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament, or care about Apostolic Succession.

There may be Anglo-Catholics in ANiC with a similar liturgical style to TAC worshippers, but who would not accept the juridical authority of the Pope or doctrines such as papal infallibility, as the ACCC bishops have.

Courtesy of Canadian Catholic News. Please do not reprint without permission.

July 29/2010