A Glorious Sung Mass

Thanks be to God!  The Toronto Anglican Use Sodality’s first mass was a great liturgical success.  Almost sixty people joined to sing psalms, hymns and other praises to God, with the help of a powerful choir.  Fr. Eric Rodrigues preached a thoughtful and inspiring sermon on the importance of liturgy, and especially how Pope Benedict XVI sees a liturgy united over time as an essential part of the Church’s response to the present ‘profound crisis of faith’.  Those attending included an even mix of young adults, older adults, and families in between, and almost everyone stayed afterwards to enjoy refreshments and visiting.  (Peregrinus has also posted some comments on this mass.)

Masses will continue Sundays at 1:45 at Sacré-Coeur church, 381 Sherbourne St.  Remember that there is free parking, a children’s catechesis for part of the service, and coffee hour afterward.  Spread the word!

Weekly Mass starting May 6

It is with great joy that the Toronto Sodality of the Anglican Use announces weekly Masses according to the Anglican Use starting Sunday, May 6^th, 2012. Please spread the word!

Mass will be held every Sunday at 1:45pm at Sacré-Coeur (the Church of the Sacred Heart) at 381 Sherbourne St, at the corner of Sherbourne and Carlton, in downtown Toronto.  Anglican Use Masses fulfill Sunday obligation for all Catholics, regardless of whether or not they are of an Anglican background.  There is parking immediately north of the Church, a children’s program during the Liturgy of the Word, and coffee hour afterward.

The Toronto Anglican Use Sodality is a group of Catholics coming from the Anglican tradition who are in full communion with the Pope and who strive to preserve and celebrate our Anglican heritage as a Catholic parish church.

In the words of Anglicanorum Coetibus, we “celebrate the Holy Eucharist and the other Sacraments, the Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical celebrations according to the liturgical books proper to the Anglican tradition, which have been approved by the Holy See, so as to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church, as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared.”

Everyone is welcome to attend and we hope to see you there.

Laus Deo!

Plans for Anglican Use Mass: Update

In preparation for the commencement of regular Anglican Use Mass, the Toronto Ordinariate group will meet at Sacré-Coeur Parish Church on April 1st at 1:30 p.m.  (We will not be meeting at St Michael’s Cathedral as previously advertised.)  Sacré-Coeur is located at 381 Sherbourne Street, Toronto (east of Jarvis, just north of Carlton).

All who are interested in assisting with these preparations are welcome to attend.

Plans for Anglican Use Mass, and Change of Location

Members of the Toronto Anglican Use group are finalizing preparations for weekly celebration of the Anglican Use Mass.  There will be no meetings on 19 and 26 Feb, but the next meetings of the Group will be held on:

- March 4th (2:00 p.m.) at the Newman Centre;

- March 18th (2:00 p.m.) at the Newman Centre;

- April 1st (2:00 1:30 p.m.) at St. Michael’s Cathedral, 200 Church Street Sacré Coeur Parish, 381 Sherbourne Street, Toronto.

All who are interested in assisting with these preparations are welcome to attend.

We would like to extend a warm thank-you to Fr. Michael Machacek for allowing us use of the Newman Centre over the past year, and to the university students who helped with babysitting.  The Group will be collecting a contribution of thanksgiving to the Newman Centre Parish and, if you are unable to attend the March meetings but wish to donate, please e-mail us at ordinariate@torontoanglicans.ca for further details.

Anglican Use Mass in Cambridge, ON

This coming Sunday, the 12^th of February, members of the Toronto Anglican Use Group will be travelling out to Cambridge, Ontario, to join with the Sodality of St Edmund, King and Martyr, for their regular Mass according to the Anglican Use. We will therefore not be having our regular meeting at the Newman Centre this Sunday.

The service (Sung Eucharist) will be at 1pm at St Patrick’s Church, 53 Wellington St, Cambridge, and will be followed by a coffee hour in their parish hall. The Sodality of St Edmund, King and Martyr, is the second group in Canada to begin celebrating the Anglican Use regularly and belongs to the Diocese of Hamilton.

As for our own group in Toronto, we have just received confirmation that Archbishop Collins will be authorizing some of his own priests to celebrate the Anglican Use Mass for us on a weekly basis beginning in the near future. As those plans are finalized we’ll be sure to keep everyone informed.

In the meantime, we’re very much looking forward to seeing our fellow future ordinariate members again at St Edmund’s (their website is at http://www.stedmund.ca/) and we hope you can join us. The first AU parish in Canada, St John the Evangelist in Calgary, has a new website too, at http://www.calgaryordinariate.com/, and it will encourage everyone to know that since they were received into the Catholic Church at the end of Advent their regular Sunday Mass attendance has already begun increasing.

