Anglicanorum Coetibus Society Blog

The National Catholic Register, the best Catholic paper in the United States, is carrying a great article by Peter Jesserer Smith entitled Passion to Evangelize Drives New Ordinariate Communities.

Go on over and read the article, as it gives a great overview of what’s happening in the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, starting with a new group in formation in Connecticut, driven by young people.

Included in the story is a mention of the Anglicanorum coetibus Society.

One of the engines of the ordinariate’s development and growth is the Anglicanorum CoetibusSociety (ACS), which has a mission to nourish and pass on the Anglican patrimony within the Catholic Church.

“There’s a great interest in the ordinariates and our Anglican patrimony that Pope Benedict described as a ‘precious gift’ and a ‘treasure to be shared,’” explained Deborah Gyapong, president of the ACS. “That passion animates the society, but our focus is also on evangelization and deeper conversion to the Catholic faith.”

Gyapong said the society helped in the development of a devotional, called the “St. Gregory Prayer Book,” which is in the process of being published. It also encourages the development of Anglican Patrimony Groups, which aspire to become ordinariate communities in formation.

“Our interest is not in studying our patrimony as some kind of historical society, but in keeping it alive because of its beauty, its truth and its goodness,” she said. “Our liturgy, our daily offices, our high sacral language and our community life have helped us grow ever deeper in our Christian faith.”

The New Liturgical Movement has the news from Sarah Rodeo, who is also an Anglicanorum coetibus Society member.

For the first time, the Divine Worship (Ordinariate) Form of the Roman Rite will be celebrated in the state of Connecticut, on Saturday, September 29th at 6:30 pm, at St Joseph’s Church in New Haven. This Mass is the culmination of the efforts of the Ordinariate Fellowship of Connecticut, a group looking to form a mission of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter in the state of Connecticut.

A professional SATB quartet and organist will sing and play William Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices (Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus), and his Ave Verum Corpus as a communion motet; four traditional English hymns (processional, offertory, communion and recessional – all verses will be sung, of course!); the psalm rendered in four-part Anglican chant; David Burtt’s English plainsong propers (psalm-tone based settings of the introit, gradual, offertory and communion antiphons), and an English translation of Credo III.

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We held the Anglicanorum coetibus Society’s Annual General Meeting on Sunday, Sept. 16 at the school on the campus of St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

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N September 19th, we celebrate St. Adrian of Canterbury and St. Theodore of Canterbury.

Sts. Adrian and Theodore are mainly remembered for being highly successful missionaries in largely pagan England and for being best friends.

St. Adrian was originally offered the position of Archbishop of Canterbury by Pope St. Vitalian, but St. Adrian turned it down. On St. Adrian’s recommendation, the pope offered the archbishopric to St. Theodore, who accepted, and made St. Adrian the Abbot of St. Peter’s, a Benedictine monastery in Canterbury. They left for England in AD 668: St. Theodore was 66 and St. Adrian was 33.

Under St. Adrian’s direction, the School of Canterbury became the center of English religious and secular learning. He also started many other schools. These schools taught Latin, Greek, arithmetic, astronomy, poetry, and theology.

In St. Adrian’s schools were educated many of England’s future saints, scholars, and missionaries. These men strengthened not only the English Church, but also helped the fading faith and learning of France and Germany.

Under their leadership, the Church made many converts, laymen were pious, and priests were diligent. Together, St. Adrian and St. Theodore unified the customs and practices of the Anglo-Saxon Church with the Roman Church.

One of St. Theodore’s main accomplishments was writing his book Penitential, which laid out the exact public penances for sinners, according to which sins they had committed and how many. This book was widely used for many years, before private confession became popular and gives us a unique insight into the problems that plagued the Anglosaxon Church at the time.

For example, “Those who labor on the Lord’s day, the Greeks reprove the first time; the second, they take something from them; the third time, [they take] the third part of their possessions, or flog them; or they shall do penance for seven days,” and “If one slays a monk or a cleric, he shall lay aside his arms and serve God…” Kill a monk? Be a monk.

