In America, the sister Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter is rapidly establishing itself as an active and growing part of the Church.
Where timidity continues to be a soft but tangible barrier to ordinariate growth in England and Wales, US bishops and dioceses (and indeed the Ordinariate itself) have adopted a “Give it a go” approach.
The results have been encouraging. In many places communities of former Anglicans have been welcomed into the life of the wider Church as long-lost kin, not by lifting clergy and lay faithful from their distinctive habitat into the life of dioceses and diocesan parishes, but by creating new, small, intentional, dedicated communities, where the Christian life can be lived in its fullness, albeit with a distinctive Anglican character. The best examples of this are found where groups have been given principal use of a church building, or where a redundant building has been made available to them full time, in a manageable way or with material help.
The Ordinariate was given a further boost earlier this year when Mgr Steven Lopes was consecrated a bishop and made the new ordinary. Bishop Lopes is able to speak bishop-to-bishop; to communicate the vision and mission of the ordinariate in a robust and convincing way, as a true equal.
American history is on the Ordinariate’s side. A great part of this openness on the part of dioceses, may be down to the widespread and historical experience of national or ethnic personal parishes which, for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, dotted major American cities.
The US version has another major advantage. In England and Wales, the Church has for so long been an insular, almost defensive, community with a sense of terminal decline. The US Ordinariate, by contrast, benefits from a keenly felt confidence that the Church can and is moving forward.