An Ordinariate for North America

It appears that the newley erected personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter will, in time, include Canadian communities.  The Bishop of Hamilton indicated as much in his letter welcoming the Anglican Use Sodality of St Edmund when he wrote, “they will, in due time, become part of the Personal Ordinariate that is being erected in the United States.”

Peregrinations writes:

Fr Jeffrey Steenson, formerly Episcopal (Anglican) Bishop of the Diocese of Rio Grande (New Mexico and NW Texas), has been appointed as of January 1, 2012 Ordinary or chief pastor for the Anglican Ordinariate of The Chair of St. Peter. The Ordinariate is a body in full communion with the Holy See and so in communion with more than one billion Roman and Eastern Catholic Christians around the world, the largest unified religious body on earth. This is indeed an answer to the prayers of many for whom the unity of the Church is essential.

The Ordinariate is erected in the United States but will apparently have oversight for Canadian groups as well so is effectively a continent-wide diocese for Catholic Anglicans in the United States and Canada allowing them to bring their Anglican heritage or patrimony into the full communion of the worldwide Catholic Church under the guidance of their own ordinary or chief pastor, Fr. Steenson.

The full text is on the blog Pereginations.

Anglicans Received into the Catholic Church

Christopher Mahon  provides the following update on the Toronto group and other Canadian groups:

In this Christmastide the good news keeps coming.

This coming Sunday, the 1^st of January, the Bishop of Hamilton will be receiving a group of Anglicans from the Kitchener-Waterloo area into the Catholic Church. The Mass within which they are to be received will be celebrated according to the Anglican Use at 2pm in the Cathedral of Christ the King in Hamilton.

This will be the third group received in Canada after a number of Anglicans were received in Toronto and Calgary on Advent IV. The Calgary parish, St John the Evangelist, is now celebrating the Anglican Use regularly. We in the Toronto group hope to begin doing so in the near future as well [after several members of the Toronto group were received into the Catholic Church on 18 December.]

New Year’s Day will also see the official erection of an Ordinariate for the United States. It is expected that the American Ordinary will be given interim jurisdiction over the Canadian Anglican Use communities until such time as Canada is given an ordinariate of our own.

A letter from the Bishop of Hamilton is available here, on the Diocese of Hamilton’s website.

May God continue to bless these communities, and others aspiring to respond to the Holy Father’s initiative, through the New Year.

Update

Although the situation in Canada is a little behind events in the US Church, the Toronto group is moving along well.  Under the leadership of Fr Eric, the group is meeting regularly; since already well catechized, discussion has focused on salient topics such as the role of Our Lady, the Eucharist, and the Papacy.  As we await an announcement on the how and when Anglicanorum Coetibus will be implemented in Canada, we press on in hope, “keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.”

Catechesis begins

The Anglican Ordinariate Group of Toronto will resume meetings on Sundays 2-4 pm at the Newman Centre (89 St George Street ), starting Sunday 11 September.  As before, we will begin with Evening Prayer in the chapel.

This time we will be engaged in a process of catechetical instruction, likely using the Evangelium program, to prepare members of the group for reception into the Catholic Church.  Fr Eric Rodrigues will lead us in these sessions.

As stated in an earlier post, this catechesis may accommodate people who aren’t yet sure of their decision.  To enter a program of preparation does not imply an obligation to be received!  At least initially, then, anyone is welcome who wishes to ask questions about the process, or join catechesis in order to explore the Catholic faith and discern whether God is calling them to enter the Church through the Ordinariate.

Also welcome, of course, are those members of our group who are already Catholic. We are one community. Both Anglicans and former Anglicans have already contributed much to our common fellowship. God willing, we will come to form form one parish community. Following the Evangelium program is an opportunity for us all to continue to benefit from one another’s encouragement and presence.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions.

Archbishop Collins on the Implementation of Anglicanorum Coetibus

Archbishop Collins has released a DVD of the talks delivered at the March 2011 Anglicanorum Coetibus conference in Mississauga, Ontario.  His introduction to the DVD can be viewed on the Archdiocese’s website.  In his introduction he states:

Now, in July of 2011, we are coming to the close of the process of gathering information on roughly how many people in Canada who have been fully and accurately informed concerning Anglicanorum Coetibus and what it means, want to proceed according to the Apostolic Constitution to be received into the Catholic Church, and to form communities within the Church.  Once I have an idea of this, I will be able to advise the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and then the Congregation will decide on the precise way in which Anglicanorum Coetibus can be implemented in Canada.

