THE
P RTAL
January 2013
Page 9
The Ordinary’s Page
Monsignor Andrew
Burnham writes
Nowadays I
seem to have two jobs. One is continuing as an
Assistant to the Ordinary with all the exciting pioneer work that entails:
principally, in my case, work on liturgy, but also work with ordinands
and with clergy formation.
The Oxford Ordinariate Group continues to be in my
care and with it the distinct opportunity, available in a
place like Oxford, to enable young Catholic musicians
to sing the masses and motets at the very service for
which they were written. All of that is tremendously
worthwhile and, with the inevitable meetings, could
be a full-time job. As it is, all that takes up half my
time.
find
Ordinariate
clergy
wondering
whether I have ‘gone
native’ – moved over
into parish and
diocesan
work
and
no
longer
interested
in
the
Ordinariate, its liturgy and its life.
The other half is being seconded to the diocese of
Portsmouth to be the priest at East Hendred and East
Ilsley, downland villages in what used to be Berkshire
absorbed into the parish
and is nowadays South Oxfordshire.
We will indeed find that some of the smaller groups
It has been good to learn some recusant history – the are in danger of being absorbed into the parish and
local big house belongs to descendants of St Thomas diocese where they find themselves. That is not what
More and in its thirteenth century chapel the boast the Pope has asked of us, however. My own view,
is that the Protestant service has never been read. increasingly, is that, when an Ordinariate group is
Another big house in the parish has the Strawberry quite small – less than a couple of dozen, say – there
Gothic chapel used by Bishop Challoner and, for Mass, may be a new and challenging vocation unfolding.
one wears his vestments.
For an individual member of the Ordinariate it is
at least two jobs
not dissimilar to the vocation of many other Catholics.
These two jobs – working for the Ordinariate and Many parishes have members of Opus Dei, or one or
for Portsmouth Diocese – show us the way that the two Third Order Franciscans, or Benedictine Oblates.
Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham is making a Even at its tiniest, then, the Ordinariate Group, like
contribution in these early days. Most of our priests other religious movements, is a bit of leaven, a bit of
have at least two jobs – working first and foremost for salt.
the Ordinariate but also working for the local diocese,
in parish or chaplaincy work.
Those who have joined the Ordinariate have had
the courage to become Catholics and go somewhere
Some Ordinariate priests are spending more than further away or less convenient on a Sunday, often
half their week on diocesan or chaplaincy work - to the astonishment of friends and family members.
because it is from those sources that they draw their That kind of radical obedience to the Gospel, and
main financial support.
With a fairly balanced commitment to the detail of the Catholic Faith and its
working week, I find the parish and diocese sometimes practice, is a very great gift to the Church.
wondering whether I am spending too much time on
the Ordinariate, or trying to make the parish into an
Each one of us, whether part of a large Ordinariate
Ordinariate redoubt.
Mission or a small Group, is where God has put us and
there is work to be done, and it is a work of faithfulness.
going native
(So far there are two of us….. Some redoubt!) I also
May God bless you in that work in 2013.