St. Theodore died long before St. Adrian, as he was much older. St. Theodore labored in England for 19 years until he died of old age. St. Adrian labored for 39 years until he also died of old age.

The time of Sts. Theodore and Adrian was later known as a golden age of English learning and piety. King St. Alfred the Great (AD 849-899) still possessed old handwritten manuscripts written during their time, but unfortunately barely anyone could read them because literacy had died out again! St. Alfred lamented that in the golden age of Sts. Theodore and Adrian, men came to England to learn, but in St. Alfred’s day, English men had to go abroad!

Sts. Theodore and Adrian provide a great example of combining religious faith with secular learning. They are also great examples of courage and of diligence: they both labored for decades in God’s vineyard. Sts. Theodore and Adrian, pray for us, and as you reformed the Anglosaxon Church, so aid us in reforming our Universal Church!

Written by Mr. John Burford, IV and Dr. Foster Lerner of Incarnation Catholic Church in Orlando, Florida; a parish of The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, (C) 2018.

John is the founder and owner of Magnolia Prep, an SAT and ACT tutoring business with branches in several major US cities. Foster is a graduate of Nova Southeastern University College of Osteopathic Medicine pursuing post-graduate studies in medicine.

Pope Francis has called an extraordinary synod  on the protection of minors from sexual abuse for next Feb. 21-24.

Yet, many have criticized the move because the Church, at least in North America, has done a good job of protecting minors since the early 2000s, as the recent Pennsylvania Grand Jury report shows.   What’s at issue is the sexual abuse of seminarians, of bishops still covering up, and corruption even at the highest levels of the Church.  And that’s to say nothing of concerns there’s an agenda afoot to bring Church teaching more in line with what’s popular in the world.  We come from the Anglican world.  We have seen this movie.  We know how it ends.  We came into the Catholic Church because we wanted to stand on the Rock of Christ and not the shifting sands of “experience” and “social science,” and the latest gender theory.

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What follows is the work of my dear friend and fellow Incarnation Catholic Church of Orlando, Florida parishioner Steven Rabanal, which he kindly permitted me to repost here. It was originally posted on his blog, The Acolyte’s Toolbox. I think it represents an excellent resource particularly for devoteés of the Missale Romanum (commonly the Extraordinary Form or Traditional Latin Mass according to the 1962 Missal) to learn more about the Traditional English Mass (as it has been called), according to Divine Worship: The Missal, published just 3 years ago A.D. 2015. -F.S.L.

N discussions regarding the liturgical details of Divine Worship: The Missal, which is the missal used by the Personal Ordinariates for former Anglicans, a frequently visited topic is how the missal relates to the Roman Missal and/or the 1962 Missale Romanum.

This is also a frequently debated topic, for a number of reasons that I will not analyze now. However, what I am choosing to do now is present a semi-detailed comparison of Divine Worship with both the Roman Missal and the Missale Romanum.

No bias is intended to make it appear more like either missal. I should also note that this chart does not indicate or imply that it is prohibited to add any practices to the missals not found in them. However, it does not include extra-missal practices, no matter how frequently they occur, for the purpose of examining only the missals themselves. I hope that this is a helpful reference for those that would like to take a closer look between the three missals and even a helpful chart to help others learn more about the missals in general. Continue reading →

In honor of The Most Holy Name of Mary, the photo shows the blessing of a statue of Our Lady that someone left on our lawn last year.  

I have been meaning to read Rod Dreher’s  The Benedict Option: a Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation but, having read much about the book, pro and con, I would place myself on the “pro” side.

I am in good company.

Yesterday, in Rome,  Pope Benedict XVI’s personal secretary Archbishop Georg Ganswein endorsed the book in a speech that has astonished the world.  +Ganswein still closely serves the Pope-emeritus, but also Pope Francis as the head of the papal household.   So everyone is paying attention to the speech because it may give insight into what Pope Benedict is also thinking about the current crisis in the Church.  And I would like us to contemplate how our Ordinariate communities can become little beacons of light in building a Benedict Option as our culture becomes more and more hostile to the Christian faith.

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