The Archbishop describes the process to be followed by a group of Anglicans, and the relationship between the individual’s decision and the group’s corporate reception into the Catholic Church:

It is important to note that the corporate dimension refers to the fact that people do come to a decision to enter the Church as a group of Anglicans, that when they have been received into the Church they form a group again, an Anglican use parish within an Anglican use diocese of the Roman Catholic Church.  But each person must individually enter the Catholic Church and, after being fully informed, must individually decide to proceed.  Notice, for example, in Anglicanorum Coetibus that there is a requirement that each person write a letter asking to be received into the Church.  So the process is this:  A group of Anglicans decide they want to enter into the Catholic Church. Then a catechetical process adapted to their needs and based upon the Catechism of the Catholic Church is established, which would take several months.  In some way a Catholic priest needs to be involved in this process to clarify matters and to answer questions about the Catholic faith, and what it means to be part of the Roman Catholic Church, in communion with the Holy Father.

The Toronto group is at this stage, as we anticipate a catechetical process to begin in the Fall.  Archbishop Collins continues:

Then, those who wish to proceed, and who must be free to do so or not to do so, individually request it through a letter. They make the standard profession of faith which is used for reception into the Catholic Church, they go to Confession, they receive the Sacrament of Confirmation, and then receive the Holy Eucharist for the first time as members of the Roman Catholic Church.  Then they gather together with their fellow parishioners to form a parish which celebrates the Anglican patrimony within the Catholic Church according to Anglicanorum Coetibus and its Norms.

At the 11:50 mark on the video the Archbishop also addresses Anglican clergy who wish to be ordained as Catholic priests in the Ordinariate:

One thing to notice concerning the clergy of an Ordinariate as they are described in Anglicanorum Coetibus and its Norms is that although they will be pastorally responsible for what is often a very small Anglican Use community within the Ordinariate, they are also simply, fully Catholic priests of the Roman Catholic Church, and would likely be serving widely within the local diocese or in other forms of ministry. … the priests of the Ordinariate are fully Catholic priests and need to have a formation and a screening which is very much in line with that which is found in the preparation for the ordination of all Catholic priests.

[There are] certain procedures which are used in all Catholic seminaries, and are particularly important these days.  There are police checks, and … interviews, letters of reference and so on, and psychological testing.

[The time usually devoted to seminary formation], obviously, needs to be adapted in the case of people who have already been formed for the priesthood within the Anglican Church and that certainly will be done, making it a much briefer formation process, but the content of it needs to be respected.

I would urge any Anglican priest, who is considering Anglicanorum Coetibus, to study carefully the document issued by Pope John Paul called Pastores Dabo Vobis, which is the charter for all seminaries within the Catholic Church and which describes the whole process of formation: human formation, pastoral formation, spiritual formation and intellectual formation.

[E]ach person’s situation needs to be looked at, and the degree of supplementation that is needed must be decided.  Each case must be treated individually as the situation and the background of each applicant differs, but the norm is to be as close as possible to the standard for ordination to the priesthood within the Catholic Church.

For those who are applying for ordination according to the Apostolic Constitution and who have received already a formal, full Anglican preparation for ordination, in a seminary or theological college, it is most likely then, in their case, that after the screening is completed, what would be needed would be simply some supplementation and that might be done relatively quickly according to the norms of Pastores Dabo Vobis.  If, however, a person does not have such a background, which is really the background assumed in Anglicanorum Coetibus, but rather has had a much more informal formation for the priesthood which is very much less than what is described in Pastores Dabo Vobis, then there are very serious questions about what needs to be done.  It may well be that a person in that situation would need a very, very lengthy process of formation, or it may well be that sometimes we may need to look at the question of whether the person be ordained to the priesthood or perhaps to the diaconate or perhaps to serve the Lord in the lay state.  These are questions that need to be looked at in each individual case.

The Archbishop concludes by summarizing the next steps to be taken:

So, we look to the future.  First of all we need to determine, and we are close to that, what form the implementation of Anglicanorum Coetibus will take in Canada.  Parish by parish the Ordinariate is formed, and we need to see how many groups of Anglicans, and how many people, want to proceed. Then the Holy See will decide what happens next.

While that is going on, individual groups, assisted by the mentor priests and perhaps by the local Catholic pastor, will begin their process of catechetical instruction preliminary to reception into the Catholic Church, and the formation of a parish.  At the same time the clergy applications need to be considered for those clerics who wish to be priests within the Catholic Church according to Anglicanorum Coetibus.

So, we celebrate this great reality of Anglicanorum Coetibus.  It is a blessing for Anglicans who wish to be received into the Catholic Church, while still retaining many of the Anglican cultural, pastoral, liturgical, and spiritual traditions which they love, and which are a source of spiritual enrichment for them. It is a blessing for the whole Catholic Church, already so diverse in traditions, and now enriched by the Anglican patrimony.

Blessed John Henry Newman, pray for us. Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us.